Some of these ideas, I feel, would also benefit the player as well as the patchmaker.
Trading for an empty roster slot
As discussed in EG's wishlist thread, this could be utilised if trading of draft picks is featured in NBA Live 2004. It could also be used to dump players on teams with salary cap room without getting a player in return (essentially a player for cash deal).
From a patchmaking point of view, it makes things easier when making player moves in the default rosters.
Bring back the old "Restore Rosters" feature
Rather than resetting the rosters involving reversing all trades and moving created players to the free agent pool, have it completely reset the rosters - default rosters, all created players deleted. Again, this is basically to speed up the creation of new rosters, and resetting the rosters to default should reset all changes - including the creation of players.
Bring back custom teams, with a difference
This idea would be handy for patchmakers in the creation of some great patches, but I'm sure everyone would find some fun in it.
Create-A-Team should return, with a few additional options:
- Ability to designate custom team as a regular NBA team, All-Star team, or special team. Special team would basically be the old format of custom teams, while the other classifications speak for themselves. Of course, since it's a created team, it would be deleted when the rosters are reset, no matter what the classification.
- Ability to specify uniforms worn - custom made ones (selecting colours, etc), individual NBA team jerseys (so you could create All-Star/All-Rookie/All-Sophomore teams), or perhaps some generic ones. Which leads me to...
- More generic custom team art. Simple "NBA" logos, a basketball going through a hoop, etc. Do not make the team logo automatically show up on the jerseys. This way, you could make a custom East All-Stars team from the 80s that would use the East All-Stars logo, but would have a red or white jersey with the 80s style NBA All-Star logo on it. Basically, just a little more customisation.
Better generated schedule, ability to save season formats
This would make old season roster patches much better. Rather than choosing Long, Medium or Short as the season length when you choose a custom number of NBA teams, the maximum should remain 82 games (or at least have the option to do this). You could then make the 94/95 season, entering 27 teams and still play a realistic 82 game schedule.
That's where saving the season format comes into play. Rather than selecting "NBA" or "Custom", you should be able to save and choose the season formats. So old season roster patches could be distributed with this data file, which could then be selected when starting a new season.
This would be handy for the new Charlotte expansion franchise as well. It also allows a bit more customisation for any user who wants more or less than the default 29 teams, but still wants an 82 game schedule.
Edit the All-Star teams
Easy to see why patchmakers would want this one. Having an in-game facility to edit the All-Star teams would be a welcome alternative to the easy but nevertheless time consuming practice of creating new All-Stars, deleting the old All-Stars, and moving the new All-Stars to the appropriate team.
I'll take this one step further as well - as well as being able to permanently change the All-Star teams (well, permanent until you reset the rosters) when playing East vs West in an exhibition, perhaps you could choose to "Select new All-Stars", sort of like a temporary custom team.
Find some way to load roster updates in a season that has started
Hey, doesn't hurt to ask.