NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

[Insight23]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Have in-game injuries returned? Kinda felt like I was cheating the CPU in MyLeague/MyGM by always having healthy players while they consistently had to manage their rosters accordingly.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

So I suppose the strong and evasive layups will be chosen by the CPU if you use the button then.

Works for me. I'll continue using the button to shoot and the stick to layup or dunk.

Also, are double clutch layups controllable now? Like if you hold the button down or keep the stick tilted?

You can pick strong vs. evade layups with the Shot Button too. It reads the Left Stick to decide what kind of layup you want, like floaters did last year.

Double clutch layups are controlled by pressing the Shot Button or re-deflecting the Pro Stick mid-flight

[GSW]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Does it take a couple seconds to get to "full speed" when sprinting or do players still go from stand still to full sprint when hitting sprint button or transitioning from turning around after losing the ball?

[LorenzoDC]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

That's a good question for Zach to answer. I don't know how many of his new post moves/shots are signature vs. packaged by player type. I have seen the AI use the post game quite a bit though. Young Shaq is a beast down there now.

We fixed post dunks this year too. So if you have a runt guarding a big down on the block, you can back him down and dunk pretty easily this year.

Yes! Hopefully those mouse in the house strip blocks/steals are not OP again as well. I expect with all the new animations down low, the interactions down there will be more realistic.

I'm also assuming we won't see so many defensive flops due to trying to take a charge leading to an open lane and easy bucket. With more defensive animations and ways to make contact play out, the system won't rely on that flop animation as a possible outcome so often.

That's actually pretty big, if that's how this plays out.

[Barncore]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Basically, I tasked the team with moving as much of our tunables to our slider system as possible because we now have the ability to tweak our default slider set post-ship with a roster update. This is especially helpful if we want to have offline be different than online (we can tweak Park differently from ProAM or Play Now Online, etc.)

So for example...

We used to have these shot tables that gave the human or CPU shot % boosts or penalties that the end user couldn't access. Those were merged into the Close/Med/3PT sliders.

There were tunables for thresholds for the allowable distances/angles we triggered 2P body ups. Those became a new Body Up Sensitivity slider.

Live ball was something that we could only tweak through patches last year. This year, there's a Ball Security slider. The higher it is, the less "live" the ball will be to incidental collisions. But if that slider is really low, you'll see the ball colliding more when it glances off of body parts.

AWESOME. That means that patches that try to fix online cheesing wont affect offline balances.
The game was nicely balanced out of the box last year imo. Patches messed with it a bit.

[MeloJello]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Does it take a couple seconds to get to "full speed" when sprinting or do players still go from stand still to full sprint when hitting sprint button or transitioning from turning around after losing the ball?

Good question, I really hope this is addressed. It took too long to go from stand still to full sprint.

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[Barncore]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Does it take a couple seconds to get to "full speed" when sprinting or do players still go from stand still to full sprint when hitting sprint button or transitioning from turning around after losing the ball?

I disagree with this. Players felt sluggish in 2k16 to me.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Speaking of that left thumb stick directional input, I sometimes wonder at what point in the movement of the stick the game accepts directional input.

For example, if the input sensitivity is high twitch, then just landing the thumb on the stick before consciously inputting direction could lead to a "false" input.

If, on the other hand, the input only triggers when the stick achieves a certain level of "tilt" or deviation from dead up center, then there's less chance of input "error" from the user POV. But from a game play POV there may be more input lag and delay, leading to slight game play disruption.

So just out of curiosity, Mike, how does that work? For myself, I've sometimes experienced what felt like near 180 degree directional pass errors when I can literally see that my thumb ends up on the out rim of the stick circle in my intended direction. I sometimes wonder if the scenario I described may be the cause.

Thanks.

We account for dead zone and filter out false inputs. So like you're saying, there's a min. threshold you have to deflect the stick before we count it as valid. And I believe we read the left stick at the moment the pass command comes through.

If you're getting a guy in the complete opposite direction you deflected the stick. Chances are the desired receiver was an invalid target (maybe standing out of bounds or in some locked state) or the left stick input was late. Pass targeting is complex though... could just be a bug.

[tsbmolina]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Directional pass targeting is very complex. Some people are often way more off with their left stick aiming than they think. Others want the system to be more "intelligent" and bias toward open teammates. The new sliders give you the ability to set the weighting exactly the way you want.

Direction = how much we weight the literal direction of where you're pointing the left stick

Openness = how much we weight the openness of the receivers in the general vicinity of where you're pointing (you'd want this higher to always get the roll man for example)

Distance = how much we weight toward always picking the closer teammates. this is good if you tend to get unwanted skip passes.

This is intense. The work you guys put in is superhuman.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Yeah I have question to follow up on this do you have to time the double clutch? I am talking the mid air change shot.

No. We throw out the timing bonus/penalty on midair changed shots.

[Finepanther]

Mike can you explain the shot creator a little more? What do you mean by deciding how multiple releases are blended? Thanks

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Mike with all the changes in difficulty between user and CPU what is the game tuned for still SS?

I don't like answering this question because our userbase has grown and is so diverse. Some people will find they can get realistic stats and game outcomes on Pro, some Superstar, etc.

Rookie is definitely designed for kids or people brand new to the series.

I would say, generally speaking, Pro is easier than it was last year.

2K vets should probably at least start on All-Star or Superstar.

Hall of Fame this year, by Da Czar's request, is actually tuned almost identically to Superstar but ACE is cranked up on both the offensive and defensive AI side so that's where the increased challenge comes from.

[Caelumfang]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

A concern of mine: When the game has been out for a few months, and people have gotten a chance to master the shot stick, will Sharpshooters turn the competitive scene into Patch-4 2K15? Considering only Lockdown Defenders can get gold LD badges, I hope this doesn't turn into a problem.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Has loose balls being addressed, in nba 2k16 it was a huge problem. For example every time I block or knock the ball out of CPU hand. They recover the ball very quickly unrealistic fast.

Sometimes I will still be in blocking animation, the guy I block recover quickly and scores. It's really annoying. Sometimes I will block the ball hard sending it almost out of bounds but the CPU will make a Randy Moss catch to prevent it from going out of bounds.

Same things with steals, you knock the ball out of their hands and they recover so fast. While your player is in recovering the ball animation, the CPU already recover it and scores.

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We definitely tried to address it. We now let defenders immediately (and automatically) search for pickups when they knock the ball loose. Last year, we didn't search unless the user actively tried moving toward the ball... even if it was right in front of him. We also refreshed the shooter and ball handler reactions when getting the ball blocked or stolen, so the reaction time to loose balls should be more realistic this year. Hopefully those two things help a lot.

[MeloJello]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

We definitely tried to address it. We now let defenders immediately (and automatically) search for pickups when they knock the ball loose. Last year, we didn't search unless the user actively tried moving toward the ball... even if it was right in front of him. We also refreshed the shooter and ball handler reactions when getting the ball blocked or stolen, so the reaction time to loose balls should be more realistic this year. Hopefully those two things help a lot.

Nice[emoji2]

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