in the words of the great George Bailey (and in the spirit of the coming season): "either I'm crazy or you are..."
dude you are at it again - there's an FAQ if you need a primer - what you are doing here is backwards engineering your theory of how the sim works using a paucity of sampling (in terms of both size and controls). and it's kind of annoying
first, I don't understand your level of certainty when debating someone who (redacted for obvious reasons) and again there's an FAQ (which clearly (sort of) lays out how the engine works)
second, you are positing a level of engagement and activity on behalf of the admin team that is ludicrous given every iota of the facts on the ground for the last five years. Is it really your contention (or nate's) that they snuck in in the middle of the night to make small unannounced tweaks to the engine that are largely cosmetic? really? they barely have time to respond to users - they don't, as we know, really respond to users. But a simple in season variation in one stat (out put) category is telling? hell do it with controls over the course of 500 seasons and you might have something (make sure all the factors are the same in each and every season, same tempos, same settings, same opponents etc). - instead what you have is what we already know, random happens
and that's it - there are a bunch of moderating factors (the stats we draft) stuffed into each game, mix in the random (a necessity to some debatable extent) and you get all sorts of weirdness - It's like you're going crazy staring at a tv screen full of static trying to find a pattern
finally, you guys are thinking about it all wrong. Most of the stat columns in the box score are meaningless 'after the fact' outputs and don't deal with the real meat and potatoes of the engine - it doesn't matter how many assists you wind up logging in a game - the system is using advanced stats that impact the make-miss likelihood. If a shot is made only then does the engine determine if it was assisted and assigns the assist to a particular player only after that decision. The question you should be asking is 'does having all this as% on the court improve my fg%?' And if so then 'at what rate and at what levels do I see improvements? the rest is noise...
11/20/2013 9:45 PM (edited)