APF 2K9: What Could Have Been

[metallicatz]

I'd venture to say there are/were far more hardcore 2K gamers playing offline than online. APF was a day 1 purchase for me, but since the game was virtually a direct port of 2K5 (which I already have and would rather play than APF) missing 90% of the bells & whistles........it wasn't more than a couple of weeks before it went back to Gamestop. I know I wasn't the only one judging from the big stack of used copies I saw on the shelf when I took mine back. 2K screwed up huge with APF.

[asu666]

"While we dont have alot of info, they did say that the series is not dead. So we really dont know wtf is going on." kcxiv

EA has the NFL covered for years to come. 2K has a better playing game and should press on with the total customization theme and forget the licenses. I would love to create my own league, or be able to download some crazy fan's version of the NCAA or even the NFL. It's a really beautiful concept because 2K basically just has to focus on making little improvements to the gameplay engine, graphics, and content creation tools. Most game devs would love it if they just had to come up with the tools to trick out a game and didn't actually have to design every little detail themselves and put all of the assets in place.

[Valdarez]

You really lost me on the whole football Gods concept. They need to dump the Legends in the game, use the money they spent on the Legends on putting a story / backdrop on a custom league, and then provide complete customization such that we can have a virtual Orange Box for football gaming where we can create our own NCAA, NFL, Arena League, Canadian style, or even high school football leagues.

Other than the Football Gods concept, most of what you presented has been discussed in the forums. In fact, there are a couple of lines there that look copy/pasted directly from the forums themselves.

I read a lot on APF, so for me at least, nothing new in the story.

A better game would include a fictional league, with a complete backdrop ala Blitz the League, and there's an expansion where you're allowed to create a team from scratch. You get a few left over Vets, but must build the team from scratch, starting out with mostly scrubs. As the team progresses, players gain abilities, and raise in their Tier (progress).

Instead of a normal CAP mode, players create football players using an RPG'ish style build trees, such that players can't create over powered players, and they have a speed back, power back, or all around back, or a speed WR, or a possession WR.

I have a 20 page write up that I put together for 2K Sports that they basically ignored that I can share some day if you want a write that incorporates ideas from the forums, and a lot of other new ones like the ones listed here, complete with game play changes and screen shots to boot. PM me if you want an article on it, and I'll see what I can do.

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by asu666

EA has the NFL covered for years to come. 2K has a better playing game and should press on with the total customization theme and forget the licenses. I would love to create my own league, or be able to download some crazy fan's version of the NCAA or even the NFL. It's a really beautiful concept because 2K basically just has to focus on making little improvements to the gameplay engine, graphics, and content creation tools.

Dead on. User Content is not only the future, it's now. Look at places like wikipedia, myspace, urbandictionary.com even. Users are more than willing to create their own content when it's something they enjoy.

• Focus on the tools.
• Make them PC available.
• Provide a share system (2K Share, whatever).

Sit back and watch as 2K Sports enjoys a lower cost of delivering a more realistic football experience that fans can cater to their own desires.

[Malachi]

Quote: Originally Posted by spankdatazz22

lol seems I've pissed off a lot of people with my posts the last few days here and in the Madden forum. No prob. First, my opinion on the football gods idea was just that - an opinion. And I thought I did point out that what the author brought up was that we all have our ideas about which direction 2K should've taken. I don't think we've ever been able to come up with a consensus on what the game should be. Pre-release, there was a strong contingent of people that wanted fully customizable, 2 conference, 4 division, 32-teams at a minimum - which sounds awfully familar. Or at least the option to create that format, or any format they desired.

As I’ve said at the opening of my last post, I don’t care about what you think about the article being good or not. Especially when you admitted to not even reading it, but yet still found a way to be critical of it as if it’s slamming the game for being crap. Again, the football gods idea was nothing more than an idea, a creative one at that, that seemed like it could have actually worked and added much needed substance and replay value to the game. I applaud the article and the person who wrote it for the simple fact that this is one of the few ideas I’ve heard where it could actually work. Sure it would need to be tweaked, and reformulated in a way that it would all make sense, but the core of the idea is solid. It’s funny that you say people wanted the ability to fully customize everything, but yet that was one of 2K’s biggest selling points for All Pro 2K8, customization. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a non-licensed game to be largely customizable. Regardless of what you and I think, 2K needed something that would make people say “okay, this may not be the NFL, but it’s a hell of a football and gaming experience that I see myself playing for awhile, at least to the next installment comes out.” And, in my opinion All Pro definitely didn’t do that and fell short of it.


I see those who are fans of All Pro say there’s so many combinations of players that they’ve have yet to use. Wow, is that what’s suppose to keep gamers coming back to play the game, putting together different teams? I’m sorry, but I’m not appease nor am I enticed by the thought of putting together different teams every time I’m done with a single season. In fact, this goes to my point even more about customization, franchise mode, etc and how those things were strongly needed. I never felt connected to with my “created team”. A lot of people fail to factor in that part when talking about sports game. A lot of people buy sports games solely because they are connected to their favorite teams or players. All pro needed to find a way to feel that void, and I think a largely customizable game, and a franchise mode would have been somewhat a remedy for that.

Quote:

Regarding the franchise issue, most people logically assume if they had added one it would've been bare-bones simply because of the complexity of trying to develop something new. How would progression work with the new ratings system that has no numbers visible to the gamer? How would the legends be incorporated? What would be a fair financial structure? How are the yearly pool of college players generated/raked/rated? These are just things off the top of my head - I'm sure there's a ton of complexity involved in trying to develop a legitimate franchise mode. I don't think any of the current sports games have had to start from scratch developing a franchise mode. For example, while I'd guess while much of Madden next gen's franchise mode isn't exactly the same as the current gen version, I'd guess they were able to use *some* of the current gen version's code as a base. And well they should, because franchise mode was very well done last gen. While 2K might be able to keep the format, pretty much all the names/numbers had to change at the very least, because they no longer had the NFLPA license. Then they'd have to think how to structure players given their focus on player abilities versus player ratings. I'm no programmer; I'm just wondering aloud what I'd think would be hurdles in trying to develop a functional franchise mode. I was also taking into account they didn't have the same number of people working on the game as they did the NFL2Kx games. Yes, I should've taken the god idea more seriously and looked at how it might've circumvented some of the issues I noted above. But as I said - everybody had their own idea on what they wanted the game to be. For some, the themed stadiums were too much and not grounded in reality enough.

I said this in my last post. You said the reason why All pro didn’t have a franchise mode was because they were trying to branch out from the NFL. And I also find it funny that you’re asking all of these questions when the article itself found away that All pro could have gotten a franchise mode to work. To answer some of your questions however, they could have kept the same system that they have. When a player is progressing, or having a “hot streak”, weapons or special abilities could have been added under the players’ profile. The same thing goes for regression, weapons could have been taking away. Legends could have easily been included in an ongoing franchise mode. You could have had them where they were in their prime, thus playing for a longer period of time, you could put time constraints on how long a legend plays, not to let my ideas run amok, but it could have been goals that a legend wanted to accomplish, and once achieving them, or not achieving them, they would retire. The financial structure (if there would be any at all) would be up to the developers to decide. Why would the pool of players that you choose from have to be college players?



All of the questions you ask just goes to show that you’re being closed minded about this entire thing, and of course, you’re trying to defend 2K for not having a franchise mode in All pro. And I also think you’re misunderstanding what people are asking for. I for one am not asking for a long drawn out franchise mode that would span over 20 years; all I’m asking for is a good 5 years of franchise mode.

But you know what, I wouldn’t have had a problem and I would have lowered my expectations drastically if they would have took the NFL 2K5 route and charged 20 bucks for this game. It could have been a reintroduction to 2K football if you will, but 60 bucks? I bought All Pro for the simple fact that I thought it could be on the level of NFL 2K5.Not exceeding it, but it would at the very least be on par with it. I was wrong. You see the price that All Pro 2K8 is now? That’s exactly how much it’s worth, and how much it should have cost from the jump.

You keep bringing up however many people worked on the game, again, I don’t care to know and it doesn’t concern me as a gamer who has nothing invested in 2K sports. If you want to use that as an excuse, I can easily say that they had over three years between football titles to get ideas out in the open and make something concrete. Honestly, what you need to realize, NO game is above criticism. That includes All Pro, Madden, NCAA Football, NBA 2K, NBA Live, etc. People will always find something wrong with a game and yes people have visions on how they want a game to play and how its played. Some want the ultimate sim experience from all of these titles aforementioned, and some just want to have fun while playing. Usually, what a developer does is try to find a common ground to appease both hardcore and casual gamers, and that’s when the conflict and criticisms take place. All pro is no different than any other game. But the difference is when you hear how things should be fixed or added REPEATEDLY. That’s when you know there’s a problem, and that’s when these developers are force to listen on how they can fix or improve their game.

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

It’s funny that you say people wanted the ability to fully customize everything, but yet that was one of 2K’s biggest selling points for All Pro 2K8, customization. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a non-licensed game to be largely customizable. Regardless of what you and I think, 2K needed something that would make people say “okay, this may not be the NFL, but it’s a hell of a football and gaming experience that I see myself playing for awhile, at least to the next installment comes out.” And, in my opinion All Pro definitely didn’t do that and fell short of it.

Of course it fell short - they were one and done. But as you said, they seem to have focused more on the online portion of the game versus the offline portion of the game. As I said, rightly or wrongly that's the direction they chose. And from the way the game is structured, they wanted to maintain some sense of balance so you wouldn't get online and see the same combinations of players on every team. AS I SAID, as a mostly offline player myself the offline portion of the game is somewhat disappointing because it seems needlessly restrictive. But I'm not sure why certain decisions were made. I'd guess if you're going to have full customization offline, they may have needed to have two roster files, one for online and one for offline so there would be no way a gamer could circumvent the system and create some player combination that was unstoppable and make the online portion of the game mostly unplayable. It took less than a month for someone to create a 7ft (i think) receiver with x-capabilities.

The reason I brought up the number of people working on the game is because there's no way they'd be able to account for the unlimited number of combinations and variables people were going to come up with. Things every other dev has to deal with. But if you're working with less people, it only makes sense to extend yourself enough as to be able to control things to a certain degree.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

I see those who are fans of All Pro say there’s so many combinations of players that they’ve have yet to use. Wow, is that what’s suppose to keep gamers coming back to play the game, putting together different teams?

For online players I could see where it is. And where your skills as a player versus your choices while working within the limitations of the system truly show if someone is the better player.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

You said the reason why All pro didn’t have a franchise mode was because they were trying to branch out from the NFL. And I also find it funny that you’re asking all of these questions when the article itself found away that All pro could have gotten a franchise mode to work.

*sigh* First, I seriously doubt I said All Pro didn't have a franchise mode because they were trying to be different from the NFL lol. I said there are complications in trying to implement a franchise mode and rattled off questions I'd have in trying to create a franchise mode. I'm sure there are a ton more issues that need to be taken into account that I'm not even considering. Of course there are probably ways it could work - just as they could choose a way that didn't work. I spoke to the complexity of the situation.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

All of the questions you ask just goes to show that you’re being closed minded about this entire thing, and of course, you’re trying to defend 2K for not having a franchise mode in All pro. And I also think you’re misunderstanding what people are asking for. I for one am not asking for a long drawn out franchise mode that would span over 20 years; all I’m asking for is a good 5 years of franchise mode.

see above. glad you were only asking for a 5yrs frachise mode lol. That's a new one to me

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

But you know what, I wouldn’t have had a problem and I would have lowered my expectations drastically if they would have took the NFL 2K5 route and charged 20 bucks for this game. It could have been a reintroduction to 2K football if you will, but 60 bucks? I bought All Pro for the simple fact that I thought it could be on the level of NFL 2K5. Not exceeding it, but it would at the very least be on par with it. I was wrong. You see the price that All Pro 2K8 is now? That’s exactly how much it’s worth, and how much it should have cost from the jump.

Cost definitely factored into people's expectations. And in retrospect it would've been better to release the game at $39.99 or $49.99. But practically every game releases at the same price regardless of quality - Superman 360 had the same msrp as Grand Theft Auto. I've seen no original 360/PS3 release at less than that so I don't get the expectation that the title should've been $20 since that's all it's worth in your opinion (guess the price is lower). Expecting the game to be on par with NFL2K5 never should've been an expectation - that's totally unrealistic on your part.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malachi

You keep bringing up however many people worked on the game, again, I don’t care to know and it doesn’t concern me as a gamer who has nothing invested in 2K sports. If you want to use that as an excuse, I can easily say that they had over three years between football titles to get ideas out in the open and make something concrete.

See above; the number of people working on the game combined with the need to develop a new football concept should've brought about more grounded expectations. I listed a bunch of problems I had with the game, and I have a ton more. But my expectations were a little more realistic. Just as I wouldn't expect the world from Backbreaker when it comes out. But many people will.

[mwjr]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

You really lost me on the whole football Gods concept. They need to dump the Legends in the game, use the money they spent on the Legends on putting a story / backdrop on a custom league, and then provide complete customization such that we can have a virtual Orange Box for football gaming where we can create our own NCAA, NFL, Arena League, Canadian style, or even high school football leagues. Other than the Football Gods concept, most of what you presented has been discussed in the forums. In fact, there are a couple of lines there that look copy/pasted directly from the forums themselves. I read a lot on APF, so for me at least, nothing new in the story. A better game would include a fictional league, with a complete backdrop ala Blitz the League, and there's an expansion where you're allowed to create a team from scratch. You get a few left over Vets, but must build the team from scratch, starting out with mostly scrubs. As the team progresses, players gain abilities, and raise in their Tier (progress). Instead of a normal CAP mode, players create football players using an RPG'ish style build trees, such that players can't create over powered players, and they have a speed back, power back, or all around back, or a speed WR, or a possession WR. I have a 20 page write up that I put together for 2K Sports that they basically ignored that I can share some day if you want a write that incorporates ideas from the forums, and a lot of other new ones like the ones listed here, complete with game play changes and screen shots to boot. PM me if you want an article on it, and I'll see what I can do.

I wouldn't dump the legends; I think there is a certain appeal to that.

I would, however, make their presence optional. I'd include a variety of modes - e.g. season, franchise, career, superstar - with fictional leagues, teams and players.

However, I'd also add an option to each of those modes which would allow me to play either (a)without any legends or (b)with legends.

Problem solved.

Where's my royalty check, 2K?

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by mwjr

I wouldn't dump the legends; I think there is a certain appeal to that. I would, however, make their presence optional. I'd include a variety of modes - e.g. season, franchise, career, superstar - with fictional leagues, teams and players. However, I'd also add an option to each of those modes which would allow me to play either (a)without any legends or (b)with legends. Problem solved. Where's my royalty check, 2K?

So you want to incur the costs of the x-NFLers and a fictional league. That's too much to ask from a game that's struggling to get by. I'd cut the costs where ever I can, while still providing the ability for the fans to create any custom content they want. If I can't track an ROI to the investment, then I wouldn't incur the cost of the investment. If anything, APF2K8 has shown us that the Legend players are not enough to sale the game.