I've always thought one problem with the sim is that it uses the same PE for both offense and defense.  Since when do players in the NBA play the same positions at the same effectiveness on both sides of the court?  There are plenty of lock-down defenders (like a Trevor Ariza) who should be 100% for defending 1-3, but certainly shouldn't be that way on offense.

They should really get rid of the classic positions altogether (just as most NBA analysts should stop referring to them) and just use terms like "lead guard, wings, post".  Sure, technically Moses can play the 5 and Rodman can play the 4, but they're both going to be trying to play the low post on offense.  There's no way your offense would work right in that situation (and got forbid you jam in a Malone or Barkley at the 3 - there's no way there'd be any room in the paint for any of them to operate at 100%).

The best scenario would be if on offense you could list a guy either at "initiator" (like point guard, but leaving it open for forwards and don't want to include the word "guard"), "wing", "low post", "high post", and just make it so you can have at most one guy at either post, 2-3 guys on the wing, and one initiator.  That's how real NBA offenses work.  And then defenses could pretty much just be "perimeter defense" and "post defense", taking into account large height differences somehow (easier to get a shot off on the perimeter and obviously easier to post a guy up).  I think doing it in some way like this would make the teams way more realistic and less rebounder-heavy.

I miss the old forums where I could quote someone and delete everything but a sentence or a couple of sentences.  At least, it was easier there... Anyway...

I've always thought one problem with the sim is that it uses the same PE for both offense and defense.

Yes.  This is something a lot of us brought up a while back.  I'm going to use the latter trio Bulls Championships... Remember Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and Ron Harper?  All excellent defenders (Harper worst of them and he was not bad, especially at that point where he wasn't spending any energy on offense).  Who did they guard?  It was never a pg-pg, sg-sg, sf-sf, pf-pf type deal.  For that matter, who really played what position on that offense?  Scottie Pippen was as much of a point guard as Ron Harper.  And what position do you call the 3-headed white monster that was basically 18 fouls of goodness?  This totally leads to your second point:

They should really get rid of the classic positions altogether

I agree.  To an extent.  I think for a sim, it makes it a lot easier to see that things don't get abused.  They should just make the positioning more loose, so that some players who easily could have played multiple positions can in the sim (or players that played multiple on defense that aren't getting 100% at multiple right now).  There's not an option to choose type of offense, so I can't go with a triangle in mind and pick guys according to that and not really run a point guard.  I can run a point guard that played in a triangle, but I can't say put Pippen at PG even though that was the role he really played more than a traditional point guard did (and more than he played a traditional SF).  Same goes for Lamar Odom right now.  But to keep things from getting quickly abused, I think you have to keep some kind of leash on it.  Just because KG has 18% ast% doesn't mean it's acceptable to put him at PG (imagine the rebounding team you could build if you did this).  Same thing for 66-67 Wilt!  Since the positions in the sim really don't do anything position-like, it doesn't matter where they are at.  It just matters what matchups you can create and take advantage of.

And then defenses could pretty much just be "perimeter defense" and "post defense"

They've had more problems with consistency in the sim ever since they went to the whole +/- thing.  It's part of the reason bomber teams do so well (you can't guard them.  Literally.  If you go + on them at all, you get in terrible foul trouble.  If you don't go + on them and they shoot an unusually high number of threes, even for them, and you get in terrible foul trouble.  I shudder to think of my experiences going - on them).  This is a flaw with the sim engine itself... It says that if you're defending an offense wrongly, you're going to foul more.  While that's true IRL, there's no good way of doing it in the sim.  Guys do a lot more than score from 3 magic zones IRL and defensive schemes are much more complex.  The thing I like about the feature is that it forces you to put more thought in your teams (offensively).

I think the solution to excess rebounds and points is simply increasing the price of those things.  I've railed about Moses before.  Here is a guy who is an incredible rebounder, shoots well, defends well enough, a ton of FTA's and ....he's dirt cheap?  Absurd.  Anyone like him, or Nash, Stockton, Magic  -guys that do multiple things very well should be very expensive.  Guys who do one thing incredibly well (Rodman, Karl) need to be very expensive as well.  Rebounds have always been cheap here.

We need it so that a lineup such as Mark Jackson-Bryant-TMac-Pau-Russell can be competitive. 

Posted by colonels19 on 6/29/2010 6:05:00 PM (view original):
I doubt it's even being worked on.

This seems like the right answer....

another week, no news...

I'm really not meaning to beat a dead horse or anything in all seriousness, but WIS is really dropping the ball on this, considering that they should probably get a bit of an NBA sim boom at the end of the regular season/playoffs BECAUSE OF the release of new players, and to delay that with no concrete release date is business suicide. People want to play and use, but the resources aren't there. I think if any of us new that the new players would take this long to come out, that we would have spoken out against the Position Effectiveness changes that are being made supposedly. This is just a bad fumble.

I forget - did WIS sign an exclusive deal with the NBA to use their players in a sim on the web?

Posted by colonels19 on 7/6/2010 11:10:00 AM (view original):
I'm really not meaning to beat a dead horse or anything in all seriousness, but WIS is really dropping the ball on this, considering that they should probably get a bit of an NBA sim boom at the end of the regular season/playoffs BECAUSE OF the release of new players, and to delay that with no concrete release date is business suicide. People want to play and use, but the resources aren't there. I think if any of us new that the new players would take this long to come out, that we would have spoken out against the Position Effectiveness changes that are being made supposedly. This is just a bad fumble.

I wouldn't have.  Why would I want MORE broke players?

Posted by detlef on 7/6/2010 2:41:00 PM (view original):
I forget - did WIS sign an exclusive deal with the NBA to use their players in a sim on the web?

I doubt it...they need a license for the names/stats?

WIS, how about maybe releasing one 09-10 player a week as a tantalizing teaser?  I know you had to generate them to run your NBA playoff sim. 

Short of that, just thinking out loud, another potential way to add some varietal spice to lineups - anything to break the Moses, Rodman, Peja/Barkley, Allen, Nash mold - would be to add a sort of stock market sliding scale to salaries, where player season costs are adjusted according the frequency of use among the pool of gamers at any given time.  This has probably been visited in forums before, not sure how difficult it would be to pull off.  But it might help reduce the number of zombie teams out there.

But if it'll slow down the current release, forget it.  In court I'll deny it was ever suggested.
 

the salary adjustments they're supposedly making should break up moses/rodman/peja/allen/nash (throwing Barkley & Rice here, too, as they are part of an even better cookie that's catching on).

I don't like fluctuating salary based on ownership and think it's the wrong direction for the sim to take.  There will always end up being "cookie-cutter" teams, as the entire goal is to get a certain number of everything and put out your team like that, and as time goes by, people will find the best way of getting the most bang for their buck.  But I can deal with that.  Fluctuating salaries would blow.

Fluctuating salaries based on ownership is the dumbest NBA sim idea ever.

some SIM enthusiasts dig playing the open leagues and finding the best possible cookie cutter combo team that can optimize performance given the parameters of the game.  others of us would prefer the challenge of theme leagues with different caps and strategies to make things less repetitive and hopefully more interesting.  to each his own.  fluctuating salaries might be an interesting way to make open leagues more variable and interesting, but they're certainly not a blanket solution to anything. 

Posted by colonels19 on 7/7/2010 5:28:00 PM (view original):
Fluctuating salaries based on ownership is the dumbest NBA sim idea ever.

I completely disagree - it is something that should be explored. There were ALWAYS be cookie cutters unless something like abrondon suggested is executed.

WIS will never do it, but it would be fun as $hit.

We can't even get players after the season ends, yet you guys want somebody to monitor how often players are used, then adjust salaries accordingly? 

You funny!