SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby PointGuard » Sun Jul 31, 2022 3:49 pm

added
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby ShamWow17 » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:08 pm

In regards to rtruesdell's 5th suggestion a couple of posts back, I think I remember Gary saying something about the ability to offer more scholarships than you have available calling for a massive overhaul to the recruiting AI which would be unlikely in the near future. That said, while I generally prefer DDSCB for qualities such as the single payment per game, greater customization and realism, as well as offering both single and multiplayer options well, Hoops Dynasty does excel in some areas, most notably the recruiting, which allows for more scholarship offers than open roster spots. If how that may be implemented from a coding standpoint is part of the trouble, maybe HD devs could/would offer a couple pointers or something? Not sure of the viability there, and certainly not for the next iteration or two of the game, but it would be an awesome change to see around 2025 or so.

As for a new (as far as I recall seeing) suggestion, it would be cool to be able to seperate out individual stats and lineup tracking based on quality of opponent. For example, looking at your team's net +/- in quad 1 games. I think it would help provide a better feel for whether changes in those numbers after adjusting your rotation come more as a result of the changes made, or if it's due to easier/more difficult competition than the team had been facing.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby PointGuard » Tue Aug 02, 2022 1:44 am

Added your suggestion.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby rtruesdell » Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:29 pm

One more for the hopper!

On Sept 18, when it's time to set schedules, I'd like to request that the preconference tournament brackets also fill out at that time to show who's playing in each. I try to avoid scheduling a team that I might face in a preconference tourney. So I have to go manually through each likely conference's team schedules to see who's drawn into my team's tournament. I quick look at a bracket would solve that in seconds.

Thanks!
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby PointGuard » Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:52 pm

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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby EnriqueM » Tue Aug 09, 2022 5:22 pm

rtruesdell wrote:One more for the hopper!

On Sept 18, when it's time to set schedules, I'd like to request that the preconference tournament brackets also fill out at that time to show who's playing in each. I try to avoid scheduling a team that I might face in a preconference tourney. So I have to go manually through each likely conference's team schedules to see who's drawn into my team's tournament. I quick look at a bracket would solve that in seconds.

Thanks!


One more about schedules, I'm lazy and don't care for the interface to request a schedule type so I usually let the AD do his thing which leads to impractical results. Like there's no way the AD for a power 5 team with an 80 reputation coming off a finals appearance would ever choose the "we should have 8 road games against top opponents" schedule. So maybe reputation should be used to set default behaviors with some probability of choosing a slightly atypical schedule. And/or just provide a button with the annual scheduling email so I can either go straight to that conversation or send him my feedback from that one directly instead of navigating through several other clicks.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby PointGuard » Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:49 pm

LOL...I don't know that the head coach being unwilling (or "lazy") to call the AD and request the preferred type of schedule is enough of a reason to implement a change, but I'll add your suggestion nonetheless.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby ShamWow17 » Fri Aug 12, 2022 4:01 pm

Shifting the year that seasons are logged as in save file history by one. So instead of the 2022-2023 season being listed in a save file's history as the 2022 season, it should instead be under 2023, when that season's conference play and tournament take place. Just a slightly more intuitive way to look back at history, and overwhelmingly the most common way to denote different seasons, at least among everyone I talk to with any regularity about basketball.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby PointGuard » Fri Aug 12, 2022 5:24 pm

ShamWow17 wrote:Shifting the year that seasons are logged as in save file history by one. So instead of the 2022-2023 season being listed in a save file's history as the 2022 season, it should instead be under 2023, when that season's conference play and tournament take place. Just a slightly more intuitive way to look back at history, and overwhelmingly the most common way to denote different seasons, at least among everyone I talk to with any regularity about basketball.

This has been brought up a few times in the past and Gary responded with why he has to do it this way. While I can't recall the specific reasoning, it made sense to me at the time and he was set on maintaining how it's been done within DDSCB as long as it's been around.
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Re: SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

Postby Bryan » Sat Aug 20, 2022 10:39 am

Returning after many years away, I have sort of a fresh perspective on the game, and I have a different perspective on games/design than I used to. With that in mind, I suggest in the strongest terms a major focus on the UI for the next version or two. I think this is more important than any feature additions; making DDSCB easier to use will result in fewer people who are willing to try it bouncing off of it. Visually the interface looks much more attractive these days, so that's been excellent to see. It's more functionality/ease of use that I'm concerned with. My primary 'first re-impression' was that 'yep this is still a good game' but also 'I'm fighting the UI at every turn. I'm not so sure this game actually wants me to play it and enjoy it'.

Don't mean that at all to be rude, but it would be dishonest to be less direct about it. Examples I've run into in the first few hours:

- Sliders in the association setup for giving your coach ratings are slow to respond at best and it's very hard to set the number to what I want it to be.

- Things like save dialogs, changing your coach picture, and so on bring up a standard 'windows interface' that would be best removed. Using buttons to cycle through the list of pictures, a save/load dialog with visuals consistent to the ingame interface, etc. would be better. That last bit is more of an aesthetic and not functional, but still a good idea. Along with the that I would put elements like the minimize/maximize/close windows controls in the upper-right look tacky/out of place, the three lines in the upper left that you click to get to menu/save/options/credits are not intuitive IMO. I think it would be much better off with a icon for those broken out into the main display. Esp. for settings, maybe not room for all of them on smaller resolutions.

- It's not always clear what you can click on and what you can't. I saw this mentioned on other sites as an issue with the game fwiw. Looking at the player 'cards' on the Dashboard, needing to click on the player name and not on the photo or in the brief bio are below to bring up their detailed card was not at all apparent and doesn't make sense to me - you can't click on those other parts to go anywhere else, so why not just click anywhere in the whole area?

- I spent 10 minutes on the Depth screen, I know what it's trying to do, and I still can't figure out how to do some basic tasks. How to just remove a player from a time slot in the game - I can set them to a different position but there's no obvious way to just take them out. How to move a player from being a reserve to starting. There's nothing I can find to drag-drop or such that accomplishes this.

- When advancing through the summer, camp weeks requiring multiple clicks isn't optimal. When you arrive at those weeks, I would suggest running all the camps at the start of the week and giving the player the results, so you can just review the information and then advance to the next week. Otherwhise you just end up either ignoring the camps, or advancing an extra time to see the info, then making your recruiting choices, then advancing again ...

- When texting players, you need to do about 7 clicks to ask the basic questions. It would be far better IMO to just have options for that right on the screen where you've just click text. I.e. 'ask about these topics' Even better to just say 'always ask about family if you haven't already, always ask what they think about your school' and so on. The little blurbs they say get repetitive very quickly and I don't think add much.

- When there's only one option for a combo box, it should be autoselected. For example, when trying to have a meeting with the AD for scheduling. You have to select AD, but there's literally no other option. Just pick it automatically instead of making the player do it. Other similar situations are clicking Continue after an association is created (you have to do that anyway, so just eliminate the button and enter the association when it's done creating), the login popup for singleplayer is just a clickthrough that doesn't need to be there - you can change which coach is loaded after you get into the game if you want, when going to the Roster screen there are two options, ratings and bio, but neither one is picked so it just defaults to not showing anything which is another bit of unnecessary work for the player and the initial impression is actually that the game isn't functioning properly.

- I don't know what the reasons are behind the scenes, but the loading time to go between screens seems excessive.

- Clicking Advance to Buy Reports or Schedule Camps is counterintuitive. Let's just be able to click on where it says Buy Reports etc. and go that screen right away.

- Some screens require you to save such as practice time, others don't such as strategy. Doesn't seem to be a consistent approach here. I think consistency is important that so that users can feel they are quickly getting a grasp on how the interface works.

- I am befuddled at which screens are linked from the left-side controls, and which ones use the small icons at the top. Recruiting, Coach Assignments, Practice Time at the top; Almanac, History, School Info on the left which are not as commonly used I wouldn't think. Recruiting, Recruit Class, Recruit Ranks are nowhere near each other. The core format of 'go to any screen from any other screen' is an excellent adoption of modern UI techniques. But the specifics of the implementation leave me thinking 'wait ... what?' I think the Staff and Coach Assignments screens could easily be combined into one. The information they have is mostly redundant.

- The green action buttons being on the far right of the screens feels out of place as left is where most of the rest of the action is and where the user attention is pushed. 'Advance' on some screens, 'Play/Sim Games' on the Play/Sim screen, etc.

- Playing out games, everything there pretty much looks really sharp and excellent to me. I also could not sub a player in at dead ball situations to save my life. I followed the instructions but I think I don't know how to select a player, because no matter what I clicked on, then clicking the photo of the player I want to bring them in for did nothing. I think this is really a microcosm of what I'm referring to. I want to like how all of this works. Good options for controlling how the team plays. Matchups, crashing boards, 2-for-1, etc. I follow the action on the court. Ok, time to bring in a reserve ... well, I can't figure out how to do it. And if I can't figure it out, I guarantee there are a lot of other people who couldn't either.
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