Trading Logic
With Player Valuation complete, replacing the Trading Logic system was the obvious next step in our revamp of the under-the-hood AI systems. The first thing we did to help teams was to help them identify who they should and shouldn’t keep on their teams. Much of this is handled by the Roster Building system described above, but another safeguard that was used in the game is the addition of a new ‘Player Role’, called the ‘Core’ role.
Core players are guys like Kobe, Wade, LeBron, D. Howard, etc. These are guys that are so valuable to their team, that a trade involving one of these players is incredibly unlikely. I’m not here to tell you that you can no longer trade for these players, but I can tell you the CPU will be much, much stingier in parting with a Core player. In fact, they’ll demand one in return. Don’t expect to package two 82-rated players and grab a Core player in return. Not happening this year.
Beyond the addition of the Core role, the system now features new logic that can be best described as, “do I really need this player?” If you are trying to make a trade with the Jazz where the best player they are getting back is a point guard, they aren’t going to be overly interested as they now have the knowledge that they already have a Deron Williams filling the starting PG slot. When you offer a trade to a CPU team, that team will assess what their lineup looks like pre-trade as well as post-trade. This alone gives the CPU a tremendous amount of knowledge that it did not have in the past. In fact, prior to NBA 2K11, the trade system would simply look at the value of the items being swapped and make the deal if the values were close enough. This is how you ended up with CPU teams trading for stars at positions they already had stars at. I’m pleased to say this is no longer an issue with NBA 2K11.