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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
Your player starts at a 60 overall. I had this game in my hands as early as anyone, actually before the five day pre-release period. I sunk several hours in that first morning and got myself up to a 64. I figured I would be ahead of the game a bit and strolled over to the local courts to where there were already quite a few 80 and 90-something players. Now mind you, there are multiple versions of this game you can buy that have things like additional packs of cards and bonus VC, but it was clear that people were dropping big bucks on this. While this is no doubt good for the bottom line at 2K, I can't help but wonder if this is bad for the health of the game in the long run. Pay to win is generally accepted in a free-to-play game, but generally with titles you are already paying a AAA price on, these kinds of microtransactions are limited to cosmetic items for the sake of game balance. No matter how good your timing is on releasing a jump shot or how crafty you are when playing defence, the fact of the matter is this: a player who is an 85 overall is going to destroy a player who is 65 overall just about every single time. They are faster, they are stronger, they have more shots available to them and they have a wider margin of error under the hood when determining if a shot is going to go in or whose hands a rebound is going to stick to.
You can do that as well, mind you. Buying a new pair of shoes or increasing your character's vertical come from the same pool of VC. It's been that way for a long time. However, as I found myself running past the NBA store and rounding the corner past a Foot Locker shop on may way back from the multiplayer basketball courts, I could not help but wonder if perhaps 2K Sports has gone a bit too far down the road to sponsorship and microtransactions. I would strongly recommend that for the sake of gameplay balance in future iterations, that the development team give some serious thought to the idea that stat improvement should only be earned and only cosmetics be purchased (perhaps with a second form of currency). Of course if they continue to make money off of the current model given the popularity of these modes, it is unlikely 2K will opt to go my suggested route, but one can hope.
A flashy cash-grab.In a lot of ways, NBA 2K18 is more show than substance. While MyCareer has seen a big aesthetic improvement in terms of the new Neighborhood shared world and more involved cut-scenes, the core gameplay is still the same. Add to that the fact that, at every opportunity, it feels like developer Visceral Games is telling you that you have to spend money to make money, and you begin to feel like you’re spending more time on the bench than on the court.
It doesn’t help that the other basketball game is better than it’s been in a while and, in some ways, more fun to play. To be fair, NBA Live 18 stole a lot from NBA 2K18, right down to its basic controls, to regain its reputation as a respectable basketball sim. And while NBA Live 18 has its own philosophy towards microtransactions, it never lost sight of its commitment to making its core gameplay fun. The same can’t be said about NBA 2K18.But let’s be real here: NBA 2K has been as much about its presentation and its bells and whistles as it’s been about actually playing basketball. This truth about the series has never been more obvious than in NBA 2K18, where MyCareer has gotten a major face lift in the form of a shared world called the Neighborhood.
The Neighborhood is, for all intents and purposes, a living menu system where you and other players (as your created MyCareer characters) can walk around, shop for new duds, play pick-up games, exercise, or get a haircut. MyCourt is still there, but now you can walk to the courts from your apartment or your team’s practice facility, because everyone loves walking, right?The thing about the Neighborhood is that, around every corner, there’s some shop that’s trying to get you to spend money. This is most obvious when you look at the drab, almost prison-like uniform of a brown t-shirt and gray sweatpants that every player starts with at the beginning. Pretty soon, you see level 85 players (who had to have spent real-life money to get there already) walking around in flashy outfits, and your player feels like a loser in comparison. It’s just like high school all over again, except instead of Tommy Hillfiger (or whatever the kids are wearing these days), it’s virtual Air Jordan and virtual Under Armour. If I hadn’t been magically gifted 150,000 virtual credits because the copy of NBA 2K18 that the publisher sent me to review was the Legendary Edition, I would have been stuck with an overall rating in the 60s (which is a long way on the “Road to 99”) for a while.
None of this would be a problem if NBA 2K18 compartmentalized its currency a bit. Maybe after playing a game, you can get some tokens to spend on upgrading your character’s skills and some more on upgrading your character’s wardrobe. But there’s only one form of currency in NBA 2K18—gold coins cleverly named “Virtual Currency”—and you use it for literally everything, whether that’s your MyCareer character’s attributes, wardrobe, or haircut, or your MyTeam cards. Alternatively, that means that almost every mode you play will net you a handful of gold coins that you can then spend in any other mode, but you really only make a little money at a time, at least starting out, which lends itself to a feeling of running in place early on in your NBA 2K18 experience. Deciding whether to spend your hard-earned coins on one more attribute point in your 3-point category or on a potentially wasteful MyTeam deck of cards is like Sophie’s choice but, you know, a little less dramatic.Unfortunately, it seems that every year NBA 2K moves further and further away from developing the true meat-and-potatoes of sports games and are investing more in figuring out new ways to get players to spend more money on developing their avatars. And even after developing those avatars, unless you have a Pro-Am team, your individual PvP efforts will be funneled into waiting in line to player matches of 3v3 with strangers. At the very least, the online server stability is stronger here at launch than in years past, but now that NBA 2K18 has competition that lets you simply queue for 5v5 matches the old-fashioned way, its propensity to make you wander around until you can find an almost full court and then wait for the current game to end before you can step onto the blacktop seems like a complete miscalculation. In a way, however, this experience is actually a perfect metaphor for NBA 2K18 in a nutshell: it would rather make you walk through hoops than simply you play its perennially solid basketball game.The Bad All of its obvious attempts at pumping additional money out of players turns what could be an engaging MyCareer mode into a grinding slog.Comment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
another professional review that heavily focusses on vc, the grind and what it does to the gaming experience.
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2017/09/21/nba-2k18-review/
Update: In discussion with 2K Games, we’ve temporarily removed the score pending a statement with regard to our criticisms, at which point it will be reinstated. Additionally, a draft conclusion was posted that incorrectly characterised our score as a protest vote, and has been reworded to reflect that our criticisms are rooted in the effect that VC and microtransactions have on the gameplay.
i'm looking forward to what 2k has to say about that.Comment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
Three times I've been hit by that VC glitch where I don't get my earnings after a game... WTF...Comment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
When are we going to take ownership in our own choices?
I could give a bleep about Paying for VC.
I’m a 70 rating and only played on avg 6 mins in 17 games with 2 additional play now games
Quit whining don’t spend money
It’s not meant to be easy to reach 99
Most of us are going to max out in the low 80’s
U can be a great player without a high *** ratingComment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
Lol^
So can someone send me a YouTube link to that VC glitch?
I need it for uh, research purposes only.Comment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
I could not care less. I play MyGM 95% of the time. Spend it, brother!
Sent from my iPhone using Operation SportsComment
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Re: NBA 2k18 - Another VC grind fest?
2K really has no shame lmao....with blatant commercials billed as "cutscenes" that are unskippable, with the glitches taking away everyone's VC and nothing to help us yet, but then the VC glitch that everyone used that helped alleviate the VC losses was immediately patched, and the website that gave them a 3/10 due to 2K crossing the line with VC getting bullied into removing the score by 2K themselves... I really love the gameplay and most of the game for the most part but a game with this many glitches in nearly every game mode makes this horrible. I spent $40 on VC and already regret it.
Honestly, 2K being a free-to-play game with reliance on microtransactions is what they should do moving forward. Obviously they'll never do that, they'll continue to push different editions of the game for increasingly expensive prices (last year there were $60/$80/$100 versions, this year they changed it to $60/$100/$150 and I bet next year will hit $200 for the same things the $150 version gave us this year.) I feel ashamed to have bought VC and I wish I hadn't.
I could say a lot more but the higher ups here wouldn't allow it lol...Comment
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