A look at Association Player Development, problems and possible ideas..

[deknegt]

[For TL;DR reason, scroll to the bottom to see the things I want changed...]



Well I feel like rambling about Assocation mode in NBA 2k13, and also the previous iterations.

I have been simming one season with the Mavericks, and after off-season, draft etc. I go into the new season.

I look around the league at the other teams, and I am left wondering something very simple. "Where have all the bad teams gone?"

The reason I am asking that to myself is just the fact that pretty much every team after season one boosts up to a 85+ overall rating and bad teams are just non-existent.

The easiest thing to blame that problem on is 2K's way of player development. Players get a flat potential and it sometimes regresses over the years, but most of the time it stays the same.

So an A+ potential player will become absolutely stunning in every single way imaginable and will become the best at his position in only a couple of years time. And even C's and B's have a very consistent habit of becoming extremely good players.

And 2K also loves to hand out high potential grades to plenty of players, so you don't have 1-2 guys with A potential, you have 10-15 guys with that kind of potential. And the bloated drafts add around 3-5 of those guys every single season.

So after a while (sometimes even 1 season), you stumble upon a huge problem in which the league is filled with massive stars where even the Kings and Bobcats have a premium of talent available to pad their roster with.

Thus after only 1-2 seasons you see even the bad teams in the league have 3-4 80+ guys on their rosters, and only 1-2 teams are truly ''bad'' in a sense that their team overall lies around 80. All the other teams hang around the high 80's, low 90's.

An example of a team that absolutely explodes after a season or so is the Minnesota T-Wolves. And whilst I admit that the team really is talented in real life, the amount of pure stardom the squad attains after that season is just highly unrealistic and you see guys like Williams, Budinger, Shved etc. etc. reach 80+ whilst Love and Rubio hit 90+ in a matter of time.
That turns the Timberwolves in a beast of a squad that should blitz the league with ease, but that won't happen. Because every other team is also filled with 80/90 guys.


--

The whole player development thing is an obvious problem that gets worsened with a problem that haunts almost every sports game on the market ranging from NFL to NHL and FIFA.

That problem being, players are chronically overrated in an attempt to appease the masses.

The problem also exists in NBA 2k13, to a huge extent. If you look at the base 2k13 roster of this year (No mods, no history teams etc.) you will see that a lot of players are rated 90+ or higher, and that even more players are rated 80+ or higher.
And for the sake of showing, I will post the number of players in their respective overall classes below...

90/99 Overall:
PG: CP3 (94), Westbrook (93), Rose (92), Rondo (90), D-Will (90)
SG: Wade (93), Kobe (93)
SF: James (98), Durant (94), Melo (92)
PF: None
C: Howard (95)

So in the base roster of NBA 2k13, there are 11 90+ rated players and James and Howard take the crown with 95+ overall.

And I will be the first man to admit that all 11 of them are bonafide superstar players that deserve high ratings across the board, but in my personal opinion a 90+ rating should be reserved for only a select few. And with select few I mean 2-3 players that define the sport of Basketball.

But even we leave the 90/99 guys out of the equasion, let's look at the amount of players in NBA 2k13 that are between 80 and 89 overall.

80/89 Overall:
PG: Nash (87), Parker (86), Irving (83), Wall (83), Lowry (83), Curry (82), Holiday (82), Billups (82), Lawson (82), Jennings (80), Conley (80), Kidd (80)
SG: Manu (87), Ellis (86), Gordon (85), Johnson (85), Tyreke (81), Harden (81), K-Mart (81), Roy (80), Shumpert (80), Stuckey (80),
SF: Iggy (87), Gay (87), Granger (84), Deng (83), Pierce (82), Butler (81), Wallace (81), Chandler (80)
PF: Love (89, J-Smoove (87), Pau (87), Griffin (86), Aldridge (86), Nowitzki (85), Garnett (84), Amar'e (84), Z-Bo (83), Millsap (83), Bosh (82), Lee (82), Ibaka (80)
C: Duncan (87), Bynum (86), Jefferson (84), Noah (83), M.Gasol (83), Horford (82), Cousins (82), Lopez (80), Monroe (80), Gortat (80)

As you go into the 80's the problem becomes more obvious. 53 players are rated between 80 and 89 and if you add the 90+ guys to that you get 64 players that are rated 80+. Divide that between all the teams in the league you get just over 2 80+ players per team.

Now just playing match up's and online one-off games that doesn't really equates to a problem. But if you go into Association and intend on running more than a season, you will meet a lot of problems.

The biggest problem being that the majority of the guys in the 80+ range are young guys... Young guys with high potential ratings.
To put a number up for people... 22 of the 80+ guys are 25 years or younger, and most if not all enjoy a B or higher potential rating.
That means all those kids will grow when the season ends, and they don't grow 1-2 points... Most of them grow 4+ overall points. That means all those talented kids will boost up highly, and seeing most players in NBA 2k13 grow until they 28 that means when they end up peaking they will be close to the 90's if not higher...


To repeat myself and add something new too. There are two problems that cause Association to become a messed up experience with everyone and their grandmother being a highly skilled player...

1: Default Rating
This is the most obvious problem. 2K rates players too highly and whereas High 80's should indicate a star, they rather use 90+ to indicate stardom. So a lot of ''non-stars'' end up becoming high 80 players, and most of the young players in the 80 range also gets handed a nice potential rating that will help them become even better in time. The younger the player, the higher they end up peaking.

2: Potential and Player Development
This is the bigger problem in NBA 2k13. Every player has a set potential rating, and that rating will not or hardly ever change if they become older.
That means that any player with A+ will turn into a godly star in a matter of time, and a player that is 19 (Davis) is a surefire 90+ player in the future.

Now we can argue that there are plenty of talented stars in the world today, this will eventually lead to big problems in a game like NBA 2k13. Because the game holds on to strict growth and regression simulation.
If a guy like Rudy Gay ends up injured for 60+ games and only scores around 15 PPG and has a terrible season, he will still end up growing even though he had a very bad year.
And a guy like Ryan Anderson who turns in a career year and propels himself into the limelight as a bonafide scorer and rebounder will not get an appropriate ratings boost to coincide with his sudden skill.

No, the engine holds true to a strict engine which causes players with high potential to grow fast and loose and players with low potential grow slowly or not at all...
Peaked out players also do not suffer major skill overhaul depending on better/worse production so players between 28-32 will hardly change overall or their skills. Players do not find niches that make them a better role player and they also do not suffer from major injuries like ACL tears and the like.
If a player has peaked, his overall will stick until he becomes 32-33.



So in closing, the otherwise great game of NBA 2k13 suffers (heavily imo) from their old and inadequate association mode causing a huge overload of talented players in team rosters and on the free agency market.
Talented kids become even better, whilst there aren't enough players getting significantly worse to balance out the system. Playing time and performances have little to no effect on the upward/downward development of players and after only a couple of seasons there is an unrealistic premium of class players in the game with that number rising only more and more with draft classes being bloated with massively talented players...

And that also causes a periphery of other problems namely bloated free agency with every player demanding huge amounts of money that teams cannot pay because they are already paying the premium for 7 or so 80+ guys on their roster.

So if for some ungodly reason a 2K developer reads this (which they won't because I am a realist.) These are the things they should focus on improving or changing.

- More balanced and thought out player ratings. No 60+ players with 80+ ratings from the get go.
90 should be a top number and not a start for stars.(No rookies here)
80/85 for elite level players. (No rookies here)
75/79 for good/great rotation player (Elite rookies here)
65/74 for role players to lesser rotation players. (Lottery rookies here)
-64 for fringe players (late 1st and 2nd rounders, undrafted kids here)

- Don't hand potential ratings out willy nilly. There are 63 -25 year olds in the default roster that are rated B or higher (I checked and it was really 63). Guys like Babbitt, Vesely, Kanter etc. shouldn't be expected to become elite players, 2K needs to have more career role-players and less career-stars.

- Have a dynamic player development engine. Young players grow steadily. Some peak early, some peak late, some don't at all. Make Playing Time mean something and have players with more playing time grow quicker than the others.
If a player suffers a bad injury or has a bad season, have him drop in overall or fail to grow if they are young. Leg injuries cause loss in speed, vertical etc. and arm/hand injuries cause a drop in shooting skill or handling.
If a player has a great season above expectations (MIP winner?) have that player get a boost in skill even if his potential says otherwise. Ryan Anderson for example, expected to be a role-player he ended up putting his name on the map and is now regarded as a deadly shooter.
In real life some players fail to live up to their potential, or other players end up better than expected.

- Have a better draft system. Right now the only big players you can draft are with the first 5 picks. Everything after that are pretty much scrubs.
The problem isn't with the scrubs, but those first 5 players are waaaay too skilled and have way too high potential. So every year there is an influx of hugely talented guys (future LBJ's, KD's, Rose's etc.) that take away the spots of other rotation players. Players starting out at over 80+ are highly unrealistic and like I said earlier, at the most 2-3 elite level rookies and at the most around 75 overall.
There also must come a bigger focus on role players and draft busts/gems. Lots of late first rounders find a place on NBA rosters with their skillset ranging from top defenders (Sefolosha) to great rebounders (Faried). Also there need to be lowly rated gems that turn into good/great players, Isaiah Thomas as Mr. Irrelevant turning into a solid PG is a good example...

- More love for the Role players of the NBA. There are plenty of guys around the NBA that fill important bench roles but aren't highly rated. Skilled Shooters (Jimmer / Korver), Skilled defenders (Thabo / AK47) etc. They might not be star level players, but they fill important spots even though they will never be a star.

- Bring back the D-League. Players go abroad. The latter would be harder to implement because they would need to get rights of the foreign leagues, but not neccesarily. Players going abroad can also just be put ''unavailable'' and with foreign draftees there should be a chance that they stay 1-2 years extra in their nation of origin.
The D-League is a thing I didn't get why they dropped it, but the system was already pretty much useless from the get go. Have free agents join up to D-League teams and have them improve slowly too if they are young. Players you send to the D-League also need to get slow improvements depending on their playing time, they don't improve as quick as playing in the NBA but it's better than reserves sometimes...


Simply put, NBA 2k14 would need quite some love from the developers if they want to really improve upon the Association and after years of having essentially the same system.
I personally only play NBA 2k13 for the association and the very ocassional My Player game. And I really am dissapointed at association which hasn't changed in years and has even been gutted with the removal of features like the D-League.


Sorry for the long read, I hope some people will agree with me if they even take the time to read this long read. Can't blame you if you guys ignore the wall of text and return to your gaming

[mango_prom]

Great post! There's actually no logic behind player progression in 2k13.
You'll frequently see players in their late 30s with >90 dunk/vertical for example. The whole thing makes no sense.

Some other observations:

1) Ignoring all the painfully obvious flaws in current association mode, 2k could fix player development in a lazy way by simply toning down created draft classes.
I've tested this with 30+ seasons. If you limit top prospects to 0-5 players per year rated >70 OVR, you get a pretty realistic distribution of talent comparable to the current league.
That's it, nothing more needs to be done. I remember this issue since 2k3...

So I disagree with your observations on draft classes. Just auto-generate a few, you'll see many with 10+ players >70 OVR already. They aren't scrubs, many draft classes are already better than the Wizards Bobcats and Pistons combined. Destroys league balance, been that way for a decade.

2) There is no system behind the distribution of ratings, tendencies and player types. Makes absolutely no sense. You'll see big men with >80 midrange rating and a tendency of 0 because their playstyle is "defensive".
"3pt"-specialists with a 3pt-rating of 70? Why not...

3) Signature Animations are assigned with arbitrary scripts, you'll see pretty much any semi decent guard having the "air jordan" layup package, no matter what.

4) There's not much variation in terms of ratings. Many top prospects have dunk/layup >90 already. Different types of players are pretty much non existant. The league is filled with 6'7 PFs featuring maxed out dunking and SGs having all shooting attributes >90. Goes without saying they're perfect dunkers as well...

5) Signature Skills are apparently tied to certain rating-cutoffs, so you'll see too many of them amongst the dozens of >90 OVR players the league consists of after a few years.

6) Now if 2k maybe is able to fix the broken touches tendency in the next decade or so, the next thing is to look at how it's distributed for generated players. I've found no correlation between a players' skill and his supposed touches.

Seriously, look at how Sega manages huge databases for their Football Manager series with thousands of players and even after simming whole decades the distribution of skills and progression of talents is incredibly solid. I'd like to see at least a minimum of effort in 2k14.
In the FM series you can see that it is possible to create a realistic progression for literally a hundred distinct leagues if you hardware can handle it.
I've simmed 50 years ahead just for fun in FM2013, and leagues still make sense, you see lots of variety and this game is not any less complex than 2k13. So it's only a matter of actually wanting to improve things. I'm not even talking about a complete rebuilding, but at least fix the most obvious issues.

I mean in past years games, 2k released patches that said something about "tuning draft classes to be in line with current player ratings"...so if it's true they've looked into association apparently there's nothing wrong with draft classes being better than the current Mavs and Pistons combined...

[benbrown1]

Fantastic post. I've been waiting for them to improve Association mode but they focus on My Player instead.

[deknegt]

Quote: Originally Posted by benbrown1

Fantastic post. I've been waiting for them to improve Association mode but they focus on My Player instead.

Thanks for the reply.

They have been focusing on My Player but even then that game mode hasn't changed that much aside from some semantic stuff like a twitter feed. You still got eff-all in player customisation and that also goes into the default drafts in assocation. Every single player has the same generic looking face and the same boring hairstyles.

Also thanks Mango for adding on my post, I agree with all your points and it's clear that 2K has the wrong priorities when they are updating the game.

The new shooting style is cool and all, but in the grand scheme of things the game is hardly any different than 2k12 and 2k11.
And the idea of ''don't improve on perfection'' is just 2K's reason to be lazy as long EA isn't in the market without any competition.

At the end of the day the loyal 2K fans suffer because we buy a game that hardly changes and 2K would really show some love to the fans if they decides to completely overhaul association mode and come back with a completely new (and better) experience.

I buy and play sports games to play dynasties and associations ranging from FIFA to Madden to NHL and NBA 2K. And I really feel like it would make no difference if I picked up NBA 2k6 because it's exactly the same association mode.

[mango_prom]

I totally get that 2ks main area from a business point of view and maybe in terms of getting a certain development budget is to keep EA out of the market for the forseeable future.
That's the clear route they took with 2k13, branding the franchise as a more arcade oriented easy to pick up game for the casual audience.

That's fine, and I don't expect them to really take care of association/AI/defense and so on in 2k14. But there are many simple ideas to fix the current game and improve overall quality without completely rebuilding from scratch.

And with association mode I just can't imagine a developer playing it and be satisfied with the current version. But looking at the marginal difference between 2k3 and 2k13, this could actually be the case. Maybe they're serious when claiming "we're still making a basketball simulation", I don't know. Noticing all the messy stuff in associaton is nothing that can't be done with maybe an hour of testing, that's it. And they actually put Bieber's face in the game, this takes time,too...So keep the current mode, I'm fine with that.
But fixing the most simple issues can't be a matter of money/time.

I hope 2k is simply not supposed to spend their time on improving overall realism and game modes as a general company direction. If you want to develop an action game, that's fine. But if they really think they are working on a "sim"-franchise, they're clueless.
Just look at the roster updates, if they're doing this on purpose, alright then.
But I just can't believe you can claim to simulate the real game and create such a mess of a roster every year. If your direction is arcade, there's nothing wrong with how 2k handles rosters/tendencies, but then claiming to produce a "simulation"?

And looking at issues like association...I paid for this game, I'm not a 12 year old downloading everything and then say "if you don't like it, don't play it"...as a paying customer it's disappointing that advertising is just flat out wrong every year.
I can't test most features in a demo, and it's pretty weak to get buyers by falsely advertising features that are either broken or seriously flawed.

[aussieicon91]

What 2k needs to do is keep the potential level but create some sort of function which ensures that only a small percentage of players ever reach their maximum potential, a slightly higher percent reach 50% of their total potential and the rest either stagnate or flake out of the league. The potential should fluxuate over time depending on injuries, the players they play with, the players personality, morale and the team chemistry.

What they also need to do is make sure that smaller market teams can't go as hard into the luxery tax as what larger markets can.

[Colts18]

Using default rosters give you this issue. Use custom rosters and you won't have this issue.

If you are on 360, use HyperBaller's rosters. Players don't start off with high ratings and potential has been fine tuned.

[deknegt]

Quote: Originally Posted by Colts18

Using default rosters give you this issue. Use custom rosters and you won't have this issue. If you are on 360, use HyperBaller's rosters. Players don't start off with high ratings and potential has been fine tuned.

But that doesn't relieve the problem of the fact that 2K are doing a shoddy job. The fact that users need to create their own rosters is just rediculous and it's crazy that the consumer needs to fix 2K's crap.

And you still hobble against the problem with draft classes, yes you can download custom ones. But that doesn't excuse the fact that 2K does a shoddy job.