We mentioned the main points that changed with the conversion from DDS3 to DDS19, but with the adjustments from pre-season we wanted to bring those points up as well.
1. We lowered the BLK rating 15% globally for the league. This rating is more powerful in DDS19 and resulted in some high block averages across a season. This brings the range back into where we were with DDS3.
2. We lowered the STL rating by 5% globally for the league. Again, slightly more powerful here and it resulted in more TOs and STLs. We dropped this rating to get the TOs back into range and this is important to note for the future.
3. Rookies FG_RA and FG_RA POT were significantly lower than the non-rookie players. This has been adjusted for ALL rookies and they now fall in line with the rest of the league.
4. Through the pre-season we found that the PASS Ball Action rating was incredibly powerful (we knew this, but not to this extent). The SCR rating in DDS19 more pertains to scoring ability and less about how much they will shoot. The PASS Ball Action is essentially linked to the SCR rating now where it tells you how often a player will shoot (aka score more). The PAS rating (not the Ball Action) also is the same where it means passing ability and not how often they will pass the ball. Just note if a player has a low SCR rating, but a low PASS Ball Action they will shoot a bunch, but at a much less efficient clip than a player with a high SCR rating.
5. Because of point 4, we have directly correlated the PASS Ball Action to the DDS3 SCR and PAS ratings. This made us have to adjust all Ball Actions slightly due to the newly revised PASS Ball Action for all players.
6. PGs still shoot a ton in this engine because they have the ball in their hands the most. We had to increase the PASS Ball Action rating for all PGs to account for this and even it back to the DDS3 levels.
NOTE: If you play another player who is not a primary PG at PG, they do not shoot nearly as much as a true PG does so this increase did not apply to them.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
A. Team Makeup is critical now. You can have a player who has a low PASS Ball action only score 13 ppg because there are a lot of other scorers on the team. Its not simplified like DDS3 was and every player impacts every other player on the court now. Remember this when adjusting your own players Ball Actions.
B. Just like the game doesn't allow it, we will not be allowed to adjust the PASS Ball Action through preferences. Every other Ball Action and Floor Range can be adjusted through preferences, but not the PASS rating. The reason is that it is clear that it is far too powerful and will ruin the league dynamic is we allow this.
C. Assists are up in the new engine. This isn't a bad thing and the numbers align with the NBA, but we will have true floor generals here and a couple players who can average +10 APG. This was near impossible in DDS3, but you will see the Lonzo's, Cotton's, etc, dishing it out at much better rates.
D. Thank you all again for all of the help in finding bugs and making these adjustments! We couldnt have done it without you all.
E. Remember, this still won't be 100% perfectly converted, but we feel really really good about it after the pre-season testing and the data that generated.
Again, thanks for your patience during this but we wanted to make sure it was done right. It has been suggested that we run 2 pre-season sims so that GMs can get a better sense of these adjustments, but we plan on starting the Regular Season later this week (Thursday tentatively).
-Myles and Jon
UPDATE 2.5
Myles wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:10 pm Update Part 2.5 (and this will be included in the main post)
After some further testing, we have decided to cap the Corner location (similar to how we did for the drive preference in DDS3) to 40, in order to maintain the balance of three point shooting and keep some semblance of realism. There's a reason why when you look at the breakdown in frequency of corner three point attempts vs. three point attempts above the break, that you only see low usage role players at the top of the corner 3, and you'll never see a high usage star shooting many corner 3s (in the NBA). We didn't want to do anything too complicated and put too much on our plate, so we have decided on a flat cap of 40 for the corner location for all players. For players who's floor ranges were already above that number, we simply moved the difference into their ATB location rating, so they will still shoot the same number of 3s.