DDS19 Transition

[Myles]

Hey all,

Since we haven’t made an official announcement, just wanted to make it official: we are going to be moving to DDS19 during the 2024 offseason. This change will take place in 1.5 years in-game and in about 9-10 months in real life.

I’m currently on vacation without my laptop, but when I get back home I plan on adding lots of information to this post, detailing the changes in DDS19 and what they mean for us.

[Dennis]

Enjoy your vacation!

[andrei]

Enjoy your vacation Myles. Can't wait for more updates

[Stockton12]

Yay good move ...enjoy your vacation ..

[Ocons]

Thanks, Myles. Look forward to learning more about DDS19 and how it differs from DDS3 because it could have an impact on trades, draft strategy, etc.

Enjoy your vacation.

[Dylan]

Have fun man.

Wish we could transition sooner - I've played around with 19 a bit and it's definitely better than 3. Regardless I look forward to the future!

[Rizzo]

I know that DDS19 has its quirks, which a few of us have seen first hand, but the overall game feels to play a better game if basketball. I believe the rating conversion and draft team could mold players in such a way to mitigate some of the engine’s flaws, but that will take copious testing. Overall, I’m excited about the transition.

[Raidercj]

Do you know if he will give us keys for free or everyone must rebuy the game?

[Rizzo]

Do you know if he will give us keys for free or everyone must rebuy the game?

I wouldn’t plan on getting anything for free. Buying the game comes with 2 licenses so if you really wanted you could split it with someone.

[Flaming Homer]

Love it! Enjoy your vaca

[Andrewu91]

Dds19? Hmmm sounds intriguing

[Stockton12]

Do you know if he will give us keys for free or everyone must rebuy the game?

I wouldn’t plan on getting anything for free. Buying the game comes with 2 licenses so if you really wanted you could split it with someone.

I will talk to gary and see if we get a discount for those who want dds..would need to know numbers thou before asking him

[ozymandias]

I'm definitely up for a transition to dds19. Bought it on Steam when it came out but didn't have a lot of time to test it. It looks really nice though.

[Myles]

Okay, here's a bunch of the new stuff to DDS19:

New Ratings
So there aren't any new ratings from a public perspective, just under the hood stuff, but Gary has broken down shooting ratings even further. In DDS3, there are 4 shooting ratings: FGD (dunk), FGI (inside the paint), FGJ (mid-range jumper) and FG3 (three-pointer). Now there are 5 shooting ratings, FGRA (restricted area), FGITP (inside the paint), FGJ (same), FGATB (above the break three pointers) and FGCOR (corner three pointers). There's also a dunk preference still, but no correlating FGD, so I need to ask Gary how that's handled by the engine. With the breakdown of three-point shooting, we will have to look into how to translate our current shooting ratings to the new engine, but the new breakdowns give us all more of an insight as to where our players thrive from shooting the ball and give us more creativity in how to construct offenses.

Player Preferences: Floor Range and Ball Action
Along those lines, player preferences have changed. In DDS3, there were two bars, the post/jumper/3 bar, and the drive/shot bar. In DDS19, there's a lot more to it. I'm including a screenshot below of the new floor ranges and ball actions, as well as an explanation from Gary himself about how they work.

Floor range and ball actions work together in that the floor range gives you an idea where the player likes to shoot from while the actions will tell you what he tends to do when he gets the ball. For example I opened up the NBA mod and looked at Ben Simmons - it gives him 38% post, 61% midrange, 0% corner and 1% above break - in other words Simmons is almost never going to look to shoot unless he can get inside the arc. Then if you look at his ball actions 11% is drive/pass, 7% is drive/shot, 0% catch and shoot, 2% pull up and 4% post up. With 0% catch and shoot it means that Simmons is practically never going to shoot the ball off of a pass to him - in fact 20% of the time he's going to put the ball on the floor to either drive and hopefully create a shot for someone, drive and get to the paint for a shot or once in a while drive to get somewhere for a mid range jumper.

There is no way to change the floor range at this time (well except going to commissioner mode and editing it) but the offensive systems will modify them in real time. Lets say you have someone like Dwight Howard (76% post floor range with 26% post up ball action). If you have an offensive strategy like pace and space you're going to be moving Howard out of the post frequently. Now in doing so though you might turn Howard basically into nothing but a screener or passer because only 6% of the time does he do anything but a post move or make a pass. However if you took someone like Embiid you might end up with him shooting even more threes than he is used to now with that sort of offense because he's got % in floor range for catch and shoot or pull up jumper so if for some reason you think he's a good weapon from outside and want to encourage that even more then you would choose an offense that emphasizes outside play and it he will be able to adapt to it because he's comfortable doing so.

Offensive Strategies
The offensive sets have changed too. There are 6 distinct offenses, Balanced, Pace and Space, Perimeter Focus, Grind, Post Focus, and Seven Seconds. They work by adjusting the sliders for things like team pace, floor ranges, and ball actions. Here's a screenshot just to show you what I mean, as we test further we'll make full posts dedicated to stuff like this.



Defensive Strategies
There are also brand new defensive strategies that work similarly to how these new offensive strategies work. We've done some testing on these and it doesn't appear as though any one of these is definitively better than the others, but we will do further testing for sure. It also seems that the individual matchup doesn't work as intended, but we need to do further testing to prove that for sure. If it doesn't work, it's not a big deal, as it simply means we are not any further ahead or behind where we are right now.



Expanded Statistics and Lineup Tracking
There are tons of new stats to parse through, from lineup analysis, to offensive and defensive efficiency ratings, to more precise advanced metrics. Here's a few screenshots of what I mean.






I'll be the first to admit we still have quite a bit of testing to do, but we know that this transition will be positive for the league if we do it right. Not just in regards to giving us all more to work with and more to dig into, but also in making it easier to recruit new members and get a full league of active GMs again.

[Andrewu91]

I support this even though it's going to take time to get used to, eventually when I come back

[Dennis]

Played it again last week. The big man three thingy still is a thing. Will it be fixed by Gary or are we allowed to decide preferences and ball actions for our team when the league restarts? Would hate to see a guy like skal going from 52% to 38% because of thst super bad coding for example.

[Flaming Homer]

Seeing forward to it

@Dennis: where exactly is the problem there? I was just checking my test game from back then and it doesn't look like the bigs are shooting too many 3's. A PF like Kuzma has 4 3PA for me, which is fine imo.

I only saw two players where it looks out of place while checking other rosters ... Wendell Carter has 7 3PA and Draymond Green a whopping 16. But it makes sense if you look into their shooting ratings.

[mgtr81]

How different is it from 18?

[Rizzo]

How different is it from 18?

I know I can't answer that since i have zero experience with DDS18.

[Dennis]

Seeing forward to it

@Dennis: where exactly is the problem there? I was just checking my test game from back then and it doesn't look like the bigs are shooting too many 3's. A PF like Kuzma has 4 3PA for me, which is fine imo.

I only saw two players where it looks out of place while checking other rosters ... Wendell Carter has 7 3PA and Draymond Green a whopping 16. But it makes sense if you look into their shooting ratings.

If a player has certain preferences he racks up 3s. I think it was 1% pull up jumper. I tested it with several bigs not long ago. For example vucevic was racking up 50% threes with 1%. I still have the screenshots on my computer and can share it next week. Just travelling through half of Europe for work atm.. so no personal computer access here in Barcelona. Detailed explanation will follow thoufh.