NBA 2K18:State of The Union

[Breakstarter]

Hello everyone, this is Breakstarter here
I've listened to quite a few devs that say around this time of the year is when they come up with their game plans for their ideas to push into the following game. If this is so, not that I'm not grateful for new improvements in game modes and animations, but I want 2k18 and every game after it moving forward to be great. For that to happen 2k18 NEEDS to focus on only 5
Major areas of their game.



1)Online matchmaking/Online Latency issues(Lag)
I won't go into detail but we all know this is 2ks most talked about legacy issue since forever.
There's no reason that a Triple A title like 2k can't have a beautifully working online arena where all players can match up and search to link up with their friends to play with or against each other without fear of getting kicked to the main menu. 2k wants Esports to take them serious, but they need to take their online matchmaking serious as well. There's nothing worse than playing to qualify for a spot in the NBA 2k Allstars tournament and half of your team doesn't even make it in the game and you wind up being handicapped against a really good team. We need this to be your number one concern if you want us to take you serious in the future.




2)Virtual Currency:
NBA 2k is in the BUSINESS of selling video games which we all understand, but at what point did they become a nickel and diming corporation that not only receives $65 for the initial purchase, but if you want to compete early you need to drop another $70 dollars to complete your myplayer to a 95 overall? The increase in cost for vc was sharp and yes we understand you DON'T have to "Pay-to-play", but the entire gaming ecosystem is revolved around VC. The clothing, the boosts for mypark/NBA games, the attributes system, the layups and dunks free throws crossovers etc...all tied in with Virtual Currency. It forces people who don't have the time to sit here and grind on my players to use real money to constantly keep vc so they can make in game purchases. I believe that this system needs to go. I know better but there needs to be a holdover system where vc is transferred over to the next game year in and year out because people simply don't want to spend that type of cash on a video game.
I'm sure most of you who've been playing this game since dream cast can remember a time when micro transactions were never a part of this franchise and now it seems to be crippling it's customers pockets on an annual basis. 2k we deserve better than this. Please fire out a way to balance this broken virtual money system because it just comes off as if you're out of touch with your fan base and only care about money. The "Other Game" died off with that reputation. Let's not let that be the last thing we remember 2k for.



3)Defense
This is by far the most important aspect of the game that needs a complete overhaul.
To put it as simple as possible: The defense doesn't match the offense In this game. Too many ways to abuse the A.I. and too many ways the offense can exploit human beings. 2k has been on record to patching and "nerfing" parts of the offense in this generation more than any other franchise that I can remember. If it isn't explosiveness out of dribbling, it's shooting contested shots, or points in the paint being too over powered. We need a defensive system in place that keeps the offense in check. Offense should be something layered and skilled based. Not everyone should be able to pull off every move in the game. Making defense a top priority would push 2k to the next level. Fix legacy issues like baseline cheese and
Lateral movement on defense. The animations that play out on offense are the same one that plague us on defense. If you go for a steal or a block, you're automatically out of the play because you lunge sooooo hard, that there's no chance for recovery. I want the game to work as quick as my mind does. I want to see faster recovery from steal attempts and block attempts. The game needs quicker responses from user input on both ends but especially on defense.

2k has always gotten offense right, it's about time we make the defense as rich and detailed and skilled based as possible. If eSports is the direction we're heading in, then there has to be a counter for all the offense that 2k puts in users hands.



4)The REAL return of Crew Mode/ New Park Ideas
When I first heard of PRO Am mode 2 years ago, I finally thought 2k got it right by bringing us back my favorite mode with a new feel. Boy, was I wrong. Not only was I wrong, it just felt incomplete.

2k10/2k11 had:
The option to choose which position plays where. As it stands you can't pick where you want to play and causes a lot of unneccessary mismatches when playing walk on pro am, regular pro am, and park mode.

A 15 man roster limit which allowed for more teammates to be on your team. This 10 man roster is cool and all but we all have more than 10 friends that we ball with that want to join our team that we have to constantly boot someone from the team just to make space for whoever is online. Make this a priority for 2k18....hell increase it to a 20 man roster.

2k10/11 had commentators during the crew mode game. That feeling of immersion of a close competitive game being called with you and your friends against a really good team there's no feeling like it. We haven't seen this feature in this current generation during our pro am walk ons or our Real Team pro am games. 2k needs to bring back what made us fall in love with crew mode.

The park has seen no improvements in 2 years and we don't like walk ons...please bring back the Jordan rec center with improvements like being able to wear your crew jerseys and hear Kevin Harlan and the crew commentary during matchups. We need more venues for the park...those 3 parks are tired as hell..we need a new system...maybe like 10 different venues to play at.
Last, but not least...



5)Customer service

Not that customer support has ever been their strong point, but at least in last generations titles whenever we had an issue with our games, we at least had a customer support line where we could actually speak to a human being that was live. In this day in age we are relegated to getting our concerns or complaints sent off to twitter in which in my honest opinion just isn't fair. There's nothing like getting a generic response from customer support after stopping what you're doing to generic one write an email about your issue. We need to get
Better customer support than what we're getting now.

Nothing against Ronnie & Chris but they don't even address most of our concerns when they live stream so we need to hire at least 2 people from within the community who can be our voices so that when there are game breaking issues or we have concerns about the game that it doesn't fall on deaf ears. We need Liaisons between the community and 2k to constantly keep us the customers informed on what's going on a day to day basis.
Day to day meaning:

Update required-fully detailed explanation of what's being adjusted and why.

Patch notes-same as above

When servers go down- more accurate ETA's on how long we should expect them to be down for.

All in all I just want and expect better from our game as a whole, and we as a community should hold 2k to a higher degree of responsibility in order to get the best possible experience when it comes playing NBA 2k . Feel free to add on anything that I've missed.

Thanks, in advance and let's help make 2k great again.

[Breakstarter]

10 characters...bump

[SixGod]

Good read! Pretty much summarizes what issues people are pointing out with this years game (legacy or otherwise).

I like the VC carryover idea. I remember in 2K16 I hit Legend in September and had all this pointless VC because 17 was a few weeks away.

[Junior Moe]

I'm an offliner but I'm 1000% with you on point 3 and 5. Defense (locomotion in general) needs an overhaul. 2K17 has been plagued by poor customer service/interaction since before release. I said at the time I hope 2K17 is flawless because people were turned off. 2K17 wasn't and they're paying for it all now, IMO.

[RickyRubio9]

I just want they to separate offline/online modes.

No cap attributes for offline players. And different body types for your my player.

[de_jesus]

I agree with what you are saying Breakstart especially with regards to your 3rd point. However, I think there are a few other things 2K should revamp in order to create a more enjoyable gaming experience:

A) A more robust character creator.

I think this should have two facets: looks and animation packages.

As of right now, making a character (at least in the offline modes) is a bit underwhelming. Most created/generated characters look the same or have the same body type, and there is absolutely nothing the user can do about it. If I want to create a fit, toned SF that is 6'7" and 230 lbs I can do that. However, he will look exactly like a 7'2" 305 lbs center.

Why? Who knows. They just do. Sliders do not matter. Weight does not matter. Ripped/Toned/Etc (or whatever the settings are) do not matter. Everything aside from facial features and height will look nearly identical. Unless, it's a cpu-generated character than they will all look like inhuman monsters from a Tolkien novel.

(Oh, and on the subject of sliders = give us wingspan for the wingspan slider. I do not like setting it to 65 then going into another menu to see what the actual wingspan is. If my player is 6'6" then let me know what his actual wingspan is when I'm adjusting the slider. Make it easy for me especially since I often try to edit player models in my offline MyLeague and that non-sense takes absolutely for-ev-ver)

But beyond that we still can't access certain aspects of the players. Rhythm dribbles and certain animation packages (without badges - which I find a bit ridiculous, bue que sera...). I would like if we could get a robust and intuitive character creation suite that allows me to actually dictate how my player looks from head to toe, and how they move in terms of animation packages.

Nothing overly fancy but something that allows us to really tweak certain aspect of our character.

(Oh, and just to add a one more itty-bitty thing: add female character models to the game for certain modes. Sure, they shouldn't be in the NBA because that makes no sense. But it's not like you don't find girls at the park. They don't need their stats affected in any way, but I don't see the problem in doing so.)

B) One-to-One AI decision making

My least favorite aspect of NBA 2K17 is that MY AI teammates do not AT ALL play like the CPU's AI teammates. As one example, Sam Pham, showed that when setting off-ball screens the User's AI teammates will often stand literally right behind/in front of the screen and run right into. While, on the other hand, AI teammates can perceive the screen and, more often than not, slip right right around it taking minimal contact or completely avoiding it.

I know in many cases this should happen but the occurrence of such events should be equal on both sides and influenced by the player's ratings. I've criticized 2K17 plenty for making it seem like user's have to play against the AI and the game's core mechanics which is frustrating for many users. Myself included.

Essentially, I'm asking to make my AI teammates as smart as the CPU's AI teammates when all things are comparatively equal (e.g. if my player is a defensive ******* I get why he would run into a screen, but if he has a high defensive IQ (or whatever) make him play like it when he is off-ball.)

Same can be said for offensive decision making and running plays. Still leaves much to be desired with the bumping and collisions.

B-2) Offensive players should not be brick walls.

I do not know if anyone has ever noticed, but if you run into your own players they often will not move or acknowledge that you are running full speed into them.

Try it.

You can fully sprint into a teammate and your player will keep running and go absolutely NO WHERE while your teammate stands there completely oblivious to your presence. It's weird, and I started noticing it about two months ago.

I would like true player interactions where my players recognize where their teammates are and actually interact with them on the court.

C) Tell us about the game

Seriously, I've only played 2K since 2K15, and there is a gaggle of things about the game NO ONE knows about. For instance, did anyone know that the driving contact frequency slider is counter intuitive according to one of the devs. Essentially, and if I remember correctly, the lower that slider the more contact you get... the higher it is the less contact you get.

If I can find the post from the dev I will happily update this post with it, but it caught a few people by surprise when the dev casually dropped it in a thread some time ago.

Tell us what the sliders actually do, and how tweaking it up or down impacts the game. You know we are going to make our own sliders so give us the tools to do that intelligently without a "Guess n Go" system that we have to implement and communicate with each other. 2K clearly knows how the sliders work but they have yet to provide any guidance.

We should have that guidance.

D) (Personal preference) Remove or limit badges to personality traits OR tell us EXACTLY how they impact a player's performance

Don't get me wrong I love the badges system, but at this point I honestly think it creates a LOT of imbalance in the game especially due to the variance in performance they lead to. I tried playing without badges based on some advice from OS, but it was hit or miss. Good players felt good and bad players felt bad, but performance was wildly inconsistent.

I think the personality badges are great: "Clutch", "Wild Card", etc. But HOF catch and shoot vs Gold catch and shoot vs Silver Catch and shoot vs Bronze catch and shoot is just too much. Especially in a system like MyLeague where while players improve or decline it does not seem as if their badges always do which leads to weird imbalances where you can have a 80 rated player become a mid-90 over two or three seasons, and still have these mediocre badges which impedes their performance (relative to a higher tier badge)

Or the other side of this is to just tell us what is impacted by the badge (alal RPG status). If I have Hall of Fame Catch and Shoot then tell me if it adds 5%, 10% 15% chance of making a shot. That way we can have that perspective and knowledge.

Same with badges like Killer Crossover: what exactly does it do and how does it affect my chances of doing it?

I like information. 2K has information.

Seems like a perfect match.

[Jrocc23]

I agree 100% w/ this thread. Mainly w/ Online and Crew. I admit though, Crew is getting there. It's definitely a lot closer to what we had years ago. It's just a lot of other things they need to do. It's just not complete/setup right yet.

The main other thing I would add is movement. The movement this year has been terrible. And it definitely hurts the most defensively.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jax01]

What did Crew have that pro-am doesn't? I thought the whole pro-am setup is way better than crew ever was. You got walk-on for just quick games. You got team customization, 10-man roster, free agency offers with player stats (sick addition), etc. Other things like full announcers was probably cut due to lag issues.