Basketball GM finally has an All-Star Game!
One of the most common feature requests has been to add an All-Star Game. I was always kind of reluctant to do it, both because it'd be a little messy to implement and because the All-Star Game doesn't actually matter, right? It's just a diversion. It's just, you know, fun. Like a video game is supposed to be. Yes, even a text-based simulator like Basketball GM still needs to be fun. So now there is a nice fun All-Star Game. Go play now to see it for yourself, or read on for details.
At the beginning of the regular season phase, when the schedule is being generated, an All-Star Game will be scheduled 60% of the way through the season. For leagues with in-progress seasons, you'll have to wait until next season.
When an All-Star Game is scheduled, there will be a new entry in the Play menu, "Until All-Star Game". You can simply ignore it and keep playing as you did in the past, and all the All-Star stuff will happen in the background. Or you can simulate until the All-Star Game.
If the next game in the schedule is the All-Star Game, yet another new entry appears in the Play menu: "View All-Star draft". Again, you can simply ignore this and keep playing. But it's pretty fun. If you click it, you're taken to the All-Star draft, which works similar to the NBA's All-Star draft. The top two players are captains, and they select from a pool of 22 other top players. All-Stars are selected based on which players have the highest EWA+WS values. Unlike the NBA, conferences don't matter. If any All-Stars are injured, replacements will be selected. The injured players still get credit for being All-Stars, they just don't get to play in the game.
If a player from your team is selected as a captain, then something fun happens. You get to draft the team for him. I know this is silly and unrealistic, but it's also fun!
After the draft, the actual game occurs. Like a normal game, you can either watch it live or simulate it and view the completed box score. The box score is available by going to Stats > Game Log and switching the team to "All-Star Game", or by going to League > History > All-Star History.
The All-Star Game has a few differences relative to a normal game:
- Faster pace
- Less defense
- Fewer injuries
- No home court advantage
The end result is a lot of scoring!
After the game is over, an MVP is selected. The MVP is displayed below the box score.
All-Star selections and MVPs show up as awards in the places you'd expect: the event log, player pages, and the Awards Records page. There is also the aforementioned All-Star History page (linked from League > History), which shows the result of every past All-Star game along with the captains and MVP.
If all this sounds horrifying to you, there is also a God Mode option to disable the All-Star game completely.
This is just the beginning! Eventually there will be even more All-Star features. Imagine text-based slam dunk and three point shooting contests, those would be fun.
And this is all only in Basketball GM, not Football GM, because an All-Star Game is both more complicated and less important in football. I hope to bring it to Football GM in the future.
