It's alright if you disagree man. No hard feelings. But let me address your post as to why a few things you've mentioned is a majority problem.
You mention that you only enjoy mycareer when you're badge hunting for your player to compete online. That right there is an indicator that the whole mycareer aspect is unappealing to you. This isn't your fault. This badge hunting process is what takes the focus away of just playing mycareer and the spike lee joint aspect was a flop for so many reasons already stated.
There has to be a more formal way of obtaining badge and also no one should be able to get every single badge for online play. They need to go back to 2k14 and before where you're limited to the badges you can get and assign. A 7'3 280 C should not have shot creator, dribbling badges, one man fast break, and badges that are not realistic to their size and playstyle. On the other hand, I don't want to see any small guard having brick wall, eraser, defensive anchor, bruiser, post move whatever, and badges that aren't relative to their size and playstyle either.
Now let's talk about what you mean by "watering down" and also in the community myplayer playstyles thread in a post of yours you say that 2k is already limiting the player with inside/outside/balanced playstyle. You're absolutely right! They're limiting us to make the player we would like to make combined with this atrocious VAGUE bucket system for a couple of years now. That to me is cookie cutting and watering down alone to use your term more precisely.
You're saying my playstyles are vague then what do you call this bucket system in place? Have you played 2k when playstyles actually existed? If not you had to select one that accomodates how you want to play and then build your player from there. This is essentially what I am trying to do, but on a more grand scale with online balance. If you've followed the community playstyles thread more closely than you would've read that you could go beyond the max offline and potentially obtain 99 every attribute and essentially be a god like player, but online with the way it is now everyone is nearly identical attribute and badge wise and this is where 2k is boxing us in and not giving us more options.
You say reverting back to 2k14 is enough, but you're wrong. The max attributes are WAY too high for the playstyles and they all nearly have the same attributes across all playstyles when they're maxed out check it out for yourself.
https://docs.zoho.com/sheet/publishe...00c0&mode=html.
Not to mention, that height and weight don't have any affect! So everyone will be a 6'10 275 athletic SF and be just as fast and dunk just as well as a 6'8 245? There's no diversity there and to piggy back on what I just said, why be small when you can be big and have the same attributes?
In conclusion, use 2k14s idea of the playstyles again, but more balanced with badges and establish pros and cons with height and weight. How are you going to say that there are "too many playstyles for 2k to implement"? I did all these playstyles in a matter of like 2-3 months span alone without much effort. I'm pretty sure an entire crew at 2k development team can easily do all playstyles for every position in like a week. Now if you're saying it's too much because it is overwhelming for the average 2k player to choose one, then guess what? You can make your own playstyle with "X" amount of given VC and select what attributes you want to allocate VC to just like in previous 2k when it was skill points. This was also mentioned in the thread as an option if you didn't want to pre-select one.
By the way, I only mention the thread to those who talk about wanting playstyles and complain about bucket system so they can see that someone is actually working on something that is more refreshing which in turn will create more feedback for myself and others who are interested in helping anyway they see fit.