Operation Sports Q&A with Mike Wang

NBA Live 10 Q&A: Round Two
Submitted on: 08/31/2009 by

The Operation Sports community recently got another chance to ask Mike Wang, lead gameplay designer for NBA Live 10, some more questions about the game.

OS: Can you pin the ball against the glass when blocking a layup or a dunk?

Mike Wang: Yes, you can pin the ball against the glass if you time your blocks properly. It’s very tough to do, but I’ve seen a couple throughout the development cycle.

OS: Playbook questions: Can a developer confirm the total number of plays available in the game (and/or note that it might change via DNA updates)? Steve mentioned in the Operation Sports preview that 392 players were available to the Lakers in the demo, but is that cumulative? Including variations? What is the average number of team-specific plays available? Can we assign the Bulls playbook to the Spurs if we wanted to?

MW: There are over 500 total selectable plays in this year’s Live, and most of the plays have branching options within the basic sets. There are around eight team-specific sets for each team, with several play options within those sets. And yes, you can mix and match plays from one team to another. The best thing about this year’s plays, however, is that they’re TRULY authentic. In the past, we derived our plays from watching games or looking up stuff on the web. For Live 10, we partnered with actual NBA coaches and scouts to get REAL plays. I can’t stress enough how unprecedented this is. When I first laid my eyes on the playbooks when they were sent to the office, my jaw dropped. Really amazing stuff.

http://www.operationsports.com/feature.php?id=938

Thanks for the heads up, good read. Hopefully our Q&As are returned answered soon.

MW: The biggest thing with interceptions that bothered me in Live 09 is that it looked like you’d sometimes just pass the ball to the wrong team. Also, it was very difficult to manually intercept the ball. It was just easier to let the AI [artificial intelligence] do it for you. We’ve improved pass selection so that players will take more reasonable passing lanes and not make dumb passes.

Also, we changed the way players get to the ball when making an intercept attempt. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but essentially we were able to get much better reliability with the system. So for the user, it’s a much more solid twitch game. If you play the passing lane properly, time the steal properly and have decent enough ratings, you’ll be able to pick off passes much easier this year. As a side note, we also tuned the system so that more often than not, intercept attempts lead to knockaways and tipped passes. It just seemed more realistic this way and also leads to some cool hustle play moments.

That's good to hear, interceptions were very irritating at times in NBA Live 09. I think a lot of it had to do with the directional passing, a lot of "I didn't actually want to pass it there!" moments. The number of interceptions wasn't too bad (and could be adjusted by the slider anyway), it was more the nature so it's encouraging to hear that it's been addressed.

OS: What’s up with all the players skipping like J.R. Smith after they score?

MW: Yes, it is annoying. I have a fix for it already and it will be patched ASAP.

Looks like we've got some info on the first patch.

More Signature Shots sounds like a good thing and auto subs. this is good stuff?

Pin the ball against the Glass?? YESSSSSS STAR lol

Readin the rest now

OS: What’s up with all the players skipping like J.R. Smith after they score?

MW: Yes, it is annoying. I have a fix for it already and it will be patched ASAP.

THANK GOD