2k19 (Disappointing) SMH Rant
To start it should be stated I just picked up 2k19 a few days ago and have dove in the last 3 days. 2k18 was not without its issues but when edited it was the best playing basketball game I have ever played. So, I was excited to pick up 19. I have been reading the threads and it seemed like a lot was ironed out in patches and it was a good time to grab it, but there are a few game killers for me unfortunately. These are all things that in 3 days immediately stood out to me. Now, To be clear when I say game killer I mean things we can’t fix as a user and things that are hard coded in 2k.
I edited 1 team (Celtics) to test with and I fully edited them with advanced rotations, I put in Woody’s signature edits, copied my tendencies and attribute edits for every player from 2k18 work and scouting, changed POE’s, added all hot zones, added all badges, put in every players proper play types & redid their whole playbook with 50 plays. So this team was fully 100% edited. I spent 8 hours editing all that just for the Celtics. I then spent 8 additional hours on sliders trying to fix some things. I Tried numerous sets on OS to test different theories people had. I tested extremes from 0-100 and everything in between. What I was left with was more then disappointing. (See #3)
So, Let’s get started...
1 - Teams do not run set plays even at 99 or 100 run plays. They literally run the same series over and over 5-10x in a row. SMH! I tried the ace off workaround and it’s still not acceptable or even close to good enough. It’s horrible and completely takes you out of immersion! There is 0 point to even tweak playbooks right now as the CPU doesn’t use them as freelance and series are now crammed down our throats. I even tried coaching run play sliders at 0-1 to see if it was reversed it was so bad. If I see the Celtics run the swing into stagger flex cut 1 more time I’ll scream!
Edit: the workaround has its flaws. Number 1 a lot of people don’t have a 2nd controller but even if they do when cpu calls timeout the user can not do anything during timeouts. Not to mention ACE is off for cpu team throughout the game. Add to that the variety in plays used in the playbook is very very minimum in further testing.
2 - The CPU not subbing in early foul trouble is back again! Also, still no logic to break the advanced rotations in blowouts, etc... So, how do you workaround this lack of CPU foul trouble logic? Well, unfortunately you need to edit draw fouls and commit fouls for the whole league and every player (especially the starters who play a lot of minutes) or just extremely lower the foul sliders which in turn means lack of realism with low fouls per game to accommodate... SMH This was a known and very vocalized issue last year but was ignored.
3 - We all know about the blow by’s last year. 2k has struggled with on ball defense or OP offense in 1.1 for years. 1 year it’s OP, next year brick wall, next year blow by’s, this year unlimited riding and brick wall. Ok, that’s fine because sliders can fix this right? Wrong! In years past it was fixable but this year it is not. Let me clarify what I mean.
On superstar (Yes, I saw czar’s video talking on difficulty levels this year with reactions speeds of players tied to the difficulty and I tested on all levels all star and up) and only for the purpose of testing the extremes to find balance I put the CPU on ball defense at 0, CPU body up sensitivity at 0, CPU driving contact at 0, CPU lateral Quickness at 0, CPU defensive Awareness at 0. What did I see? I saw defenders stone walling players left and right. Sure after pulling of a plethora of dribble moves you can beat them occasionally. But apparently gone are the days of freedom of movement?! This is not 80’s and 90’s basketball. So, that was discouraging because I had no where else to go down anymore to eliminate the bumping. What I had to do to fix it was through the movement sliders with speed and acceleration by giving the ball handlers huge advantages in acceleration ratings to explode by players before a bump. Then over compensate the help defense, contest shots, and block sliders for the CPU. My frustration is sliders had very little fix in a key area of the game (1st thing I test and tweak in sliders every year is movement and contact sliders) as well as it’s a hard coded solution for 2k to band aid the blow by fix so now OG is not on blast for the bad rotations lol!
4 - Playoff mode was my favorite mode last year for a few reasons. Number 1 the atmosphere in the playoffs is fun compared to the bad regular season 2k crowds. Number 2 I can set up all the coaching sliders (help defense, rotations, etc.) for all the cpu teams like you can do in my league to create a completely different game as play now games are unplayable. Number 3 ACE in the playoffs is on steroids compared to any other mode which makes those games ultra competitive especially game to game. UNFORTUNATELY, I can not use this mode anymore as they do not allow you to use custom rosters anymore! You can not upload and play with any roster it must be 2ks official roster. SMH! Why this was taken out is beyond me. All I can think is someone dropped the ball. Again, gamekiller for me as it was by far and away my most used mode. Can I sim a whole season to get to the playoffs? Sure, but should I have too? How are these things missed or glossed over? You can’t use it in nba today either. Not sure if that was possible last year or not? I know most last year nba today wasn’t even working.
5 - New play art... I HATE IT! Talk about cluttered. Yes, I know I can turn it off but I like seeing my play art on just not this play art. Some of you might like it. Whoever gave the go ahead on that gets a big SMH! If your going to add something give us the old school as an option at least. Some of the art is so light it’s hard to see then the zig zag art is so unecessary telling me where to dribble to. All I need is the spot on the floor to know where to go not a line from baseline all the way down the court! Smh! Then some of the passes and who to pass to show up way to late so no real flow of you don’t know your plays. If you choose lite you really have no clue what’s going on. I have nothing good to say about it! Just a bad decision!
6 - Every time I try and save a new advanced rotation it saves the rotation, but it freezes the game. I need to load another game, re load 2k19, then go back into the roster and re upload the rotation and then save the roster. SMH
7 - CPU playbooks, Signatures, and Player tendencies every year are a complete joke. Do I need to say anything more? It’s crazy a real life game like this with the tools to make it realistic go ignored every year. It’s frustrating that just to enjoy a game I need to spend 2-3 solid months editing it. You have a roster guy you hired yet he doesn’t touch tendencies. Not in his job description. So does he just get half his salary? Lol I kid but a birdie told me a random guy somewhat plays with them not who you would think. My question is why not? Why is this ignored? Why not hire someone? With playbooks and new coaches it’s totally understandable to not have those dialed in on day 1 but no excuse for other teams. If it’s a man power issue then for the love of god hire more help. Same with tendencies, hire a tendency guy.
8 - I saw someone mention this in another thread somewhere and it’s dead on from what I have seen as well with bad spacing on SOME PNR’s. Another hard coded flaw we can’t fix with the bad roll angles. Along with that when I select a iso the spacing (lack there of) is horrendous! Everyone should spread 5 out or 14 flat to allow me space to go. This was fine in 18 but not sure what happened in 19?! In addition to that every time I use manual DHO the guy performing the handoff decides to defy odds and go the opposite way of the handoff to get in the way of the guy he just handed the ball off too. He should be rolling, popping, or setting a screen away.
9 - Why every year are we switching the most basic controls? I get it if we are adding something more intuitive but replacing something with nothing and to just switch it around every year doesn’t help little Timmy or the casuals from picking it up and for us vets it’s annoying. To add to this they eliminated a ton of sigs. Why? One that stands out is the al horford or Joel embiid fade away. They were perfect in 18 and gone in 19. Adding to the dribble sigs they switch names for what? They changed the order? Why? So inputting woodys signatures is a chore now which I can’t help but feel was partially a small reasoning. Smh! Another example was in 18 double tapping LT gave you a iso motion set up or just tapping it gave you a basic cross. It was intuitive. Instead they replaced it with.... nothing! Lol
10 - it seems like from what I’ve read and in a short sample size seen is CPU players forcing drives and lack of 3’s without heavily adjusting sliders is a problem. I don’t like to edit slider tendencies at all for cpu as it takes away from their real life player tendencies. Might just need to scale up or down in drive and 3point areas for 19 though with all players but seems like game was coded to higher thresholds in these areas?
11 - In coach settings and when you select playcalling messages on once again it does not show the name of the play at the top of the screen so you don’t know what play is being called. This was like this last year as well. When testing cpu vs cpu games this is huge in seeing what plays are being called. Yet another bug... SMH
12 - spacing is bad! I’m really noticing it probably because the cpu playbooks aren’t edited with the plays I put in that usually all have good spacing which I’m not used to. But because of that it really shows how bad 2ks spacing logic is. Everything is cluttered with guys running in lanes and this is with backdoor slider set to 0 for both teams as I always have it. I don’t remember 18 having that issue besides the bad fast break logic it had in it? Like I said with selecting iso guys have no awareness and I need to run to other side of court compared to other way around. It’s never been like that. Same with DHO as per my example earlier where DHO guy cuts off guy he’s handing it too.
I’d have no problem going back to 2k18 if only they had the dna share like they do in 18 to easily get the rookies into my roster. I’m hoping 2k fixes a few of these things like they did for the over use of ISO’s & guard posts (this was an issue last year I talked about so not like it wasn’t a known issue coming into 19). The playbooks couldn’t even be seen at launch so good thing I didn’t buy at launch as that would have made me lose my mind as it’s the 1st Place that I go. But so far this is by far the worst 2k I’ve played in recent memory. I can’t see doing what I did last year and putting in all the time to edit a subpar game. Last year it was worth it because the gameplay was so good and you could see the results of every edit. Idk, I’ll keep testing and pray for a monster patch, but more then likely I’ll end up wasting 65.00 this year and end up waiting for 2k20... I can’t help but feel disappointed in almost every way with 19. SMH!
Just my .02 and YMMV and good for you if you can find enjoyment in it but no question it’s a huge dropoff from 18 imo...
Quick list of things I like so it’s not all negative...
1- New DNA share.
2- DHO’s are executed better finally! Live has it perfect though! So smooth!
3- Some great new plays
4- Cutters and DHO plays are now usable.
5- series added
6- online league association depth now
That’s it... Maybe my expectations were too high after 18?! I think 18 was so good gameplay wise especially after edits it was so close to being perfect with minor changes in areas. There was no need for these mass changes or trying to reinvent the wheel. I’d been much happier with a nba2k 18.5! If I’m missing something though in 1 of the above areas and you have a fix Let me know and comment and I’ll try it out...
To start it should be stated I just picked up 2k19 a few days ago and have dove in the last 3 days. 2k18 was not without its issues but when edited it was the best playing basketball game I have ever played. So, I was excited to pick up 19. I have been reading the threads and it seemed like a lot was ironed out in patches and it was a good time to grab it, but there are a few game killers for me unfortunately. These are all things that in 3 days immediately stood out to me. Now, To be clear when I say game killer I mean things we can’t fix as a user and things that are hard coded in 2k.
I edited 1 team (Celtics) to test with and I fully edited them with advanced rotations, I put in Woody’s signature edits, copied my tendencies and attribute edits for every player from 2k18 work and scouting, changed POE’s, added all hot zones, added all badges, put in every players proper play types & redid their whole playbook with 50 plays. So this team was fully 100% edited. I spent 8 hours editing all that just for the Celtics. I then spent 8 additional hours on sliders trying to fix some things. I Tried numerous sets on OS to test different theories people had. I tested extremes from 0-100 and everything in between. What I was left with was more then disappointing. (See #3)
So, Let’s get started...
1 - Teams do not run set plays even at 99 or 100 run plays. They literally run the same series over and over 5-10x in a row. SMH! I tried the ace off workaround and it’s still not acceptable or even close to good enough. It’s horrible and completely takes you out of immersion! There is 0 point to even tweak playbooks right now as the CPU doesn’t use them as freelance and series are now crammed down our throats. I even tried coaching run play sliders at 0-1 to see if it was reversed it was so bad. If I see the Celtics run the swing into stagger flex cut 1 more time I’ll scream!
Edit: the workaround has its flaws. Number 1 a lot of people don’t have a 2nd controller but even if they do when cpu calls timeout the user can not do anything during timeouts. Not to mention ACE is off for cpu team throughout the game. Add to that the variety in plays used in the playbook is very very minimum in further testing.
2 - The CPU not subbing in early foul trouble is back again! Also, still no logic to break the advanced rotations in blowouts, etc... So, how do you workaround this lack of CPU foul trouble logic? Well, unfortunately you need to edit draw fouls and commit fouls for the whole league and every player (especially the starters who play a lot of minutes) or just extremely lower the foul sliders which in turn means lack of realism with low fouls per game to accommodate... SMH This was a known and very vocalized issue last year but was ignored.
3 - We all know about the blow by’s last year. 2k has struggled with on ball defense or OP offense in 1.1 for years. 1 year it’s OP, next year brick wall, next year blow by’s, this year unlimited riding and brick wall. Ok, that’s fine because sliders can fix this right? Wrong! In years past it was fixable but this year it is not. Let me clarify what I mean.
On superstar (Yes, I saw czar’s video talking on difficulty levels this year with reactions speeds of players tied to the difficulty and I tested on all levels all star and up) and only for the purpose of testing the extremes to find balance I put the CPU on ball defense at 0, CPU body up sensitivity at 0, CPU driving contact at 0, CPU lateral Quickness at 0, CPU defensive Awareness at 0. What did I see? I saw defenders stone walling players left and right. Sure after pulling of a plethora of dribble moves you can beat them occasionally. But apparently gone are the days of freedom of movement?! This is not 80’s and 90’s basketball. So, that was discouraging because I had no where else to go down anymore to eliminate the bumping. What I had to do to fix it was through the movement sliders with speed and acceleration by giving the ball handlers huge advantages in acceleration ratings to explode by players before a bump. Then over compensate the help defense, contest shots, and block sliders for the CPU. My frustration is sliders had very little fix in a key area of the game (1st thing I test and tweak in sliders every year is movement and contact sliders) as well as it’s a hard coded solution for 2k to band aid the blow by fix so now OG is not on blast for the bad rotations lol!
4 - Playoff mode was my favorite mode last year for a few reasons. Number 1 the atmosphere in the playoffs is fun compared to the bad regular season 2k crowds. Number 2 I can set up all the coaching sliders (help defense, rotations, etc.) for all the cpu teams like you can do in my league to create a completely different game as play now games are unplayable. Number 3 ACE in the playoffs is on steroids compared to any other mode which makes those games ultra competitive especially game to game. UNFORTUNATELY, I can not use this mode anymore as they do not allow you to use custom rosters anymore! You can not upload and play with any roster it must be 2ks official roster. SMH! Why this was taken out is beyond me. All I can think is someone dropped the ball. Again, gamekiller for me as it was by far and away my most used mode. Can I sim a whole season to get to the playoffs? Sure, but should I have too? How are these things missed or glossed over? You can’t use it in nba today either. Not sure if that was possible last year or not? I know most last year nba today wasn’t even working.
5 - New play art... I HATE IT! Talk about cluttered. Yes, I know I can turn it off but I like seeing my play art on just not this play art. Some of you might like it. Whoever gave the go ahead on that gets a big SMH! If your going to add something give us the old school as an option at least. Some of the art is so light it’s hard to see then the zig zag art is so unecessary telling me where to dribble to. All I need is the spot on the floor to know where to go not a line from baseline all the way down the court! Smh! Then some of the passes and who to pass to show up way to late so no real flow of you don’t know your plays. If you choose lite you really have no clue what’s going on. I have nothing good to say about it! Just a bad decision!
6 - Every time I try and save a new advanced rotation it saves the rotation, but it freezes the game. I need to load another game, re load 2k19, then go back into the roster and re upload the rotation and then save the roster. SMH
7 - CPU playbooks, Signatures, and Player tendencies every year are a complete joke. Do I need to say anything more? It’s crazy a real life game like this with the tools to make it realistic go ignored every year. It’s frustrating that just to enjoy a game I need to spend 2-3 solid months editing it. You have a roster guy you hired yet he doesn’t touch tendencies. Not in his job description. So does he just get half his salary? Lol I kid but a birdie told me a random guy somewhat plays with them not who you would think. My question is why not? Why is this ignored? Why not hire someone? With playbooks and new coaches it’s totally understandable to not have those dialed in on day 1 but no excuse for other teams. If it’s a man power issue then for the love of god hire more help. Same with tendencies, hire a tendency guy.
8 - I saw someone mention this in another thread somewhere and it’s dead on from what I have seen as well with bad spacing on SOME PNR’s. Another hard coded flaw we can’t fix with the bad roll angles. Along with that when I select a iso the spacing (lack there of) is horrendous! Everyone should spread 5 out or 14 flat to allow me space to go. This was fine in 18 but not sure what happened in 19?! In addition to that every time I use manual DHO the guy performing the handoff decides to defy odds and go the opposite way of the handoff to get in the way of the guy he just handed the ball off too. He should be rolling, popping, or setting a screen away.
9 - Why every year are we switching the most basic controls? I get it if we are adding something more intuitive but replacing something with nothing and to just switch it around every year doesn’t help little Timmy or the casuals from picking it up and for us vets it’s annoying. To add to this they eliminated a ton of sigs. Why? One that stands out is the al horford or Joel embiid fade away. They were perfect in 18 and gone in 19. Adding to the dribble sigs they switch names for what? They changed the order? Why? So inputting woodys signatures is a chore now which I can’t help but feel was partially a small reasoning. Smh! Another example was in 18 double tapping LT gave you a iso motion set up or just tapping it gave you a basic cross. It was intuitive. Instead they replaced it with.... nothing! Lol
10 - it seems like from what I’ve read and in a short sample size seen is CPU players forcing drives and lack of 3’s without heavily adjusting sliders is a problem. I don’t like to edit slider tendencies at all for cpu as it takes away from their real life player tendencies. Might just need to scale up or down in drive and 3point areas for 19 though with all players but seems like game was coded to higher thresholds in these areas?
11 - In coach settings and when you select playcalling messages on once again it does not show the name of the play at the top of the screen so you don’t know what play is being called. This was like this last year as well. When testing cpu vs cpu games this is huge in seeing what plays are being called. Yet another bug... SMH
12 - spacing is bad! I’m really noticing it probably because the cpu playbooks aren’t edited with the plays I put in that usually all have good spacing which I’m not used to. But because of that it really shows how bad 2ks spacing logic is. Everything is cluttered with guys running in lanes and this is with backdoor slider set to 0 for both teams as I always have it. I don’t remember 18 having that issue besides the bad fast break logic it had in it? Like I said with selecting iso guys have no awareness and I need to run to other side of court compared to other way around. It’s never been like that. Same with DHO as per my example earlier where DHO guy cuts off guy he’s handing it too.
I’d have no problem going back to 2k18 if only they had the dna share like they do in 18 to easily get the rookies into my roster. I’m hoping 2k fixes a few of these things like they did for the over use of ISO’s & guard posts (this was an issue last year I talked about so not like it wasn’t a known issue coming into 19). The playbooks couldn’t even be seen at launch so good thing I didn’t buy at launch as that would have made me lose my mind as it’s the 1st Place that I go. But so far this is by far the worst 2k I’ve played in recent memory. I can’t see doing what I did last year and putting in all the time to edit a subpar game. Last year it was worth it because the gameplay was so good and you could see the results of every edit. Idk, I’ll keep testing and pray for a monster patch, but more then likely I’ll end up wasting 65.00 this year and end up waiting for 2k20... I can’t help but feel disappointed in almost every way with 19. SMH!
Just my .02 and YMMV and good for you if you can find enjoyment in it but no question it’s a huge dropoff from 18 imo...
Quick list of things I like so it’s not all negative...
1- New DNA share.
2- DHO’s are executed better finally! Live has it perfect though! So smooth!
3- Some great new plays
4- Cutters and DHO plays are now usable.
5- series added
6- online league association depth now
That’s it... Maybe my expectations were too high after 18?! I think 18 was so good gameplay wise especially after edits it was so close to being perfect with minor changes in areas. There was no need for these mass changes or trying to reinvent the wheel. I’d been much happier with a nba2k 18.5! If I’m missing something though in 1 of the above areas and you have a fix Let me know and comment and I’ll try it out...
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