Taking budget baller to another level

[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

hmmm, having some success with Wallace eh? That is a small lineup, surprised you havent had trouble rebounding. Your lineup is solid though.

you can get Moncrief for 3k for sure. if you can get the DPOY thats the one because of his finishing/inside scoring/mid-range. if you have to get the other one....then should work out fine as well.

It's a really small lineup, but after going 0-4 I realised that the problem was that the lack of speed on my C and PF to counter transition as well as slow reactions and recovery on a 4-1. Facing amethyst lineups with slow players, with the way transition is, means giving up layup after layup.

I really thought the lineup wouldn't work, but I had to do something. Ben Wallace is working defensively, and he scores a bit.

I've played with Marc before and, while I really like him IRL, he's too slow with the way players are exploiting the gameplay now in the unrestricted seeds. Interior defence seems to have gotten worse throughout the year, interior defence, but might be just me not knowing better.
Cousins has surprisingly decent defence, strength and post game. Ben Wallace is my improved version of Howard.

Edit: Dandridge might be a good call. Need to see how much it costs. The reason I went with Hayward was because he's be best gold in the ultra cheap category.

[harryl]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Yeah, I would second the recommendation of D12 for best fast cheap Center. And also WCS or Sanders for Silver.

And I know your rule is RttP for MT only, but playing Challenges and Domination for MT is getting MT through gameplay too.

[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Yeah, I would second the recommendation of D12 for best fast cheap Center. And also WCS or Sanders for Silver.

And I know your rule is RttP for MT only, but playing Challenges and Domination for MT is getting MT through gameplay too.

Yeah, the thing with the rule is more a test to the mode itself. I have my main account where I played through domination some challenges and got around 200k by doing that and selling some rewards.

I don't play Fifa much, I just pick the game up and play FUT seasons and managed to build a pretty decent and competitive team worth around 200k and improving.

On NBA 2k, by doing the exact same, I have a team worth around 30k and have no perspective of improving my team substantially. The mode is short on affordable content and ability to generate MT.

[mint11]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Way too hard and slow to earn MT points. Currently built up a reasonable team almost exclusively through domination, have 10 left on historic

Westbrook / Kidd
E. Gordon / Iguodala
Butler / Wiggins
Bosh / T.Chandler
Cousins / T.Chandler

Pretty average team but does the job well for me, have managed to save about 160k so far, still got all challenges and gauntlet to go. Managed to get up to unrestricted seeds using essentially this team, only lost 2 games on the way. Trying to save up as much as possible and splash out in about 2 months when prices come down. Hoping dynamic prices drop to fair levels or there is no way I'll even get to 2000 cards. Should be more cards offered as prizes for certain challenges, and should definitely be packs with guaranteed amethysts, maybe they could charge 30,000MT per pack?

[synistr]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

It's a really small lineup, but after going 0-4 I realised that the problem was that the lack of speed on my C and PF to counter transition as well as slow reactions and recovery on a 4-1. Facing amethyst lineups with slow players, with the way transition is, means giving up layup after layup.

I really thought the lineup wouldn't work, but I had to do something. Ben Wallace is working defensively, and he scores a bit.

I've played with Marc before and, while I really like him IRL, he's too slow with the way players are exploiting the gameplay now in the unrestricted seeds. Interior defence seems to have gotten worse throughout the year, interior defence, but might be just me not knowing better.
Cousins has surprisingly decent defence, strength and post game. Ben Wallace is my improved version of Howard.

Edit: Dandridge might be a good call. Need to see how much it costs. The reason I went with Hayward was because he's be best gold in the ultra cheap category.

yes, Hayward is cheap but Dandridge is only about 1k more. thats because people really sleep on Historics.

I still would add Marc because like I said, he is cheap and you can use him when your other team puts slower Center in. Get D12. Cheap beast. Put him beside Ben. They will be small, but strong, fast, and athletic defenders.

I understand what you are doing with RTTP test...but to do this and be successful you have to be as resourceful as possible. So I hope you have been using shoes. Tony Parker has TP9, a gold shoe with +9 offensive consistency. You don't really need it for him because he is already at 95, but its 250. Anyone who can wear Nikes, do the Kobe 9. Both of these shoes can be found regularly for 250. there are always Kobe 9's for 250.

anyone that doesn't have a shoe, go and pick SOMETHING up for 250. Definitely check out WCS for a fast C.

as far as more recommendations.....

TBT Bledsoe is a gold card with silver border...trust me. Probably the best silver card for the money due to his badges.

TBT Tyson Chandler, have you not had him yet? He is a gold player for 2k or less and decent speed

TBT Caron, this guy is an ultra cheap silver that plays like a gold. regularly for less than 1500mt.

TBT Dudley is great too but a lil more expensive then the aforementioned guys.

I think you have to focus on getting as many gold players that play better than their ratings, like D12 and as many silvers as you can that play like gold. If you are low on MT I would even suggest selling Hayward and getting Caron since Caron is about 1/2 the price.

[synistr]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

actually scratch that about TBT Bledsoe.....Gold Bledsoe even cheaper, lol. I haven't been keeping up much.

you could sell Moments TP and get regular TP for about 1500 and that would give you some MT to play with. get rid of Hayward too and maybe pick up Dandridge. regular TP has 90 OConsistency...put the shoe on him and give him 99. That would make him a reliable scorer and I would play him offball with Bledsoe in the lineup. thats not a bad combo for about 3500 mt or less.

Whiteside and Drummond are cheap, I used them when I first got the game. Rebounding and shot blocking galore.

Lowry or Horford could help, but you mentioned players between 85-89....well Mike Conley is about the cheapest. He is 85 overall and you can get him for less than 2k sometimes.

[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

synistr, hadn't got the chance to play and search for the players you suggested, will update once I do.

About the shoes... while it may seem ridiculous, 250MT for shoes is a huge amount of MT. My current squad costs me around 420MT per match. Those 250MT are pretty much my profit at the moment. Until I settle with a final squad, I can't really afford them. It's really sad, but it;s how 2k has the mode built.

[synistr]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

synistr, hadn't got the chance to play and search for the players you suggested, will update once I do.

About the shoes... while it may seem ridiculous, 250MT for shoes is a huge amount of MT. My current squad costs me around 420MT per match. Those 250MT are pretty much my profit at the moment. Until I settle with a final squad, I can't really afford them. It's really sad, but it;s how 2k has the mode built.

I am afraid your test may be coming to an end soon then. You have already proven that you cant just pick up the controller and go through RTTP and be competitive at the higher seeds because 2k just doesnt reward you enough in that mode. You are a better player than me and probably 85% of other players out there and you have already ran into a roadblock. Pretty much proves its pay to play when you cant afford consumables. This is why I just dont understand why 2k doesnt put Overall restriction in RTTP. You cant run through RTTP without playing other parts of MT and playing the AH. They should have MT bonus for completing seed in addition to those sorry *** packs with weak odds.

Now if 2k would only listen to our suggestions.

[E The Rhymer]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Lol I just played a guy whose starting lineup in the tree gold seed was wall and Kyrie with Westbrook off the bench


Sent from my iPhone with minimal cares for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

I am afraid your test may be coming to an end soon then. You have already proven that you cant just pick up the controller and go through RTTP and be competitive at the higher seeds because 2k just doesnt reward you enough in that mode. You are a better player than me and probably 85% of other players out there and you have already ran into a roadblock. Pretty much proves its pay to play when you cant afford consumables. This is why I just dont understand why 2k doesnt put Overall restriction in RTTP. You cant run through RTTP without playing other parts of MT and playing the AH. They should have MT bonus for completing seed in addition to those sorry *** packs with weak odds.

Now if 2k would only listen to our suggestions.

Definitely. The experiment is over. I'll be writing a wrap up now.

[synistr]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Definitely. The experiment is over. I'll be writing a wrap up now.

it was a good try though and thanks for the updates. its understandable that they are going to be stingy with MT but if thats the case then make some sort of Overall restriction and step them up in stages as you climb through seeds. I can put 15 Amethysts on the floor and I am sure there are people with at least 3 Diamonds now. Even an advanced player cant run through seeds against those types of lineups with some mediocre golds/silvers because at the higher seeds those players are decent at worst.

[synistr]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Lol I just played a guy whose starting lineup in the tree gold seed was wall and Kyrie with Westbrook off the bench


Sent from my iPhone with minimal cares for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

nothing but cheese. all 3 of those guys and Lillard. bet they just turboed to the cup on you all game. smh. its still not very hard to beat a team like that. lockdown Kyrie from the outside and let Wall and Westbrook try and beat you from the outside. (apply moderate pressure) if they have any other knockdown guys like Korver, then just play deny on him. thats what I have been doing and nobody has figured out how to overcome that despite it being very easy to do so.

I run into lineups like that all the time. I played one where they had Kyrie starting and Wall came off the bench. Played one where RWB and Kyrie started and PG13 came off the bench. Also played someone who had Wall and Kyrie in backcourt and Lillard at SF. I beat every one of them and Billups is my starter, backed up by Beverley and silver Bledsoe. Their style is predictable.

[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

So, I decided to end the experiment, as I already drew the conclusions I wanted. I'll be writing my conclusions and suggestions below.

I apologise for the long post, but hopefully some people will read it.

I won't be talking about gameplay issues, as I deeply respect @Da_Czar and @ScottOG and I know they are fully aware of the issues that still exist. Besides that, I believe the this game mode does not play in the way they coded it.
Also, I won't be talking about the Diamond cards as I understand this is a fantasy mode and I love that aspect of the game independently of disagreeing with the direction the mode has taken.

Just as a reminder, all the MT I acquired was by playing RTTP.

So, to what really matters.

Wrap up:

The game mode holds its own just fine during the restricted seeds. At this stage of the cycle the card prices are low enough to build a competitive squad for those seeds.

Having said that, the game completely collapses once you get to the unrestricted seeds and, unless you're one of the most skilled players in the game (which I'm definitely not), you have no chance of being competitive. I have no doubt that the mode doesn't have close to as much users as it could because of the issues stated throughout this thread and the ones I'm presenting now, as it completely alienates users that don't spend money.

I see two main reasons for the game mode to collapse:

Issues Part 1:

1. Inability to generate MT
2. Lack of affordable gold cards

1 - My current lineup has 7 gold players, 3 silver players and 3 bronze players. This costs me 420MT per game. Considering that the average player gets 700MT per game, I profit 280MT per game. This means I need to play 100 games to generate 28.000MT which is the cost of the cheapest Amethyst player.

2 - High rated gold cards are generally expensive because of limited supply. 2k did well with the DPOY packs, where the odds were good enough to make these players affordable, but Rookie and 6th Man of the Year didn't had the odds. New packs seem to be focused on Amethyst and Diamond players. We still get more silvers in TBT than gold players, and moments cards, after Tony Parker and Lillard, completely derailed again (Devin Booker, JJ, KAT, Draymond... the list of cool moments gold players that we never got goes on).

Sum up:

I was able to slowly build my team with the MT from games, selling the expensive bronze players I had and selling things from reward packs. I think, in total, during the unrestricted seeds, I made around 30k. I did't spend much in contracts as I only lost around 3 or 4 times.

Once I got to the unrestricted seeds, I could not afford an entire gold lineup, as the contract cost would barely allow me profit from playing the game, and even if it did, I was not able to generate enough MT to buy players over 3000MT as I have Moments TP and DPOY Ben Wallace as my main guys, and they're too expensive when considering the amount of MT I'm able to generate.

I was able stay in the 4th seed.
I'll continue to play, but I feel that most of the losses are coming from the huge difference in lineups more than difference in skill and I have no way or form to upgrade my lineup.

Solutions:

One thing that I find it's kind of easy to adjust to solve this issue is contract cost. If we look at a mode like Fifa Ultimate Team, as 28 game contract costs you around 300 coins and you get on average 600 coins per match. This means that the 11 players cost you under 120 coins per match. On top of that, UT gives you between 3000 to 10000 coins overtime you finish a season (value depends on season and result and a season is around 10 games).

The release of gold players should be easily fixed by establishing a players of the week and player of the month award. This means that we have a constant flow of new cards arriving to the mode, driving prices down and making it affordable for people that just play the mode.

The game is deeply unbalanced in terms of card ratings.

To give you an example Fifa UT has around 35 cards over 90 OVR in a roster that has over 12000 players. This was what I was expecting with the new HoF scale. I'm not saying that the proportion should be the same, but it puts things into perspective.

Issues Part 2:

A game of NBA 2k in MyTeam takes somewhere in between 30 and 40 minutes, please keep this in mind for the point I'm making next.

The game mode is not worth my time, as simple as that.

One of the reasons I didn't play Domination or Challeges is because they do not offer a reward that is worthwhile. I do not have the time to go through 30 games + RTTP + Challenges. Back in 2k14 (if I'm not mistaken) we had tournaments to get reward players that were usable and last year we had challenges. Now, I'm not a fan of giving away players for playing just a couple of games but ain't against it either. I propose tournaments for packs with guarantee golds or even amethyst if the requirements are steep. Why would I pay 100.000 MT to get Curry and then do a challenge that rewards me with a couple thousand MT?

It is clear to me that 2k does not have anyone (economist) that understand how markets work, because if they did, he would point out most of these problems. Make no mistake, if you want to have a market, you need someone that understands and studies how the market behaves and is able to make the necessary adjustments for it to work.

This leads me to my last point. MT purchasing sites are a cancer to the mode. You all may argue that it's the only way to buy the players, but that is a fallacy. When the came first came out, Curry was selling for 50000MT and the supply was way more limited than now. The MT purchasing drove the prices sky high and it never recovered.
Inflating prices destroys the mode for the casuals and this is something that may completely sink the mode.

If 2k is serious about making this a legit mode, it should impose price ranges, which is fairly easy if they have someone analysing the mode and bring the ban hammer.


I'm definitely forgetting a lot of stuff, so please feel free to add, as long as they are related to making the mode work without the need to add extra money into it.

[LegitSkillz]

Taking budget baller to another level

Great effort Ichi. I totally agree with all your findings. Coin sites are killing this game mode and reiterates why completing RTTP shortly after release is beneficial to get the reward cards like Hayes, Hamilton, Mullin, and Ewing. It's hard to compete when all these diamonds and fantasy players are released. Yesterday I played a few teams with 3 diamond cards on the roster (butler, wall, smith, cousins, walker, Irving and love). Wall was virtually unstoppable. He made DPOY Mutombo look like a fool. Shot contesting was unsuccessful and he kept getting And 1s. Jimmy Butler was something else too. He wouldn't miss ANYTHING he put up. I put DPOY Leonard on him and I was on him like white on rice. Again, he drew fouls like crazy and it was plain annoying. One guys line up look like this; 1. DPOY Jordan 2. Diamond Butler 3. DR Durant 4. Diamond Kevin Love and 5. Amethyst Kareem. Don't let me even tell you who came off the bench haha. It was really ridiculous. I still beat him but it was a daunting task. No casual gamer would put up with that kind of a headache. I was cursing on my headset like crazy seeing some of the plays that were manifested. This guy barely called plays, turbo cheesed all game and did every exploit you can think of. I actually thought about quitting myteam afterwards but beating guys who blow their paycheques on this game is kind of fun haha.

Coin sites need to go! It's ruins the game and experience for hardcore and casual gamers who enjoy a solid REALISTIC game of basketball. Myteam has disappointed me this year but I will continue to play it either way. Guess I'm a sucker haha

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[Ichi]

Re: Taking budget baller to another level

Coin sites need to go! It's ruins the game and experience for hardcore and casual gamers who enjoy a solid REALISTIC game of basketball. Myteam has disappointed me this year but I will continue to play it either way. Guess I'm a sucker haha

Thanks man.

I think it is even more serious than that. It creates what barrier to entry for a huge amount of players that do not want to regularly spend money on the mode.

The mode is effectively a mode that forces you to pay.

They will argue that MyTeam entwines with other modes where you can earn VC, etc. But this a really bad argument, as it further states that MyTeam is a mode that you can't just pick up and play.