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.

OS: Will bench animations be tweaked further for certain situations? The demo videos showed bench players getting overly excited on not-so-exciting plays.

MW: Bench animations are synched up closely with the action that happens on the court. You’ll see this in the shipped version of the game (demo as well). There might be the few random occurrences, but for the most part, they’ll be relative to what’s going on.

OS: Will the designated defensive stoppers move over to other positions to guard opposing star offensive players? I always hated how guys like Bruce Bowen would only cover other small forwards, even if the opposing star was playing shooting guard etc. Also will they do a better job of recognizing stars and double teaming/denying the ball at times other than when the offensive players get "hot"?

MW: By default, your players will guard whoever they’re matched up with according to position. You can change your matchups on the fly this year if you’d like. And yes, the double-team logic was rewritten this year, and it does a much better job recognizing valid threats and hot players when deciding who to help on.

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.

OS: How many different types of post moves are there in the game?

We integrated NCAA’s post game into Live 10 and refreshed the animations to be more NBA-specific. Functionally, it’s very similar to NCAA though. You can do the following: pump fake and go left/right, up and under layup, up and under jumper, Spin move left/right then branch to layup or dunk, dropstep left/right then branch to layup or dunk, post jumper, Post fadeaway and various hook shots.

OS: What changes have been made to the interception system?

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.

OS: My question is will the CPU substitute players in off the bench? In last year’s game, player fatigue was messed up so players ended up playing the entire game a lot of the time.

MW: With short-quarter games, the starters will still dominate playing time. However, if you bump the quarter length up, you’ll see much better minute management with the auto-subs. The sub logic was another system that was rewritten, and we’re much happier with the bench players’ playing time, and the right guys are getting into the game at the right time.

OS: We’ve heard about "storylines" now. So does that mean commentators will talk about to stars guarding each other –- example being when Kobe and LeBron play against each other?

MW: The storylines will discuss the matchups, and the commentators will focus on the storyline players, but we won’t have audio for the commentators talking about the two of them at the same time. But again, that will be highlighted in the storylines.

OS: How many more signature shots were mo-capped into this year's game?

MW: I don’t have the actual number, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 or so. Also, we had quite a few NBA players in house this year to capture their real-life shots. B-Roy, Rudy Gay, Tony Parker, Bargnani and Iguodala to name a few. We also dug up some old mo-cap data from when Paul Pierce came in a while back, as well as Kevin Durant and a couple others. So we were able to retool their shots as well. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the upgrade to jump shots this year. The animations are much more true to life, and now that the shot releases are releasing with the actual release of the button, shots feel 10 times better than before.