Signature Skills: Tied to Player Progression for CAPs

Some of these signature skills seem like improvements upon ratings of previous years. For example, Deadeye and Finisher are different takes of Shoot In Traffic. First one is an improvement on "Shoot in late traffic", and the second one is "Drive in traffic". I'd still love to have all those as additional ratings, rather than them being an on/off switch, but maybe with the right ratings adjustments we'll be able to get them to work differently in each player.

It's nice if most of them end up being like this, stuff that isn't already in the ratings or tendencies, even if they're just improved and more detailed/advanced takes on what we already have.

Ronnie2K just announced we should be waiting for 3 more sets of Signature Skills today, which should bring the total to 20, if they keep presenting players with their 5 SigSkill slots filled up.

F that presentation, I really do hate it...

+1 It looks

Good eye, didn't notice that.

yes ld2k on twitter said that will happen throughout the release idk what he meant by that

Maybe that means that ratings are subject to change before release day, although release day rosters for NBA 2K are usually accurate as of August 20something. Could be a zero-day roster update via Online Data.

The rosters are approved by the NBA per the licensing agreement. The ratings are most likely entirely under the purview of VC and can be set to whatever they want up until mastering.

Derrick Rose added. If someone finds the explanations for the new sig skills, post them here so we can add them.

EDIT: People at OS are already complaining about how much of a Floor General D. Rose is, and that Finisher would be more suited to him. Even if he could be considered a Floor General by what 2K wants that to mean (raises the Off Awareness of his teammates when on the floor), should all players with that sig skill have the same effect on their teammates? Or are some players more like Floor Generals than others?

That's why I don't like things like passive on/off abilities over ratings in basketball. They should either have them levelled (like Floor General lvl 1, lvl 2, lvl 3), so that they could differentiate between them, or they should be ratings themselves.

@benji: Any way of calculating statistically whether D. Rose deserves to be a Floor General?

here is the D Rose explanation video

phpBB [video]

The video you posted says in its annotation that Blake Griffin and Michael Jordan are to follow.

Also, Ronnie refers to his My Player as My Player, confirming indirectly that My Player has not been renamed to My Career. If and how these two modes are connected, we'll have to wait and see.

Soooo KD has the finisher attribute, and Rose hasn't? Mm.. Probably because there aren't any empty slots left for rose.
I wonder what they'll be doing with Kobe and Jordan? Give him the 'Kobe' and 'Air Jordan' Signature Skill? Because they could have almost all of them !

Once again, a point can be made that were those sig skills not binary choices but actual ratings, players could use more than 5 of them, and have much more variety in the effect each one has.

Ronnie 2K 2K13 ‏@Ronnie2K
One thing that is being brought up is Durant's rating has been lowered one. This will happen as game evolves. Blake is down 1 to 86 as well

Beat me to it by some seconds. God I love the dedication in this community.

The video you posted says in its annotation that Blake Griffin and Michael Jordan are to follow.

Also, Ronnie refers to his My Player as My Player, confirming indirectly that My Player has not been renamed to My Career. If and how these two modes are connected, we'll have to wait and see.

and yes they said they will be showing blake and mj today and all the players 2mmrw, so there will be on official video by 2ksports 2mmrw talking about all the signature skills

I think added signature skills that truly differentiate the players sounds better than simply stating we added 8 more attributes.

And again I like the idea that those skills are instantly shown on the playercard, however as I said why do you need the added boost in order to create these 'labels'. Here's how I would have done it:

Shot Creator: Make every player have this 'label' that has a shot in traffic >90, and close, med, 3pt shot >80. Simply giving a boost to the player's success does nothing that new attributes or ratings wouldn't. The ability to turn on or off the abilities is definitely a turn off from a sim style as well.

Although I will say that Acrobat and Floor General seem like two skills that would genuinely add something to the game. While skills like Microwave, which is essentially the Consistency attribute, are totally redundant and unnecessary.

I'm talking about differentiation between two players that share some signature skills.

Is every player that gets the "Floor General" skill actually equally skilled at being one? Should all players that have that have the same effect on their teammates? I'm not saying make it a full attribute, but at least make it levelled or something.

Like you, I'm more interested in those that add new aspects to the game, rather than those that could just be labels for ratings and tendencies we already have, or ones that are just ratings turned binary. I hate Microwave and Closer for that exact reason. They're the Consistency and Clutch ratings turned from a 0-99 scale into a 0-1 scale. The Closer signature skill along with the removal of the Clutch rating is a pure marketing gimmick. That much is obvious. It's a feature we already had, cut down, with a new name. Same goes for Microwave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLN1zb-Fxz4 heres blake griffin for you to add to the thread, will be posting mj next

Thanks daddy123.

"Blake Griffin practically invented posterizing."
SERIOUSLY?!

"We dropped him to an 86."
Awkwaaaaaaaaard...

"Blake Griffin is known for his hustle, and getting after loose balls."
So the "Hustle Points" signature skill is the rating formerly known as Hustle? Because the first one seems to just be about points after grabbing an offensive board, but then Ronnie gets into other parts of what hustle is.

If I see Clutch, Consistency and Hustle having been removed as ratings, gaaaaaaah.

Added MJ. Only new Sig Skill for him is Lockdown Defender. I'm waiting to hear its description, but it seems like it's another one that could just be a rating tweak, rebranded as a marketing gimmick. Things like that could be, like volsey said, labels that would be triggered if a player fulfilled some specific conditions on his ratings and tendencies, kind of like we already had the 3PT Specialist, Finisher, Lockdown Defender, etc. icons that would automatically show up in 2K12.

and here is MJ23

phpBB [video]

The description for Lockdown Defender is interesting, but also sounded a bit cheesy/cheaty. Being able to neutralize your opponent's sig skills can't be something that you are just able to put on any player. Let's hope Signature Skills require an amount of specific ratings being already that high for a player, before you can enable them.

It could be a major defensive weapon with the introduction of Signature Skills this year, if it has the right rating conditions set to it.

EDIT:
@leftosa: @Ronnie2K @LD2k Do Signature Skills have ratings conditions? Can I apply "Lockdown Defender" on a bad defensive player for example?
@LD2k: @leftosa You will find out all this information tomorrow in a detailed writeup by one of the Dev's. Fully detailed breakdown on Sig. Skills.

So we're getting both dev videos and dev diaries this year. Some things are better when explained in 10 paragraphs than when showcased in 2 minutes of footage, so I'm all for it.

Specific Players' Signature Skills Revealed

• Kevin Durant: Shot Creator, Microwave, Deadeye, Closer and Finisher
• Derrick Rose: Closer, Acrobat, Floor General, Shot Creator and Ankle Breaker
• Blake Griffin: Highlight Film, Posterizer, Hustle Points
• Michael Jordan: Shot Creator, Lockdown Defender, Acrobat, Finisher, and Closer

Too bad for the 5 signature skills limitation. Michael Jordan should have every single one of these sig skills

As i said in another thread - honestly, this signature skills bizzo makes me nervous. I fear that it may bring up problems and imbalances in the game. 2k may be taking the wrong direction with this. Others' thoughts?

Agreed. Particularly clutch and microwave, which are in no way at all based in reality.

Clutch and Microwave were already in the game as ratings/sliders. They were clutch and consistency, but instead of being on a 100 scale, they're now binary.

Here's some quotes from what I wrote on OS about the matter.

Just posting to say I'm totally with youALREADYknow and RyanFitzMagic on this one.

As much as I like some of the new signature skills, others seem like rebrandings of past ratings and tendencies, but that are now binary (on/off, 0/1) instead of on a 100 scale (0-99). That's actually a step backwards.

Every signature skill so far could be implemented in much more detail if applied via (old and new) ratings, abilities and tendencies. Then, those signature skills could show up as icons for players who fitted the criteria for each skill. For example, players with high defensive awareness, hustle, speed and blocking could earn the Chase Down Blocker icon. Players with high clutch and shooting ability could get the Clutch icon. Exactly like how in 2K12 the 3PT Specialist, Finisher and Lockdown Defender icons show up depending on a players' ratings.

Right now, players that share the same skill will have the exact same effect. For example, two players with the Floor General skill will have the exact same effect on their teammates. So that means that all players with the "Floor General" skill, per 2K's standards, are equally good at making their teammates better.

Signature Skills shouldn't be binary, they shouldn't be On-Off. They should be in the least leveled, like Abilities are in 2K12, and optimally be determined by adding new ratings, abilities and tendencies when required.

You couldnt give that scenario with all of them though example poster dunker LeBron is faster stronger and more athletic than most other players with the same skill set so while they both can poster people lebrons would be alot different. And the point of floor general is to make your teammates play better in how many ways are they supposed to do that? Give me an example of the difference.

It's all numbers and percentages. When an AI player has to pick through the gazillion of moves he can do at any point in time in the game, his offensive awareness and other ratings and tendencies affect the probability of which move he will do, how fast he will do it, etc. Since Floor General is meant to raise your teammates Offensive Awareness, say it's a +5 bonus when that player is on the floor. Should all Floor Generals give the same +5 bonus to their teammates? Or should some players be better at it, giving +7, while others be worse at it but still be decent enough to get the skill, giving something like +3?

Granted, this could be easily fixed by leveling the Signature Skill effect on what the player's other ratings are. An obvious one would be Finisher. A player with higher Dunk and Layup ratings will make better use of Finisher compared to a worse player that still has this Sig Skill. In the same manner, Floor General could give an effect that is a percentage of say, the player's offensive awareness (and other parts of their IQ). So say, Floor General could be
"When on the floor, he raises his teammates Offensive Awareness by 50% of every point of Offensive Awareness he has above 80."
So, a player with an Offensive Awareness of 92 would give a +6 bonus to his teammates, while one with 84 would give a +2 bonus to his teammates.

I see where you're coming from with this, but is that really how these SSs will work in this game? I thought they were there to give more casual players an at-a-glance look at which players excel in which ways. I thought that there would be underlying numerical values (0-99) still associated. So say 2 players have the Closer SS, maybe one has OClutch of 98 and the other has OClutch of 92; since they're both in a particular range (say, 90+), they both get labeled with the Closer SS.

I've said that I wish it was exactly like this, that they were just labels/icons that are triggered by (old and new) ratings, tendencies and abilities, just like the 3PT icon or the dunk icon were triggered in 2K12. But the 5 signature skill limit doesn't make sense if it were so.

Signature Skills are things that you equip your player with to give him bonuses in areas he's already good at (at least I hope so, I wouldn't want to see players with an On-Ball Defense rating of 50 being able to equip Lockdown Defender and neutralizing my players' signature skills).

Let's see what the full dev write-up on Signature Skills, which comes today, has to say.

Personally I hope that there's an option to turn these skills off.