As a basketball gamer, I get jealous when I see a StarCraft Tourney or EVO Finals. It's not just the hundreds of thousands of viewers on stream or the sponsors, but the competitors themselves. When I watch Justin Wong fight Infiltration in Grand Finals, I know that I'm looking at two of the best in the world. They are there as a result of hard work, practice and high levels of competition to practice against. You have just as much a chance of beating Infiltration in Street Fighter as you do in beating Lebron in a game of one on one.
Real competitive games have room for expertise.
Basketball games have come a long way, but in this series of articles I'm not going to spend a lot of time praising all the new features and improvements. If you're reading this article, it's for the same reason I'm writing it. You love basketball games and you want them to continue to get better. The one area above all others, where basketball games have failed to truly improve is in competition. This isn't for lack of players. Millions play 2k and millions will play NBA Live when it makes its return on next generation consoles this holiday season.
We don't have great competition because there is no room for it in the games themselves. The word "cheese" is thrown around a lot, but exploits is much more accurate. In a competitive game, when a cheese tactic doesn't have a counter, it's an exploit of the gaming system flaws. When that happens, the game is either patched or it sees a death in the competitive scene. With basketball games, the exploits take over all competition and no one takes it seriously because that's not fun to watch.
Besides the rampant exploitable systems, we have a different problem. Even if you took out all of the 1-3-1 zone cheese, the Eurostep cheese, the quick 3-pointer cheese, you'd still have a game that is far too simple in execution.
Accessibility is important, but we need layers, not dumbed down systems. In order to be both accessible to casual gamers and challenging to experts who want to elevate competition into an art, you have to create a stable, balanced system that works on both of those levels. That's not easy. That's not a quick fix. That can't be done with Bounce Tek or the right Slider set. That's going to take imagination, cooperation and hard work both by the gamers and the developers.
In order to find the opportunity to take what is a simple, automated system and transform it into something subtle enough and great enough for a true competitive experience, we're going to have to tackle each issue, break it down and build it back up. As always, the Simnation will use basketball fundamentals as its guide.
Passing into a Shot
Seems straightforward, right? Pass it to someone and they shoot.
It's not. That's wrong.
In real basketball, many factors influence the success of the journey from pass to swish. In basketball games, you press pass and you hold shoot until the player gets to the top of their jump and you let go of shoot. As a starting point, this is fine. If two scrubs just want to sit down and relive their Double Dribble days with better graphics, have at it. Press those two buttons and score 70 pts in five min quarters. When you're not dunking, anyway.
Sim gamers need an extension of this gameplay mechanic that takes into account positioning, defense and timing beyond the shot release. High level of competition isn't just fail/success. There are degrees from ultimate failure to ultimate success. For this part of the discussion, we'll remove the possibility of the defender stealing the ball and focus solely on pass-shoot execution.
--Ultimate failure = the offensive player does not catch the ball in a clean shooting position. Defense has a chance to fully recover
--moderate failure = the offensive player makes a clean catch, but the shot will be contested before the release.
--moderate success = clean catch, late defensive recover. Good success rate for highly rated shooters, lower % attempt for someone rated 75 or below
--ultimate success = the catch is perfect, passed right into the shooter's pocket at the moment they set their feet. High chance of success for all but the worst of shooters.
This is a basic outline shortened to keep this article from turning into a book. In between each of these, there are smaller, more subtle degrees, modified by signature passing and the ratings of each player, along with hotspots and fatigue. Those factors are more influential in the middle degrees, but if you find yourself way on the bottom or top of that list, you should get predictable miss/make results, regardless of those things.
Reward execution, planning and knowledge of the game.
If a competitor's defense allows the perfect pass-shot execution, everyone including his(or her) momma knows that it's his(or her) fault (s)he's getting torched. On the flip, if you're forced to attempt contested shots by mediocre shooters, you need to powwow with your inner D'Antoni and make some changes on the clipboard.
Let's get into specifics, starting with the passer.
--GREAT PASS = Shoulders squared to the shooter. No defender in the lane. The higher the rating of the passer, the bigger the window of timing you have to make the PERFECT PASS. Example: Chris Paul is not being pressured in any way, JJ Redick is running a clean cut, the defenders are thinking about that Blake Griffin oop and pay the price. Cash. Just like practice. Give up this play too often and you're not sim enough to cry about fatigue or FG%.
--VERY GOOD PASS = Same situation, but the passer is moving. They had to sell the penetration or give a setup dribble to freeze the D. Highly rated passers get the same basic success rate as the GREAT PASS but the window of timing to hit the shooter's pocket is tighter.
--GOOD PASS = Ratings take more of an effect now. The D is applying decent pressure to the passer but not influencing the passing lane. If the passer doesn't have a high passer rating, the timing window is now too small for a GREAT PASS and high success is more on the shooter and the close out defense. Highly rated passers who aren't too fatigued will find the most benefit from their rating in this situation. Low rated passers might be passing into a contested attempt, because the ball won't travel as fast or clean.
--MODERATE PASS = The defense has done their job. This ain't Stockton to Hornaceck. This is Fisher to Kobe or if you're unlucky, Farmar to Nick Young. The passer is pressured the shooter catches it alright, but this is really about their ability to hit a fadeaway, leaner or contested jumper. Requires higher execution and rating on the shooter's end. Rely on these shots too much and you'd better be winning the war on the glass.
--POOR PASS = Highly rated passer is passing when there is a defender in the passing lane. They aren't in position to steal, but the pass must occur outside of the shooting window in order to avoid the turnover. Low rated passer should avoid this attempt. Could lead to a deflection or a bobble. Shot clock is ticking. Move the ball.
--TERRIBLE PASS = Highly rated player is feeling themselves and doing something they shouldn't do. Low rated player is doing the same, but this might just be a POOR PASS if they were Kyrie Irving. Shooter is way early or way late on their cut but this pass has to be made because the defense saw what you were setting up. Look for another option on offense because this will not be a clean reception. This is the kind of pass that allows the defense to really settle in on your stars while not giving your role-players enough room to be specialists.
For the shooters, the basic principle is the same whether we're talking about a baseline cut to the corner 3, a transition 3 or a curl to the elbow. There is a magic window with the signature gather, signature base and signature release that will result in a smooth shot with a very wide margin of error. If the pass is made into this timing window, the defense absolutely has to recover into a full contest. If they are recovering late to this kind of cut, they have failed to pressure the passer and bump the cutter. Now their only resort is to gamble. Jump at the shooter, risking a foul and possibly an and-one. Jump at the shooter and risk getting pump faked. Mash Turbo and hope that your opponent is scared into a pump fake, but you stop short and reset the situation into an isolation opportunity.
Wrap It Up
When we play the games, this should feel right. We should feel the difference between almost perfect and super perfect. In Street Fighter, there are 1 frame links that expert players hit for big combos. That's one frame and sixty frames per second, meaning they are executing these two button presses at a 1/60th of a second window. Greatness. In StarCraft, there is a perfect timing between being supply capped (look it up) and having the right amount of resources to build that next unit. Expert players nail this while scouting their enemy's base. Greatness.
Basketball gamers deserve to be able to reach this level.
For casual players, most of this isn't important. They won't be running the plays with these kinds of cuts. They won't be aware of the perfect window, watching the footstep-animation of their shooter's as their digital hands reach out to catch the ball in the pocket. They can have a good time, tapping pass until it's time to hold Turbo and X. That will still work against casual defense.
For serious competitors and even single player simheads, adding these layers and subtleties will not only allow us to be great, but it'll replace cheese. Killing cheese isn't just about removing exploits, but also about making sure that most effective tactic is a balanced expression of basketball fundamentals.
--Books
