From Discussion to Implementation: Live Ball Physics

[Leftos]

I'm copy pasting my post from the OS forums, in order to get the discussion going here as well.

I'll come back with some more detailed opinion, I just wanted to mention that I posted the question as a basketball gamer, not as a 2K employee (which I'm not yet, unfortunately; isn't bureaucracy fun?). I have no idea whatsoever in what direction NBA 2K14 is heading as far as live ball physics go, so keep in note that everything I say and ask is just my opinion and speculation.

The point of my question wasn't whether gamers are ready, really. Live ball was implemented in 2K12, but as we saw, the animations weren't totally in sync with that concept, weren't designed with the ball being live as the core concept, so there were a lot of points of awkwardness and frustration.

2K13 regressed a bit in the concept of the ball being live, so you see less occurrences of the ball leaving a good ball-handler's hand because another player happened to be in front of him, but then again you don't feel that if you really the right parts of your body in there you're going to steal or block the ball, it feels like you're either going to trigger the right animation or not.

The reason I feel that happened is because...

1) Introducing live ball physics takes a lot more work, it's a concept you need to rebuild a lot of stuff around, so better to make the game enjoyable for now and work on it behind-the-scenes and get it back in when it's ready, than keep the frustration going for the sake of live ball physics. Sports games are on a yearly release cycle, the developers can't just say "we're not releasing until this and this and this are ready", there's no blocking features, there's no release delay until the devs have everything they want done. So features that require a lot of work might need to stay out or regress for a while while work is being done on them.
2) We still need to find a good compromise between giving the user full control and making sure the game actually plays like basketball. Reason I'm saying this is that any user, with any controller, will most likely not have the smarts of a good ball-handler on how and towards where to move, how to react when an opponent is stationary in front of him, when an opponent is coming towards them. And even if they do, no controller gives the precision that human legs do. In games such as soccer, it's easy to say that "if the user keeps the stick towards the sideline, the user is going to go out, we ain't stopping them", because the soccer field is huge in comparison to a basketball floor. Given that lack of precision, you need to make sure that ball-handlers of varying skill can react better or worse to what's happening around them. I'm not saying that users that turbo right into their opponents shouldn't be punished. But if you give the user absolutely full control, they're bound not to stop dribbling early enough, they're bound to just miss the direction they should be going by a couple of degrees, they're bound to make more mistakes than a good ball-handler would do.

So, what I suggested Czar brings up during his radio show, and what I'd like all of the basketball communities to discuss (and for me to take part in that discussion as someone who will soon be working directly on NBA 2K), is the whole Live Ball Physics matter, from the discussion to the implementation.

How much control should the user be given? What measures should be in there to make up for the user's lack of precision and smarts, for the mere fact that the user isn't holding the basketball, isn't moving the actual legs, but is actually sending input into a game that decides which animation to branch into. And of course, we can't just disconnect the ball from the hand of the player without focusing more on how the implementation needs to be rebuilt around that. So, other than having the ball be live, what aspects of the game do you think would need to be adjusted? From controls, to general animation concepts, to specific animations that would work, to specific animations that had been in the games so far and would or wouldn't work at all with live ball physics.

Most of us have tried out NBA 2K12. The fact that the ball was disconnected from the player's hand lead to some frustration, but gave us more control and gave an additional factor that the user needed to be aware of at all times. That's where the "are gamers ready for live ball physics" part comes through. How do you teach the user to be more careful with the ball, to be more aware of their surroundings without making it a totally unpleasant experience until they do?

There's a lot of questions to be answered, so I'm extremely looking forward to your feedback. Be constructive. Don't just rant and complain about how much NBA 2K "sucked" or how "terrible" NBA 2K was. We're talking about what we want to see, and we're sharing ideas on how we'd like to see it implemented.

[Andrew]

2K would definitely have to change its approach to controls. As with NBA Live, dribbling moves would have to be immediately triggered, otherwise you're still letting an animation play out. Of course, then you've got the challenge of preserving animation quality, which is one of the challenges that EA are facing as they try to find balance in that concept.

[BrotherJRB]

Basketball games often don't represent the risk/reward well in regards to players. Lance Stephenson can make incredible crossover moves but he is also very likely to dribble it off his foot out of bounds with his crazy in and out move (his footwork/hips are going the opposite direction).

Some players may not have a great wide arching crossover but are great strong straight line dribblers. To me NCAA basketball (not sure if a great comparison but) every player could execute the same dribble based off of user input. Not exactly sure if user input should direct the same for Steph Curry as Carlos Delfino. But if this is "live ball" and the physics engine says R stick all the way to the right and back to the left is going to be an Allen Iverson like crossover then we are going to see a lot of strange looks for players controlling Andrew Bogut.

I personally am ready for live ball physics. I would like to see more turnovers and more unique plays in games and make my adjustments. I enjoyed dribbling off of players feet in 2k12.

[Andrew]

Individual player abilities and signature animations (or even a few different generic styles, for players who don't really have a distinct dribbling style) definitely need to be taken into account and implemented with such an approach. I think the ultimate goal would be to avoid everyone having the same dribbling animations and being able to pull off the same moves.

[BrotherJRB]

The biggest advantage of live ball physics would be on rebounding. I am sick of the ball warping to a player instead of bouncing off the rim in what direction physics would dictate. Long threes equal long rebounds generally. This is missing I think.

[Andrew]

It's particularly noticeable when it clips straight through a player's hands, usually allowing the CPU an offensive rebound. It does leave things feeling a bit predetermined.