PB25 Playthrough Experience

[iPrestige]

I just wanted to make a post listing and detailing certain issues I’ve encountered, suggestions on where I think the game needs improvement, questions and many other game related stuff. I also would like to see how Gary and the community feels about certain things that I’ll be bringing up, which I hope can lead to some insightful discussion in an effort to improve everyone’s gaming experience. Have you been experiencing some of the same issues? Where do you think the game can improve? What have you seen during your playthrough? This post will also be linked to a support ticket so I can send Gary files of some of the issues I’ve been experiencing and bugs/glitches I’ve found:

1. No player over the age of 24 should be eligible for the ROTY award nor an All-Rookie Team selection in YEAR ONE of a fictional league.
1.1. I understand fictional leagues begin from scratch with no prior stats and all players starting off with zero experience. This setup presents a problem when a 32-year old player—usually at the height of his prime—beats out younger guys (around their early-20s) that produce enough to be serious candidates for the awards.
1.1.1. Only 1 player (24-years old) out of 10 fit the “24 or under” criteria I’m proposing in one of my saves. The second youngest player is 27-years old.
1.2. Why 24-years old?
1.2.1. Oldest rookie to win the ROTY in the last 10 years was Malcolm Brogdon at 24-years old.
1.2.2 WSDSS College Basketball 24 & 25’ s linked league feature considered—illustrated below are CB players’ typical age for their class, and their age when they transition to the pro game in parentheses, which shows 24-years old as the oldest a player can transition from CB to PB:
1.2.2.1. FR: 18 (19) - SO: 19 (20) - JR: 20 (21) - SR: 21 (22) - RS/5TH-YR SR: 22 (23)
1.2.2.2. FR: 19 (20) - SO: 20 (21) - JR: 21 (22) SR: 22 (23) - RS/5TH-YR SR: 23 (24)
1.3. The player who usually wins ROTY is almost always the league MVP in YEAR ONE of a fictional league; realistically speaking, definitely doable (Wilt in ‘59-’60 season) but not when you're 32-years old—while accounting for the modern NBA game.
1.4. If an age limit can’t be set for whatever reason, I wouldn’t mind having players generating in fictional leagues with pro experience that correlate somewhat with their current age in order to bring back some realism to the aforementioned awards. I’ve noticed a few issues—more so inconveniences—relating to a player’s pro experience which frequently confuses, frustrates and/or decreases my overall gaming experience during a playthrough. I’ll go through them later on in this post as I address other topics.

2. G-League Issues/Concerns
2.1. G-League COTY game logic may need to be reworked.
2.1.1. I can’t find a pre-season prediction of where G-League teams are projected to finish by the end of their regular season like I can for the pro teams, so I can’t even use that as a way to confirm the validity of the winning coach’s nomination. With that being said, shouldn’t the award just go to the coach with the best G-League record, or at least close to it? I have seen, on multiple occasions, coaches with double-digit losses winning the award. When I check the team standings for those years, I see several coaches with better records than the award winner, with around 2-4 of them with single-digit loss records. This might not be very important as it relates to the G-League, but it does mean something when coaches from the G-League pool are being considered for coaching staff positions in the pro game, especially G-League HC’s with spotty resumes and low coaching levels getting HC positions with pro teams (which I will elaborate on later in this post); these little details really bring the realism down in the game.
2.2 Promotions of G-League coaches to pro teams seem unrealistic.
2.2.1. As stated before, the most egregious promotions are the frequency at which G-League HC’s secure head coaching positions for pro teams. Again, not impossible: Mark Daigenault with OKC. But that situation saw him develop as a coach for several years within OKC’s organization. His record wasn’t the best during his time with the Blue, but you can see why he was given a chance out of the G-League with a team focused on a rebuild. Not saying all G-League HC to pro HC promotions should be like this, but there should be some logic behind them—which take into consideration coach level, current overall coaching record, playoff appearances, championships, COTY, etc. Another thing that I have seen is 3rd Assistants on G-League teams being promoted to 3rd Assistants roles in the pro game (although I may have deleted the save where I witnessed that).
2.2.2. Here’s a rough categorization—considering they’ll be competing with other coaching with some sort of pro level coaching experience— of what coaching positions in the G-League could have a realistic shot at each coaching position in the pro game (not the end-all-be-all; outliers can still be a thing):
2.2.2.1. HC: GL-HC (rare)
2.2.2.2. 1st AC: GL-HC
2.2.2.3. 2nd AC: GL-HC; GL-1st AC
2.2.2.4. 3rd AC: GL-HC; GL-1st AC; GL-2nd AC (rare)

3. Under “Daily News”—clicking on a (1) HC’s name opens up a random player’s page instead; (2) retired player’s name opens up a blank player’s page during the “Ownership Meeting” period of the Offseason.
3.1. When pressing a retired player’s name, the page summarizing the player’s year-to-year box score averages and his “Career Awards” sections should be displayed like those things are when you search a player up in the Almanac or a team’s “Player History" page.

4. Teams should have the option to negotiate a Player Option or Team Option during contract extensions like IRL. Also, players seem too unwilling to budge on the years when negotiating extensions.


5. When playing with “Dynamic Ratings” enabled, can Player Badges be active one year and then the year following be deactivated? For example, a player’s “Bucket Getter” badge deactivating due to a player’s scoring skill regressing and/or not having a good scoring season. I believe I saw something like this happen in one of my saves where I had “Dynamic Ratings” ON and I wanted to know if this was a thing. Can player’s star ratings/overalls increase and decrease in a non-linear manner with “Dynamic Ratings” enabled?

6. Pre-Draft Workouts
6.1. Can I have some clarification on these combine results: (1) 3PT; (2) OFF DRIBBLE; (3) OFF CUT?
6.1.1. Is “3PT” for both three-point shots taken stationary and on-the-move, or just catch-and-shoot? Is “OFF DRIBBLE” and “OFF CUT” midrange shots only?
6.2. Are the pre-draft letter ratings each prospect is given by your scout relative to the draft class or the pro league players?
6.3. Can we increase the number of invites from 18 to 20? This will make it so that we have enough players to hypothetically have 4 teams consisting of 5 players each playing each other in a pre-draft workout environment.

7. 6MOTY & DPOTY
7.1. The 6MOTY is being dominated by centers who are hyper-efficient low-volume guys, which doesn’t seem realistic. The average FGA per game for qualified players in a recent save of mines was 13-FGA per game. I have seen more than one Center win the award averaging less than 10-FGA per game. Although the IRL award tends to skew towards on-ball scoring/playmaking guards and wings, I have no problem with Centers (considering Naz Reid and Montrezl Harrell as worthy winners—putting defense aside) winning it. Also, voters are beginning to weigh a player’s efficiency more than they have in the past but I still think volume matters in this scenario. Lastly, no player in the past 10 years has won the award averaging less than 10-FGA per game.
7.1.1. I know there is no hard minute minimum for this award, but guys over the last 10 years who’ve won the award have played at least 24 mpg. I would be for a minute minimum of 24 mpg to be eligible for this award, considering the 6th Man is usually regarded as the “Sixth Starter” so the least he can do is play 50% of a 48 minute game.
7.1.2. Winning should be weighed more—if not already, taken into consideration—when awarding a winner. Over the last 10 years, winners of this award have seen their respective teams make the playoffs. Now I know with the Play-In, it could be a bit tricky weighing in winning correctly. I think having your team finish in the Play-In should be good enough since it shows you played well in enough meaningful games for your team to earn an opportunity to play themselves into the playoffs.
7.2. The DPOY should weigh in winning, specifically a play-off berth when choosing a winner. I have had a player with consecutive years without a playoff appearance win DPOY awards be granted to him with no playoff appearances. If you are the best defensive player in the league for a season, you should have the floor-raising ability of guaranteeing your team a top-6 seed; the DPOY award is the MVP award for defense in my opinion.

8. Two-Way Contracts
8.1. I would be all for a Two-Way age limit of 27-years old. The oldest player on a Two-Way contract currently is Houston’s Jack McVeigh at 28-years old. If you want to follow the real-life max age on a Two-Way, I’m fine with that. But 27-years old is more so related to WSDDSCB. If the oldest age a player can come into the pro game is 24-years old, that player's last year of eligibility for a Two-Way would be at age 27. This would help mitigate all these 30-year-old players who begin to regress from being signed as Two-Way players by the AI teams in fictional leagues. I have seen a 38-year old player who averaged 30-ppg the season before sign a Two-Way contract dominate the G-League instead of contributing to a pro team. Now imagine multiple players around the same skill level and age as the 38-year old all in the G-League via Two-Way contracts. This not only takes away players who still have pro talent from the pros, but it fills the G-League with players who shouldn’t be there, thus taking away developmental PT and end-of-the-season awards from players who would have benefited had those older players not been there. I’m just trying to get Two-Way contracts back to targeting development-focused athletes who are on the younger side.
8.1.1. I think the reason this issue primarily is a problem when playing fictional leagues is because of the pro experience being set to zero for all players, regardless of age or current/potential ability. Because these players are still under 5 years of pro experience, the game’s logic still thinks they have room to grow, regardless of age. So the AI, even though they are regressing, still picks them up because their current/potential abilities look like that of a promising prospect, ignoring the player’s age-based regression and current age. I’ve only seen this happen with star ratings since I don’t play with overalls. I would love to see how it would play out if I played a fictional save with overalls enabled instead.
8.2. IRL all teams have all 3 Two-Way slots filled, except for the Magic who have 2 of 3 filled. Why don’t PB teams have all their slots filled? Is it because of a lack of overall talent in the game? Maybe we should have more 2.5*-prospects who have a low chance of reaching that 2,5* potential. Or, increase the overall potential of young prospects as a whole while decreasing the chance they ever realize their full potential, and/or have them start considering signing young players with 2*-potential.
8.3. I have yet to see a player on a Two-Way get converted to a standard contract. If this happens, when does it occur so I can look out for it? If not, why isn’t the AI doing so?

9. When I turn “Trade Restrictions” ON, what is actually enabled? Can I get a list? Could we possibly put a list in-game?

10. Free Agency
10.1. A 2-year minimum without an option attached isn't realistic for either side of the negotiating table. A player would prefer to maximize a good year on a 1-year minimum and go back in the market while a team wouldn’t want a roster spot to be taken up by a player who they feel like they’d rather replace after playing a subpar season with the team. Not saying they don’t happen or can’t, they just seem more of like a rare occurrence nowadays in the modern game; it’ll be more realistic if we see options on 2-year deals or players signing a 1-year deal instead.

11. I would be more inclined to utilize the “Training Camp” feature instead of letting the AI handle it if the sliders for each category were numbered and the max amount of points for each section would be allocated using the sliders to reach the total. The sliders current configuration aren’t very appealing to me considering I can just max everything out with no way of knowing how much impact doing so has on my players and the team’s overall development.

12. I would love coaches salaries to be more in-line with real-life coaches salaries. I know that for most coaches in the NBA the contract structure and general contract information isn’t as widely available as player contracts, but I think there is enough info out there to get a rough estimation on the values of coaches contracts on a per year basis. This change will make both the “Remaining Staff Budget” and “Training Staff Budget” more important, as well as the management of both; as it stands, all teams always have a decent chunk of “Remaining Staff Budget” after filling out their coaching staff, which allows all teams to max out their “Training Staff Budget” at $3.5M. With how coach salaries—specifically head coaches—are in the game there is always a ton of money left over every season for every team which takes away the strategy and considerations a player and the AI would have to take when hiring a HC. These would indirectly affect your “Training Staff Budget;” do I set my budget to $2.1M instead of maxing it out at $3.5M to get that one coach I feel would be perfect for my team? Off the top of my head, after doing some quick research, the average NBA head coach makes roughly $6.8M. The lowest reported being New Orleans’ HC Willie Green at $1.2M/yr, while Golden State’s Steve Kerr leads the pack at $17.5M/yr. I’m not saying the coaches in PB have to get near Kerr’s figures on a consistent basis, just closer to the average real-life averages with realistic deviations both up and down…maybe $12.5-13M being that “Steve Kerr” number in PB.

13. Second-round picks whose rights were retained should be eligible to be placed on a Two-Way when exercising their rights and bringing them in to play for your team.
13.1. When is the last day to make a decision on the player’s rights before you can do so again?
13.2. Can players whose rights you own develop without being on your team? If so, I’m assuming it wouldn’t be to the degree of development while on your team?

14. When is the in-game deadline for teams to match RFA offers? When is the deadline for RFAs to accept pending tenders?

15. Players with options on their deals should have a letter indicating which option they have (“T” for Team and “P” for Player) and in what year that option is in when you open a “Player’s Bio,” under the contract details section after clicking a player’s name.

16. he “Advanced Stats” option in “Player Search” should not include ON, OFF or EFG%. They should be replaced with USG%, STP% and PA/SF. These stats are more informative when it comes to having a list of players who you are comparing than the ones that are currently there. Or, add drop-downs to allow players to set up their own customizable views that could be saved and used in the future.

17. Trading Logic Issue: Trading (the better of) 1st-Rd swaps shouldn’t trigger a message from the team I’m trying to trade with which states along the lines of “[they] don’t want to trade a 1st Rd Pick.” It usually happens when I am trying to trade an older player on a bad contract away. I assume I am getting that message in large part because of the player I’m trying to trade, not the 1st Rd pick swap I’m including in the deal; it’s just weird that I got that message instead of “we don’t want to take on this contract.”

18. League Standing/Play-In Seeding Error
18.1. When there is a tiebreaker between two teams for the last Play-In spot, the team shown outside the Play-In is the team that ends up taking the last Play-In spot instead. The standings are displayed incorrectly in the “Standing” menu.

19. Why isn’t the Play-In setup like IRL? The current setup has the Play-In teams playing in a 1-game series single-elimination format in order to qualify for the playoffs.

20. I had a Clippers team, in a fictional league, with questionable spacing dominate towards a 64-win season; maybe lineup configurations should weigh spacing more to reflect the modern game. Teams that don’t have proper spacing should receive a minor decrease in performance.

21. [Glitch] Coach gained 30 Skill Points after continuing past the "View Awards" page.

22. On what day do in-season reevaluations happen? When playing with “Dynamic Ratings,” is how a player is playing so far in the season also reflected in the ratings? Can ratings change any other time, other than after training camp?


23. In terms of player development, does the GM play any role in developing players? In the “Staff Help” section on the “Staff” page, it states GM don’t play a part but when creating a game, on the coach’s rating menu, it states otherwise under the Player Development rating—one of these screens may need to be updated with the correct info.

24. I think the game is overvaluing Centers for All-NBA Team selections as well, specifically a certain type of Center who's also been winning multiple 6MOTY awards as well: the low-volume, rim-running high-efficiency finishing big.
24.1. I’ve had multiple instances of bigs who I would consider as quality starters, but not perennial all-star/superstar talents make All-NBA 2nd and 3rd teams. All-NBA teams in the modern era are usually filled with guys who are close to +20-ppg scorers on slightly above-average to high volume and bring value in multiple different areas of the game. Now, there are star players in this archetype who’ve made All-NBA teams like Draymond Green (x1 Second Team; x1 Third Team) and Rudy Gobert ( x1 Second Team; x3 Third Team). These two guys are generational defenders, with Rudy also adding elite rebounding ability while Green adds generational playmaking ability for his position—most of the Centers with this archetype don’t provide those types of advantages to mitigate their low-volume output on the offensive end. You can’t average under 15-ppg, albeit hyper-efficiently, be ok at 1 or 2 skills and make All-NBA teams—it’s just not realistic.

25. The MVP of one of my fictional league's seasons didn’t make an All-Star team. I’m assuming he must’ve been out with an injury when the All-Star selections happened and ended up missing out. There should be a system in place that picks All-Stars maybe a week in advance of the official game, and any player OUT within that amount of time will still retain their All-Star not, but would not play. They would have an injury replacement take a spot instead and promote a player up from the remaining group of All-Star selections on the team. The replacements could even have their own All-Star badge be purple to show that they’re injury replacements. This would allow players who get screwed by an injury close to the All-Star game to still retain their All-Star selection, while the game is still played with a player who would’ve also been deserving had a player in the original 12 not been as good—sorta like how it is IRL.

26. I found a few minor spelling errors in-game…

[jlemmen43]

The Fictional leagues start fresh (as if nobody has played an actual NBA minute). But it will be populated with various ages. What you can do to work around this is add experience to each player according to age (via the Database Import/Export function). This method was changed beginning on last year's version I believe. I thought there was an option toggle, but I'm not seeing it anymore (or I'm remembering incorrectly).

[Gary Gorski]

ok a lot to digest here and I don't want to write an essay but here are some answers - anything error related I will look at of course

1. A fictional league starts as if the league were just put together so everyone is a rookie so while I understand what you are saying it doesn't make sense to limit it to an age. It would be more appropriate to just not do the ROY but I don't know how the code would handle that and could lead to other issues

2. I will have to look at the code and see what it is using as the criteria but if I recall it kind of tries to do a win per talent level type calculation but that may not be appropriate for the G League because players come and go

4. My feeling is why should the player be willing to take less years in an extension? He is better off going to free agency and having the most options possible for the best contract. The ability for an extension is only a benefit to the team because they're bidding against nobody at that point so why make it easier?

5. Everything for dynamic ratings shown is a "feel" of the player so there is no linear or non-linear matter - its a reset every year of how a player is viewed by the general public at that point so one season he might be viewed very highly, has a bad season and then his ratings shown would be lower because people sour on him but
what you are shown is not necessarily the ratings that really exist so you might get a lot of up and down this way and it looking like a player is progressing and regressing all over the place when the actual ratings being used are either increasing or staying the same until he hits the point in his career where he begins to decline.

6. The combine results are for a player making three point shots, jump shots off a dribble and jump shots off making a cut and receiving a pass. The letter ratings are relative to the entire league, not just the class and pre draft workouts are not done all at once in real life with like 20 guys coming in and having 5 on 5 scrimmages. They're done 2,3,4 guys at a time over the span of many days - just the game does it all at once

9. The trade restrictions would be not allowing teams to trade first round picks in consecutive years and also ceratin 30, 60 and 90 day windows for trading a player who has been traded or signed etc

11. I try to explain training camp with the notes at the top of the screen but the way it works is that the sliders are for a visual representation to you - if you max everything you are saying treat all things equally and give equal time to everything. The same as if you were to place them all in the middle or all at the end. The sliders let you visually differentiate between the importance of spending time on certain things.

13. I don't know if that is actually allowed to happen. The retained rights are only available on the day of the email you receive about them and they should develop at a slower pace while not on your team

14. Teams have 3 days from the signing of an offer sheet to match on RFAs. There is no actual deadline to accept the tenders but the players will tend to give up waiting after a while and realizing there is no more money out there for better offers.

19. the play in is set as in real life - 7 plays 8 and the winner gets in, the loser plays the winner of 8v9 to get in next

21. did you win the championship or something? coaches get a significant boost for doing that

26. if you provide them to me I will correct them

[iPrestige]

1. That’s understandable—I don’t mind using Jlemmen’s workaround to circumvent the issue if my suggestion (1.4) might be too tricky to implement in this current iteration of the game.

2. Did you find anything worth changing after looking at the code? If so, will they be addressed in the next update?

4. Agreed.

5. I see—so, can the increases and decreases shown when progressing through training camp be considered “real” or are they masked when playing with Dynamic Ratings?

6. Got it—thanks for the clarification.

7. The latest update (14.3) mentions an update to award choosing criteria. I’ll run some saves and provide some feedback if need be.

8. I think Jlemmen’s workaround may provide a solution.

9. Ok, I’ll make a quick Google search to see what day-specific restrictions are related to trading and signing.

10. How do you feel about my thoughts on FA and the numerous 2-yr minimum contracts I’m seeing each FA period?

11. I’ll move forward with that in mind.

12. How do you feel about my thoughts on coaches?

13. I don’t see why not. The only condition a player has to meet is having fewer than 4 years of NBA experience.

14. Thanks for clearing that up.

16. How do you feel about adding customizable views for “Advanced Stats” on the “Player Search” page?

19. Got it—had some confusion there. Sorry about that.

21. No, I wasn’t even in control of a team. I’ll send you the file.

22. I know it’s in the middle of the season, but I’d like to know the exact date.

23. I would love some clarification on this matter please.

25. How do you feel about my proposal Gary?

26. I’ll be sending them in after posting this reply. Thanks again for being so receptive Gary!