hey guys, nothing like a little brainstorming ways to improve HD to start off my Sunday morning. I still really enjoy the game but I feel that we’re still really lacking in game planning options which makes the time in between recruiting very boring and I rarely spend more than 3 minutes gameplanning for a regular season matchup. Please share your ideas as well, maybe we can eventually do a poll on the best ideas brought forth. Here are mine.

?6th Man:you can designate one player as your sixth man. The only requirement is that they not be in the starting lineup, but they will get playing time priority as if they were a starter. Could be very useful in the cases where you want to make sure you have scorers on your second string, which might lead you to play one of your better players as a backup. Could work with multiple designations as well but one would be a good start.

Improve Fatigue settings: right now there isn’t much strategy to fatigue substitution settings. 99% of the time it’s in your best interest to set to fairly fresh and forget anything below getting tired. I think we need to switch the fatigue ranges for these categories. A player on fairly fresh shouldn’t play more than 18-20mpg (assuming 80 stamina) while getting tired should probably be more in the range that fairly fresh currently is in. This setting would also help you limit minutes for freshman that you promised a start to.

Defensive matchups: currently the only way we really have to counter a dominant scorer is double teaming. How about offering a shut off ball option? You might get more fouls and help defense might suffer but it wouldn’t be as exaggerated as double teaming is (which I also almost never use). As a trade off, it would also only really limit volume for a top scorer and wouldn’t affect efficiency.

Ive also considered the thought of assigning your best defender to always guard their best scorer, but would be much more complex from a programming stand point. Also might give M2M an advantage.

One other idea I like is being able to set your bigs to favor boxing out vs help defense. If you’re facing a team with strong outside shooters, you might want to favor boxing out, if the other team drives the ball well with their guards, you might prefer help defense. Being able to set your perimeter defenders to high or low pressure would also better allow you to counter lopsided offenses and encourage coaches to recruit for a balanced attack. But that might be redundant given the positioning setting.

Please share are your thoughts guys! My hope is that if we show a consensus, maybe WIS will be more open to testing out changes like these when they remember the forums exist a year from now.

Sounds great. If only we could get 1 of these 3 put into the game.

I like those ideas and I certainly wouldn't mind more options for game planning. You can already basically implement your 6th man idea though by getting creative with your depth chart and fatigue settings (put him as the first backup at multiple positions and set to getting tired).

I would like the option to set a different lineup for the last several minutes of the game though. Then my "6th man" could be on the floor to end the game. Although this could be a bad idea to the extent it encourages coaches to offer starts to more recruits.

I'd love a late-offense/defense setting for which players you want on the floor.

Up by 5(or whatever) with 1 minute(or whatever) left, a specific 5 run out. Same if down.

I would like to put minute limits on players.

Posted by mrslam34 on 1/7/2018 12:34:00 PM (view original):
I like those ideas and I certainly wouldn't mind more options for game planning. You can already basically implement your 6th man idea though by getting creative with your depth chart and fatigue settings (put him as the first backup at multiple positions and set to getting tired).

I would like the option to set a different lineup for the last several minutes of the game though. Then my "6th man" could be on the floor to end the game. Although this could be a bad idea to the extent it encourages coaches to offer starts to more recruits.

I would really love an “end-of-game” lineup option, and distribution option. Up by 5 in the closing minutes, play the lineup with the best FT, play the seniors, that sort of thing.

I’d also prefer an option to set a different lineup for different sets I’m running, specifically moving between 2-3 and 3-2. It’s a pain to make all the alterations every time I just want to play a different kind of zone.

Nice thread trail.

I'd like an option or some sort of setting to choose who does the intention foul at the end of the game. I've had my best player with 4 fouls make the foul and it ****** me off.

"One other idea I like is being able to set your bigs to favor boxing out vs help defense. If you’re facing a team with strong outside shooters, you might want to favor boxing out, if the other team drives the ball well with their guards, you might prefer help defense. Being able to set your perimeter defenders to high or low pressure would also better allow you to counter lopsided offenses and encourage coaches to recruit for a balanced attack. But that might be redundant given the positioning setting. "

I like this one. Change whether you want to get back on defense or go for offensive boards. Or if you want to go for defensive rebound or look for the cherry picker points.

I’m for a change when it comes to defensive matchups. I don’t have suggestions on how to make it work. But it’s kinda silly to me that the offense dictates who guards who, when you make positional changes in your lineup. Player matchups should ALWAYS be decided by defense. I shouldn’t have to guard a specific player just because I’m in the lineup as a PG. If my coach wants me to guard the PF, I should be able to.

Posted by topdogggbm on 1/7/2018 8:57:00 PM (view original):
I’m for a change when it comes to defensive matchups. I don’t have suggestions on how to make it work. But it’s kinda silly to me that the offense dictates who guards who, when you make positional changes in your lineup. Player matchups should ALWAYS be decided by defense. I shouldn’t have to guard a specific player just because I’m in the lineup as a PG. If my coach wants me to guard the PF, I should be able to.

2nd, 3rd, and 4th that.

Posted by topdogggbm on 1/7/2018 8:57:00 PM (view original):
I’m for a change when it comes to defensive matchups. I don’t have suggestions on how to make it work. But it’s kinda silly to me that the offense dictates who guards who, when you make positional changes in your lineup. Player matchups should ALWAYS be decided by defense. I shouldn’t have to guard a specific player just because I’m in the lineup as a PG. If my coach wants me to guard the PF, I should be able to.

In theory I support this. But in practice I don't think I would. This would make M2M even more popular and would make it significantly better than zone and press.

Posted by mrslam34 on 1/8/2018 3:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 1/7/2018 8:57:00 PM (view original):
I’m for a change when it comes to defensive matchups. I don’t have suggestions on how to make it work. But it’s kinda silly to me that the offense dictates who guards who, when you make positional changes in your lineup. Player matchups should ALWAYS be decided by defense. I shouldn’t have to guard a specific player just because I’m in the lineup as a PG. If my coach wants me to guard the PF, I should be able to.

In theory I support this. But in practice I don't think I would. This would make M2M even more popular and would make it significantly better than zone and press.

I see that. And since I'm not putting out ideas on how i think this should be fixed, if it were put into place that we could have defensive matchups settings, i do feel like there's ways that it could be done that would make it not such a major advantage.

And i say this because I'm not sure if coaches now, say "well I'm NOT running M2M now because i can't match up who i want to guard who". I could be wrong on that tho. I don't know how everyone views different things