Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five memorable roster mod complaints that I’ve received over the years.

One of the annoying things about creative endeavours – especially online content creation – is the way that negative remarks stick in your mind. You can read nine glowingly positive things from people who enjoyed what you did, and one bluntly harsh comment from someone who didn’t, and somehow it’s the latter that sticks in your mind. Even though the takeaway should be that nine out of ten people liked your work, somehow you focus on the fact that one person wasn’t a fan. While negativity bias may have evolutionary importance, it’s not conducive to creative satisfaction!

After all, when you create something that you hope will be enjoyed, it’s dismaying to hear that someone didn’t like it. Of course, when it comes to a project such as a roster mod for a basketball video game, the complaints can feel rather disproportionate. To that point, some feedback is just entertainingly ridiculous, so it’s not necessarily a case of being hurt by what was said. Indeed, even negative comments that stung a little at the time end up being amusing to look back upon! And so, while negativity bias may have helped commit the following roster mod complaints to memory – and some are examples of how not to provide constructive feedback – I can laugh about them now.

1. Outdated Schedule in a Current Roster

Since the very beginning of our modding community, people have strived to keep the previous year’s game and even older releases up to date for the current season. I was immediately drawn to the idea – I’d already been trying my best to do that with NBA Live 96 PC – and once I learned how to mod rosters, I also began releasing updates for others to use. I quickly discovered that if you release a roster mod, you’re going to get a mixture of thanks, constructive feedback, and complaints! It didn’t deter me though, and I went on to make rosters for NBA Live for many years, until I finally got burned out. It was simply too much work for games that I and others were no longer playing.

I will say that most people were appreciative and supportive of my efforts, as well as respectful in their feedback. Occasionally you would get someone who wasn’t polite, sometimes due to lofty expectations. There was one person who angrily complained that the roster didn’t update the schedule in Dynasty mode, fuming “How can you call this a roster update if it has last year’s schedule” (or words to that effect). Never mind that all the latest trades and signings were included, the new rookies had been added complete with faces, and team branding had been updated! Frankly, people who make complaints like that don’t understand the time and effort that goes into a roster mod.

2. A Minor Rotation Inaccuracy

Speaking of overreactions when sharing complaints about a roster mod, some people have a tendency to blow minor issues way out of proportion. It’s even more egregious when what they’re criticising isn’t necessarily a mistake! An example that’s stuck in my memory is when someone came in hot with complaints that a current roster mod of mine was filled with lineup mistakes. They didn’t say what these mistakes were; only that I’d done a “terrible job”. After a bit of prodding to find out what they were actually referring to, they mentioned that I’d made Luke Walton the sixth man on the Los Angeles Lakers, and that a couple of other bench players were also out of order.

That’s all! The lineup for one team out of 30 wasn’t in the order they felt it should’ve been, so the whole roster was terrible and full of mistakes. Furthermore, I’d ordered the Lakers’ bench that way to reflect recent box scores, though they had a point that it didn’t gel with the players’ minutes on the season as a whole. To that point though, they could’ve just said “hey, the Lakers lineup is wrong”, but instead they opted for hyperbolic insults, even after being asked for clarification so that I could address the problem. It’s the same reason “this sucks” and “make gameplay better” aren’t helpful comments when compiling a wishlist. Constructive feedback needs to be specific!

3. Rookie Ratings

Whenever you create a roster mod, a majority of the complaints will be about player ratings. This is understandable, and I’d suggest that you do actually want to receive this feedback. Even if you know your stuff when it comes to basketball and how to translate real performance into a game’s ratings, when you’re working with hundreds of players, it’s easy to lose track of some of them. There’ll also likely be some players that you’re less familiar with, so a helpful heads up is appreciated. Of course, when it comes to rookie ratings, all we can do is speculate before we have some actual data to work from. Those first rookie ratings are a rough draft, erring on the side of caution.

Most people do understand that, and are respectful in suggesting any improvements. However, other people have strong opinions but weak communication skills, and thus struggle to provide feedback without being incredibly hostile. That description would certainly apply to the person who took exception to my first pass at rating the Class of 2005 in a roster for NBA Live 2005. Among other insults, he derided my ratings for Andrew Bogut, declaring him to be a “sissy from Australia”. Being an Aussie myself – and an Andrew on top of that – that remark undoubtedly contributed to his venomous post becoming one of the most memorable roster mod complaints that I’ve received!

4. Melo’s Cornrows

As we’ve developed tools and techniques to mod textures and models, we’ve come to expect more comprehensive roster projects. It’s led to some truly incredible mods, so I definitely support those efforts, and have strived to add more detail to my own rosters. With that being said, because my introduction to modding came back in the 90s with NBA Live 96 PC – a game we couldn’t do much with as far as art updates – I’m more open to minimalist projects. Even in the early 2000s, dialup connections and smaller upload limits made it difficult to share large mods. Current roster updates from that time may thus seem barebones now, but believe me; a ton of effort went into them!

Because I remember a time when creating a current roster mod for the previous year’s game was more about the big picture, I haven’t always anticipated complaints about some of the finer details. To that end, I wasn’t expecting someone to get as upset as they did when one of my current roster updates for NBA Live 2005 didn’t include a face update for Carmelo Anthony after he got rid of his cornrows. The reason for that was simple: I didn’t yet have one on hand that I could use! Although I understood the importance of including such an update and intended to do so as soon as possible, like the complaint about the outdated schedule, it felt disrespectful to hours of hard work.

5. Smush Parker Allegedly Being Underrated

All these years later, this remains my favourite cautionary example of taking feedback on player ratings. As I previously mentioned, it’s certainly helpful when people point out ratings that need to be updated because it’s easy to overlook players, but not every suggestion is a good one. We all have our biases, and that was painfully apparent back when I was updating NBA Live 06 PC. A couple of people – and yes, they were Los Angeles Lakers fans – kept insisting that Smush Parker’s ratings needed to go “up, up, up!” They gushed about his defensive prowess as a master pickpocket, talked up his playmaking acumen, and basically insisted he was on the way to being a great player.

To say this is a stark contrast to how Smush Parker is remembered these days is a massive understatement! Granted, it’s become a bit of a meme to dump on Smush, but no, he wasn’t the next breakout star. As such, I wasn’t severely underrating him in my roster updates! Indeed, it’s why I began insisting that any ratings suggestions needed to be backed up with evidence, instead of just listing names and stating their ratings needed to go up or down. I’m not trying to call out Lakers fans here – OK, I sort of am – but the point is that while watching a lot of basketball does provide insights (or at least it should), our perspective of the players on our favourite teams can be skewed.

Roster makers, what are some of the weirdest and/or pettiest complaints that you’ve received about a mod you created? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Memorable Roster Mod Complaints appeared first on NLSC.