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In my experience Stamina has value. I notice that if a backup gets hurt early and the starter has to play the rest of the game without a break, his performance slips toward the end. Also players with higher stamina sub out less often. A low stamina player can get maybe 34-38 minutes on average per game, whereas a higher stamina player can average maybe 42-44 minutes. If this is one of your best players (starter) it is probably better for him to be in the game and effective for longer than one of your bench players (back-up).

An observation I have made that may be just coincidence or may be an indicator of stamina's usefulness is that performance will ebb when low stamina players play for prolonged periods. Like when no fouls or turnovers or game stoppage for long periods of time, I notice players get tired, shoot poorer, guard poorer, etc. This may be my imagination or a fluke I cant be sure but it feels true when I see it. In my opinion Stamina has value and to me the question is just how much...

A low stamina player can get maybe 34-38 minutes on average per game, whereas a higher stamina player can average maybe 42-44 minutes. If this is one of your best players (starter) it is probably better for him to be in the game and effective for longer than one of your bench players (back-up).

to be honest, this is the reason why i like small stamina because when he plays 44 minutes in game one i can not play him the next game without ruining his form for the next week.

Original post

So, there is a very negative attitude on our National Forum (Russia) to Stamina. Some believe it's ABSOLUTELY useless skill, some (a smaller part) think the other way. But both of them haven't got any arguments!

I agree CrazyEye that there are different strategies that can be employed with different levels of stamina. However my response was directed at the original post that Stamina was absolutely useless.

A) When players play prolonged minutes without rest they get tired

B) When players get tired their performance goes down

If A and B are true then the conclusion would be-

C) Players with lower stamina get tired faster, and thus have their performance reduced at a faster rate than a player with a higher stamina.

Whether or not you can strategize around this or find a way to make it work for you is an individual thing, but to say stamina has ABSOLUTELY no value seems contradictory to logic.

It seems to me that if the game is set up to do substitution correctly whenever a player has a stamina issue their sub should be brought in. Since we have no control it must be automated for benefit to all players.

In this case if your backup is close enough in quality to your starter than you shouldn't have to worry about stamina right?

In other sim games I've played the amount of stamina you need is relative to how good your opponent is. So if your opponent is as good or better than you your players tire out fast, but if you are leagues ahead of the team you play then you don't lose stamina. Don't see any precedent for that here, probably just goes by minutes, slowly decreasing your players ability as they play more minutes in the game, until they look about even with their sub, then sub gets thrown in until starter refreshes to look better player than the starter.

Anyway really hard to have any data at all about this. So shoot blind like most everything else.

hey mistersan...

you are spot on. i totally agree with you, in an ideal world you should be able to expect such behaviour from the game engine. To substitute when a player gets tired to give him the necessary rest. However, since this game is very new I have my doubts the game engine is this sophisticated or if you would prefer call it balanced yet. Before some people start reading this negatively as some always like to do, this is not a complaint. The game is fun enough and i am sure the developers are doing everything they can to make the game as realistic as possible.

I give you another example to make clear what I mean. When team A and B are playing eachother and and there are like a few minutes left on the clock and team A leads by like 10 or less points, you would expect team B (if foul limits permit) to start fouling team A and make them go to the free throw line. I have seen on more than 3 occasions, team B make 4 fouls shortly after eachother (they have 4 fouls than in total) and stop fouling until the last 30 sec off the game. Off course this makes no sense at all. No basketball team would follow this strategy and stop at 4 fouls. Or for example when team A leads by 30 points and there are only 30 sec left to play team B takes out a full time out... I doubt any basketball team would do that either.

These are smaller issues, that have no priority to be fixed and to be honest, I totally agree they arent high priorities. I am just a little bit sceptic that if they have this kind off GE errors in the game, I doubt the GE is good enough (yet) to detect the stamina issues.

As a final note, the way you describe you expect the GE to react as described in your message, I would expect it to react in the same way too.

However as I said in my post, I am doing quite well in my league and have never trained stamina. I will dig up the games in question tonight and show you that overall I always come back into a game instead off loose the 4th quarter... Giving me the idea that players do have a build in "slow start" off game hidden skill. Or maybe this is because other teams did train stamina, they start the game better than me and since they loose stamina, they start loosing the game???

Last edited by Astragoth at 8/11/2009 7:21:45 AM

Stamina plays a variety of roles from what I've noticed.

The better the stamina on your players, particularly your star players, the more likely their skills won't diminish as the play clock ticks away which puts your team in better position to keep those close games in your favor.

For example, let's say you have a star Shooting Guard that lights up the league on a nightly basis but only plays about 23 minutes a game because his stamina is atrocious. Reason he only plays 23 minutes is because he has to be subbed out in order to keep him fresh for later in the game when he might be needed the most. Now imagine if his stamina was around inept. Now he's averaging around 30 minutes a game.

Your tactics play a role in your player's stamina as well. Fast paced game wears down on your low stamina players making them less effective when it matters most. I'd hate to have the game put into my star SG's hands at the last second when he went up against a fast paced defense, i.e. Full Court Press if his stamina rating was atrocious. He might have Profilic jump shooting and jump range but those skills would be diminished so much from running up and down the court at such a high pace that his jump shooting and jump range might be around the lower levels of Strong by the time he takes those shots.

The question you have to ask yourself though is, is it worth playing your star player an extra 10 minutes when he only averages roughly 8 more points during those 10 minutes while your backup to the star player is averaging anywhere from 12 to 15 points a game during those extra 10 minutes that your star normally does not play?

The question you have to ask yourself though is, is it worth playing your star player an extra 10 minutes when he only averages roughly 8 more points during those 10 minutes while your backup to the star player is averaging anywhere from 12 to 15 points a game during those extra 10 minutes that your star normally does not play?

very interesting thought... never would have thought about that myself. but i think you might be right...

Usually that backup is also playing backups as well, so it skews the numbers.

It seems to me that if the game is set up to do substitution correctly whenever a player has a stamina issue their sub should be brought in. Since we have no control it must be automated for benefit to all players.

In this case if your backup is close enough in quality to your starter than you shouldn't have to worry about stamina right?

In a perfect world you are correct. However there have been a number of times that during the course of a game 8 minutes will go by without a stoppage of play. Then when play stops the fatigue level of everyone is high enough that all ten players are substituted for. I am inclined to believe that if the teams are otherwise equal, the team with the better stamina, especially for key players, had the advantage for several minutes of that period.

yeh