BuzzerBeater Forums

So i took another look at your game....


it looks like at about 1 minute 3 of your starters were taken out, and then later 1 more. If the blowout code had been triggered they all would have been subbed out. Although we do give even more preference for starters in the 4th quarter. the coach was very sure that the guys on the bench were better than who you had put out there. Now, its true we don't give people with good FT skills preference in the sub pattern when a team is up and in the last minute or two of play.. perhaps we should.

also our game engine doesn't do advanced things like think into the future, and rest a starter earlier so he can play the last bit. this is what happened in your game.. the starters were left in and basically just got too tired in the last minute. No matter how big you make the modifier you aren't gonna be able to avoid this without having a smarter AI. We could think about ways to do this.. but i'm not sure that its a big deal.. unless other people are saying they really don't like the way games are ending..

At least in my opinion so far the game ending have been going very well, better than I expected actually. Guys fouling the adversary when they have to, taking 3-point shots when they have to.

And I think we have enough issues and discussions about the substitutions patterns already to be dealt with, before we move on to more specific and detailed situations like that. But for sure it was a valid suggestion, to maybe be considered in the future.

Edited 8/1/2007 7:48:20 AM by GM-Raonne

well i think using all of the clock on a possession is a controversial thing to do when down in a close game in some cases. It really depends on what the distribution of shots is that you are gonna get in the last second... my philosophy is this.. if you really want to take 30 seconds off the clock and don't want to score then you should burn the clock. Otherwise you should try to score, and you should really really not take a bad shot.. but you shouldn't give up a good ... not even great.. but a good look... just for the sake of burning an extra 10 seconds.. cause really making a basket is worth ~ 20 seconds of clock in terms of the minimum amount of time expect it will take a team to make that difference up... so as long as you have >50% chance of making the hoop you should take it. (20 seconds * 50%) vs 10 seconds *100% ) if you winning the game comes down to using the most clock.

honestly i can't remember off the top of my head whether we put such a thing in... i think basically we said that if it was the case that the team that was down wasn't fouling, that the team that was up wasn't gonna move slower than they usually did. I think if you force a team to play slower than they usually have been, you also need to make their offense less effective. You see this in the college game and high school game all the time.. but very rarely do you see the pros just burning 24 seconds. Sometimes true.. but not nearly as often as you do in the lower levels.

so let me address the second case first...

also, if a team is up 3 with 20 secs left, they shouldn't be trying to shoot at all

in this case we have chosen to have the defense foul.. as they must get the ball back in order to have a shot and the clock will run out.

with 1 minute left, up 5, i think you will see every pro team burn at least 20 secs unless they get a layup or dunk

this is a real borderline case.... if there is 1 minute left at the start of the possesion, then the defense will play defense until it gets to less than 45 seconds i think.. then they will foul. So for those 15 seconds, yes its possible that the offense takes a shot.

Let me ask the question this way... up 5, how much time needs to be on the clock in order for you to just continue to run your regular offense? If its less than that time, do you immediately go to hold the ball till the last 5 seconds and take what shot you can get? Do you just increase your threshold for shot quality say linearly as the clock goes down until it reaches some upper threshold? that would sound reasonable to me... but then again you don't want your threshold to be so high that you end up taking a really poor last second shot. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that generally the shot threshold has been set to go down as the shot clock progresses... you will take higher quality shots earlier in the possession than you would later. So effectively this modifier would just flatten the curve.. or if high enough it might make it inverse.

One thing I think it should be considered also is that a team that is losing by more than one possession and has the ball with 40ish seconds left has to try to score quickly, so the adversary will have more than 24 secs left and won't be able to just burn the clock, they will have try to score otherwise the losing team will have a chance of a buzzerbeater in the end. And on this cases So after scoring quickly, been down by one possession now (less or equal to 3) they can just defend (not foul!) and have a few seconds after to try to tie or win the game).

this is basically a 2 for 1 modifier.. this is on the list of things to add before the game goes final... but its sort of a fine detail... but be assured its on the list.