*If anyone wants to comment please do not discuss overall ratings in this thread. This is a long write up. I don’t expect every view to read the whole thing so this is at the top. Talk overall elsewhere. Any other rating is fair game. Just please don’t put on the overalls.*
I'm writing this like its an open letter to the creative trust at Visual Concepts but this is just hypthetical. I doubt I will bother to PM it. So take it for what you will.
VC,
The troubled ratings stand out more with so much of the gameplay in proper order. Much love. That demo is NBA on a hard drive soon to be on a disc.
The ratings are flawed and if you have high standards I would say badly flawed. There have been reports of at least three NBA players bashing their ratings and you know what all of them had a case. So here is breakdown with a solution. I will use the Trail Blazers as an example because I know them and I can see their ratings in the league but these issues are standard for every team. The Blazers are like a control group in an experiment. There are screenshots out that are identical to the test league.
Some players are just not scouted at all.
This is the Dante Cunningham model.
Here is a guy who was known for his spot up in college, hit his shot in the summer league, shot well as a rookie and has a 50 close 46 med rating today. He is a pick and popper. That’s his game but the announcers will treat you like a plum idiot for taking his shoot. Every team has a few Dante Cunninghams.
Missing players
Armon Johnson?? You could tell he was making the team in the first summer league game and he signed a while ago too. Not a major concern. Things take time
Defensive ratings are all over the place
This is a tough ratings for one person. I get that.
Messing up ratings that aren’t subjective
How can you mess up vert and ft? Wall has a 97 in vert with a 39 max vert in real life. There are people with 40 inch verts, 41, 42, etc. Elliott Willaims has a 48 inch vert.
Overrating rookies
see John Wall. Good breakdown on that. http://thereal2kinsider.blogspot.com/
The thing that really stands out is his defense. Balldef of 84 is too high for a rook. The pass rating of 84 sticks out too when you consider how stingy the ratings are with passing. Unless it’s a 3 year guy breaking records shutting people down that’s a bit high for defense. Everything seems like its pushed up a bit just to give him signature. Honestly… I bet he lives up to most of it but not right away.
The plea to the Insider system
This system is foul. The Insider’s blog is just a sheet of people typing up this and up that, down this and down that. The problem is most of it is stuff he should already know. Why should he need to be told Brand’s 99 in close is too high? A lot of the real common sense stuff doesn’t get changed anyway.
Big speed/quickness/ PGs too fast
This is something that I been hammering on for a while. I didn’t notice it until I was playing my sixth season in CH2k8. I had a couple athletic big men who ‘run the floor’. It brought a level of personality and authenticity to the game that was missing with the standard roster players. In NBA 2k it’s the same thing. An athletic center starts off with a 60 in speed faster than every center in the game. Dwight Howard has a 57. I mentioned that last season. That’s almost a bug in the game when I can create a guy and without cheating be faster than anyone at my position right away. That’s one of those common sense changes that Insider didn’t respond to.
Once more its not grounded in reality. Howard is really fast. When his speed was tested he outran most of the PGs and he is not alone. Tall athletes are not uncommon in the NBA. In NBA 2k they don’t exist. I know the ratings aren’t scaled by position because I have tested speeds in the practice gym. A 57 for Howard is a 57. If you make him an 82 his long legs wont make him super fast it just makes him an 82. The speeds just arent scouted. Grant Hill was the 2<SUP>nd</SUP> fastest Sun when Barbosa was there but speed in NBA 2k is based on position instead of reality. It was fun seeing an athletic big men run the floor and block shots in CH 2k8. I should see the same with Amare Stoudemire who has a 58 in speed or JaVale Mcgee. Maybe JaVale wouldn’t be so upset about his overall rating if it was boosted with some just athleticism. It simplifies an otherwise deep game when the little guys are fast and all the big guys are slow. Its like playing D&D where fighters line up in front of the mages. I always prefered to use Rangers and hide in trees.
There is no excuse for it now that ball handling matters and affects your speed while you are dribbling. Oden and Pryzbilla can outrun Andre Miller but I’m not going to give them the ball to lead a break with their ball handling and passing ratings.
PGs are too fast. Not everyone deserves world class speed.
Unused ratings
Clutch
Consistency was like this too but later fixed up
Its still kinda generic. 82games.com has clutch stats so why are they so generic. Almost everyone has a 25. A few stars have 50s or soemthing like that, and the mega stars have 99s. Little signature.
Overrated stars for the sake of the overall ratings
Kobe’s skills might make him a better player when the rubber meets the road but there is no way he is numerically equal to LeBron in those ratings without a push to make him equal. Change the overall rating system to maybe a letter grade or a value system. Otherwise things are always going to look wrong. Guys like Dirk will always suffer.
Even if Wall wasn’t overrated and his overall made sense you wouldn’t have to justify why its higher than a rookie MJ. Stars are overrated period because they are rarely overlooked. A guy can put up better block stats than LeBron and get overlooked and end up with a lesser rating. That happens all of the time.
Coach profiles and tendencies
Months after the game was released they were untouched. People on share updated them. If there were any updates It came too late. I still don’t see teams running zone. That little Suns zone made for some playoff intrigue.
Freak athletes are not respected unless they are short
Guys like the Graham brothers, Joe Alexander, Sonny Weems, Chris Wilcox, Elliott Williams and Nene are Olympic class athletes should have high speed, strength and vert ratings. Joe Alexander put up the 5<SUP>th</SUP> fastest combine sprint ever and he gets a 69 in speed. Some of those guys are in the league primarily because they are big time athletes. Why make them ordinary? This is another factor that helps overrate stars. Its easier to get off in a league without freak athletes and big stiffs. Check that. The only freak athletes are the stars.
Inflated individual ratings
Pryzbilla has a 98 and 99 in rebounds. What?? Save those ratings for the alltime greats, or at least the best in the current era especially now that you have a lot of the glory teams. I see the same thing with the speed and ball handling ratings for PGs and rebounding for other centers. 95+ is given out too easy. Diop has a 99 in oboards. A 99 should slap people in the face and make you want to use that player because its rare. 95-99 should be for the unique and the phenomenal.
Deflated individual ratings
Passing is a severally deflated rating. Too many 25s. Oden can execute a give and go out of the post pretty well. Any center that can do that should not have the minimum rating. Save that for the Yinka Dare types god rest his soul that can play months without recording an assist. Its not just deflated for bigs. Passing is kinda low for backup PGs too.
Igoudala plays on the perimeter averages 6.5 boards and has a 40/54 in rebounding. Almost all of the PGs have low rebound ratings. It has no basis in advanced statistics or their position on the floor. At 6’1 Patrick Beverly led Arkansas in rebounding playing with a future NBA Center and Sonny Weems. The best he could get was a 40. The little rebounders be they rookies or vets are capped too low.
Pass rating doesn’t pay attention to assist/turnover ratio
Not much to say there
On the positive there are some improvements
Tying vert to block works well. It helped cure my beef with the block rating.
Shot ratings are decenter. I know that’s not a word
Solution
Independent contract some scouts for the Insider. You have a wealth of talent right here. Pay them a percentage of rev and give them NBA TV. You have guys like Behindtheshadow that can specialize in the college game, Rashidi is great with shooting stats, and really a number of things, Nogster’s good with tendencies/coaching stuff, I like focusing on athletic ratings and defense, Tomba dissects the ratings themselves to make sure they play and sim right. Keep the Insider as a commissioner and give the scouts a vote on each rating with the specialist getting two votes. Us the average for the rating. If the Insider thinks anyone’s vote is way out of wack he can toss it and correspond with them.
We would gain empirical expertise for each rating. Right now its just too arbitrary. Whatever revenue invested would be recouped in several ways. Anyone working for a bonus of rev will give you free PR. Ratings calibrated by a team of gurus just rings better on the box than ‘the Insider‘. If you had say 5 to 6 people voting on one rating and taking the average it would reduce the wild and increase the precision. 6 minds are better than one.
Before anyone says it I could just change the ratings or download one of the many great rosters; we cant use them online. For the first time since 2k3 or maybe 2k8 I have been pumped to play the game online and that’s knowing I will have to tackle that monster Heat beat every other game. Its just that the gameplay finally looks like it can hold up. We’ll see.
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