Firstly, let me tell you what this is not: a post about the best slider sets out there or even one about what makes for the best slider set. There are plenty of thoroughly researched and test-driven slider sets up on 2K Share — many of them from OS users who have crafted great matched sets of rosters and sliders for. As a starting point, I highly recommend looking into mkharsh33's slider set, which seeks, among other things, to help the problem of the CPU grabbing defensive rebounds and taking off on unstoppable fast breaks — a real problem, in my opinion. But look at the headline again: the right gameplay blend will be the right one for you.

So remember that when it comes to making slider adjustments for games you’re going to be playing against the CPU, the most important thing is to make the game play the way you want it. Yes, there’s something appealing about downloading a set of sliders that promise the most “realistic” stats possible from a certain difficulty level or quarter length, but there’s actually nothing inherently moral about playing the most realistic basketball video game possible. There are a couple problems with this idea.

 

NBA 2K13 can be very sim...or arcadey.

First of all, you might not play NBA2K13 in the same way that real basketball gets played. I, for instance, like shooting in the game to be a little hotter than in real life. This means bumping up shooting sliders for both the player and the CPU just a bit so that I end up with teams hitting around 50% consistently and getting realistic scores (between 85 and 110 for each team) out of 10 minute periods. I play this way because it’s the way I wish basketball were, with fewer clankfests that result in scores like 72-69. Fundamentally, I like for good shooters to mostly make open shots and mostly miss well-contested ones. I wish this were the way the universe works, so it’s the way I like to make NBA2K13 work.

You might like a lot of dunks, and there’s no crime in that. Or you might like blocks. You might have this preference consciously or unconsciously, but it leads to the second point, which is that different people have different perceptions of the game itself. For everyone who thinks that the Game Speed needs to be pushed up to 53 to accurately simulate the speed of the game there’s someone who thinks it needs to be cut back to 45. In the pursuit of ever-heightened realism in video games, we sometimes forget that they’re not there just to simulate reality but to present us with alternative realities.

 

NBA 2K13 is very customizable to the experience you'd like.

 

You can go completely crazy. Hate free throws? Turn foul calling way way down. Love pinpoint passes? Turn up everyone’s Passing ability and turn down the Play Passing Lanes tendency.

Or you can be more subtle with it. Bump up Dunk In Traffic Frequency and Success plus the Attack The Basket tendency for yourself and the CPU if you want a physical, above the rim game. Back off on Blocking Foul Frequency if you don’t want whistles getting in the way of your fun. Or if you prefer guys to slip to the hoop like magicians, dial back the Driving Contact Shot Frequency. New this year is the ability to tweak the shot defense strength of shots both at the gather and the release, allowing you to still punish bad shots taken under heavy D while rewarding open looks more.

The key to finding the sweet spots for yourself is not to listen to what anyone else says is the definitive slider set, but to try out different sets and tweak them yourself. Play around. Through trial and error you’ll find what suits you, but you also might find that something will suit you for a week or a month and then feel flat. And don’t forget that the sliders interact with the individual player tendencies, which makes it absolutely essential to play with the right set of rosters if you want to get the effect the maker of the sliders intended. Same goes for difficulty. And although there have long been people who liked to work their way up to Hall of Fame difficulty, more recent iterations of the game have brought out people who feel the difficulty levels above Pro bring out too much blatant cheating by the CPU to make the game enjoyable.

So take a deep breath. Download some slider sets from 2K Share. Then start pushing them around yourself. The right blend is out there, you just might have to put in a little time to find it.