NBA 2k17 MyLeague After 5 Years: Data Showing Problems

[LorenzoDC]

UPDATE: We may have found some solutions for this. See here and here. I'll update this spot if we get a good work around team training slider set published and shared.

UPDATE 2: I've posted my slider set to fix this stuff here.

After all the contributions from people on this thread one about problems in MyLeague and 3 point shooting ratings over time, I decided to do a study to broaden the view of some of the problems I heard people talking about, and from my own observations of legacy issues. I thought it would be a good idea to put a study together for the devs to see what a lot of us are talking about.

In this study, I automated everything and used automated generated draft classes, and simmed ahead five years, from the season opener of 2016 to the season opener of 2021. First I'll show the data, and then I'll make some comments.



Here are the problems I see. They are caused by a combination of the composition of CPU generated draft classes, player progression and training/development AI, and CPU roster management AI:

• Over time, the league generates fewer real stars. Look at those changes in 90+ OVR players, and their average ages. While the draft classes do generate comparable numbers of players with potential at least A- or better, significantly fewer are A+ caliber league stars.
• However, over time more of the starting players in the league possess absolutely elite open shooting ratings from mid to 3pt range. Those changes are just incredible, and they make for a complete alternate universe league that in no way resembles the NBA.
• Some of the development in open shooting rates comes at the expense of contested shooting rates, but even taking that into account, shooting is way overpowered in later years, and the longer you sim forward, the worse it gets.
• Over time, the league includes many fewer defense first or at least 2-way players. This is something I have suspected for years but only now have I generated data to show it. This is due to some combination of draft class archetype composition and player progression/training.
• CPU roster management still doesn't pay enough attention to positional balance or to balancing between front court and back court personnel depth or even cap management (though I did not include cap numbers allocated by position in this study). I have some more information about the front court/back court balance of each team with 5+ players in one position, if anyone is interested. There's also a thread on this with more data here.

When you combine all of the above, you can see the MyLeague quickly become unrecognizable as an NBA simulation within a very short number of years. It becomes a league of mostly offensive players who are not elite overall but still better 3pt and mid range shooters than Steph Curry. And without 30 team control, CPU teams will not understand how to build rosters that can get teams through full seasons with injuries, because they too often neglect positional balance in making decisions.

The good news in MyLeague at least is that we have a lot of control to make edits. The quick edit feature for attributes this year is sensational on this front. And even though it's a little thing, so is the easy right stick cycling function to move you quickly across all the teams you manage.

The bad news is the CPU AI logic on all fronts (including draft classes, player progression and training, trades, free agent signings, scouting and everything else) is so overwhelmingly flawed that you end up spending more time trying to compensate for the lack of programming in the mode than you do actually playing the game.

And that's a big problem. I assume the same problems exist in MyGM where all those editing functions are absent.

I hope anyone at 2k who sees this understands this is a tough love critique. Last year I played about 300 12 minute quarter games in MyLeague, so this is my mode, and I'm a #simnation guy through and through.

I know this has been a short development cycle and I have no doubt whatsoever that the franchise mode developers completely want to get these things right. I just don't think 2k is giving them the mission and resources to work on these things or even address legacy flaws that I'm pretty sure they know exist. And for all their welcome focus on simmed stats over time, I have no idea how they can begin to get good results from those when these issues about league composition over time are so pervasive.

[Mauer4MVP]

Is there a way to set In-Season Training to manual? Just wondering if it's from CPU focusing just on 3 point shooting when training players.

[LorenzoDC]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mauer4MVP

Is there a way to set In-Season Training to manual? Just wondering if it's from CPU focusing just on 3 point shooting when training players.

Sort of.

With 30 team control, you can take over the training of every player in the league. But in order to make that tedious process a bit more manageable, you have the create and save a number of training templates based on different archetypes, and then manually set them up to each player in the league.

Once you go through the league once, those training plans stay with the player, so for subsequent years you only have to check and update the training plans of new players in the league.

There's a catch, though. There's a limit of 20 training profiles you can create and save locally to your console, assuming you don't share them out to the community. The publicly shared save file limit is probably tighter.

The problem then is there are more than 20 generally common player archetypes you'd want to make training plans for. That means that there will always be some archetypes you will have to do over and over again manually for each player with that archetype.

It's a very labor intensive process. I've done this for 20 player archetypes but I've only customized them so far by adjusting the balance of shooting training given to open versus contested shots. But it's not enough to overcome the scale of the problem.

I have not taken the next step to flat out cut the amount of training to players allocated to shooting, regardless of their archetype, and use those training points for defense. What will happen in that case is the progression system will see that you are training against archetype and cut back on progression a bit, so you may have to compensate for that with the progression slider.

The problem withe the lack of superstars over time really has to be overcome with draft class editing, making a few more A+ guys.

You could also, as I have always done, edit draft classes to include more defensive type players, but then you need to do not just attributes, but tendencies, hot zones and badges for each player manually. That ends up being a lot of work. And even then, you'd probably have to do what you've just suggested with the training plans for every player in the league.

It's just so much to have to try to fix and figure out. It makes it so that you have to spend 3 or more hours of editing for every maybe 1 hour you play the game. At what point does it stop being a "game" to "play" with all that extra work?

[trekfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mauer4MVP

Is there a way to set In-Season Training to manual? Just wondering if it's from CPU focusing just on 3 point shooting when training players.

You could manually save sliders to use for all players and then set those sliders for every player in the Player Training screen but that's

A) Insanely time-consuming and
B) Not addressing the progression issue in the offseason, which still inflates the open 3pt rating



I'm going to second the OP's post with gusto and it's completely in line with the results I'm getting on my end.

That said ... damn. I was genuinely hoping this wasn't looking as bad as it seemed. I've been hunting for a combination of sliders that stymies this, but there doesn't seem to be a setting we can affect that permanently stops this; all we can do is delay it with the sliders.

I continue to believe the main culprit is the AI progression engine. I can deal with the roster logic, that's been an issue in every franchise mode in history, but the offseason progression has never been this skewed. From what I'm seeing the progression engine is way overvaluing and rewarding the open 3pt shot and not focusing on other aspects of the NBA; the two-way stars, the elite rim protectors, the guys who live on defense (Tony Allen types), etc.

Lowering the effects of progression and in-season training only delays the inevitable and still leads to an unbalanced league, one with a lack of stars and rookies not hitting their true potentials. The lack of rookie progression at or near the default level of 50 is still an issue, but bumping that up will make the open 3pt rating issue worse

This needs to be tuned by the devs on the backend. If they can do it with player contracts, I hope they can do it here. I don't see any other solutions at this point for those of us who want to try to take their league as far as possible.

[joosegoose]

Amen brother, A+ post. We need more content like this; there are a number of issues that seem obvious to anyone who spends even a little time on these modes, but collecting the data for proof (as simple as it may seem) is immensely helpful to the devs.

I think some data collection on player contracts, contract options, and cap situations would be very helpful as well. I also wonder if we should make a singular post (maybe the OP of a dedicated thread) to keep a clean, 'consensus' list of important issues that need fixing/tuning in this mode. Then of course try to make sure a dev is aware of it.

Quote: Originally Posted by LorenzoDC

It's just so much to have to try to fix and figure out. It makes it so that you have to spend 3 or more hours of editing for every maybe 1 hour you play the game. At what point does it stop being a "game" to "play" with all that extra work?

This is precisely what's holding me back a bit, both in terms of the game and in doing more data collecting and whatnot. I catch myself spending all my time not actually 'playing' and get overwhelmed. I'll never truly be a 30 team control guy for this reason, and it's exactly why I'm only lukewarm to the new Rotation Timeline. They're great to have and I love that I have the ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want, but I don't like feeling like I have to go the whole nine yards to get a realistic league. It starts to feel more like a sandbox than an actual game to me.

[Mauer4MVP]

I guess what I was getting at was not using any training at all and just adjusting the progression and regression sliders for the MyLeague as a whole. Possible that that could be a solution?

[trekfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mauer4MVP

I guess what I was getting at was not using any training at all and just adjusting the progression and regression sliders for the MyLeague as a whole. Possible that that could be a solution?

Not based on what I've experimented with. I killed in-season training and relied on just progression/regression, but the issue with open 3pt rating is still there, less pronounced early on but I had over 70+ open 3pt rating shooters five years in.

[LorenzoDC]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mauer4MVP

I guess what I was getting at was not using any training at all and just adjusting the progression and regression sliders for the MyLeague as a whole. Possible that that could be a solution?

No, because that doesn't change the shape or composition of the talent in the league, just the overall level of the talent in the league.

The problems I'm documenting are about the type of talent in the league over time. Plus, you can see that over time there are already too few superstars, so cutting down on training and progression makes that worse. And it doesn't solve the problem of players being overwhelmingly offense (shooting) heavy and defense weak as player types.