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but it affec t each other, i would say. For me god shot blocking means to know when to jump and when not.

Andrej Kirilenko was in the young years a guy who made a lot of blocks, but also open his defence afters fakes a lot. So he was in my point of view no good shot blocker at this time, even when he have good stats.

But i know good defenders, who have a good timing in jumping for the blocks but normally don't make clear blocks but, affect the direction of the shot so that he miss more often. Inside defence was in my eyes the positing of the player good fouls, and to know when you better stand still.

as i have said before, and i will just continue to... i think this represent a fundamental generic argument that is going to face all changes to anything in the game. Now for each case, we need to layout the costs of changing to the masses and the benefits of changing it.

The benefits to changing it would be to add a dimensionality to the game that is maybe uniteresting at the moment.. like the staff system.. if shot blocking is irrelevant, than maybe we should get rid of it, or we keep it just as a remenant of realism so that our game sounds more like basketball but isnt really part of people's conversations about the game. But clearly the game would be more interesting if you had to make a more nuanced tradeoff when considering a center with good defense but poor shotblocking, or vice versa... arguing to yourself.. you know what i really need is a shot blocker to alter the shots of all the guys who are just lighting up my SG who can score but can't defend. Or on the flip side saying.. no ... i dont really need that, i'm just getting killed by the opponents center dunking over me.

On a related point, and i'm sorry for talking about two different issues in the same thread.. i would really like to hear someone lay out a similar sort of story about how adding SF training options makes for a more interesting decision, rather than simply making it easier for you to make the most optimal decision. Cause I personally think that sort of process is mind numbing, kinda of like "farming" in WoW or what have you. Now maybe people like that.. but I think the game that we as a team have tried to make is something different.

anyway... on the flip side, I will not deny that making any change is going to disadvantage some users. So lets take a closer look at who this is going to disadvantage.... There are some users now who have been training shot blocking, or happen to have high shot blocking skilled players because they perhaps wrongly surmised it was more important than it was, and now they are going to be rewarded for making that decision. On the flip side, there are people who maybe correctly decided that shot blocking was unimportant, and so they bought players who sucked at shotblocking and were good at everything else because the market was overvaluing shotblocking.. and now they will be punished for that.

I guess we could look and see how many teams are there that have players with significantly higher/lower shot blocking ability. I think there is at least a plausible case to be made that most teams are actually just ignoring shot blocking and so have neither a particularly high or particularly low shot blocking.

I will say this... although I am sympathetic to the fact that any change is going to disadvantage some people, I cannot accept that buzzerbeater must therefore not attempt to make itself a better game, and so that argument must stand up to scrutiny and we must as a community accept some degree of unfairness if we are going to avoid being stuck in a boring quagmire. We also shouldn't stumble ahead blindly and not listen to what the users are saying and make changes willy nilly.... I hope we are striking the right balance.

EDIT: SOME OF THESE STATEMENTS MIGHT BE MISLEADING.. PLEASE READ (66639.86)

Last edited by BB-Forrest at 1/7/2009 9:57:38 PM

maybe it is a bit off topic, but how it is actual decided when a shot got block ...

Me and some friend of mine decided that it work in addition to ID like charles said(when you don't think at the rating, like me oviously mean), but that seems to be wrong. But we get to this point, because even great shot blockers at c spot, often blocks around 0,5 Shots per game, and usually guards with mediocore blocking leads the shhot block statistik ... So our conclusion was, that SB just works indirect in this game and was important for ID, but not that much like ID skill himself.

I think if you do a statistical analysis you will find that shot blocking skill corresponds to the percentage of time a shot was blocked after it was taken. Note that is not exactly blocks per game because all players dont have an equal number of shots taken against them per game.

there are of course other factors too.. but i'm not gonna go into all the details.

Last edited by BB-Forrest at 1/6/2009 6:30:57 PM

I think Inside Defense and Shot Blocking should be separate skills -- ID is about positioning and strength -- pushing your man off the block, standing your ground etc. Shot blocking is about jumping and length and timing -- and often the involves a shot from an offensive player that the shot blocker isn't primarily guarding.

In the current system, I think its modeled as a one-to-one type skill. If a SG is shooting, then a SG will try to block the shot. In real life, if the SG has driven in, he may be facing a big man coming over to block his shot. Obviously, this only happens within a certain radius of the basket -- big men shouldn't be coming out and blocking 3-ptrs

I think the shot blocker should have a higher change of fouling. But rather than saying a player with high shot blocking is more likely to try to block a shot and therefore more likely to foul -- I think it would suggest that centers (and power forwards to a lesser degree) be allocated as shot blockers. They'd have additional chances to block shots, but also would have more chances of fouling. I think this works, because in general big men pick up more fouls. Seems like some of them are always riding the pine.

As for fundamental change in season 7...go for it! Give people adequate warning (maybe a season advance notice). You could also let people test the new chances in scrimmages.

Ultimately, you need to keep improving the game and those of us that understand the game, know that shot blocking isn't modeled correctly.


Steve
Bruins

with a short look over maybe 20 players with good and worse sb on center you don't see this correspondending ...

Most SB 10+ i see have less then 0ne block per game, like the guys who have seven ;)

I ussually see player liek this, leading in blocking stats -> (860657) if it really a center skills it should be better when even center could block some balls because they got trained in that. I don't know exactly how much blokcing he have, but i know that his manager don't trained him in Blocking ... The last 2 season i heard also from guards who are around top 50 in blocks worldwide, but i don't see a center who made that.

Last edited by CrazyEye at 1/7/2009 3:14:22 AM

Steve said it all, i think. Wise californian guy... ;)
Shot blocking is an important part of basketball, so it should have a certain importance in BB as well. I wouldn´t like seeing the blocking skill disappear totally but to get some influence in especially the C (and with some concessions to PF) performance. Therefore an "intelligent" game engine would help a lot, as it´s gard to measure the blocking skill just in one-on-one matchups. I don´t know if that can be done quite quickly or if a bigger change would be necessary (if you get rid of only one-on-one matchups huge things will have to follow...).

I just think we are mixing two things. Shotblocking on perimeter which is basically part of man to man defense - stretching out to block a shot attempt.And shotblocking inside - a) blocking a man you are guarding by getting a good defensive position and not being folled but pump fakes, dream shakes etc. and b) blocking ashot when you are not staying between the man and the basket by either help defense or chasing your man from behind (it could differ a bit whether the attacker is a guard who drived to the basket for a layup or a bigge man with a little bit of open space trying to finish strong - even dunk). I just don't know how those could be easily implemented into the game where mechanisms are strongly base on one to one game. Another thing is altering shots and level of risk you can take by shotblock attempt because of attacker low FT shooting percentages - that should be implemented too probably not exponential but by some coeficinet added to the formula resulting in better chanve to missed shot or blocked shot. I wouldn't go much for increasing foul rate much or at all. I think it should be more about being able to block that shot or not. Higher blocking skill should not hurt you.

I mean the blocking skill should act differently in game engine according to a position the defensing player plays on court (perimeter players could use it as an addition to OD or ID in case of driving to the hoop; centers should have it as a skill influencing opponents FG% to some extent).

Maybe even an option like Let them play/Sit them could be added into settings to adjust how much your centers and other frontcourt players should try to block shots to solve foul problems.

Sorry fo being a bit long.

I think we are not mixing things up, I agree with your proposals, this all would just help making the blocking skill more important. For now it just seems to be a one-on-one "can i block your shot or can i not block it" skill, with very few influence on the matchplay. It´s just the question how difficult all those changes are to be done by the BBs and how much it would change the game engine at all...

After all I don't have really great shotblockers so please don't rush things!:) (I'm unbiased on how it is affected by FTs I have both great and miserable FT shooters so far).