Quote:
Originally Posted by joefromchicago
If the program is designed to view 6' 2" players as tall and 5' 8" players as short, then that's a problem if the average height is 5' 8". I doubt that the program looks at averages rather than absolute numbers.
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I'm not sure on what basis you believe this, but I think game either does, or could, view the distribution of heights assigned to fictional players based on standard deviation from the average height it has stored within, and that's what the adjustment would respond to.
Just for the sake of discussion, let's build on your example and say that currently, 6' 2" is tall, 5' 8" is short and 5' 11" is average, for players born in the 1980s. (Whether those are the actual numbers is irrelevant to the discussion.)
Let's say the the adjustment for players born in the 1880s is -4%, meaning the assigned height for a group of players born in the 1880s, including bands of tall, average and short players, is -4% versus a similarly sized group of players born in the 1980s.
That would mean that for players born in the 1880s, their tall player wuld be -4% shorter at 5' 11", their average player would be -4% at 5' 8", and their short players would be -4% shorter at 5' 5". Starting with a base height level for players born in the 1980s, for players born 100 years earlier, every category would be adjusted down -4% from the current height guidelines, and heights would be assigned based on that.
IOW, using this method, at no point would the game say, "the average height of a player in the 1880s would be 5' 8", which I think is short, so this does not compute". It would say, "the average height of a player born ten decades prior to the current norm would be 5' 11" minus the ten-decade adjustment of -4%". It would never make a value judgment on what it thinks is tall or short. It would simply make the adjustment.
Am I making sense?