hey guys,
a while ago, as some of you might remember, there was a REALLY interesting zone thread where seble answered several rounds of questions about the mechanics of zone defense. information was revealed that was seemingly brand new to the entire community. we had a GREAT community discussion and then sent some follow up questions, which were also extremely interesting/illuminating. anyway, at that time, i said hey seble, this is really great! we all wish we could hear from you more, but we know you are too busy to scan the forums for interesting topics to chime in on - so what about if we did like a monthly "ask seble" where we sent you 2-3 questions on 1 topic, then debated the implications on the forums, probably following up with a couple more questions on the same topic? he said it was a good idea but basically that was what dev chats are for. he said he could schedule some dev chats, but it would be really helpful if i could reach out to the forums and get some questions and topics together and organized, so he could try to schedule them. and then maybe if that proves too hard to schedule, we could try the "ask seble" thing?

anyway, can you guys post questions here that you would be interested in getting answers on from seble, in one form or the other? i will try to organize these questions, grouping together like questions, possibly with some clean up or whatever, and then post a summary here which people can continue to comment on/add to.

to get started, here are some questions i would personally have, just to give some examples, to get people thinking. we cant just use questions i have or that defeats the whole purpose, i really hope we can get broad contribution here, and good discussion on some of these topics, as a way of distilling these complex issues down to some key questions. we have the opportunity to possibly get more in depth answers here than in a normal dev chat, so please keep that in mind (that zone thread went about 10x deeper than any dev chat i've seen ). so really, feel free to post not only questions, but your opinions on the answers to questions you have or others have, or opinions on which things should maybe be top priority to get figured out - or if you think some things are things we shouldn't be told by seble - or anything, really. the goal here is not to have a simple list, its to have good conversations about complex topics and to use those conversations to advance the community understanding - and then to tap seble when we really understand what it is that we don't understand :)

the end goal here would be to build an archive of quality seble information, in the context of the greater community discussion of the topic, along with our interpretation of the answers and how it applies to the game... so we can have some well organized discussions on complex topics, that get to a level we rarely can get to on these forums. i think that would be a fantastic resource for a lot of people.






GROUP QUESTIONS:
- Any information on upcoming changes, particularly big changes to recruiting?

sample questions:
sim engine:
- in zone defense, it was revealed that the defensive equations of each player depend on the distance from the basket, of the shooter. does this apply to man and zone defenses?
- in man defense, players have assigned defenders. do these assigned defenders ALWAYS guard their man, or are they usually guarding them, but switch off for pick-and-rolls and such?
- in press defense, do defensive matchups have any relevance? like, are players guarding the player opposite them (say your SG guarding their SG) more likely because the player is matched up defensively, or does that have no bearing?
- you added an effect in the engine rewrite where team mates can impact each other - for example, a killer passing pg will get his team mate's better open looks, than a crappy passing pg, resulting in higher fg% for other team mates. you've mentioned this effect is based on passing and iq. do all players on the team contribute in this way, or just the pg? are there other similar effects that were added at the time? was there any reason ball handling was not included - breaking down the defense through dribbling and penetrating can make a big difference - is there maybe something else that ball handling does for team mates (like maybe helps them with their own turnover rates or something)? 
- home court advantage - what are the primary mechanisms through which home court advantage is implemented?

recruiting:
- in d1, is an a+ prestige capped at a+, or can it be pushed up to a++ or even a+++ in extreme circumstances?
- are distance preferences (close to home/away from home) percent amounts that apply to all effort put into a player? are these two effects roughly even in importance, or is for example away from home worth more than close to home? can you give any insight into how important these effects are? we know that close to home applies to players from 0 to 200 miles and that it matters more the closer you are, but we don't have much idea if this is a significant factor at all, or only when you are actually pretty darn close (say within 100 miles), or if its always pretty significant.
- can you give any more insight into how considering credit works? we've been told it doesn't kick in for a while, how does that work? is considering credit a % bonus or a flat bonus? and if its a % bonus, does that bonus only apply to effort put in at the time, or total effort? for example, if you have 20k into a player and he is considering you alone from cycle 1, and someone jumps him at signings, and then you put 50k more in, while he, at the same time, puts 50k in - do you have any advantage over him on the 50k, based on considering credit? or do you only get the bonus on the 20k you already had in? 


really, hopefully we can identify some topics where we'd like to understanding more - like maybe the half court press, or maybe how 2 point shots are differentiated (is there a continuum of 2 point shots, where the importance of lp/per varies by distance to the basket? or are 2s split into jumpers and "in the paint" type shot?). and then we can talk about those topics, find a few topics a lot of people are interested in, and then have some discussions/debates/theories about how those things really work - and from there, agree on some questions we would like to have answered to advance our understanding of the topic. i'd like to hit some complex topics where we really get into it, like zone, and have to work to whittle down questions to just a few - as well as to hit some more straight forward, stand alone questions (like maybe someone wants to know if stamina impacts free throw shooting, which it does, but there are good 1 liners like that i'm sure that we can pull together more easily with less discussion). at the end maybe we can do a poll of the major topics people identified, allowing people to indicate what they are most interested in? that way we can democratically decide which issues we try to get seble to address first?

Why do all of seble's teams suck? Completely serious question by the way… I'm genuinely wondering why his teams are so mediocre when he's the programmer of the game.

Posted by backboy13 on 10/7/2014 1:46:00 PM (view original):
Why do all of seble's teams suck? Completely serious question by the way… I'm genuinely wondering why his teams are so mediocre when he's the programmer of the game.

I would guess that he uses the teams as more of a guinea pig to test the engine than anything.  If his teams were dominate or even competitive I have a feeling everyone would be complaining about how unfair it is that the developer of the game, who knows more about it than anyone, was fielding a team.  Imagine getting knocked out of the tournament by seble, I know I would be a little salty about that!

Personally I would rather have him spending his time trying to fix and improve the game, then actually playing to win.

Has there been any more information about the big changes coming to recruiting?  Last I heard was sometime in the spring I think, where he said big changes were coming soon.

hmm, i should have reserved a post for the questions people asked, but ill just add to the bottom of the first post. pretty much anything people want to ask ill put on the list, but, uh... i'm not going to send seble a list of questions including why do his teams suck so bad, lol!! 

i think clouse gave a pretty good answer, i don't think he tries for those teams to be good. i think he should try harder so he could be part of the competitive experience, which is important to relate to his customers. but i don't think its because he is awful or retarded or anything like that. i just don't think he wants to beat people who pay to play and stuff, as clouse mentioned. 

gillispie, one of your questions was regarding if prestige is capped at A+, or whether extremely successful schools could push this up to A+++.  I thought it was pretty widely accepted that this is the case, or are you just looking for definitive confirmation from seble?

My question is, do all metrics measured by a letter grade also follow this rule?  For example, I have a JR who is already at an A+ IQ.  By the end of his SR year, will this IQ really be an A++, or is this capped at A+?  Also, one time I had a player hit A+ FT and never received the "maxed out" email

These metrics measured by letter grades include prestige, IQ, FT shooting, and Home Court Advantage.

Posted by clouseb on 10/7/2014 2:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by backboy13 on 10/7/2014 1:46:00 PM (view original):
Why do all of seble's teams suck? Completely serious question by the way… I'm genuinely wondering why his teams are so mediocre when he's the programmer of the game.

I would guess that he uses the teams as more of a guinea pig to test the engine than anything.  If his teams were dominate or even competitive I have a feeling everyone would be complaining about how unfair it is that the developer of the game, who knows more about it than anyone, was fielding a team.  Imagine getting knocked out of the tournament by seble, I know I would be a little salty about that!

Personally I would rather have him spending his time trying to fix and improve the game, then actually playing to win.

Has there been any more information about the big changes coming to recruiting?  Last I heard was sometime in the spring I think, where he said big changes were coming soon.

I would agree with you, but given the makeup of his teams' rosters, I don't see how they could be "guinea pigs". His players are all usually well below quality for a human coached team but good enough to beat most sims, and I don't see how this is valuable at all.

Also, billy, if my question were to actually get asked (I don't really care if it is, just wanted to put it out there), it would be legitimate and reformed into something along the lines of "Why do you construct your teams the way you currently do?" No offense intended to seble, I'm sure he could build a great team if he wanted to, which is why I'm curious in the first place.

Posted by clouseb on 10/7/2014 3:06:00 PM (view original):
gillispie, one of your questions was regarding if prestige is capped at A+, or whether extremely successful schools could push this up to A+++.  I thought it was pretty widely accepted that this is the case, or are you just looking for definitive confirmation from seble?

My question is, do all metrics measured by a letter grade also follow this rule?  For example, I have a JR who is already at an A+ IQ.  By the end of his SR year, will this IQ really be an A++, or is this capped at A+?  Also, one time I had a player hit A+ FT and never received the "maxed out" email

These metrics measured by letter grades include prestige, IQ, FT shooting, and Home Court Advantage.

I think this is a great question. In some way, I hate for him to give too much information, because part of the intrigue of the game is the mystery of it and the varying opinions everyone has about different aspects of the game. But, on the flip side, I would sure like to know the answers to a lot of the questions we all have like this. And answering this question would have no effect on game planning, etc, although it would be interesting to know in terms of setting practice times.

Top 50 for team player records?

In the past there has been talk about removing the Fastbreak Offense and Press Defense as full-time sets and making them supplemental to other O & D sets. Is this going to happen? Also, there was talk about adding new offenses and defenses such as the Princeton Offense, Wisconsin Swing Offense, and a Match-up Zone Defense. What are the chances of seeing any of those or some other type anytime soon?

Minor concern, but can Seble rename Div-3 schools Colorado, Connecticut and Rhode Island as "Colorado College", "Connecticut College" and "Rhode Island College"...? Sounds weird, but it sometimes gets confusing if "Rhode Island" is being considered by a recruit, and I'm not sure if it's URI or RIC (I'm in Div-2 so either school might dip down or grab up at recruits... also, i realize i can click on the school and it will tell me, but I'm not too bright) (there might be other schools that this applies to, also)

ok, ill add a suggestions section and put those things in. hopefully we can start some meaty discussions about some mechanics and such. im going to give it a shot, hopefully get some folks curious about stuff :) in the zone thread, it came out that while their players were grouped into groups (like pg/sg, sf/pf, c in the 2-3 zone) causing them to share equations - all 5 players were actually all averaged together in defense of every shot. they were "equally weighted" but having different equations by distance, which makes me think they are likely not "equally important" in defense of every shot.

i found that kind of bewildering, but there is a lot of sense to it, depending on how you think about it. but it raises the question, what the heck is going on in the other defenses? in man defense, are you only defended by 1 player? or is 1 player worth like half and the other 4 are still averaged in weighted less? what about press, is it like zone, where all 5 players are averaged together for every shot?

im not sure exactly how this knowledge affects how any of us play the game in the short term - but it can affect the framework in which we see the game. no longer do i just consider opposing guards when i consider how well the other team can defend the perimeter, if they are a zone team. it also makes me feel better about some zone teams i had where i felt we should be stronger defending the perimeter than we were - i had one team in particular with strong guards, and crappy bigs, and i was like why isn't our 3 pt % better... i was also cluelessly running 2-3 -2 and -3 all the time, not realizing how severely not a 3 point defense that was.

not that many play zone - but you man defense guys - don't you want to know if matchups are 100% of the equation, or if other players are weighted in, too? how many times have we complained that our killer defender was guarding some schlep who just lit us up for 18 points? do you press defense guys want to know if you center and power forward are a factor in 3 point defense? if your pg and sg are a factor in post defense? this basic "how do defenses work" question has stuck with me since the zone thread, so maybe im overzealous on this issue - but i would think something as simple as, in man, is just 1 guy defending my guy or not? is a question we could answer as a community. unless i am missing something, we can't! this is a chance to find out. it amazes me sometimes how much we know about some things, yet how little we know about some really, really basic stuff.

> do you press defense guys want to know if you center and power forward are a factor in 3 point defense? if your pg and sg are a factor in post defense?

Yes!  How do traps work, who is where and when, etc...     A thread like that zone one would be great.

I very interested in the Man def becuase I try to put my best defender on a particular player and if that is not good stragedy I would like to understand it better.  I like the M2M I feel it's the best to understand but you should be able to match up players better.  Or maybe I'm not doing it right.  Either way a thread for info would be great.

Personally, I'd like to hear about the following:

Play Distribution has an influence over who takes shots. It seems obvious that Play Distribution means the higher the number put in by the user, the more times the ball is in a particular player's hands, but it does not necessarily always result in that player taking more shots. This seems to especially be the case with PFs and Cs in the game where you almost have to completely over emphasize Play Distribution to get a reasonable amount of shots out of them to the point where they might be the leading scorer. So, is there a gap in how the engine recognizes Play Distribution/Shot Taking between different positions? If so, what kind of difference? If not, why the seemingly larger gap between traditional bigs and pg-sf?

At around what distance from the basket does a player's LP rating enter into the likely success of a shot? If a player is set almost exclusively to +2, does the LP rating even enter into consideration on a three point attempt? I'm thinking of this in relation to players one might recruit because they have great PER, but possibly not much else (and, yes, I realize that PER is only part of what goes into whether a player is open, etc, for that shot). 

There is the option to change a player's position in HD. What are the benefits of doing this? Most teams that I have seen where they may, say, lack a clear PG, simply start the SG at the PG spot without changing position. Was this feature added for aesthetics? Is there a position penalty?

Has the job hiring matrix been tweaked? If so, how? I've seen one or two situations where I'm inclined to believe there may have been a tweak. 

Also, if any of these have already been answered in forum, my bad...not usually a big forum guy!