Why Association Mode is not realistic

[bryanho]

Because you don't need to take player and staff contracts into account, as long as they stay within the hard cap! It is easy for anyone to fill up the roster with stars and big contracts when there is no penalty for going way past the salary cap (I know, I know, you can't sign non-bird free agent etc.).

The reason why the Bobcats dumped Tyson Chandler a few years back is because they recognized Chandler is not part of this young developing team going forward, and that his contract takes a huge toll on their payroll for a franchise at such an early stage. If you are losing more money to the payroll than you get back from tickets, jersey sale, broadcast right etc., you know you need to cut someone or avoid going into luxury tax area. That's exactly how teams operate in the NBA.

Now in the Association mode you don't need to care about contracts, as long as they are within the hard cap. That is what breaks Association mode. Just too easy, too carefree for hardcore gamers.

I would personally love to see them overhaul the finance system in Association mode, include features like whole franchise finance management, ticket price adjustment etc. to give life and soul to this game mode.

[dragula15]

I agree with an overhauling being required for 2k13

BUT...i play 30-team controlled associations, and make every decision every team makes, using bedwardsroy19's rosters i get an enjoyable experience with it. I notice when teams arent going anywhere or players are being paid for lacking play, so i make those decisions based on whats best for the teams moving forward. It results in a realistic enough experience for me. to each their own i guess. I find most complaints about lack of realism comes from people who dont play with all 30 teams.

My biggest gripe is the stats bug which will never get fixed in 2k12 unfortunately

[Comduklakis]

agreed that 30 team association can fix that kind of thing. I feel for those who don't wish to take the time it does to do a 30 team association, much less a 30 team association where you are meticulous in every detail.

That said, 2k12 isn't the only game that's true of. I'm a huge MLB the Show fan, and I haven't yet picked up this year's version, but in the past top name free agents would sometimes sign with strange choices like Pittsburgh or Houston over the Yankees or Redsox. And teams that should have been rebuilding would make offers to guys they shouldn't or try and trade top prospects. Making a realistic GM AI is incredibly difficult.

I'd also argue that the league probably has some input on 2K not making free agents choose large market teams or having teams like Sacramento or New Orleans stick to a budget, never invite the luxury tax, etc. The NBA has enough criticism for stars choosing certain markets, forcing trades, and for large market teams having advantages without including it in a video game. So it wouldn' surprise me if the NBA has requested 2K make every team willing to spend, every team have a shot at top free agents, and every team have the same budget.

[LookItsOP]

Agreed. In addition, rookies are always very overrated, the draft classes are too highly rated, and players progress too much.

[LookItsOP]

I dunno what they do different, but the only realistic progression and ratings for any 2k game (or sports game at all) is NHL.

[Comduklakis]

Quote: Originally Posted by LookItsOP

Agreed. In addition, rookies are always very overrated, the draft classes are too highly rated, and players progress too much.

The generated rookie classes are just terrible. The attributes are bad enough but what really drive me crazy are the tendencies. It's almost like they pick them out of a hat instead of creating a player who might exist in real life. Some of the tendency ratings seem to openly contradict each other. I looked at one draft class and I swear every 3rd or 4th player, regardless of overall skill had an insanely high clutch rating. Shot tendencies were consistently too high or too low. Just a mess, and that's without getting into the problem that are the same as the 2k default rosters (pump fake tendency way too high, too much isolation, too high on the shimmy shot, etc)

Progression is too predictable and leads to ratings being too high 10 years down the road. It needs to be more random and needs to stop at a certain point. Rather than almost every rating going up a couple points each year, guys who reach 27 or 28 shouldn't be improving across the board. Maybe their awareness goes up, but other stuff shouldn't. Plus there should be guys that have large random improvements or drops, just like IRL. Who new Byron Mullens would suddenly be such an improved offensive player? Or that Gerald Green would discover how to harness his talent? it would be more fun to see several guys skyrocket each offseason and several guys fall of a cliff too. That's more realistic. I do a 30 team progression and I used random.org to select a possible player to bump up or decrease each season. I also have to go in an edit tendences, particularly for big men, because those "progress" as well, so that big men will keep having their three point tendency rise 3 or 4 points each year, even if they dont' shoot threes. If you don't touch it, by year five you have Joakim Noah shooting 2-83 from three point range.

Sometimes it just seems like 2k lacks staff that have a real understanding of basketball when they employ the ratings and progression they do. Honestly they could hire someone off of OS here for 50k who could do 10 times the job of rating players, developing a progression system and creating draft classes. It's too bad they don't choose that option. If you don't start with a solid set of ratings on your roster, in-seasons edits aren't goin to cut it. Just raising up, for example, Mullens shooting ratings for mid, inside, and close does nothing to address WHERE he's taking the shots. If he isn't in the right position becaus of his tendency ratings or his tendency ratings don't reflect his best shots, then merely upping the attributes in the shooting category is going to be fairly useless. I know this from experience because when I've had guys (usually big men) shooting way too low of FG% (e.g. Okafor .450, Bogut .420, Bynum .480, Howard .480) and I merely bumped up their inside and close shooting ratings, they didnt' appreciably improve. It was only after I tweaked tendencies of where they got the ball, what type of shots they took, etc. that they showed a more realistic FG%. Well as we know 2k rarely if ever fiddles with tendencies for mid-season edits.

Rant over.

[erickonasis]

The finance part i could care less about...Please 2k work on making the gameplay a little more enjoyable then worrying about contracts

[ewingandoakley]

the draft picks are so bad and unrealistic. In a draft with Anthony Davis supposed to be in it, I got some random white guy Cory Thorpe that looked like Brian Scalabrine and played like him too. I love the white mamba, but come on. Thorpe wears high socks and converses. Totally unrealistic. At least fix up that situation with NCAA and make a college hoops game to import into 2k13.