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A clutch player raises its performance.

The other option is to give each player a new (hidden?) skill or ability to act as an effective clutch player. Thus, the manager sets his preferred clutch player and this player is given more weight in clutch plays. This is closer to how I understand the original suggestion, which has the disadvantage that the GE really needs some major work to make the suggestion in any way useful (based on what we know and can assume about the GE). This option however has one benefit over the original suggestion: the player now has a skill that directly affects the outcome. If it is a hidden skill, it would not even be as important to smartly rebalance the GE decision logic.

Not hard at all.
1) Selecting a player who will take most of the shots can be easily done by updating the passing pattern.
Currently there is some formula that choses which player will get the ball from current player who posses it. Add the clutch player selection to this formula and that's it.
2) Player's clutch ability could easilly be taken, during clutch time, instead of the "regular" ones.

As I see it, the manager could override the "optimal" GE choices and force (or make significantly more likely) a certain decision, i.e. the decision to create the clutch player a scoring opportunity. By default, this is a suboptimal choice by the manager (it is important that you can make both a good and a bad decision). It also weakens your chances if you choose an otherwise good/hero player who is a weak clutch player. If the skill is shown, you will not make this decision (which suggests it should be a hidden skill). The obvious upside is that you can improve your chances, if you select a strong clutch player. I see that this would reward users who study their games and know their team. Thus, it is a fairly nice suggestion as such. I however think it needs some work in the GE. I don't mean this as critique of the suggestion, I mean it as a reality check.

I support hidden due to the same reason - it will give bonus to those who actually watch players' games before buying them, etc.
Selecting your best player wo be your clutch player for a specific game as its drawbacks as well.
This desicion is something a coach takes on those game - should we use Jordan as a clutch player, or as a bait and pass the ball to Paxon (the best example that I could thought of)...

There is an easy way to create a third option, which is to combine the other two. This would make it possible to have a "new player type" in the game: a role player who is a very strong clutch player. However, it would diminish the risk of selecting your hero player for clutch plays. It could also make the hero player with a good clutch ability too powerful. The third option would therefore need much more work, probably some balancing based on player skills or something.

I like it less.
I prefer an option where the user has more affect on the game, and where he is rewarded for performing better BB-managing skills.

Hence, I prefer that a user could choose his clutch-player for a game.
I like the idea that a user could learn who is a better clutch player.
etc.

Let me explain what I mean and discuss the implications a little further. I will start with the latter, since it is the simple option. You select a player and he gets a (mostly scoring-related) skill boost for whatever plays the game engine considers a clutch play

if you force someone to take a shot, i believe his shooting percentage will decline instead of raise.

The hidden skill could work and maybe get easier, since it might work as a Xp bonus in the calculation and may use there formulas within(or maybe already have them).

If you force Bryant to take a shot his percentage may decline (w/o taking in consideration that during clutch minutes he plays better - the second part of this suggestion), but he still will shoot better than Fisher.
So overall, this selection is what usually will happen at the Lakers.

As written in previous message, it could work also the other way around.
A team could go stronger against the best offensive player during clutch time of generally (BAO), and by choosing the second best as the clutch player, he will get more shots that may be better (deffended "lighter") than that top-player.

From the game play point of view, the choice is not necessarily a very challenging one but it should give some new variation in tactical choice. I have difficulty in seeing what is the real downside of the choice.

It all seems strongly tied to your selected offensive tactic, which you can either enhance further or give a small safety net by making the clutch player decision. If you have a hero player who you can only make stronger, is the choice not obvious and thus not really interesting?

I don't really see a connection between this two sentences, but who says that one will choose to clutch his best player?

What I mean is that a simple skill boost has no drawback. It should be fairly easy to find a setting that just works and then practically never change it. The hidden-skill method, on the other hand, introduces a potential tradeoff and is therefore a more interesting game-play element.

Again, if we will take the real-BB game, maybe that is "the catch".

The problem is that the BB GE is basically more objective and consistent than any real-life player or coach. I am not arguing it is better, but it is more consistent and blind to showmanship, super stars, and fan favourites. It finds the objectively best solution, not what a sports fan or a coach feels is the best way to go. The users will exploit this behaviour.

From the game play point of view, the choice is not necessarily a very challenging one but it should give some new variation in tactical choice. I have difficulty in seeing what is the real downside of the choice.

It all seems strongly tied to your selected offensive tactic, which you can either enhance further or give a small safety net by making the clutch player decision. If you have a hero player who you can only make stronger, is the choice not obvious and thus not really interesting?

I don't really see a connection between this two sentences, but who says that one will choose to clutch his best player?

What I mean is that a simple skill boost has no drawback. It should be fairly easy to find a setting that just works and then practically never change it. The hidden-skill method, on the other hand, introduces a potential tradeoff and is therefore a more interesting game-play element.

I will give a better suggestion to something I already suggested.
If one can choose his clutch player, it will be interesting to give also a clutch minutes defence.
That will allow the defender to choose whether to play the same or play BAO on a specific player, one that is chosen on the game tactics.
This will make it like the real-BB game, where one can decide to go stronger on the "Bryant"-player at those clutch moments, and get it from the "Fisher"-player, as the opponent tricked and decided that on that game the clutch player is not "Bryant" but "Fisher".

Both hidden and not hidden clutch skills (which is parallel to the previous paragraph I wrote), are thing that as pros and cons.
The hidden option will make the user who learn his own team roster (or a player to buy on the market) an advantage, as should be.
I prefer that.

Again, if we will take the real-BB game, maybe that is "the catch".

The problem is that the BB GE is basically more objective and consistent than any real-life player or coach. I am not arguing it is better, but it is more consistent and blind to showmanship, super stars, and fan favourites. It finds the objectively best solution, not what a sports fan or a coach feels is the best way to go. The users will exploit this behavior.I argue it is just not true. It has randomness to choose whether to pass, shoot, dribble or drive to the basket.
It passes upon another randomness decision.
Both randomness methods are not fully random, and are affected by the experience of that player, upon tactics and upon time left to the possession.

Can anyone explain why we need this and what we can gain from it? I just cant see the point of it.

Better feeling of a real BB-game (with clutch moments), and hence better BB-managing game.

Last edited by Pini פיני at 3/9/2012 4:44:00 PM

Wont your best scorer still take most shots as it is now? And saying he should take even more shots would probably just end in him missing a lot more shots?

I don't know what your point being, but I'm sure you didn't read my explanation.

Here is the summary of all that (again) - in real-BB there are:
1) Clutch moments.
2) Clutch players - who play better at those moments (shoot, drive, defend or whatever...).
3) Clutch minutes special play - going to the best clutch-moments' player or using him as a decoy and going to another player.
4) Clutch minutes' defence plan - going "harder" on the clutch player, keeping defence stand, or changing it.

This game should adapt those features.

here is an report about "hero ball" or those clutch player, since you bring up Bryant here if the lakers score the whole game like Bryant in clutch moment they will roughly score 50 points a game :)

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7649571/nba-kobe-bryant...

Also the book "Scorecasting - The Hidden Influences Behind Sports" would be intresting, and kill some myths.(or maybe some papers of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference conference)

Last edited by CrazyEye at 3/15/2012 4:19:10 PM

here is an report about "hero ball" or those clutch player, since you bring up Bryant here if the lakers score the whole game like Bryant in clutch moment they will roughly score 50 points a game :)

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7649571/nba-kobe-bryant...

Also the book "Scorecasting - The Hidden Influences Behind Sports" would be intresting, and kill some myths.(or maybe some papers of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference conference)

Just VOID.
There is no connection between the type of play used (ISO or other) to the dedicated player to take the shot.

A ISO for Bryant will work better than one for Meta-World-Piece.
A play designed for a pick-and-roll where Bryant takes the shot will work better than the same play design for Matt Barnce.
[For example]

Last edited by Pini פיני at 3/25/2012 5:30:30 PM