Living Rosters ruin NBA 2K11 - Mos1ted's Blog

Mos1ted's Blog

Living Rosters ruin NBA 2K11

Posted on December 20, 2010 at 05:39 AM.

Ever have one of those days when you go to bed really early only to way up at like 4 something wandering around your house aimlessly like a hopeless insomniac? Well, I'm having one of those days. After browsing the internet for an half hour, I decided to get out of the warm bed and go down to my cold, drafty basement to get some NBA 2K11 in.

I played a quick NBA Today game of Celtics - Pacers (the NBA Today for Dec 20 hadn't updated yet). Since I was using the Celtics, I decided to play on Hall of Fame to see how the A.I. would play me with an inferior team. Half way through the second quarter, I frustratingly pause the game. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why I was having such a hard time getting easy looks inside when I clearly had the space and opportunity. Also, for whatever reason, my teammates were playing more like JV bench warmers than NBA pros. Passes that had good intentions were easily getting picked off even when I made my best efforts to ensure a clear passing lane and utilize lead passing to lead the receiver away from any nearby defenders. What was even worse was that the speed threshold in this game (if it had one) was clearly on 100 (catch the Madden reference?) because I couldn't get any separation from defenders despite having the quicker player in some matchups. This affected me taking advantage of clear lanes to the basket and on fast breaks. I couldn't figure out what was up.

The game was set to Simulation, so I decided to set it to Default to see if it changed anything. Nope. Same puzzling plays were occurring. Dumb teammates. Players attempting unneccessary acrobatic layups that actually lowered the chance of the shot going in than if they just went straight up. Players going for contested layups when the space and opportunity was there for a simple flush. Players missing give me layups. It was just utterly frustrating. Clearly the Pacers defense was not this good. Thinking that the game was just overcompensating for the difficulty setting, I decided to humble myself and play on All-Star. New setting, same result. My conclusion? This game has the most inconsistent gameplay I ever witnessed. Some days it plays wonderfully; other times it plays like garbage. And I couldn't put my finger on it as to way. Then it dawned on me; it's has to be something with the day to day roster updates.

To test my theory, I decided reset the roster back to the default ones that shipped with the game. And what do you know? I admittedly notice a difference from my first possession. For starters, I was able to pass the ball more efficiently and effectively. Players were responding to my controls better. And I was able to get the separation I deserved, especially on fast breaks. The CPU wasn't reacting super fast to everything that was happening on the court. This was all played on All-Star. I decided to bump the game back up to Hall of Fame. Besides the better execution from the CPU (which is what you hope for when you bump up the difficulty setting), I still wasn't seeing any of the craziness that existed before I reset the rosters. It could be placebo, or it could be the fact that the living rosters do indeed change the way the CPU plays and how (IN)effective the human AI plays.

I will have to run more test games to see if my observations are consistent. What are some of your thoughts? Am I just seeing things? Are you witnessing the same thing? All opinions welcomed. Just don't blindly bash me with that "You're just not that good at the game trash - I'm a grown man. I've been playing and watching the sport of basketball for over 20 years (literally), so I know what should be happening in the realm of basketball or not to determine if what I'm experiencing is faulty programming or my own fault.

Comments

# 1 STLRams @ Dec 20

Thank you for posting this blog. I have been saying for a couple of years now that the 2K Insider and his living rosters are the only weak point in the 2K series. He doesn't adjust players and teams tendencies correctly, and alot of mistakes he makes with players attributes and tendencies, messes up the gameplay. What he does with the rosters has a huge effect on the gameplay for NBA2K11. The devs really need to look into this for this year and next year for NBA2K12 and come up with a new roster update system. Roster makers like Rashidi are alot better and are really indepth of what they do to there rosters, cause he understands that alot that you do with attributes and tendencies has a huge effect on the gameplay.

The sad thing about this, is if we want to see the NBA Today feature - which is one of the greatest presentation features in sports games history - we have to use the living rosters, by the 2K Insider. Ive begged the 2K Devs for years to alllow us to use whatever rosters we want for offline gameplay so that we could still play NBA Today games,but it doesn't seem to get anywhere. Me and alot of other people post on the 2K Insider blogs about suggestion changes that he needs to make to the living roster but he only responds to change suggestions to attribute raises, headbands, and shoes. And don't even get me started on the whole injured players aspect of his living rosters. 2K this is something that needs to change, quickly.

# 2 Mos1ted @ Dec 20

I just can't get over how much better the game plays with the default rosters vs the latest living roster. Controller responsiveness is just so much better. My main beef with the living roster is that the game seems more canimation heavy when using those. There's too many instances of unnecessary contact which forces the user to go into animations he/she can't easily break out of. This effects gameplay, controller responsiveness, and offensive spacing as well. The CPU recovers too quickly even for a higher difficulty setting.

I just went ahead and updated all the transactions using the default rosters and just sacrificed not having every rookie currently in the league. Maybe in the future I'll create the ones that's missing, but I'm satisfied enough right now to start a franchise with my current "Updated" default roster. I would say that with the updates I made today, my rosters are 95% accurate to the real life NBA rosters. Just have a few teams missing players that weren't in the game when it shipped (most, if not all rookies - no impact rookies so I'm willing to move forward with that sacrifice).

# 3 DJ @ Dec 20

Yeah, I've noticed this difference, too. When I play my Lakers 90-91 Association with PortlandBlazer's roster, the game plays much smoother than it does when I play an NBA Today game with Living Rosters. The game is like night and day.

Try Nogster's roster for an Association, too. They are really good and based off the default roster.

# 4 STLRams @ Dec 20

Fellas this is something that 2K really needs to listen and pay attention to cause this is really hurting the gameplay factor on NBA2K. Ive mentioned this to the devs to Ronnie and to the 2K Insider, and I feel like it falls on deaf ears for the past couple of years. They really need to implement some kind of new roster update system. If others are willing to, I will also keep messaging the 2K devs about this issue until they finally try to do something about this.

# 5 juicey79 @ Dec 21

agreed, when u get the ball on offense i notice players lag behind the ball handler especially on possible fast breaks...it'll be 2 on 5 which is so fustrating because none of my horses are running with me