S89 Town Hall 6

[Mike Lowry]

Does this game really hate AB?
Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?
Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?
How have random occurrences impacted your team?

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Deadline for Sim 6

[NickMalone77]

The game can’t hate any one individual or player. It just takes turns and spinning of the die to decide which player and team it decimates next at some point during the course of the game”year” during Sim. If it truly hated someone, it would’ve prevented AB from ever winning a championship if you believe in that sort of thing. Charlie is a successful GM and has been blessed with a player like Hakeem. He’s far from cursed even if Danhausen is getting human monies from an unnamed GM in SLOE.

The game does have a long history of giving the Human spirit a back breaker and a pile driver or two in crushing spirits via TC or taking FA’s and putting them elsewhere because they wanted to “play for the better team.” Always a fun tag line, excuse when that line is used. It also does have a hand in taking teams on runs through the postseason with difficult odds. Which is why you’re never truly out of a playoff series if you’re down 3-1 or 3-0. You just breath a sigh of relief when that emotion and feeling has passed.

During my lone Championship run, I beat 3 straight teams with dominant Purple Players and multiple rounds that included Game 7’s. This game just has a fate of either being blessed or being cursed. You just eventually find your side on both ends of the spectrum after playing this game long enough.

[K-100]

Does this game really hate AB?
In the old league, maybe the season Pistol Pete broke his leg. But in the new league, absolutely not.

Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?
Yes, I think so; it adds to the randomness of the game, which makes it more interesting. I think the game also rewards unorthodox strategy. If you play players out of position the game seems to favor the creativity. It takes some effort but when in doubt play unorthodox.

Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?
It is all random. You play this game long enough you will get snakebit too.

How have random occurrences impacted your team?
Yeah in the old league, I had Winston and Toppin get destroyed in their age-26 TC. Toppin also broke his leg right after RFA which sucked. In the new league, Johnny Moore broke his leg in the playoffs which torpedoed our season. Bowie got hit in one of his first TCs which was also unexpected, but he has rebounded nicely from the early setback (knock on wood).

[BigDaddyd8720]

Does this game really hate AB?
I think the game hates everybody equally. The only reason why this question is being asked is because AB is the most vocal about the game "hating" him.

Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?
I think it's all truly random. If it were really trying to encourage competitive play, then we'd see injuries to the teams who have been constantly at the top (Spurs, Bucks, etc). It seems to just do whatever it wants, whenever it wants.

Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?
I think bad camps are because of two reasons. 1. Age, obviously older players are just generally going to decline so they will have bad camps at a higher frequency. 2. Poor planning. Teams that do recommended don't usually see the increases they would like to see. But if you setup a TC that caters towards each individual player, there's a good chance that player sees a jump. I always do my own TCs for the younger players and have only seen 1, maybe 2, players take a hit over my entire time in the sim league

How have random occurrences impacted your team?
The random occurrence that impacted my team the most is probably when I signed Kiki two seasons ago. I didn't expect to get anybody and he chose to sign with my team and instantly turned me from continuing to rebuild to starting to make moves to become a contender sooner. I know I just traded him away but his time here has been incredibly beneficial for my team.

[WigNosy]

Does this game really hate AB?

No. Stop anthropomorphizing machines; they hate that.

Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?

Absolutely. It sure seems like injuries, free agent signings, and so on are random (I remember James Worthy getting "un-injured" by a rollback/re-sim, Magic Johnson signing with the Warriors and that getting rolled back by a re-sim, etc.)... and knowing this is probably a "Monte Carlo" type sim engine (as nearly every engine is) means there's randomness. As to whether I think it encourages competitive play, also yes. Games of "pure skill" get very boring very quickly as the good players always win, the bad players always lose, and once you've figured out where you sit, there's no point in playing any more... it's deterministic. Games of "pure chance" get very boring very quickly as players figure out it doesn't matter what you do, you may as well flip a coin. The best games have some element of chance that allow a less-skilled player to beat a more-skilled player based on randomness, and some element of skill that allows a more-skilled player to beat a less-skilled player more often than not. The skilled player feels rewarded for his skill by looking at his win rate, and the less-skilled player still has the incentive to play in any individual game (or season) because fortune may smile upon him.

Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?

Again, I think they're coincidental.

How have random occurrences impacted your team?

I already mentioned the Worthy injury rollback. However, I've frequently had injuries to key players during the playoffs (James Donaldson and Bernard King season 1, James Worthy a couple of years back, Johnny Newman in the Conference Finals last season). When you can, you adjust (trading Donaldson for Cartwright because the injury was before the trade deadline) and when you can't, you live with it. I think the appropriate emotion is "annoyance" that you got bad luck, but not a decision that the game/life/sim gods/whatever are out to get you.

[AngryBanana]

Does this game really hate AB?
Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?
Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?
How have random occurrences impacted your team?

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Deadline for Sim 6

This Game Absolutely Hates Me. I’ve Done A Really Good Job Of Insulating My Team From The Game Doing Too Much Damage, But I/ Shown That It Will Routinely Go After Me.

I do think in FA the game does do some “preference” for certain teams at times. Where I noticed that as a Thunder in the PBSL league I struggled mightily with FAs. Where it was a lot more favorable to other more long standing powers or larger markets.

I think the injuries and camps are purely randomized, Except For When It Happens To Me.

Nothing That Is Negative Is Random When It Happens To Me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[logpmess]

Does this game really hate AB?
Do you think the software is designed to throw wrenches and curveballs to "randomly" encourage competitive play?
Are bad camps and key injuries purely coincidental, or does the game know what it's doing?
How have random occurrences impacted your team?

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Deadline for Sim 6

No, the game doesn't hate AB. I've been absent from the chat, but I don't even understand what the issue is to call this out. I see no injuries, he's leading his conference, and his team is playing well. He has had some injuries and decisions in the past, but so have other people. There have been at least 4 instances of GMs saying they are done or want to quit due to injuries or free agent decisions or even the evil re-sim.

The entire point of this league is that it is random. If we didn't want random, we could turn injuries off. I do believe there is a lot to this league that we don't involve that play into some of the issues. We used to do in season signings, which was super advantageous for the incumbent team. The randomness is a good thing, but it's not as random as it seems. A player that has a low injury score gets injured more often. A team made up of players on the cusp of a color may have a big dive in TC. But that happens in real life too. We should try to implement league protocol violations to make it even more realistic.

Since the start of this new league, I've had a major injury in the playoffs a majority of the time. I went into last season without my starting point guard and still took the third seed bullets to a game 7. John Koncak, who I resigned in RFA to a long term contract as my center going forward, was absolutely rocked by training camp this year and has now become an albatross of a contract for a player who doesn't even see the court.

[WigNosy]

Since the start of this new league, I've had a major injury in the playoffs a majority of the time. I went into last season without my starting point guard and still took the third seed bullets to a game 7. John Koncak, who I resigned in RFA to a long term contract as my center going forward, was absolutely rocked by training camp this year and has now become an albatross of a contract for a player who doesn't even see the court.

So, in other words, just like IRL John "Contract" Koncak.

[Mike Lowry]

This game does not hate Charlie.
He just loves the pity party.
I do think the randomness favors level playing fields and high level competition to an extent.
Especially if you make room for error. Pushing guys with 7 injury avoidance and no stamina for 40 minutes of full court press will break their legs, but occasionally, Chris Mullin takes a dive in the finals and the championship swings.
Bad camps are hard to guage because I'm not certain of how well I know how to run one .
I read all the documentation and it mostly said that camp success is about as random as anything else in the game.
Some guys die, Some guys grow. Doesn't always align with age. I think I see nearly as many y/y guys go b/b as I do y/g.
My own experience is mostly with bad camps.
I try to be responsible with my DC and scout for durability.
So I haven't been hit with a crushing injury in a tough time, but I had a few superstars take steps backwards right when I was counting on them to step forward.
Buck and Magic are probably my best examples.