Normal only at 10%??? No way, that has to be incorrect

Posted by Basketts on 4/5/2022 1:09:00 PM (view original):
Tempo is weird in this game. Slowdown seems to be a magic pill for lesser talented teams, and uptempo along with fb/press on every single play just doesn't make sense in any form of basketball.

Slowdown is a magic pill for lesser talented teams in real life as well. When you limit possessions, anything can happen.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/4/2022 7:17:00 PM (view original):
I’m doing my semi-annual “tempo sucks, why is slowdown a magic upset button?” discussion with CS, and this time Chris came back at me with some kind of figure representing the amount of times users choose the various tempos. Before I disclose where he says it’s at, I’m curious where folks think it is? About what percentage of normal, slowdown, and uptempo chosen among human coaches? What are we all seeing, and where do we suppose the overall numbers sit, based on our individual impressions?

Teams that run slowdown are naturally more at risk of being upset and/or pulling an upset. This is the exact same thing as in real life. That's how Virginia gets upset by a 16 seed. If I'm not mistaken, you mostly run FB/FCP teams. As I'm sure you know, when you play a slowdown team your stamina and depth are less valuable to you. So if you're getting upset by slowdown teams, then that's probably why. I think you can win with all three tempos based on how you choose to structure your roster and the sets you run. I don't see it as a problem at all.

Posted by crabman26 on 4/5/2022 1:14:00 PM (view original):
Normal only at 10%??? No way, that has to be incorrect

I'm inclined to agree with crabman on this one.

Chris gives this statistic: ”this is the tempo breakdowns across all worlds (for human coached teams that would choose tempo):" He is quoting "choice." We are probably all thinking "use." Not the same thing. Normal tempo is undoubtedly USED a lot but is rarely a CHOICE. Over half the teams may USE normal tempo without ever CHOOSING it.

I would be more interested in the USE statistic than the CHOICE statistic.

I'm with Still on this in terms of having Chris explicitly define "choose".

yeah, good catch. Definitely a difference in use vs choice.

I don't understand what difference you are trying to convey with choice.

SimAI teams almost always play normal.

Humans pick what the start the game with and if they will change it and when.

I never change at the Half.. I do change when winning or loosing.

I guess Number of Minutes does not equal number of choices. You choose (possibly) 4 times in a game.
Once at the beginning of the game.. Maybe once at the beginning of the half.

I am actually unsure of the up by 'X' or down by 'X'. I wonder if that is 2 possible choices or if it can happen multiple times.

As in.. You uave it set for select slowdown if up by more than 8 points at 3 mins. You are up by 8 at the 3 minute point, you go into Slow. Other team scores.. You are now up by 6..do you shift back? Then you score again.. Now up by 8 at 2:25.. Do you switch back to Slow?

Anyway.. We need better stats. Minutes in each. Start of game, start of half or up by, down by :)

I'm confused by your USE vs CHOICE decision. Are you trying to say that normal tempo is very low because its the default, and therefore it's only actually chosen 10% of the time, with the other instances not counted because they were defaulted to normal?

If so, how could you possibly know the difference between a coach choosing normal tempo or just letting it default there? What if a coach wants to run normal tempo, but it already set to normal, so they just don't change it? They'd still be "choosing" normal tempo, but without actually making any changes.

Or maybe I have no idea what you're all talking about. I'll just go back to yelling at clouds.

well now I am totally confused as you guys bring up good points, if Normal is the default and therefore not a choice....why is it being counted? Ugh, Ill just crawl back into my corner now.

All I know, is that only 10% for Normal is pretty low from what I have seen.

I’ve read it a few times now, and the way Chris framed it in discussion, it looks like he definitely thinks slowdown and uptempo are chosen at about the same frequency, which is likely more important to his point (not mine, of course) than how often normal is chosen anyway.

Either way, to me, the most important thing for the community to understand about the developers mindset here is that they look at usage tendencies as reflecting strength. Since users are still choosing uptempo and slowdown at around the same rate (allegedly), there must not be any real gameplay difference between the two, in the developers thinking. Add to this his contention that they receive “hundreds” of complaints about press being overpowered (still, apparently, even after the mangled neutering of a decade ago), and unless they start receiving tickets from other folks about slowdown, I don’t think we can expect any movement from them.

And yes, I do know that press and uptempo are far from the same thing. I’m not trying to conflate them here, but he’s using complaints against press to counter my “anecdotal perspective” on the powerful nature of slowdown. Basically I’m arguing, in essence, that slowdown and uptempo should both have gameplay advantages and disadvantages. Neither should be an “upset button,” both should be used in some circumstances when they make sense, but varying from normal tempo should always run the risk of consequence. I don’t want predictable results or no upsets. I want the results to make game sense (preferably basketball sense, too).

I would love to see data by division. I suspect D3 uses the most uptempo (and by quite a bit) while D1 uses the most slowdown.

Shoe your magic slowdown button is ridiculous. I play just as bad or good with slowdown as I do any other setting. I just think when you lose against slow pace, it's games you expect to win so it just stands out in your mind

Posted by topdogggbm on 4/5/2022 7:34:00 PM (view original):
Shoe your magic slowdown button is ridiculous. I play just as bad or good with slowdown as I do any other setting. I just think when you lose against slow pace, it's games you expect to win so it just stands out in your mind

lol doggggg, what’s ridiculous is you cutting and running out of Iba A10.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/5/2022 1:04:00 PM (view original):
Here are the figures given to me by Chris in CS:

”this is the tempo breakdowns across all worlds (for human coached teams that would choose tempo):

Slowdown: 46%
Fast Paced: 44%
Normal: 10%”

I’ll post more thoughts on this a little later, but for now, I’ll reiterate if you’d asked me prior to the conversation, my feelings would have been along the lines of upsetcity - 50% normal, 35% uptempo, 15% slowdown; mostly because I know uptempo is especially more common at lower levels and *especially* against sims. This is far from the most important factor to my question, and probably plays into the issue in a counterintuitive way (I’ll explain when I have more time later today), but for now, let’s just say I’m pretty shocked (and also pretty skeptical) that normal is down this low in the figures given.

If he came back and said “oops, I had slowdown and normal reversed”, now that I would buy.

Wow. I would have guessed 40 uptempo 30 slowdown 20 normal. Uptempo is very, very popular D2 and D3. Slowdown definitely meta at high D1 and for teams that lack depth.

Normal is a really useful tempo but a lot of people just logic that slowdown or uptempo HAS to be the right call. Even me... I fall into that sometimes.

Posted by topdogggbm on 4/5/2022 7:34:00 PM (view original):
Shoe your magic slowdown button is ridiculous. I play just as bad or good with slowdown as I do any other setting. I just think when you lose against slow pace, it's games you expect to win so it just stands out in your mind

I do agree with the fact that losing against a slowdown hurts more because its often a 70% win probability type game. and we feel we should win 70% games about... maybe 90% of the time internally.

I do agree with shoe that slowdown is definitely too overpowered. my personal view is that if you go slow-down it should keep the opponent's players fresh just a bit more than it does right now. 3.0 has definitely tilted the scales towards slowdown some given that teams need to take more walkons in recruiting.