Live 2004 Franchise Depth

[killerht]

that's what they have to fix and work on.

[hoopscitylive]

I think if they linked the ratings to the stats, there would be more realistic sim results. By that I mean that a rating is directly proportionate to a corresponding stat:

FG = adj. FG% [(PTS - FTM)/FGA]/2
3PT = 3pt %
FT = FT %
OREB = OREB/48 min.
DREB = DREB/48 min.
PASS = AST/48 min.
STL = STL/48 min.
BLK = BLK/48 min.
Primacy = (FGA + FTA)/48 min.
Fatigue = Min./Game
Hardiness = GP/82

The rest of the ratings are more physical and mental attributes, such as jumping and awareness. These ratings shouldn't fluctuate as much as the above ratings.

With this method, each rating would produce a range of stats during simulatiion. Adding or trading players would affect the ratings of some other players. Also, if you played games yourself, how you used your players would effect their development. You would also be able to create real players by entering their stats (college, HS, etc.) to generate realistic ratings.

I think overall, the ratings in Live need to have a more noticable effect on gameplay. Players with 50 steal and 50 defensive awareness should not be able to intercept a pass from Jason Kidd, no matter how risky the pass. Also, there should be a greater separation of ratings between players and positions. There aren't many PGs in real life who are stronger than even the most inept Center, yet you see it in Live all the time. At the same time, there shouldn't be that many centers who are faster than a PG.

Also, ratings need to reflect not only how good a player is at something, but their tendencies to perform certain actions with and without the ball. Players with high rebounding ratings should be more likely to be in a good position to rebound the ball. You never see a CPU Jason Kidd grab 10 boards in Live.

[rudogg33]

i actually like the managment side as long as andrew said it leads back to basketball for exaple. You set ticket prices food prices, etc. And you make an income of 100 million, first off you wouldnt spend 100 million on players because of the salary cap. The other money goes for new supplies, coaches, as well as improving the facility. This would lead ack 2 basket ball becaise the more wins = more fans = more money = better facilities= free agents being attracted more to play for you. It still come back with winning, and players as well as fans be awarded. Moving a team is a great feature becuase when you are losing and no fans or free agents want to play there. so moving a team = new start. This is how madden works and this would make live a better game.

[Andrew]

You set ticket prices food prices, etc.

That's something I'm hoping Dynasty Mode will avoid. After all, that's not the role that Danny Ainge now has with the Celtics, or Jerry Krause had for so many years. I think managing that side of the franchise should be optional, since a lot of players probably just want to handle basketball operations - trades, free agency, the draft - and play the games.

[JAY__JAY_]

maybe they could have lke a trainin cap. so say u create a player. ya self for example. you wont your guy to end up being the no 1 star. right but u wont it realistic. so wen u start off u make him like a 70 75 but this fella works really hard at tarainin and goes to a devolpment camp comes bak and is lie a 80 85. wad u think. and also i think they should make it so u can create a player and add him into you francise on the consol verson. so like have create player under team mangement in francise so that myself and other consol oweners dont have to start their francise again to add in the likes of lebron and camrello and start from 2002 when they arnt even in the league yet just so u can play them. oh and maybe a create a player for coaches and trainers etc and be able to fire them and hire new ones

[havasufalls]

I love the training camp idea but i want to train wit all the players to make them better.

[Swoosh]

yeah but u shouldnt suddenly become a superstar player, or all of them, just cuz u trained a lot with them, not after one season not after two, it takes time to develop, just like kobe an t-mac had to do, if its just training and ur player keeps progressing it turns into a pokemon-like game, train ur beast/player and become the strongest, that's not what its about in my opinion, a player can improve some aspects of his game though but it would only have minor effect, +1 or something, but it should also have to do with the age of a player, if its a prospect or a great player, his overall stats may increase with lets say five points(thats a whole lot improvement in different areas), so it should be implented very carefully and not randomly and stuff(connected with the player package), they also need to fix the very fast decreasing of stats of elder vets like payton and malone, ok malone aint gonna play that long i think but GP still has at least a year or three at high level and then would still be solid(if he doesnt retire), look at pippen, he still plays at a high level imo

[havasufalls]

Yea i think it should only move 1 or 2 up every season at the most cause people train to improve in certain aspects over the offseason. Look at KG he wanted to be effective at the 3 pointer and he did most of it in the offseason and vince carter couldnt hit a 3 in his rookie year but he trained and in his sophmore year he was a force to be reckon wit at the 3 point line.

[Metsis]

I think if they linked the ratings to the stats, there would be more realistic sim results. By that I mean that a rating is directly proportionate to a corresponding stat:

FG = adj. FG% [(PTS - FTM)/FGA]/2
3PT = 3pt %
FT = FT %
OREB = OREB/48 min.
DREB = DREB/48 min.
PASS = AST/48 min.
STL = STL/48 min.
BLK = BLK/48 min.
Primacy = (FGA + FTA)/48 min.
Fatigue = Min./Game
Hardiness = GP/82

The rest of the ratings are more physical and mental attributes, such as jumping and awareness. These ratings shouldn't fluctuate as much as the above ratings.

With this method, each rating would produce a range of stats during simulatiion. Adding or trading players would affect the ratings of some other players. Also, if you played games yourself, how you used your players would effect their development. You would also be able to create real players by entering their stats (college, HS, etc.) to generate realistic ratings.

I think overall, the ratings in Live need to have a more noticable effect on gameplay. Players with 50 steal and 50 defensive awareness should not be able to intercept a pass from Jason Kidd, no matter how risky the pass. Also, there should be a greater separation of ratings between players and positions. There aren't many PGs in real life who are stronger than even the most inept Center, yet you see it in Live all the time. At the same time, there shouldn't be that many centers who are faster than a PG.

Also, ratings need to reflect not only how good a player is at something, but their tendencies to perform certain actions with and without the ball. Players with high rebounding ratings should be more likely to be in a good position to rebound the ball. You never see a CPU Jason Kidd grab 10 boards in Live.

This does not work... Live 2003 works like this, but this system really doesn't work. Think of this lineup. Starting Big Ben, Duncan, Garnett, Bryant and Kidd. They would grab like 50 rebounds per game and that is unrealistic. And think about the 100 points they would score.

It is just unrealistic. There just aren't enough stats to go around. For the simulation to really work well the system needs to change. The game should calculate the end game statistics by the team ratings and the form of the day for each player. And then distibute the stats accordingly to each player according to their stats.

The system needs work, but the thing you suggested doesn't really work.

[hoopscitylive]

I understand what you're saying, but primacy should play a bigger factor. If you assemble a team of players with high primacy ratings (like the Lakers), some of those players would obviously have to adjust, as there are only so many shot attempts to go around. As a result, their ratings would fluctuate. Their stats per 48 mins would decrease as a result of playing with other great players, and their ratings would reflect that - even though their actual skills may not decrease, they would have to suffer some penalty to reflect their decrease in productivity.

[Metsis]

But the problem is at the moment that there is a very rigid DSTATS system that pretty much declares how a player will play with simulation. But this system is pretty much corrupted and doesn't work. Ever wonder why your super rookie scores 10 points with simulation and you can't score under 25 with the guy??? This is why the DSTATS system sucks.

This one is a tough one... It is extremely hard to make up a system that would work. One thing would fix the problem, but it would make the simulation process extremely slow and that is that the game would simulate each game play-by-play. The stats would be realistic, but it would take a long time.

But simulating the game stats based on team statistics and then distributing them to the players, by their stats, but this would have to be tested thoroughly, but I think it would be a better system then the one we have now.

And then there's the personalized DSTATS... A thing I've toyed around with. So each player would have personalized DSTATS and they would change after every game and that would pave the way for player streaks and breakthrough seasons etc. And it could enable players to develop according to the DSTATS aswell. And if these numbers would be figured in with the playerpkg ratings, well that would enable bigger changes, but basically make the player development more stable. So if a star starts to go down in ratings, well you could actually do something to stop the decrease in stats. This would also allow players stats to be effected by team playing styles, coaching changes and chemistry changes due to trades etc.

But I don't know how these would work, but the system currently in effect doesn't work and it needs to be changed big time.

Tell me what you think...

[killerht]

I don't know what to say.

Anyone have an opinion?

[killerht]

no?

[Metsis]

No one ever wants to comment on my ideas... Are they just so far out there or are they just plain stupid?

Could someone answer this atleast...

[Andrew]

I can speak only for myself, but many times I have nothing to add, and feel that adding an "I agree " would just be spamming - though I will post such comments from time to time.

[Metsis]

True, true...

This would amount into a lot of spam, but you could note it in reply to another post in the same thread or something...

I don't know... I like my ideas, but I don't know if you like them, so that's why I'm asking.

And yes, Andrew, you usually say something to everything which is good.

[Swoosh]

I also like most of your ideas(in fact i cant come up with one i dont like ), though the only thing i have to say is, u describe how they should be implemented and yes it would work those ways, but it's just not that easy to implement i believe imho, cuz ea tends to put something in the game and make things too random or too extreme(like looooooots of useless trades and no injuries for example), but if implemented right, those ideas of ur would improve the game greatly, so keep up the good thinking work

[Andrew]

I certainly like your ideas (such as team chemistry and especially the calendar based offseason). Unfortunately I don't always have anything to add.

[Metsis]

I also like most of your ideas(in fact i cant come up with one i dont like ), though the only thing i have to say is, u describe how they should be implemented and yes it would work those ways, but it's just not that easy to implement i believe imho, cuz ea tends to put something in the game and make things too random or too extreme(like looooooots of useless trades and no injuries for example), but if implemented right, those ideas of ur would improve the game greatly, so keep up the good thinking work

I've been involved a little bit in making software and I can tell you that it's not easy, but EA is getting wrong a lot of the times. Maybe they just don't have the time to test it properly (with one year to produce I don't blame them). There were no ingame injuries in Live 2003, but it had too many useless trades. Lot's of things like this are a little off. They should increase the chance of an injury slightly and decrease the number of trades slightly. A little change can amount big things in the long run.

The early Live games had a good amount of injuries ingame, but they have diminished since which is not good... I don't know what they did to them.

[Andrew]

Flagrant fouls have become harder to commit. Since that's currently the only way to injure players, there are less injuries as a result.

[chipper]

The ennoying thing about playing a looooong franchise is that u cant really "identify" with players anymore, this already happens when u played about eight to ten years, only some rookies and second to four year pros are left in the game that u actually know, all those generated rookies dont exist and i still think one of the charms to play nba is that u can play with existing players and sort of "live the experience", but if its all non existent players its just playin some hoop, not that it cant be fun but i guess u know what i mean

That's why I want historical leagues so bad...
Can play many seasons and still I can recognize all the players.

[diafenes]

I don't know if this helps, but what I do to prolong the identity of some of the players in franchise is edit is historic = true for specific players (that's probably the only way you can have karl malone to continue chugging away, same with kevin willis).
Without doing that these older players usually retire staight after the 2003 season. That's why i hope that live2004 has an option to "unretire" players and to have specific cases (like the mailman) where they can continue playing past the ages 38-39-40yrs.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'd like the ability to bring players out of retirement (though it shouldn't always be possible), or at least be told when a player is likely to retire and be given the opportunity to persuade him to stick around longer.

[diafenes]

Yeah, I'd like the ability to bring players out of retirement (though it shouldn't always be possible

Agreed, its not for all the retiring players, but back in live2000 stockton&malone (just using obvious examples) would retire after the first season, now in live2003 their still around (although stockton really retired after the season!).
Certain players have longitivity, it should be reflected properly in franchise/dynasty mode. I've had frustrating/annoying times where a player would retire at 35, when they still had Payton type skills/