Floor Range Cap

[Marcos_Beck]

So guys, I haven't been around when we switched engines, but I'm going to give my two cents on what I've seen so far.

First of all, there's a 40 cap in the corner preferences. That means if you want to have one player at each corner at every position, all your players on the court have to be at 40, because it would add up to 200 out of 500 preference points. That's unrealistic to say the least, yet most of the teams benefit greatly of being able to keep two shooters at the corners at all times to open up the floor as much as possible. My suggestion is to raise the cap by 10 points, which would be 50, and you would only need to have 4 players at 50 to bring it to 200, therefore keeping one player in each corner at every possible possession while still having your center in the post, for example. That's very realistic, all NBA teams do that nowadays, and it would be a way to make perimeter oriented offenses better, or at least in a closer level to post oriented ones. It would indeed make post offenses better, but since they take way less threes than outside driven ones, it would boost the perimeter game a lot.

Speaking of it, we all know the POST preference is really, really strong in this engine. Playing in the post is the way for a player to score 30+ a night, and post relying teams are usually impossible to stop in this engine. No coincidence that Detroit, Boston, Phoenix and Sacramento's main scorers do most of their damage via post, and passive D + super high zone doesn't make them shoot lots of threes or deny post passes like it should.

IDK what could be done with that, just wanted to bring it up because if anyone has ideas, we could really implement that. Maybe having a cap for every floor area of 90, so you can't go 100 post, since it's really impossible to stop those players as defensive settings doesn't work properly.

Honestly bringing catch & shoot up a little bit could boost perimeter offenses as well. But I haven't been around as much to know why it got capped like that. Still, a player who wants to get only post shots can go 30 post + 13 drive / shot and 100 post, he'll get at least 95% of his shots close to the basket in the post range. I'm not saying players should take 95% of their shots from three, but there are some cases in today's NBA which shows players taking 70-80% of their shots as 3s, and some take the majority of them at the corners.

Just my two cents so we can think about it because it's extremely frustrating to play against post dominant teams and see there's nothing you can do to stop their offense.

[Sharkn20]

Or wecan just switch to DDSPB21. My eyes will definitely appreciate the change to a a more neat UI.

[Andrewu91]

Regarding post. Zion/JJJ and GDP rely on going to the post. GDP doesn't score but that's how he sets them up. If this rule doesn't effect them in any way, I'm cool with limiting post for high scoring guards.

[Dennis]

Hey hey, that's my topic, Marcos! Dont be called arrogant as well because you say post is overpowered .

Edit: While I fully agree, Im only worried about trades that have gone down already. Like Clippers trading for Cousins because of that Post Flaw. Would be tough to punish them for doing so. Bigs also would need a post cap related to pass/hdl/scr rating as else the likes of Zion and Simmons are going to be even stronger. It aint an easy call here as DDS2019 is just way way more imbalanced/flawed than DDS3 when it comes to floor ranges and actions.

[KW]

I don't think there's an easy solution, role players being better more willing 3-point shooters could be nice but won't stop the post studs from averaging 30. Rather see what a new engine does with our current setup

[andrei]

I think we have a good solution at the moment - its not perfect but nothing ever will be.

Corner seems to be up to Admins - if their testing allows to raise it to 50%.

Potentially we could look at capping Post, especially for Perimeter players. Think draft team are already lowering the FG% of slashers to help with the problem.

In NBA, Ja is the second leading post scorer (only behind AD) but still shoots 30% of his shots from three.

Last I checked, the likes of Cousins and Taylor (and eventually Culver) can successfully go to the Post all day and barely shoot from anywhere else. NBA defenses don't allow that, while DDS19 do.

Perhaps also worth looking at Defensive ratings also?

[Marcos_Beck]

Mathematically speaking…

Right now, a player can be worked to spend 100% of the time in the post and shoot 43% of the time from the post, either on post ups (30%) or drive and shot (13%). Since we don’t have players whose passing preference is under 50%, it means if you give him 7% or less in drive and pass, he doesn’t have to shoot the ball from midrange or the perimeter at any time. So he’ll basically take 99% of his shots inside and will rarely attempt a mid range shot probably in late clock situations.

You can instruct a player to be 40 COR and 60 ATB as well, but you can only have him shoot from the perimeter at 35% of the times (20 C&S + 15 PULLUP). Considering the same 50 in passing preference, you still have 15 points to allocate somewhere. That’s a LOT.

So, again doing some maths, the post up preference seems too high, both catch & shoot seems low, and there should be a way to make it more even. It’s no coincidence that players like Zion Porter and Cousins averages 35 a game (and even more during the playoffs) while Monk (league’s best perimeter scorer and a 90+ rated scorer) Barry tops 25 a game… there’s a 8 PPG gap between those guys, that’s insane.

There were 25 players in the NBA who took at least 70% of their shots from three last season and some almost took 90% of those from downtown. Yet, here, it’s almost impossible. In the meantime, there was one perimeter player (Pg/SG/SF) who took over 90% of his shots inside 10 ft. That was 6’10 ben Simmons of course. Some of the other perimeter guys who dominated FGA inside of 10 feet were Jimmy Butler, DeMar DeRozan and TJ McConnell. None of those shot over 70% of their field goals from close range. Most of them shot the same amount of jumpers / threes than field goals at the rim.

There isn’t a sustainable way to stop post scoring in this engine like there is in NBA so there should be some way to prevent them from dominating like they are. Prolific NBA scorers, even those who loves the post like Zion, AD, Jokic, Embiid, Giannis, still have to find another ways to score since they’ll be denied the ball in the post or double teamed as much as possible.

So I suggest adjusting to the following

POST - 80 Max
MID - 80 Max
COR - 50 Max
ATB + COR - 80 Max

This way you’ll force high volume players to score from multiple ranges, while specialists would still take the majority of their shots from where they are supposed to.

Drive / Pass - No max
Drive / Shot - 13-15 max
Catch & shoot - 20-25 max
Pull up - 15-20 max
Post up - 20-25 max

In a way that makes it balanced. Post scoring (post up + drive shot) would sum 35% to 40% at best
Outside scoring (catch & shoot + pull ups) would sum the exact same as post scoring, 35 to 40%.

[Dennis]

I really love you man. You dont post often, but when you do, it's so long, detailed and thoughrough that I need to plan a 15 minutes meeting for myself to go through it .. with that said, planned for later

[mgtr81]

These have been eight long rebuilding seasons adapting to this league setup (which was different to any other league I had been part of, and there were quite a few). If now that my team is finally competitive rules are changed, I will be disappointed.

I won't discuss the details because the issues we have derive from something I have already commented since I joined this league. The thing is that it is a computer code (a very good one), not actual basketball. It just matches preferences with ratings, that's it. And this posting-guard dominance is a consequence of the shooting ratings setup.

[Marcos_Beck]

These have been eight long rebuilding seasons adapting to this league setup (which was different to any other league I had been part of, and there were quite a few). If now that my team is finally competitive rules are changed, I will be disappointed.

I won't discuss the details because the issues we have derive from something I have already commented since I joined this league. The thing is that it is a computer code (a very good one), not actual basketball. It just matches preferences with ratings, that's it. And this posting-guard dominance is a consequence of the shooting ratings setup.

I’m just asking for more counter play, more strategic options, more ways to play instead of having a post dominant scorer dropping 35-40 a night and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it since if you go 9 zone + passive the team will shoot 15 3s at most, and the player will still overpower your defensive strats and score at will no matter what.

In every single competitive game there are buffs and nerfs to keep it balanced and fair to play and win in multiple ways.
I’m just saying we could use a solution that makes perimeter oriented teams viable as well, because well, they are part of the game. I don’t like that “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality. The fun in taking part of a sim league is building a team you like with a clear style of play and try to win it all with it, but clearly building a perimeter team and winning with it isn’t an option in the CSL.

At least in DDS3 you could zone teams to death and their 30+ PPG would drop 15 or so and they would be forced to take 30-40 3pointers as a team.

Well, that’s my two cents, only. There’s absolutely no fun to me if I have to build a team just like everyone does because there’s only one strategy that works in this league. There’s zero fun in that, at least to me.

[mgtr81]

There’s absolutely no fun to me if I have to build a team just like everyone does because there’s only one strategy that works in this league. There’s zero fun in that, at least to me.

Tell me about it ... I had no success in trying to make understand the problems associated with low FGI (now FG_ITP) so my only option was to adapt. It took me eight seasons (strictly speaking six an a half) to build a team accordingly.

If you want I can enumerate all the derivatives of the low inside shooting ratings, but it will take me a while ... maybe one day that I have more free time.

By the way, nothing against your original post. It was more like saying that I have been through this before and the only thing I could do was to adapt my team building strategy. If you succeed in the league adapting to your proposal, then congratulations.

[bt]

I haven't read through all of this but I swear I posted something a while back about us GMs having too much power and being able to 'tailor' players too much instead of trying to work them into a system and think I got shot down by most people haha.

[emplep7]

Great topic to bring up and discuss as a league as this is something we have discussed a little behind the scenes based on what some GMs have brought up in private and these are my thoughts on it (doesn't mean this is the decision of the league):

1. The initial floor range caps were decided based on the testing that occurred through the transition. Not saying its something we can't change, but I'd want to vet it a little bit in the file before making the change. I also wouldn't want them to be drastic changes, but am open to the more subtle changes that were proposed. I also would be fine if everyone was okay with not being able to adjust floor ranges moving forward.

2. I'm highly against changing any ratings within an engine since teams have been building based on the current engine for a few seasons now. Its likely that we will be switching to a new engine in the near future and that's where any ratings changes would occur and they would be universal.

3. I personally don't think sending everyone to the post is an OP tactic. We have seen in this engine several different tactics lead to a team winning consistently and while this one works for some teams, its not unstoppable. This reminds me of the NFL where a team will use something new (i.e. the wildcat) and it seems OP and then the defensive coordinators figure out how to stop it and its not a big deal anymore. While the defensive strats leave a lot to be desired, I think this tactic is something that isn't actually the best to win a championship and isn't that hard to stop. I'd prefer to see the league GMs try to counter it and figure out what works to stop it before nuking the ratings/caps.

As I mentioned above, we are highly likely to be transitioning to a new engine in the near future and I'd rather see how our current roster makeups transition to that engine rather than make changes specific to this engine. At that point, we would assess the ratings/caps holistically and make the changes then instead of while we are already neck deep into an engine.

Again, just my thoughts and these in no way represent what direction the league will move in, but I am open to a lot of the ideas presented here.

[Sharkn20]

Great topic to bring up and discuss as a league as this is something we have discussed a little behind the scenes based on what some GMs have brought up in private and these are my thoughts on it (doesn't mean this is the decision of the league):

1. The initial floor range caps were decided based on the testing that occurred through the transition. Not saying its something we can't change, but I'd want to vet it a little bit in the file before making the change. I also wouldn't want them to be drastic changes, but am open to the more subtle changes that were proposed. I also would be fine if everyone was okay with not being able to adjust floor ranges moving forward.

2. I'm highly against changing any ratings within an engine since teams have been building based on the current engine for a few seasons now. Its likely that we will be switching to a new engine in the near future and that's where any ratings changes would occur and they would be universal.

3. I personally don't think sending everyone to the post is an OP tactic. We have seen in this engine several different tactics lead to a team winning consistently and while this one works for some teams, its not unstoppable. This reminds me of the NFL where a team will use something new (i.e. the wildcat) and it seems OP and then the defensive coordinators figure out how to stop it and its not a big deal anymore. While the defensive strats leave a lot to be desired, I think this tactic is something that isn't actually the best to win a championship and isn't that hard to stop. I'd prefer to see the league GMs try to counter it and figure out what works to stop it before nuking the ratings/caps.

As I mentioned above, we are highly likely to be transitioning to a new engine in the near future and I'd rather see how our current roster makeups transition to that engine rather than make changes specific to this engine. At that point, we would assess the ratings/caps holistically and make the changes then instead of while we are already neck deep into an engine.

Again, just my thoughts and these in no way represent what direction the league will move in, but I am open to a lot of the ideas presented here.

So glad of reading this, are we thinking in one or two more seasons in DDS19?

[emplep7]

Just waiting to get our hands on 22 so that we can play around with it.

[Sharkn20]

Just waiting to get our hands on 22 so that we can play around with it.

[Marcos_Beck]

I’m not suggesting any ratings change since it can impact the league in such a huge, negative way if it goes wrong, and would be almost impossible to fix it. This should only be done when transitioning to the new engine once we decide it’s time to move on for PB22 or anything like that

What I’m saying is small fixes to the floor ranges and preference caps should make the league a fair place for every team.

Take away 3 points in post up, add 3 points between catch & shoot and pull up, and you suddenly have a 40% max post preference (27 post up + 13 drive / shot) and a 38% perimeter one (say 22 c&s + 16 pull up). Reduces post shots, raises perimeter ones, half the problem is fixed, easy to test it before the season and should level the playing field for everyone.

Also a floor range cap of 80 for post / mid / threes (both atb and cor summed) should avoid player taking like 30 shots in the paint or from deep.

[bt]

I do think the floor caps could be tweaked slightly yeah.

[emplep7]

I’m not suggesting any ratings change since it can impact the league in such a huge, negative way if it goes wrong, and would be almost impossible to fix it. This should only be done when transitioning to the new engine once we decide it’s time to move on for PB22 or anything like that

What I’m saying is small fixes to the floor ranges and preference caps should make the league a fair place for every team.

Take away 3 points in post up, add 3 points between catch & shoot and pull up, and you suddenly have a 40% max post preference (27 post up + 13 drive / shot) and a 38% perimeter one (say 22 c&s + 16 pull up). Reduces post shots, raises perimeter ones, half the problem is fixed, easy to test it before the season and should level the playing field for everyone.

Also a floor range cap of 80 for post / mid / threes (both atb and cor summed) should avoid player taking like 30 shots in the paint or from deep.

Yeah, I think something like this is definitely possible for the upcoming season and beyond. We are already figuring out how we can adjust the injury slider and will add this to the list.

[Marcos_Beck]

I’m not suggesting any ratings change since it can impact the league in such a huge, negative way if it goes wrong, and would be almost impossible to fix it. This should only be done when transitioning to the new engine once we decide it’s time to move on for PB22 or anything like that

What I’m saying is small fixes to the floor ranges and preference caps should make the league a fair place for every team.

Take away 3 points in post up, add 3 points between catch & shoot and pull up, and you suddenly have a 40% max post preference (27 post up + 13 drive / shot) and a 38% perimeter one (say 22 c&s + 16 pull up). Reduces post shots, raises perimeter ones, half the problem is fixed, easy to test it before the season and should level the playing field for everyone.

Also a floor range cap of 80 for post / mid / threes (both atb and cor summed) should avoid player taking like 30 shots in the paint or from deep.

Yeah, I think something like this is definitely possible for the upcoming season and beyond. We are already figuring out how we can adjust the injury slider and will add this to the list.

Indeed adjusting injury settings would be highly appreciated!!

I’m sure whatever it is you guys will find fair solutions like always. CSL has always been a very competitive and fair place, and we’ve adjusted to what kinda broke the system before, so it’s nothing new, and also nothing that could change the landscape of the league, just small adjustments.

Thanks for the effort admin team!