MyLeague Online Discussion (Great dev post kickoff)

[setis]

Quote: Originally Posted by Leftos

...I'd love to hear your ideas for next year if injuries are important to you in an online experience. How would you want them to work given a flex schedule? Should they last, say, an X number of games instead of X number of days?

Get players injured an X number of games, definitely.

[Leftos]

I have a love-hate relationship with Erick and Dave Z. They push me to do my best every day, they push hard, and nothing can ever be "good enough". It has to be great. When I do the "are we done yet?" face after a hard summer of crunch while trying to tweak and tune a specific feature, the response is always "no, we're not done, and we'll never be done". Having producers like that keeps my passion for the game at its peak every day. We'll never settle. If the deadline is here, fine, tomorrow we're starting work on improving this further for next year. And that was kind of the point with the rebuild of My LEAGUE Online. We wanted a new infrastructure, one that the franchise team has built from scratch, one that gives us both the tools to expand and integrate offline features relatively easily, as well as one that will make it easy for us to find out when things are going wrong and exactly why. Erick said it, the goal was to build the foundation (and boy we had discussion after discussion on how that should be built) and after that, get the core features we could get in time that would WORK. Cramming twice the features to boast a huge feature list would be possible, but there's no way we could've tested all that. However, with the foundation in place, we're very confident about how much MyLEAGUE Online can evolve with your feedback moving forward.

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

[Toaster]

Great post Leftos. Keep rocking!
Regarding the injuries I feel like going with number of games sounds like a smart compromise.

Can we also play a league with LESS than 30 total teams so that all teams are user controlled and all games are user vs. User?

Very excited for this year's version and hoping for solid online infrastructure for online in PC (PC FTW!)

Cheers

[amedawg00]

Quote: Originally Posted by SimBaller

Hi folks, In hindsight, I don't think I did a good job of eloquently explaining why MyLEAGUE Online is what it is, and how it came to be in 2K16. About 5 years ago, I made a strong push to management to give me the resources to provide a fully featured online franchise mode, which later came to be known as The Association: Online. Ambitious, and by-and-large, it worked. Sure, there were some quirks or design decisions that people didn't like (e.g. the moving window of advancement). Once that project was complete, my team and I moved on to other areas of the game. Having watched Online Leagues in NBA 2K14 and NBA 2K15 falter (for lack of a better word), I went back to management very early this year and told them I would be taking over the online league experience once again. This wasn't up for debate. To be fair, the people at VC that worked on this mode the last two years did a very admirable job, they just didn't have the experienced resources needed to deliver the proper experience you guys were craving. Those guys were hungry this year to right the ship. I loved seeing it. For NBA 2K16, we combined our resource pools, which gave us the opportunity for me to allocate some of my more specialized and experienced engineers on this project. One such engineer, Brad, spent the majority of his year coming up with a completely new server-based architecture that is the heart and soul of NBA 2K16's MyLEAGUE Online feature. This brings me to my main point for writing this. I've seen a few mentions (and about 12 of the same post from ataman (oh snap!)) and assumptions of this being the same mode as last year with potentially x and y feature added. This really couldn't be further from the truth. This is a completely new experience built with an all-new backend driving it. Gosh knows it won't be 100% perfect (though we certainly hope it is), but you do have my word that we will give you 110% until it is. We'll work through anything that comes up. Heck, Leftos won't sleep until issues are resolved. Brad is the same way. You guys got the 'A' team supporting you at this point; these are some of the brightest guys in the industry. I played last year's Online Leagues pretty heavily. MyLEAGUE Online isn't last year's leagues. It may not have the offseason you covet, but it does contain the features that make MyLEAGUE such a special experience. You will be able to (and I can't believe some of these weren't there last year, sorry): Make Rotational adjustments Implement Gameplans (and everything that comes with that) Utilize custom playbooks Adjust gameplay sliders (at the admin level) Adjust MyLEAGUE-specific sliders like Trade Negotiation Difficulty (at the admin level) Custom Roster support Control everything as an admin (trade approval, force winners, force losers, reset games, etc. etc. etc.) I see people mention things like, "did they fix the bug about being able to rejoin the league once you leave?" To that, I say no. No, we didn't because this an entirely new experience. That bug never existed in this experience. Unfortunately, time IS a factor when you release an annual title. It's not an excuse I use, because it is my problem, not yours. You want (and deserve) the universe. That being said, I'm tremendously proud of the people who managed to create an all-new online league foundation (that will serve us well as new features are added) while simultaneously making what I think is probably the biggest single year jump in our franchise in a long time. Lastly, I truly appreciate the discussion taking place within this thread regarding MyLEAGUE Online. I'm not one to shy away from a solid discussion or get my feelings hurt because someone doesn't like the way something isn't done. While this is business, this is my passion. This is the same for Leftos, Dave Z, Brad, and everyone else that played a major part in these modes. We WANT to hear your thoughts on what we're adding (or not adding if the case may be). At the end of the day, if it's not abundantly clear even after reading the "Little Things" section of my blog post...We've got your best interests at heart. Enjoy the mode(s) this year.

Simballer, OA nation welcomes you back with open arms after you deserted us to devote your full attention to myleague offline, LOL. Your post gave the community desperately needed insight into why our beloved mode was gutted to point of near extinction on next gen 2k14 and 2k15. I was thrilled to hear that you yourself suffered through the barebones OL modes of 14 and 15. Hearing this, along with the coaching, gameplan, and admin options gives the community the assurance of an OL infrastructure, that has been beefed up and stabilized inspite of the lack of an automated offseason.The level of transparency and honesty exuding from both your blog post and the further clarifications provided in the above post will help moderate the heated rhetoric and frustrations of a community that felt abandoned and forgotten after the magnus opus that was 2k12-2k14 last gen Online Asssociations. The fact that you mentioned dev names who are working on this mode both for the current iteration support through patches if necessary, and for whats to come in the future iterations, is more therapeutic and calming than you can ever imagine.

Let's use this thread to help simballer, leftos, brad, and company finish the job with constructive ideas for how to implement an offseason that works for majority-human controlled teams in OAs. It would be easy to suggest a copy and paste of the offline myleague offseason but what works for an AI centric mode will not always work for whats primarily a user/human centric mode. I want to see creative ideas resembling what Lakers24 did in his epic thread on customization, rebranding, relocation, etc. that 2k clearly took a note of. Alot of us have been leading as commisshioners and or playing in hardcore leagues for years now so we should now some of the challenges and pitfalls of having a fair and equitable free agent system.

Expect a detailed post from me to kick off how an offseason should flow for a majority-human controlled teams in an OA.Let's make this thread epic fellas and always maintain our composure and civility towards the most talented and relentless dev team in the industry. They heard our frustrations as well as feedback, and from what I read, they are inviting us to continue the conversation here with further feedback in order to improve the mode.

Certain forces on this forum would like to brand us as the new "Crew heretics," but we all know that the community is firmly rooted in Simnation; the only difference is we prefer to match wits with other sim-orientated humans online as opposed to the AI offline.

The foundation has been laid for a fully featured OA in the future and we have a visionary in Simballer who brought us the association online leading the way, so the future is once again bright for what was once 2ks flagship online mode on last gen.

[ataman5]

Quote: Originally Posted by Leftos

I have a love-hate relationship with Erick and Dave Z. They push me to do my best every day, they push hard, and nothing can ever be "good enough". It has to be great. When I do the "are we done yet?" face after a hard summer of crunch while trying to tweak and tune a specific feature, the response is always "no, we're not done, and we'll never be done". Having producers like that keeps my passion for the game at its peak every day. We'll never settle. If the deadline is here, fine, tomorrow we're starting work on improving this further for next year. And that was kind of the point with the rebuild of My LEAGUE Online. We wanted a new infrastructure, one that the franchise team has built from scratch, one that gives us both the tools to expand and integrate offline features relatively easily, as well as one that will make it easy for us to find out when things are going wrong and exactly why. Erick said it, the goal was to build the foundation (and boy we had discussion after discussion on how that should be built) and after that, get the core features we could get in time that would WORK. Cramming twice the features to boast a huge feature list would be possible, but there's no way we could've tested all that. However, with the foundation in place, we're very confident about how much MyLEAGUE Online can evolve with your feedback moving forward. Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

I'm here like an eagle picking every word that a dev say about Online League, OA, MyLeague Online.

Things can only get better from here and i'm sure it will as the iterations go...

Ofcourse i still haven't experienced what we will have in terms of robust options etc. but i will be more than willing to share all my opinions (all positive!) after i touch on the game.

It definitely is a new era and that YourTimeHasCome motto from last year has arrived for us MyLeague Online Heads!

[MrTrav15]

Will trades work the same way as they do offline, so will it be like a phone call and an immediate response to the trade? Or will we have to wait a while to hear back? Also will we still get 3 team trades online?

[swimfunk]

Quote: Originally Posted by Leftos

I have a love-hate relationship with Erick and Dave Z. They push me to do my best every day, they push hard, and nothing can ever be "good enough". It has to be great. When I do the "are we done yet?" face after a hard summer of crunch while trying to tweak and tune a specific feature, the response is always "no, we're not done, and we'll never be done". Having producers like that keeps my passion for the game at its peak every day. We'll never settle. If the deadline is here, fine, tomorrow we're starting work on improving this further for next year. And that was kind of the point with the rebuild of My LEAGUE Online. We wanted a new infrastructure, one that the franchise team has built from scratch, one that gives us both the tools to expand and integrate offline features relatively easily, as well as one that will make it easy for us to find out when things are going wrong and exactly why. Erick said it, the goal was to build the foundation (and boy we had discussion after discussion on how that should be built) and after that, get the core features we could get in time that would WORK. Cramming twice the features to boast a huge feature list would be possible, but there's no way we could've tested all that. However, with the foundation in place, we're very confident about how much MyLEAGUE Online can evolve with your feedback moving forward. Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

I understand that change had to be made, the old league infrastructure was a disaster to say the least. There was no hope from that mode as it was quite the embarrassment. It definetly wasn't up to 2K standards especially when we see all the other improvements being made to other modes. Fixes were made to other modes and we couldn't even get stats or games to register. The last 2 years of 2K have been a disapointment and that's why I think the community had high hopes for 2K16. The level of excitement rose thru the roof when news leaked that there will be a Online My League game mode.

Moving forward I hope we can have the same transparency and actually fix problems. It's been a struggle to find an answer or solution on some of the issues we've encountered. I'm hopeful this isn't just a thread to cool us off and then we won't hear from you guys when things go bad. There is a large part of this community that only buys this game for the online leagues.

I appreciate you guys actually taking the time and answering some questions. Really wish the Online My League news wasn't bunched in with all the MY GM and My Lg stuff. It sucked reading about all this great level of detail with the changes in those modes and then realizing none of it was in the mode I actually cared about. So, cheers to a restart and hopefully this mode works as planned. The community will find a way to make it work how we want, we always do.

[ataman5]

Now that came to my mind as we've evolved from basic questions like " can we set rotations" you know things evolve afterwards..

Will team chemistry and all that related stuff be in the mode ?