How To Play The Game: the key to a better gaming experience

THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND MY MODDING

      Have you ever wondered what it's like to play a basketball videogame that has a REAL feel like the actual NBA? First, you should play with patience and be smart in defense, but also allow your players to sift through team's offensive plays. Secondly, you might consider using my game settings along with my DLC for a much improved NBA gaming experience.

      I played videogames especially sports and basketball ones since 1990. Along with other experts of the game, I consider NBA 2K11 to be the best NBA videogame because of the high customization is capable of and its graphical beauty. I would take the 'photographic' player's faces in 2K11 over the 'cartoonish' faces in 2K14, the smooth realistic moves in 2K11 over the robotic moves in 2K14 any day! Even if it lacks newer animations and possibly smarter A.I. used by next gen NBA games, few people know that 2K11 turns into a more enjoyable game that comes close to perfection if you tweak the game sliders, the coach profile(s) and players skills and tendencies.

      Therefore all my efforts between 2014 and 2020 went into a constant battle against the limitations of the crazy arcade style of play with unrealistic fastbreaks and an unfair stealing tendency implemented by default by 2K Sports. This 2K system that I called "monkeys on steroids" has been in use in all of their game installments ever since and is apparently loved by the masses for obvious reasons: it gives you pleasure quickly!

     One thing no one can fix with 2K Sports is the "momentum" which is a code that software developers put in the game engine. It is the least troublesome bug which causes you to miss several shots in a row sometimes but on the other hand helps you when the opponent is forced to miss many open shots as well. That same exact "momentum" happens usually during one quarter usually the 3rd when one of the teams makes a decisive 8-0 or 15-4 or similar run. This "momentum" evens things out and balances the game so none is winning/losing by a big margin. But apparently we can all live with that, right?

       The whole philosophy of my roster modding is that I’m using real player ratings and tendencies and almost everything in my game is based on a special formula using player’s data from basketball-reference.com I also set the Potential for EVERY player in the game to 0. This way I am trying to limit the "buggy"evolution of 2K player development over the season and the random change of player ratings (this is a bug that sadly makes the Association mode unplayable). Anyway, players Potential set to zero should stop them from reaching unrealistic and “off career” values because what we don't want is the players in the game to become better than their real-life counterpart. Let's keep the lack of realism to a minimum, shall we?

        In modding players I use career average stats per 36 mins. This will change the game drastically in terms of ratings. You have been warned, you won’t find the NBA hierarchy you were used to because there is no such thing as an overall rating chart for my game! NBA gamers especially those who play online got used to the 2K flawed system. What 2K Sports has been doing is they bump overall ratings for NBA players who have a fanbase through notifications and several updates kids run to download from 2K servers. In my opinion and other experts of the game, they should have historical stats as a real foundation instead of trendy hypes that only exist to satisfy their customers who are willing to pay anything for instant gratification. But to them it is all just a game while for real fans who watched NBA games and not just highlights (like millennials or NBA team bandwagoners do since HD TVs exist)…"it’s not just a game" to paraphrase the 90s NBA ads for the ‘I Love This Game’ campaign.

      To go into more details, 2K Sports favors tall men and their skills used close to the basket like rebounding, blocking, dunking and inside shooting. Those were the most important factors for MyPlayer mode you probably guessed why. If not, here is the explanation. Kids who are the target customer for 2K games, always bought the game to create their player who could dominate the opponents instantly so they were given those factors to boost their character. Basically if you played as a very tall center you were given less skill points but you would dominate under the basket offensively and defensively thanks to your size. This is something that ruined the real NBA feel of the game!

     If you ever looked at NBA game boxscores, you know centers in the NBA have huge field goal percentages because they operate so close to the basket that they often score with minimal effort that sometimes is a simple tip of the ball or an easy dunk. Their field goal percentage (FG%) is over 50% in most cases. Once we apply the conversion formula for historic NBA stats to the game index, that 50+% translates to 80+ as their shooting skill. And the sad part is this weighs a big part of the players overall rating. In case you didn't know, the CPU is making its team lineups and even substitutions based on the player's overall rating in an automated effort to present the game with the best players on the court. 2K's idea wasn't bad to begin with but...that doesn't tell you the truth behind this method we debunked just now.

         It took me years to find a way to avoid the 2K BAD (aka for commercial purposes) intended system. As a result, the roster files I've created have historically accurate lineups but players ratings are based on 36 minutes real stats. Don't worry, inside my formulas there is a Stamina value that takes care of how early the players get tired. It means the "mediocre" players who played only 5 or 10 minutes in real life will ONLY last 5-10 minutes on the court in my game. And then there is the Touches value that decides how often a player will get the ball when moving to offense basically telling the game how important he is for the team and if his teammates should give him the ball or not.

        Now you are starting to get the big picture: even if those "mediocre" players with high ratings per 36 minutes will be on the court because the CPU chooses them, they will get tired early and when that happens another factor will kick in: the Fatigue effect which will lower their skills and make them miss shots or turn over the ball, so in the end those high rated players who in fact are mediocre will not be that great. And to add one more value, the Consistency decides which player will be hard to guard and able to score at will or go on a hot streak (that is the real Barkley while "mediocre" players will not be consistent!).

       And again - if you are into technicalities - the 36' per game system is the only way to calculate player ratings for every player even for those who played only 5 or 10 minutes per game because it uses multipliers so it evens out the stats for all NBA players as if they all played 36 minutes per game. The only downside - that Charles Barkley complained about on the Open Court show - is that some mediocre players who never seen more than 5 or 10 minutes per game coming off the bench might get better overall ratings with the 36 minutes per game system than...Charles Barkley! Which is fine with me because some players who never got the chance to play a lot were actually fantastic (they went overseas and won major competitions with mediocre teams!).      

      In my game, reserve players will almost be as good as the starters and they will get enough minutes to prove themselves worthy just like the real NBA where, when a starter is injured another rookie can take his place and become a star. Examples in the 2014 wee Taj Gibson, Donald Sloan, Tony Wroten, Draymond Green (who have taken David Lee's spot in the GSW starting lineup in 2015). Jeremy Lin (who got his "Linsanity" nickname for that reason) is another good example from the last decade. For retro fans, Elliott "Socks" Perry is another good example when he replaced an injured starter Kevin Johnson in 1995 for Phoenix. Given them the chance to play, these surprise backup players can put up similar numbers to their all-star teammates. NBA player's “per 36 minutes” stats proves my point: just go to basketball-reference.com and start comparing random players by their 36 minutes stats.

       According to this “new order of things”, players have lower overall ratings than you are used to see in NBA videogames. It just happens because of the formulas I am using according to which rebounds, consistency and many other factors are only at half what you are used to see in EA and 2K games. It gives a better ratio between 0 and 99 and it won't boost player's percentages. And on top of that it doesn't mess up the gameplay when these values are combined with the Game Sliders. In other words it keeps things under control so none of the players gets boosted by the 2K gameplay bugs (yes, they are quite a few "thanks" to the game programmers who don't have real basketball experience).

      Speaking of sliders, the best version of my sliders is dated October 18th, 2022. This is something I was working on for 6 years and been waiting for...for 25 something years since I first started playing NBA videogames! It goes along with an adjusted "universal" Coach Profile. Feel free to download my NEWEST SLIDERS. I use this in Coach Mode as I stopped using a game controller and  I have no pleasure in controlling players on the court but prefer to coach and simply watch the way the game emulates the real NBA. By the way, I find it shocking people don't know that NBA 2K11 has the perfect basketball manager type of game included. All you need to do is switch on the Coach Mode and there you are as the coach of an NBA team!

       For more than a year I emphasized positional player tendencies that include driving to the basket, rebounding offensively with better dunking and active behavior from the big men with their ability to 'putback' a shot typical to the modern style of play; also the way players 'contest a shot' has been recalculated for all players in my database according to their historical defensive stats.

      Since February 2019, all players got a +15 in Strength which helps in not missing an easy layup (that was necessary especially for guards because in my system they are rated the lowest in scoring inside the paint area. Now players go on fastbreak more often and less annoyingly with the Fastbreak slider at 30. If they are not well defended, one or two players will run on offense right after their team was scored on. This is way more different than the buggy 2K fastbreak system and it gives a natural feeling to the gameplay.

       I finally reached the perfect balance in terms of gameplay and scoring in October 2022 when I added the final touch to a series of prior adjustments: I used a stats based formula for the Clutch slider for each player in order to differentiate between prime time players who were really 'clutch' their entire career and the mediocre ones. There was also a -20 value to the Vertical for all players to reflect realistic athletic skills. Now players have between 25 and 45 inches verticals just like in real life where 28'' is the average in the NBA. Now both User and CPU teams score around 100 points a game with about 90 field goal attempts per game each while shooting realistic percentages (45-ish in FG, 30/45-ish in 3s depending on defense/desperation shots, FT are as real as they can be if you leave the REAL FT% setting untouched).

       There were a few issues I needed to fix so the game will look more realistic and challenging. It's worth mentioning 2K Sports completely messed up the offensive rebounding and the block for at least 5 years in a row. Therefore I fixed the rebounding issue so now both teams have Off Reb at 100 and Def Reb at 0. The blocking value was set to 1 (if it's 0 the stats won't count the in-game blocked shots; if more than 1, the game will abuse it - stupid 2K!).

      Another thing I did in May 2020 was to raise the attempted dunks frequency, on-ball steals and shot contest along with the help defense strength and the steal success. The rate at which players get fatigued was increased to 20 from 50 (yes, the effect is reversed in 2K games!) so more substitutions will be needed as it happens a in real game situation. As a result, you will have more turnovers, fouls, more free throws, smarter substitutions, more but also a few missed dunks, better player coverage on the court, a real battle in the paint area especially for getting the rebound, putback shots after rebounding offensively, some early foul trouble for certain players who were very aggressive historically and committed more fouls in the NBA etc.

     Now both the CPU and the User have the same game sliders (except for a slight adjustment in shooting for the User because my game is now on All Star level which gives a much needed boost to the CPU defense) and they do miracles when used in Coach Mode! For playing without the Coach Mode you might have to adjust some sliders according to your level. I recommend touching only the Off or Def Awareness sliders for the CPU: if it's too hard, decrease them; if it's too easy, increase them.

      These sliders work with my Roster files (and possibly with other mods different than mine) as they go hand in hand with the adjustments I made to the players - yet another reason to use my mods. So far I highly recommend to use them with the mods I released so far (1992-93 DLC, 1995-96 DLC, 1997-98 DLC, 1999-00 DLC, 2002-03 DLC, 2006-07 DLC, 2008-09 DLC, 2010-11 & 2011-12 DLC, 2014-15 DLC, 2017-18 DLC, 2018-19 DLC. 2019-20 DLC) and the future mods. This is the best version of my sliders/settings and roster. The only thing I might change in the future will be the customization of individual player's tendencies and hot spots.

       Here is the template for the Coach Profile(s). It is already contained in the Roster & Season files that you acquire from me when paying for my mods. This is vital for the way teams play on the court and obviously can influence the score so...make sure you keep it unchanged when playing my mods.

Offensive Tempo - 50
Defensive Pressure - 50
Help Defense - 50
Fast Break - 50
Crash Boards - 50
Run Plays - 25
Double Teams - 25
Zone Usage - 10
Bench Depth - 50
Take Inside Shots - 50
Take Close Shots - 50
Take Mid-Range Shots - 50
Take 3PT Shots - 55
Attack the Basket - 100
Look for Post Players - 25
Throw Alley Oops - 1

     And lastly, the GAME SETTINGS In my settings the substitution method is set to “fatigue” instead of “rotation” because it works better with the sliders and the progress of the game during a match plus this way it respects the actual playtime NBA players have got during their career and make better use of the bench players. Now how cool is that?

Game Difficulty SUPERSTAR (where the CPU will defend better and compete realistically)
Game speed 45
Player speed 50
Substitution Method (in Association/Season Settings & Coach Settings) Fatigue
Fatigue ON
Clutch ON
Injury OFF
Shooting% & FT% REAL PLAYER (if you switch this to USER it will affect the players stats/score development/balance of the game!)
FT Difficulty 50
Coach Settings all to AUTO *except for the Late Game Fouling

         Fee free to share your opinion and show us your results after using these settings and sliders. But before that I should tell you there are a few things from the real NBA that cannot and will not be simulated in videogames! Don't ask me why, nobody knows why they don't work in the artificial (A.I.) world - but probably it is best this way or else we would all live in a matrix. :))