[Wolverine Studios] DDS: Pro Basketball 2017 Dev Diary #1 – New In-Season Features

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A new basketball season is right around the corner and so is the latest version of our highly acclaimed pro basketball sim Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2017. We brought you a few developer diaries with the last version of the game and we’re going to be once again highlighting some of the new features for this year’s game. We’re kicking off the dev diary series with a look at some of the best new stuff you will find while playing out a season. Additional diaries will highlight the all new Matchup Maker feature as well as the expanded historical play. If you missed our announcement about the game and trailer video you can view it here.

SCOUTING

One of the most exciting parts of the game is of course the college draft. We’ve added additional running draft commentary again this year but the biggest addition comes in your pre-draft work options. We’ve added 12 scouting regions across the United States and the rest of the world for you to assign your scouting staff to. In order to get anything but the very basic information prior to workouts you’re going to need to commit some resources around the globe.

Depending on the amount of resources you commit to an area you also may get additional emails during the year from your scout staff on a player they were impressed with. Review your emails prior to the draft workouts or use the in game notepad to keep your own notes on players you may want to target thanks to the heads up from your scouting staff.

LINEUP TRACKING

Every general manager today craves as much data as possible whether its advanced stats (we have those) or cameras in the arena to track how fast players move from spot to spot (that’s not a feature…yet anyway) – the bottom line is information is king and we aim to bring you as much as possible to make your decisions. Introducing lineup tracking – a new feature to the series this year. Lineup tracking will keep track of every single lineup combination you put out on the floor and allows you to analyze how each lineup is doing.

The biggest strength of this new feature is that it gives you one more tool to understand your team. Maybe you find a certain combination of players that seems to perform well together and you adjust your lineup matrix to get them more minutes together. Maybe you see that an offensive superstar is actually a negative to your team unless he’s playing with defensive-minded players. You might learn that the team winning games because a player was injured wasn’t just a fluke but that there’s real statistical data to back up that he’s a better fit. The possibilities of what you can learn and then also tinker with because of the data are endless.

MENU IMPROVEMENTS

We have always made it a priority to give you an interface that made you forget you were playing a text-sim game so for this year we’re building off of last year’s UI overhaul and added a few touches here and there to make it even better. The most noticeable is the team menu bar across the top of the screen. Now changing screens from team to team is a simple click away instead of having to scroll to a drop box and scroll for the team you want.

We also realize that with the additional coverage the game received last year that we brought many new players into the fold and that jumping into the game might have been a little overwhelming or that things took some getting used to. That’s why we’ve started an in-game FAQ section to provide some tips to new players as well as serve as quick reminders for our grizzled vets.

PLAYER PERSONALITY IMPROVEMENTS

Player personalities are a big part of the game (if you choose – you can still turn off this feature if you like). Nothing is worse than finally thinking you have it all together on paper to win a championship only to be derailed by some personality conflicts on the team or even by a moody player in general who has decided he’s not giving his best effort.

We’ve made strides this year to limit the number of incidents you are presented with while increasing the importance of handling a situation. We’ve also added additional feedback this year so that when you’re answering questions from the media about a player or reviewing an incident report that you get a better understanding of just exactly what the impacts were of the actions that happened.

NEW GAME OPTIONS

Injuries are also one of those things in life that can derail a contender and we know that sometimes not everyone likes things to really be as realistic as they are so we’ve decided to give the control to you this season with our new injury factor. Want a league where everyone can play without fear of injury? Go for it. Want to see how much fun it would be for the injury report to be an injury novel? Crank it up. We’re leaving the choice up to you for each league you start.

We’ve also added some new options when creating your league. If you’re going to start with the 2016-17 rosters you’ll have the option of starting with players actually being injured as they are going into opening night or reset the league for everyone to be healthy (we’re looking at you Philly fans). We even are offering the chance to start with a blank historical slate so that your favorite franchise isn’t dogged with years of championship envy.

Thank you for taking a look at our initial developer diary – be sure to watch in the coming days for future developer diaries as well as information on the release and pre-order specials. Basketball sim heaven is only a short time away!

 

 

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