Mike Wang Gameplay Defense Blog

http://www.easports.com/blogs/nbalive/i ... ay-defense

We have gameplay. We don't need Blogs anymore.

We have gameplay. We don't need Blogs anymore.

I disagree. Until the game ships, I'm all for getting as much info as possible.

We really got sick of seeing people actively trying to switch away from the ball when playing defense, feeling that the AI could do a better job at guarding the ball than they could. Instead, we wanted to encourage users to stay active and not run away from the play, so to speak. Jeff Antwi worked closely with our engineers and animators to repair and balance the movement of the ball handler vs. the onball defender. We ended up incorporating some really interesting ideas such as pad filtering, which is a technique that evaluates the user’s left analog stick movement and selectively ignores certain erroneous inputs to better relay the user’s intention rather than what he actually did on the sticks. A number of other ideas were implemented — none of which I want to blog about today… you know, trade secret stuff. But at the end of it all, we really feel that guarding the ball is much easier this year and more users will opt to manually guard the ball rather than cop out and guard a non-factor on the weak side of the court.

Emphasis is mine. I certainly hope that is the case, NBA Live 09 was a step forward in that regard but there were certainly still times when I preferred to let a CPU teammate guard the ball while I controlled one of the bigs to try and protect the paint. That pad filtering technique sounds good, presumably we'll still be able to overplay on defense and be punished for defensive errors but if it works probably then staying with a ballhandler should be easier this year which will certainly give me more incentive to stay with the ball more often.

Not an easy feat by any means, but take my word for it… dribble penetration takes quite a bit of skill in Live this year when you’re playing the higher difficulty levels.

Sounds good, though I found it fairly challenging in 09 with the way Lockdown Defense worked. I just hope it's the same at both ends. The CPU hasn't been too bad at guarding the paint in recent years but a bigger concern is the way they're able to get into the paint and finish. Hopefully we can bother the CPU opponent as much as they can bother us.

Rookie = For kids and total newcomers to basketball games. My 6 year old son can compete in this one.

Pro = For the casual basketball fan. The AI is a little tougher but defense is toned down quite a bit to allow for easier shooting and dribble penetration (read: more dunks)

All-Star = For the “serious” hoops gamer. AI is pretty tough, especially when playing with a non-elite team. Most experienced gamers will find a nice challenge here.

Superstar = For the hardest of hardcore. AI is dialed up even more. Expect to concentrate hard on every possession and have almost flawless execution to win.

Good to get a rundown of the difficulty levels and their impact in NBA Live 10. Of note, Marcus also mentioned on his Twitter that a lot of the gameplay videos that have been released are on Rookie difficulty, which isn't surprising given that they're trying to show off one thing or another.

I'm worried about this Superstar level. . .EA's superstar level was already cheat. I'll know soon enough, cause that's the only level I play on

What if All-Star is more realistic and still provides a challenge, especially after a few slider tweaks? Couldn't you just play on that difficulty instead?

Maybe, but if when I usually put it on All-star, I just blow the computer out!!! Mike Wang came from 2k, and their Superstar/HOF setting is unrealistic. you can't really enjoy the game on those settings. But we'll see

Hopefully in the worst case scenario, All-Star with slider tweaks for greater difficulty will provide the desired experience if Superstar doesn't hit the mark on being realistic in addition to being the most challenging.

Yeah, I see what your saying, but still, what's the point of playing if you can't play on the hardest lol

What does that matter if you're still getting the experience you want though? If All-Star difficulty delivers a satisfactory level of authenticity and can be tweaked to give the same challenge you'd expect of Superstar difficulty because Superstar difficulty doesn't (hypothetically) play realistically, does it really matter that you don't have the game set to Superstar? Isn't it more important that you're getting the gameplay experience you want?

I suppose it does become an issue online because there's not as much you can tweak, but for offline/Dynasty play it doesn't really matter.