Posted by seble on 8/23/2010 2:40:00 PM (view original):
I can further increase the weight on rebounding if that's a common feeling.  Is there a certain area that seems overpriced?

Posted by ashamael on 8/23/2010 7:47:00 PM (view original):
If high fg% tacks on to salary (as it should), low fg% should take away from salary.
fg%+ should do something.  As it is, I think that guys are getting priced based on the theory that it works when it does not, in fact, do anything.

I could be wrong on this.

Also, if I can get 66-67 Wilt, 91-92 Rodman, 78-79 Moses and any Jordan, players are too cheap (in a $42M league).

As it stands, higher cap leagues already have a lot of redundant minutes with a few exceptions.  The new salaries will make this worse.

"Add in the fact that the sim is almost exclusively built on quantifiable factors driven by real-life statistics, and your statement above about the relative ineffectiveness of older players becomes pretty much inevitable."

But this argument is instantly invalidated because of WIS's attempt to normalize several key areas of the game (rebounding and fg%, even though the latter didn't happen right).  You can't say rebounding hasn't been normalized.  If you do, then you weren't paying attention.

" most players from the 60s and 50s SHOULD be severely challenged in the sim given the entire premise of the site.  "What if" you could throw any conceivable combination of players throughout the history of the NBA (and ABA) onto the court together?  Take the realist view that modern fitness and nutrition regimes, coaching strategy and lifelong exposure of players to more intensive coaching and practice, and you have to figure that the average more recent player has an advantage against the average less recent player."

I take issue with this for the following reason:  In any hypothetical scenario of taking players from different eras from any sport and competing against one another, you have to assume like conditions to come up with anything close to being competitively realistic.  If we're taking those old players and playing against the new ones, you have to assume the old players now suddenly have had all of the technological advancements the new guys have had.  Otherwise, yeah, it's a completely dumb comparison. 

"But ash, what's the problem that needs to be solved? "

Well, for one thing, fg%# should work.  I assume you know how fg+ is figured, but in case you (or anyone who's reading this) don't, it's simple:  Player's fg% divided by league average fg%.  Now you pick a fg% to normalize with (whether it's 1965, 1985 or 2005 - I don't care, but I'd say you use an average of the last five seasons IMO).  Say that number is .450 (nice, simple, round number and probably pretty close).

59-60 Elgin Baylor's fg+ of 104% now means 1.04*0.45 or 0.468.   That's a hell of a lot better than .424%!  57-58 Bill Russell's 115 takes his 44.2% to 51.8%!  My personal theory is that the salaries for older players are based on the fact that this works, yet it doesn't, so I think the older players have slightly inflated salaries.

If you make fg%# work like this, I believe you drastically increase the number of usable players, thus increasing the enjoyment for everyone in the sim.  I know there are several Elgin Baylor seasons I think about using, but always end up dismissing them because I know the fg% issue is going to drive me up the wall.  I still use Bill Russell, but that's because he has low usage and won't kill me with his poor shooting.

"I agree particularly with the bolded part. "
 

I don't see anything bolded.


 

Posted by shapandrew7 on 8/23/2010 10:00:00 PM (view original):
Aren't tweaks really all we need?

Let's be serious - people are going to keep mastering this thing one engine at a time - some variations will cause more teams to stop guaranteed winners until all else is unbeatable - if Ash wins the ODL with his current group of clowns (no offense, brother), then the current engine could be dead. The formula for this engine was established by Beni and Sly in opens and Ash in the ODL - I believe those two forms to be the purest of the WISNBA.

Let's tweak this current thing a bit - salary emphasis on rebounding, eFG, and 3s would be nice - and change the game a bit. Isn't that what Russell's Celts,. Bird's Celts, Magic's Lakers, Jordan's Bulls' and to a lesser extent Wilt's Sixers and Duncan's Spurs did? They changed the game, and made it tough for people to adapt.

How about you make it extremely reminiscent to today's product - find out who can lump the three most salary efficient studs together and surround them with a competent supporting cast?

Another Budweiser and some more youjizz is calling me - peace.

Posted by longtallbrad on 8/23/2010 8:31:00 PM (view original):
But ash, what's the problem that needs to be solved?  I've slowly and painfully come to the realization that maybe most players from the 60s and 50s SHOULD be severely challenged in the sim given the entire premise of the site.  "What if" you could throw any conceivable combination of players throughout the history of the NBA (and ABA) onto the court together?  Take the realist view that modern fitness and nutrition regimes, coaching strategy and lifelong exposure of players to more intensive coaching and practice, and you have to figure that the average more recent player has an advantage against the average less recent player.  Add in the fact that the sim is almost exclusively built on quantifiable factors driven by real-life statistics, and your statement above about the relative ineffectiveness of older players becomes pretty much inevitable.  

I'm one of the WISNBA users who deeply hates the fact that Maravich, Barry, Mikan, etc., are essentially unusable in open leagues and in most theme concepts - but I've realized that the reasons for this handicap are built into the entire concept of the site.  They scored much less efficiently, and they fouled and turned the ball over more, than their more modern counterparts.  How do you get around that?

We are talking about a major re-write of the SIM engine.  According to Seble that's not going to happen in the near future.  But I would like to hear from Seble (and please tell us plainly) if its in the forseesable future.  For now I'm in agreement with Ash that we should put more weight on rebounding, eFG and three to determine the salaries of the most used players.  So by default you will see some players that have no been used much before.  Its not perfect but its a start...

Posted by jakotay on 8/24/2010 11:59:00 AM (view original):
I don't think anyone is asking for a rewrite.  I am on board with ash though I think dimes need more weight in the salary system.  But other than that I think ash and I are on the same page.  But FWIW, its not a rewrite of the engine to normalize FG%, it changing the input currently used to a different value that represents the normalized FG%.  The leg work is determining that number and now is not the time to determine it.  That would take time but on the other hand we only get so much time for the programmer to work with the NBA sim.  If these changes go South in a month we'll still have months before they get back to us for changes.  Do as much as possible now while we have Seble here or else we are either leaving or ******** and ranting in the forums again.

  

Posted by felonius on 8/24/2010 1:10:00 PM (view original):
I thought FG+ was meant to do that - maybe just a tweak of the weighting?