I'd have to play devil's advocate and say with 2K12, 2K doubled down on the community and attempted to give them what they wanted, only to get collectively spat on imo. I'm not the basketball expert many of you are, but there was a lot of good with 2K12 - they lessened a lot of the roughhousing/physical play on the perimeter you could get away with in 2K11 (and that gave people the false sense they were playing good defense), they tried to implement the live ball as the community wanted, they tried to implement more Legends content that the community wanted, they did Online Association for the first time if I'm not mistaken, gave much more control from a Isomotion standpoint, vast improvements to playcalling over 2K11. Those are some of the things off the top of my head.
I think because live ball wasn't implemented perfectly, the community immediately rejected it; 2K12 was the first year where there was no NBA Live so there were a lot of ex-Live fans that had no gameplay alternative and mouthed off at everything they perceived wrong in NbA2K. It was also the year of the player's strike, and I remember there being a lot of dissatisfaction with what 2K was doing with the rosters even though it was a somewhat impractical situation for them. Some also disliked the Legends teams implementation; even though more teams were added, some wanted an approach similar to the Jordan content in 2K11.
That's not to say 2K12 wasn't without fault on 2K's end of course, just stating some of the things I remember. And just pointing out that the community isn't infallible either. It wasn't then, and it DEFINITELY isn't now - just look at many of the overreactions that have occurred with 2K releasing one of the most extensive patch releases we've ever seen for a sports game. It's a tricky balancing act. Imo I think 2K has been forward-thinking enough to have the vision of what they ultimately want to implement while being open to listening to the more level-headed faction of the community on where the game needs tweaking to improve
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