effectiveness of wish lists

[Mike Bradford]

As I'm new to this place, I'm wondering just how effective the wish lists have been over the years, because if they've done their best to include the majority of it (doubt they have, because gameplay has not increased much) then Live 06 should be great

[Andrew]

Dynasty Mode (ie a multi-season mode), All-Star Weekend, sliders and the ability to save screenshots are just a few things off the top of my head that have been suggested in Wishlists and added through the years. I'm sure if we went through all the Wishlists since NBA Live 98 we could find a lot of things that have been added. As far as gameplay goes, a lot of the suggestions in the NBA Live 2004 Wishlist for improvements on NBA Live 2003's gameplay have been implemented.

[Mike Bradford]

Thats good to hear, because you wishlist blew me away, it had everything. keep doing what your doing

[Andrew]

Glad you liked it. It might be interesting if we did a Wishlist comparison, ticking off items on all the lists to see just how many suggestions have made it into the game. Of course, whether or not some of the features made it into the game as a result of the Wishlist or simply the evolution of the game and vision of the production team is open to speculation, but in either case they're things that we've wanted that have made the game.

[T-Comm55]

This site has had the biggest impact on the NBA Live series than any other. And as Andrew said, we got the papers to prove that.

[Sauru]

the thing with a wishlist is, it will always be bigger than what they can do in a single year. thats why you will see a couple things added each year. it seems EA goes out and picks 1 thing they really want to add to the game then they try to update everything else. whatever time they have left seems to go to adding other smaller new things. for instance last years game they probably spent WAY to much time working on that dunk contest. granted it was cool and many people were dieing for it, i dont think it was time well spent. i like the all star weekend though it adds greatly to the game imo.

[Mike Bradford]

its too bad we cant choose which thing they try to improve each year, rather them choosing one. i'd rather have seen a larger increase in gameplay then have them spend all that time on the dunk contest.

[Sauru]

i 100% agree with you

[Guest]

Dynasty Mode (ie a multi-season mode), All-Star Weekend, sliders and the ability to save screenshots are just a few things off the top of my head that have been suggested in Wishlists and added through the years. I'm sure if we went through all the Wishlists since NBA Live 98 we could find a lot of things that have been added. As far as gameplay goes, a lot of the suggestions in the NBA Live 2004 Wishlist for improvements on NBA Live 2003's gameplay have been implemented.

How do you know that EA added those features because of the wish list people sent in? Those features are not so unique that the Live developers cannot think of. I doubt they really read those wish lists at all...

[busta_cap]

How do you know that EA added those features because of the wish list people sent in? Those features are not so unique that the Live developers cannot think of. I doubt they really read those wish lists at all...

Actually, they do. And, as stated before, there is proof.

You are probably partially correct, though, in that some of the changes were indeed logical ones that the development team could easily have come up with on their own. But there are others -- big ones -- that could only have come from the player community. This is the overwhelmingly-dominant NBA Live site on the web, and for some time it was practically the only one at all. And certainly this one has the largest following and most active community.

How can we know that NBA Live developers read this site? Tim Tschirmer is a producer for EA Sports' NBA Live series, and he is the founder of the NBA Live Series Center (where you are currently reading these words).

[T-Comm55]

The features may seem obvious but as said before they dont have time to incorporate everything in the game so they look at all the wishlists and pick the ones that everyone seems to want and try to build it into the game.

[J@3]

How do you know they do that? You're just speculating. I agree with busta_cap though it's highly unlikely that EA pay no attention to this site or what people think purely because Tim was the one that started it all.

[Andrew]

Dynasty Mode (ie a multi-season mode), All-Star Weekend, sliders and the ability to save screenshots are just a few things off the top of my head that have been suggested in Wishlists and added through the years. I'm sure if we went through all the Wishlists since NBA Live 98 we could find a lot of things that have been added. As far as gameplay goes, a lot of the suggestions in the NBA Live 2004 Wishlist for improvements on NBA Live 2003's gameplay have been implemented.

How do you know that EA added those features because of the wish list people sent in? Those features are not so unique that the Live developers cannot think of. I doubt they really read those wish lists at all...

I happen to know that the Wishlist is read, as are ideas posted in our forum. As for features being added because of the Wishlist, I said:

Of course, whether or not some of the features made it into the game as a result of the Wishlist or simply the evolution of the game and vision of the production team is open to speculation, but in either case they're things that we've wanted that have made the game.

[Metsis]

Wishlists do add something to the game every year... Or the team just finds confirmation from it to something they were thinking about adding to the game...

The fact is that in January the team probably has some general idea on what new they are going to add to the game. Maybe it's something bigger from the last wishlist or something else. The bigger things that are suggested for Live 06 might not make it to the game until Live 07 or 08...

One thing I can be sure of that we made a difference from Live 04 to 05 is the fact that the CALENDAR returned. We put out some really solid grounds for the return of the calendar and making the off-season into a calendar based mode too! Maybe it was coming none-the-less, but that is one MAJOR thing we had on our wishlist for 2005 and it was in the game.

The argument on "is something added due to a wishlist or some developers idea" is a pure guessing game. A developer might come up with it, but he might have seen it on a sight somewhere and really doesn't remember where, the thought has just been cooking up in his head and has born into fruitation in the long run... How do even we come up with the stuff we put on the wishlists in the first place??? Who knows how the human mind works... And it's totally fruitless to argue about that.

[Andrew]

The bottom line is, by doing the Wishlists and posting in the forum our ideas and suggestions have the potential to be used in the development of NBA Live. If we say nothing, we can be 100% certain our ideas aren't being heard by the production team.

[Matt]

i think some inclusions are no brainers but others are with the held of gamers. I doubt EA people have enough time to sit down and PROPERLY test the game over time like us gamers and that's where our input comes in.

It's good to know that our input is at least heard.

[Sonic98]

I think they do read them, but I also think they could be more of the stuff in than they do. It really makes no sense for some of the same things to be on there 3 and 4 years in a row. I really don't see how certain things would be that big a deal to add. Adding something like the option to have more than 1 person during practice should not be that hard. Tweaking how blocking works should not be that hard. I'm not on the development team, but I have been involved in those of other companies, and I know a lot of the stuff they don't put in during the next revisison is stuff they just had to leave out or that would have prevented them from meeting a deadline.

[Sauru]

the thing is, they have 1 year to produce a game, just 1. most games run on atleast a 2 year production plan. bigger games go as much as 5.

[Andrew]

That's why we have a top wishes section in the Wishlist, to let the production team know what we feel are the most pressing issues.

[Mike Bradford]

yeah. unfortunately they dont always see it the same way we do.

[Metsis]

They see it well enough... It's hard to balance out the game so that there are no guys averaging 8 blocks per game in simulation and in gameplay. The simulation can be more easily managed, but the way you play the game and defend is a whole other story...

There are as many different playing styles as there are players so it's hard to figure out what gets the best balance for everyone.

But if you look at the real basket ball game... There are basically very few blocks... Only like 6-8 blocks per game per team... That means that something like 90 shots are being blocked like 5-10% of the time... So they should eliminate most of the blocks, but just make the shots way harder to make. This is what you are talking about right? But if they make this happen, we're back to NBA Live 2001 level where you had way too many rebounds and the AI center always seemed to get 20 boards in each game... It's almost certainly has to be either way, especially with all the different playing stylres... You either get too many blocks or you get too many boards. It's hard to balance it out to the perfect amount. Maybe make more longer rebounds so the guards and forwards would pick more boards up on defense rather than just making them all fall into the centers hands.

It ain't easy... When you get it right for someone, another person starts dragging on you that the very same thing is now totally flawed.

[Andrew]

In theory, that's where sliders should help and they do to a certain extent. Unfortunately the blocking sliders weren't effective enough in NBA Live 2005.

[Metsis]

In theory, that's where sliders should help and they do to a certain extent. Unfortunately the blocking sliders weren't effective enough in NBA Live 2005.

Still, most of the boards end up for the center or the power forward... I rarely get 5 boards with my guards or small forward and usually get more with the big boys. I do play alot of my bench guys too, so that too bothers the guard boarding as there are more players to grab rebounds with.

But in Live 2005, did the "no block" cause a harder shot? I know it counts for something, but there should be an "almost blocked" ratio that makes the shooting really tough after the blocked end result. And this is something that isn't in Live 2005 for sure. You know, those shots that really just barely escape the defenses claws...

But I really don't know how that all works, so it's a guessing game for me. There should be different end results for attempted blocks:

1. Block succesful
2. Block almost succesful
3. Good challenge
4. Bad block attempt
5. No challenge at all

With 1 clearly means getting the block and as the number raises the less distraction the defender is able to make for the shooter... Usual results being 3-4 on long jumpers. Maybe 2-3 on short shots. 3-4 on post moves. With 1 and 5 always being an option when the guy is right on the money or his jumping timing is just way off.

[Andrew]

I don't think jumping for the block or the freestyle "Hands Up" defense had as much impact on the shots in Live 2005 as it did in Live 2004. Hopefully that's fixed in Live 06, with more shots challenged with a reasonable amount of blocks.

I think the most difficult part is probably maintaining realism while allowing for freak occurrences. Sometimes players do block a lot of shots, like Josh Smith's 10 block performance this year. And of course, the game can only ever be as realistic as we make it, not to mention the fact unwise play can result in the CPU getting more blocks than usual.

[Matt]

the blocks are deffinately an issue that needs to be eliminated immediately. 8bpg by a team is sufficient enough.

If we want a more realistic game then EA needs to slow the pace of the game down. This isn't something that we can effectively do with the sliders. For example if we dont want a fast break game we simply put the speed sliders down...that kills fastbreaks and the halfcourt game because it makes players unrealistically slow. So basically we sacrifice the halfcourt game in order to have limited fastbreaks. If EA set the default speed/style to less fastbreak then we'd have more realism. The number of rebounds would surely go down too given that teams would be taking less shots. Perhaps team game styles should be adopted. Every team in the L can play fastbreak basketball, but only a certain few do (Phx the obvious), others play half and half and others play halfcourt (Detroit, SAS)....but in the game everyteam is a fastbreak team.