I think I read somewhere here recently that with the current sim engine, the better team will play better in the second half. I've had a number of games where I've been a clear underdog end lopsided after I was close or even ahead at the half. Last night I was up 36-29 at the half and lost the second half 48-34.

I suppose this is pretty true to real life in most cases. But is this really something built into the engine?

Maybe their halftime adjustments turned the tide

Yes, it's built into the engine.

It could also be that for the first 20 minutes there haven't been enough possessions to truly start separating the teams. Perhaps the underdog got a few good outcomes that ran contrary to what they'd normally expect to see and vice versa for the favorite. With more possessions in the 2nd half the true strengths of the teams come more into focus. Just a thought.

Posted by pallas on 4/10/2016 11:24:00 AM (view original):
I think I read somewhere here recently that with the current sim engine, the better team will play better in the second half. I've had a number of games where I've been a clear underdog end lopsided after I was close or even ahead at the half. Last night I was up 36-29 at the half and lost the second half 48-34.

I suppose this is pretty true to real life in most cases. But is this really something built into the engine?

the way you worded it, no - that does not exist - but i know what you are talking about, and it has an effect sort of like that.

what exists in the engine, is feedback. it was put in to reduce the extreme cases of variance in this game, to eliminate some of the more unrealistic outcomes that would happen, maybe more often than they really should have happened (comparing to real life). so, for example, if your stud 1st team all american caliber shooting guard is 0 for 8, his chance of making the 9th shot is higher than his chance of making the 1st shot - because he is artificially being boosted on his 9th shot, it an attempt to "revert to mean" so to speak. that's the feedback in action, essentially it keeps track of what happened, versus what should have happened - and over time, if what happened is deviating from what "should" have happened (on average), it gently nudges the event back towards the expected outcome. so maybe instead of that stud SG taking an elbow jumper and making it 55% of the time, he would make it 60 or 65% of the time, after missing his first 8 shots.

speaking about direct impact, all teams are effected by feedback in the same way. there is no coding to make feedback favor the better team, or anything like that. however, an obvious effect of introducing feedback to reduce variance in individual areas of the game (it is documented somewhere exactly which effects seble tracks and introduced feedback to, i don't know where offhand) - is that the variance on the overall game itself, will come down, too. less randomness in the components of the game, will lead to less randomness in the game, and that favors teams who are expected to win games most of the time. if its harder for their stud SG to go 2-10 on the night, its harder for that underdog to pull the upset.

one of the examples we talk about on the boards sometimes, is simply a manifestation of what i just talked about. if an underdog is winning a game at half time, the better team is going to have feedback on their side, in the second half - which gives them a boost. one thing a couple coaches noticed, and posted about, is that they seemed to have 2nd half upsets ripped away from them, more often than they had previously. that makes sense, because of that feedback boost. also, there are going to be less upsets overall, thats what reducing the variance does, and because feedback takes time to really kick in, you are mostly going to see its effects in the 2nd half.

so, back to your OP wording, what you could accurately say is, "with the current sim engine, when a better team is under performing at the half, they are generally going to perform better than they would have in the old sim engine, and better than they were expected to play in the 1st half". you can't just say they play better in the 2nd half, because if they over perform at the half, they are going to perform worse than they were expected to, in the 2nd half - the feedback works both ways. in real life, there are emotions, and teams who are killing it for a while often run out of steam, or teams who are up 15 or 20 stop playing so hard, which makes pulling an upset from that point on, much higher than it would be if you were only rolling dice, to simulate the players' raw abilities (which is what HD is). in a way, i see feedback in HD a little bit like simulating player emotions. its obviously not the same, but there are some similarities. as to which version of the sim engine, new or old, more accurately reflects what is seen in real life, nobody knows, but there is definitely less complaining about random events these days.

Posted by gillispie1 on 4/10/2016 3:13:00 PM (view original):

Posted by pallas on 4/10/2016 11:24:00 AM (view original):
I think I read somewhere here recently that with the current sim engine, the better team will play better in the second half. I've had a number of games where I've been a clear underdog end lopsided after I was close or even ahead at the half. Last night I was up 36-29 at the half and lost the second half 48-34.

I suppose this is pretty true to real life in most cases. But is this really something built into the engine?

the way you worded it, no - that does not exist - but i know what you are talking about, and it has an effect sort of like that.

what exists in the engine, is feedback. it was put in to reduce the extreme cases of variance in this game, to eliminate some of the more unrealistic outcomes that would happen, maybe more often than they really should have happened (comparing to real life). so, for example, if your stud 1st team all american caliber shooting guard is 0 for 8, his chance of making the 9th shot is higher than his chance of making the 1st shot - because he is artificially being boosted on his 9th shot, it an attempt to "revert to mean" so to speak. that's the feedback in action, essentially it keeps track of what happened, versus what should have happened - and over time, if what happened is deviating from what "should" have happened (on average), it gently nudges the event back towards the expected outcome. so maybe instead of that stud SG taking an elbow jumper and making it 55% of the time, he would make it 60 or 65% of the time, after missing his first 8 shots.

speaking about direct impact, all teams are effected by feedback in the same way. there is no coding to make feedback favor the better team, or anything like that. however, an obvious effect of introducing feedback to reduce variance in individual areas of the game (it is documented somewhere exactly which effects seble tracks and introduced feedback to, i don't know where offhand) - is that the variance on the overall game itself, will come down, too. less randomness in the components of the game, will lead to less randomness in the game, and that favors teams who are expected to win games most of the time. if its harder for their stud SG to go 2-10 on the night, its harder for that underdog to pull the upset.

one of the examples we talk about on the boards sometimes, is simply a manifestation of what i just talked about. if an underdog is winning a game at half time, the better team is going to have feedback on their side, in the second half - which gives them a boost. one thing a couple coaches noticed, and posted about, is that they seemed to have 2nd half upsets ripped away from them, more often than they had previously. that makes sense, because of that feedback boost. also, there are going to be less upsets overall, thats what reducing the variance does, and because feedback takes time to really kick in, you are mostly going to see its effects in the 2nd half.

so, back to your OP wording, what you could accurately say is, "with the current sim engine, when a better team is under performing at the half, they are generally going to perform better than they would have in the old sim engine, and better than they were expected to play in the 1st half". you can't just say they play better in the 2nd half, because if they over perform at the half, they are going to perform worse than they were expected to, in the 2nd half - the feedback works both ways. in real life, there are emotions, and teams who are killing it for a while often run out of steam, or teams who are up 15 or 20 stop playing so hard, which makes pulling an upset from that point on, much higher than it would be if you were only rolling dice, to simulate the players' raw abilities (which is what HD is). in a way, i see feedback in HD a little bit like simulating player emotions. its obviously not the same, but there are some similarities. as to which version of the sim engine, new or old, more accurately reflects what is seen in real life, nobody knows, but there is definitely less complaining about random events these days.

Thanks for the well-thought response, gillispie. I understand now. And losses aside, I actually like it.

Yeah, I always know if my opponent got a hug number of fouls in the first half compared to me that I can expect to see my squad whistled for a disproportionate share in the second half. I'm fine with the law of averages running itself without help. If a "stud" player goes 3-for-12 too often, then he wasn't actually a stud player. He was a kid with a world of unfulfilled potential. coaches have to deal with those all the time.