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The only skill in a player's skill set that you cannot train in any way is Experience.

We know from the game manual, in the Game Engine part:

A player must decide whether the opportunity presented is good enough to take a shot… this of course changes as a function of amongst other things… the shot clock, the players experience, the score of the game, the history of the quality of shots the team has seen recently, the offense the team is running, and whether that rookie shooting guard of yours thinks he knows better than the coach does how good he is at making jump shots.

We also know from the manual that almost all games add experience to players, including scrimmages. The manual mentions specifically that B3 games and NT games add to the players' experience too, but nothing more is said about this allusive mysterious quality.

So we know it matters, the manual clearly says so. I personally saw older players with low skills sometimes take many offensive rebounds at the end of games.

We also know how to gain experience. Age is a huge factor, but also crucial games like B3 and NT (and somewhat U21 NT) play a big factor. After that it's playoffs, cup games, regular season games (do TV games add more?), and lastly scrimmages. Private leagues do not add to a player's experience, as it will help supporters over non-supporters.

But how much does it really matters, if we want to quanitfy it? I would obviously pick an experienced player over the same exact player who is a bit less experienced, but that's never the case.
Can I say it matter over free throws or stamina? Does it matter over main skills? I heard people say it matters more in the playoffs than in the regular season, is that true?

By the way, you can sometimes find very young players who are highly experienced. Players from small countries, for example, who played for their NT since they were 24. Also, every new team seems to get at least one very experienced player. You can find in the market low salary players that have more than 17 experience, even though they are only 25 and never played in the NT or the B3.

So, what are your thoughts on the matter? Do you even look at that skill when you buy a player? Will you take it into consideration when you look for a player? How much does this interesting skill matters, to you and to the game engine?

I think it's hard to quantify without some good data. As NT coach I've started to look for it more closely, as I have a feeling it matters more than most managers currently believe. I can't help the discussion much further as it's only a feeling, but as the difference in experience can be pretty big in a player trained by a Div III team that's never seen any important game vs on that is trained by the B3 champion, it certainly has my attention.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As an NT manager, did you ever see more experienced players do anything different, like taking more clutch shots or rebounds? It is also interesting whether the engine prefers them in Let Coach Decide tactics, especially at the end of games.

I must say I haven't monitored it for a long time yet, so I haven't seen significant differences yet (also because currently we are blessed with multiple high XP players, so it's difficult to compare it with less XP players). I did see a 2 high XP guards taking a lot of offensive rebounds (one was playing at C in a reverse patient, but even still): (55212), but in another match when we played that tactic with those guards they only grabbed 1 combined. Also, I haven't seen how a less XP player would perform in that role.

I once had a veteran player who was losing skills. But his experience was really high. So in playoffs he managed to play really well next to players with much better skills than he had. So experience in my experience makes up a lot in certain situations. These players seems to be wiser and have certain extra quality.

Last edited by Seda meeskonda juhendab arvuti. at 6/10/2020 8:48:19 PM

I'm doing some experiences with my Utopia team to see how it works. Right now I have a 32, 28 and 23 experience guys. The 23 noticeably plays better than his skill. The 28 is trash, couldn't take any conclusion of it, and the 32 I just bought.

In the past, I noticed that my players with more EXP seemed to play better in the 4th quarter (especially in close games).

Last edited by Big Dogs at 6/14/2020 10:42:11 PM

They seem to overachieve in the final minutes, but I have no stats to back my claim