Question Concerning Playbooks

[ADW]

I haven't had a chance to play ESPN 2K5 yet, but after browsing a few different forums I've been seeing guys making posts about the playbooks being too small. Is this really the case? I highly doubt VC went back and decreased the size of the playbooks. In 2K4 each team had roughly 25-35 offensive formations where as in Madden it was roughly 12-16.

[MartinDihigo]

no , i do not think that the pbs or too small.

ther are some issues with them.

1- we cant change our playbooks online this year. - last year many players had a favorite playbook that didn't necessarily belong to the same team as their choice or even was one of the generic extra playbooks such as "west coast playbook". The playbooks were somewhat built with a group of base plays that was all about the same and then each team had additional plays that tried to suit the style of their team. For example; atlanta had some good qb running plays (if u made a offline custom playbook last year or had a favorite online pb other then your team then you know exactly what i am saying). Not having the choice online greatly increases the chance that you may not have a few of the types of plays that happen to suit you perfectly.

2. I am not sure how much the PBs have changed this year from 2k4... They are probably very similar(hopefully not exactly the same), and that is human nature that when you are familiar with something like PBs - it shrinks in our perception- it is not overwhelming. I haven't noticed if they beefed up playbooks to each have more of the extra plays to adjust for the fact that they took away the online choice?(i have some early doubts , if they did beef them up it was gradual).

finally we have a tendancy to notice that only a few plays from each formation really work extremely well for us (based on our style of play ,our team, etc...)- this is another factor that seems to shrink a playbook. Some of this is overcome once a player reaches a higher level of skill , because they will find it easier to incorporate most of the plays(allthough there will always be some plays that do not work well)


ADVANCED PLAYBOOK TOPICS - The Online Element
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In the future there are some playbook issues that really should be addressed by VC.
First we need to be able to make a custom playbook and bring it online. This adds yet another level of strategy and preparation to the online element. In fact it kind of rewards those who would spend the effort and time to develop a playbook that contained nearly all of that gamers "best" plays.
This wouldn't require any dramatic extra programming, and shouldn't kill bandwith or anything like that. It is just one of many online extras that should be added a.s.a.p(in 2k6). The online gaming is really just in it's 2nd or 3rd season of serious console sports gaming , and a very large thread could be dedicated to online extras that have yet to be implemented. Online is the future of gaming , and companies are slowly realizing that the need for a fully implemented online experience is getting rapidly higher on the average gamers list (for many of us internet savy gamers ,online experience is already a HUGE importance). Developers will begin to notice a direct link between superior online experience and sales(if they haven't already among certain (growing) consumer group(s))


Taking that idea further we will want to be able to make our own plays, build a playbook of them, and bring them online for competion. - This would cause a serious programming challenge , and some type of technology that would require the console's hard drive to be able to be accessed at different times /(and multiple times) during play to keep the server burden within realistic possibilities(this technology will not be limited to sports gaming)). (for example a simple version of this tech. would upload only the offensive playbook during change of possesion when your team is about to get the ball (of course also uploading only the defensive playbook of your opponent and if necessary deleting the off/def that was just previously in use..) this could take 10-20seconds for the game to implement requiring a short cutscene and/or short break in the action or possibly be done WHILE the special teams play happens). We would also want our substitutions by formation to be useable online(subs for each play would be too much..) - I am not a programmer who has worked with the available technology , so keep in mind that i am doing some guessing on the possible technology that would be implemented , How it would be implemented, and that it could be much more or less difficult then i imagine....

[ADW]

Thanks for the info. I'm looking forward to actually playing the game myself.