Tweaks, small & large... Topic

There are often a number of suggestions about ways to improve the sim. Those have fallen on deaf ears for ... a really, really long time.

I've been around here a decade. I have as much experience as anybody in a variety of leagues. Overall, I think they have a lot of things right, but there are a number of small tweaks - and some not so small - that I would think would go a long way towards improving the sim. Here are my ideas:

1. Show all of the pertinent stats (like tov%) that the engine relies on. Make it (them) a searchable & sortable stat. It is a critical part of what determines the result of a possession, yet that number is something you have to calculate on your own or go to another website to obtain.

2. Re-examine the defensive rating algorithm. If you decide that this is the best that we absolutely can get (it's not lol but w/e), then make a few subjective changes (Bill Russell's defensive rating, for example. I would make it 100 every single season). You fabricated Bill & Wilt's block numbers in the first place, so at least fabricate them more realistically that impacts their defense better.

3. Increase the effects of normalization. It's too tame. Pick a nice mean (use today's standard, honestly) or medium fg% as the average, and then use fg%# based off of that number. If your average is 47.5%, for example, and a guy in 59-60 shot 10% above the league average for that season, multiply 47.5% by 1.1 & use that as the fg% the new player revolve around (before defensive adjustments, ast% adjustments, tempo adjustments). Too many good early players are just not usable.

4. Put a curve on ast%. It should give a great benefit having a lot of good passers on the floor at the same time, but at some point, it's going to taper off. The sim seems to reverse this. The State Farm squads are prime examples of how extremely bad this is currently implemented. Give reasonable boosts for 60, 70, 80 even 90 & 100, but have that boost trail down. Say 50% is our break even point & 60% is a 5% boost to fg% (so a 50% shooter is shooting 52.5% prior to defense & pace adjustments). Make 70 a 7.5% boost. 80 an 8.75% boost. 90 a 9.5% boost & 100 a 10% boost. Anything beyond 100 still boosts, but it is not 1/100 as effective (so a 150% ast% team would be a 10.5% boost instead of the 25-30% boost it is now). Those numbers could & should be tweaked, of course, I'm just showing how it could be done to still be worth putting good passers together yet keep the bonus from getting out of hand as it does now.

5. EVERY player is 100% effective at 2 positions. Less restrictions = more imaginative combinations.

6. Even though I argued for it almost a decade ago & it's a little contradictory to what I just said, Lebron 100% at PG every season is a little ridiculous. I'd say cut 97% at PG for probably every season of his career except 09-10. Maybe drop that to 95% in his later Cleveland years (and drop shooting guard down to 97/98).

7. If only one thing gets done, this would be my top choice: Up the salary cap in OLs to $47m and ELIMINATE ROOKIES. Leave them as an option for themes (with low caps, possibly), but get rid of that for the standard leagues.

8. Stoppages in play that aren't necessarily related to fouls or out of bounds plays. This allows for subs to be made in a more intelligent fashion that's more closely related to our depth chart.

9. Crunch time line-up - because your best lineup shouldn't always be your starting line-up.

10 VARIABLE LEAGUE SIZES. C'mon, man.

11. Salaries need to be revisited. There is too big a penalty for having a lot of minutes - ie Partial seasons are a tremendous value & there are too many great seasons that just can't be used reliably in most standard cap leagues because they just aren't competitive with those bargain players.

12. Get rid of team possession penalty/usage tiers. Individual possession penalty makes enough sense as it is.

13. But hold up - that possession penalty needs to be relaxed SLIGHTLY. Either make it based actually off of usage or relax the fga/82 requirement because many players don't even come close to their FTAs.

There's probably more, but I'm tired of typing atm. What are some of your suggestions?

7/4/2017 10:17 PM (edited)
Great stuff, Ash...I feel like you've touched on all of the things that I've griped about/mentioned. I've not played the NBA sim regularly in almost 10 years thus I'm not really in tune with the ins and outs of the game, however I also feel like their is sometimes too much variation between the same 2 teams in consecutive games or games played in close proximity to each other. I guess I've always felt like the sim randomly takes a **** sometimes for no rhyme or reason.

I'm interested to see what some of the other regulars have to say here as well. Take care man.
7/4/2017 10:44 PM
I'd really like to play the NBA sim, but I don't for a few main reasons. First, the rookie thing. Just dumb. Second, the open league salary cap is too low, at least for me. Third, I'm an old fart who grew up in the '70s & the players I'd most like to use from the dark ages can't make a competitive team in an open league. It just kills my interest.
7/5/2017 3:15 PM
Search results from 51-52 through 67-68 seasons (the last season without an all-defense team):

0 player seasons with 100 defense
0 player seasons with 90-99 defense
10 player seasons between 80 & 89 (all Wilt) defense
21 player seasons between 71 & 79 defense
53 player seasons with exactly 70 defense
133 player seasons between 60 & 69 defense

contrast that to the most recent 17 seasons (00-01 through 16-17)

29 player seasons with 100 defense
157 player seasons with 90-99 defense
262 player seasons with 80-89 defense
422 player seasons with 71-79 defense
242 player seasons with exactly 70 defense
500+ (max results available) with 60-69 defense

There were 10 teams in the 51-52 season, and there are 30 now, so let's adjust those numbers for the fact there is around 3x the player pool.

100 d - 9 compared to 0
90+ d - 52 compared to 0
80-89 d - 87 compared to 10
71-79 d - 140 compared to 21
exactly 70 d - 80 compared to 14
60-69 d - at least 166 compared to 44.

Look at shooting percentages now & then.

conclusion: WISNBA's fabricated numbers suck.
7/5/2017 11:25 PM

conclusion: WISNBA's fabricated numbers suck.




FTFY

7/6/2017 9:59 AM
It would be nice if they had the draft wizard for the basketball leagues like they use in the baseball leagues. It works great in baseball.
7/6/2017 1:23 PM
WIS has indicated they are willing to consider maybe making one of the above changes . . . right after there is World peace.
7/6/2017 3:10 PM
Posted by all3 on 7/6/2017 3:10:00 PM (view original):
WIS has indicated they are willing to consider maybe making one of the above changes . . . right after there is World peace.
Metta?
7/6/2017 5:22 PM
I also think that overtime games shouldn't over-fatigue players/teams
7/8/2017 2:29 PM
Posted by colonels19 on 7/6/2017 5:22:00 PM (view original):
Posted by all3 on 7/6/2017 3:10:00 PM (view original):
WIS has indicated they are willing to consider maybe making one of the above changes . . . right after there is World peace.
Metta?
funny story - wis has Artest listed as both Artest & Peace - but not in consecutive years. Makes using him in a progressive a big pain. Already had one user think he was on the IR when he was really just listed as the other name.
7/8/2017 5:41 PM
Tweaks, small & large... Topic

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