I am mainly an online competitive player (Pro Am, MyTeam, Park, Play Now Online, in that order), so coming from that playing perspective, here is how I would rank 2K20's gameplay problems, from most important to least important:
1) Replace the tier 1 behind the back escape move with a new animation that's more realistic and less overpowered.
All you have to do is scroll over to the 2K20 section of your favorite social media site, click on any Twitch stream, YouTube video, or Twitter clip, and I'm sure you will see a 6'5" or shorter guard scoring off the cheese behind the back move within the first 15 seconds of whatever video you clicked on.
This move is OP because it has a short startup time, an explosive forward launch, and a massive amount of lateral movement. It also lets you clip through the limbs of any steal attempts and ghost through the bodies of any nearby defenders. And it doesn't use much of your stamina meter, so you can just keep triggering it over and over again until you eventually get open.
The only defensive tactic I've seen that has much of a chance to counter it is setting up for a charge in the animation's exit path, but because the ballhandler can quickly let go of his left joystick and cutoff the BTB animation mid-move to cancel it into a standing shamgod hesitation, that charge drawing tactic is easily defeated.
In the right hands, this move is simply unguardable. And it doesn't even look like or act like a dribble move that you'd see on a real basketball court, so it doesn't deserve to be in the game. Please take it out and replace it with something else.
2) Make Kobe's between the legs signature sizeup dribble more susceptible to steals.
This is the second most popular dribble move in 2K20 after the behind the back escape, and that's because all guards know it's a safe way to switch hands and setup a speedboost escape without exposing the ball for a steal.
Unlike the cartoony behind the back escape animation, this is a real basketball move that absolutely belongs in the game, I just feel like the Kobe sizeup should be a lot riskier for the ball handler to do, and the ball should get knocked loose if you know the move is coming and hit steal while the animation is happening. A move with this much offensive upside (the speedboost out of it is tough to guard since the constant hand switching makes it hard to guess which way the dribbler wants to go) shouldn't feel so safe and shouldn't be free from any negative consequences when the dribbler is just spamming it repeatedly in a defender's face.
3) Improve defensive body ups and shot contest tracking during hop step dunk/layup animations.
After the two dribble moves that I mentioned above, the next most overpowered offensive maneuver in 2K20 is the hop step into a dunk or layup.
It's an OP move because even if the defender is tightly engaged body-to-body with the dribbler when he starts up the hop animation, it's likely that the defender will come unstuck and lose body contact or just fail to have his right joystick shot contest register as the hop animation plays out.
Jumping at the shooter as he goes up with the ball gives the defender the best odds of forcing a missed shot, but it also gives the offensive player a good chance of getting his own offensive rebound, since the hop animation usually launches the shooter towards the rim, whereas the defender's body will be drifting away from the basket after attempting to block the shot.
You can try to go for charges or strip steals against hop step spammers, but those are low percentage plays with lots of risk and low odds of generating a positive defensive outcome.
If the defender has a similar body and similar ratings/badges to the offensive player, then he should be able to play hands up defense and stop this move most of the time. But that just isn't how the outcomes tend to play out in 2K20, due to how bad the body up and shot contest tracking are against hop step dunks/layups.
4) Off-ball AI three point shooters should be spotting up within their shooting range.
I know that Czar added this new "deep range" wing and top of the key spacing to the game because it's how a lot of NBA teams are setting up their offense, but it just doesn't work well in 2K20 because so few players have the range extender badge at a level appropriate for how deep they're spotting up.
Ideally, all of the AI players should know what level their range extender badge is set to, and should automatically spotup at whatever shooting range is comfortable for them. But if this year's game can't handle that level of AI complexity, then as a bandaid fix for the rest of 2K20, I'd prefer to just have all of my shooters spotting up right next the three point line instead of standing 3 or 4 steps behind it.
5) Increase the number of available pauses to 10 in online head to head matches, but keep the pause timer at 4:30 per game.
In real basketball, the best coaches are the ones who make adjustments to counter their opponent's tactics as the game goes on. But in 2K20, you are only given 5 total pauses per 30 minute match to make all of your offensive and defensive adjustments, and you usually have to waste 1 or 2 of those pauses before the game has even tipped off just to get your AI teammates playing properly (Why don't these strategy settings save permanently to my user profile? Or at the very least, let me set up everything before the game starts so I don't have to waste in-game pauses). I don't need that much time to make adjustments (it usually only takes 10 or 20 seconds to fix whatever I need to fix), but I do need more pauses, please. I've lost countless games of 2K over the years because I didn't have another pause available to change a tactic or setting that would've turned the game around in my favor and countered something that my opponent was doing to me on the court.
6a) Revert the shot feedback system back to how it was on day one.
When 2K20 first launched you had to "green" jumpshots to make them, and almost all poorly timed "white bar" shots wouldn't go in. This feedback system made it easy to adjust your shot timing based on the post-shot results, since you knew when your timing was good ("green") and when it was off ("white"). But then 2K changed shooting a few patches later to where many of your perfectly timed jumpshots will now get falsely displayed as "white" slightly early or slightly late releases. This makes it hard to judge whether or not you're actually releasing shots with good timing, since a "white" slightly early release could mean that you really did mistime your shot, or it could mean that you actually had a perfect release and the game just didn't acknowledge that by giving you a "green" bar. There's just no way of knowing which shots are perfectly timed and which shots are mistimed in the current shot feedback system. And when you combine that release timing uncertainty with the 2K series' longstanding online latency issues, the end result is an extremely frustrating shooting experience.
6b) Alternatively, just display shot feedback data in exact milliseconds instead of using vague words and meter colors.
Can we just get an option in the controller settings to show shot feedback in numeric form? If the game would explicitly tell me that I'm releasing the ball 15 MS late or 23 MS early it would be a lot easier to adjust to the inescapable input delay that all online matches of 2K have had since the Dreamcast days. We all know that 2K is an inconsistently laggy game, where the amount of lag varies wildly from one match to the next, so please just give us the tools to compensate for that input delay.
7) Lower the performance level of heavily fatigued players.
The orange gatorade symbol that pops up next to fatigued players just doesn't have enough of a negative impact on player performance. In 2K20 you can easily win games online without calling one timeout and without making a single substitution if the base ratings of your starters are high enough. Fatigue just doesn't drop their ratings low enough to where good players become ineffective players, once tired.
8) Reduce steal success against high rated/highly badged post players.
Having hall of fame post badges and a 90+ post moves rating should protect post players from strips during drop step and post spin animations. Currently, the steal success rate is way too high against those two post moves. The best defense against a highly rated/highly badged post player should be to deny the entry pass then bring a double team if a pass happens to gets through, not to mindlessly mash the steal button knowing that you have around a 75% chance of forcing a turnover and only a 10% chance of committing a foul (that's what the odds feel like right now). I definitely don't remember seeing Ewing, Hakeem, or any other legendary post scorer getting stripped every time that he tried to perform a post move, which is what's happening right now in 2K20. Even the basic post "protect stance" where you sit still while holding the left trigger isn't very safe right now and can easily get ripped.
9) Remove the pogo stick badge.
With the way that this badge is currently tuned, defenders with gold or hall fame pogo stick can just keep mashing the jump button repeatedly and will recover so quickly from their second, third, fourth, and fifth jumps that you can't consistently score on them (or even draw fouls) using patient pump fakes like you should be able to.
If the offensive player is smart enough to bait his defender into jumping on a pump fake, then the offense should be rewarded with either an open shot or a shooting foul the majority of the time. But those positive offensive outcomes rarely happen right now. The game should be designed to reward intelligent decision making, not button spamming. Keep kid-friendly badges like pogo stick in arcade basketball games like NBA Playgrounds.
10) Make deep outlet passes tougher to complete and remove the right bumper + left bumper passing command.
Most outlet passes in real basketball are just short dump offs to a nearby guard, yet 2K continues to allow big men with bad pass ratings to consistently complete blind, full court heaves by hitting the right bumper + left bumper as soon as the ball touches their hands, sending no-look outlets flying upcourt to the teammate that's furthest ahead on the fastbreak. In previous 2K games it was the breakstarter badge that made these cheesy full court outlet passes possible, but this year, you only need around a 60 pass rating + bronze breakstarter to consistently hit leaking teammates in stride. So it's not even the breakstarter badge that's the problem this year, it's just that outlet passes in general are tuned in a way that makes them far too easy to complete.
The game should be tuned to where 90% of the outlet passes have to be thrown behind the half court line, as is the case in the real NBA. But right now, 2K20 is tuned in the exact opposite direction, where 90% of outlet passes end up going past the halfcourt line, to teammates that the rebounder can't even see on his screen, but can still hit in stride thanks to the right bumper + left bumper CPU pass assistance.
11) Restrict the "openness" pass setting to offline modes only.
Just imagine how much criticism a game like Madden would get if it had a controller setting that allowed online players to simply press the A button and let the game automatically throw the ball to the most open receiver on the field. That's essentially what the "openness" slider can do right now in 2K20 if you choose to max it out. It lets anyone who picks up the controller look like they have superhuman passing vision, and while I can understand making "training wheels" like openness available to newcomers in offline modes, there's no acceptable reason for allowing such high levels of CPU assistance in online matches of 2K.
12) Let ball handlers pass out of bump animations, which a slight penalty to pass accuracy.
If you've tried to play as a ball handler this year then you've probably encountered those "bump" animations that stun your player for a second or two and put him in a temporary state of input paralysis where he can't do anything except pray that he doesn't travel or step on the halfcourt/out of bounds lines.
I feel like high rated playmakers should be able to pass out of those animations at any time, but their pass accuracy should be lowered a bit if they hit the pass button before the bump animation finishes. And the bail out badge could also activate in those situations, to better distinguish the ball handlers who can play through physical defense.
1) Replace the tier 1 behind the back escape move with a new animation that's more realistic and less overpowered.
All you have to do is scroll over to the 2K20 section of your favorite social media site, click on any Twitch stream, YouTube video, or Twitter clip, and I'm sure you will see a 6'5" or shorter guard scoring off the cheese behind the back move within the first 15 seconds of whatever video you clicked on.
Spoiler
This move is OP because it has a short startup time, an explosive forward launch, and a massive amount of lateral movement. It also lets you clip through the limbs of any steal attempts and ghost through the bodies of any nearby defenders. And it doesn't use much of your stamina meter, so you can just keep triggering it over and over again until you eventually get open.
The only defensive tactic I've seen that has much of a chance to counter it is setting up for a charge in the animation's exit path, but because the ballhandler can quickly let go of his left joystick and cutoff the BTB animation mid-move to cancel it into a standing shamgod hesitation, that charge drawing tactic is easily defeated.
Spoiler
In the right hands, this move is simply unguardable. And it doesn't even look like or act like a dribble move that you'd see on a real basketball court, so it doesn't deserve to be in the game. Please take it out and replace it with something else.
2) Make Kobe's between the legs signature sizeup dribble more susceptible to steals.
This is the second most popular dribble move in 2K20 after the behind the back escape, and that's because all guards know it's a safe way to switch hands and setup a speedboost escape without exposing the ball for a steal.
Spoiler
Unlike the cartoony behind the back escape animation, this is a real basketball move that absolutely belongs in the game, I just feel like the Kobe sizeup should be a lot riskier for the ball handler to do, and the ball should get knocked loose if you know the move is coming and hit steal while the animation is happening. A move with this much offensive upside (the speedboost out of it is tough to guard since the constant hand switching makes it hard to guess which way the dribbler wants to go) shouldn't feel so safe and shouldn't be free from any negative consequences when the dribbler is just spamming it repeatedly in a defender's face.
3) Improve defensive body ups and shot contest tracking during hop step dunk/layup animations.
After the two dribble moves that I mentioned above, the next most overpowered offensive maneuver in 2K20 is the hop step into a dunk or layup.
It's an OP move because even if the defender is tightly engaged body-to-body with the dribbler when he starts up the hop animation, it's likely that the defender will come unstuck and lose body contact or just fail to have his right joystick shot contest register as the hop animation plays out.
Jumping at the shooter as he goes up with the ball gives the defender the best odds of forcing a missed shot, but it also gives the offensive player a good chance of getting his own offensive rebound, since the hop animation usually launches the shooter towards the rim, whereas the defender's body will be drifting away from the basket after attempting to block the shot.
You can try to go for charges or strip steals against hop step spammers, but those are low percentage plays with lots of risk and low odds of generating a positive defensive outcome.
If the defender has a similar body and similar ratings/badges to the offensive player, then he should be able to play hands up defense and stop this move most of the time. But that just isn't how the outcomes tend to play out in 2K20, due to how bad the body up and shot contest tracking are against hop step dunks/layups.
4) Off-ball AI three point shooters should be spotting up within their shooting range.
I know that Czar added this new "deep range" wing and top of the key spacing to the game because it's how a lot of NBA teams are setting up their offense, but it just doesn't work well in 2K20 because so few players have the range extender badge at a level appropriate for how deep they're spotting up.
Ideally, all of the AI players should know what level their range extender badge is set to, and should automatically spotup at whatever shooting range is comfortable for them. But if this year's game can't handle that level of AI complexity, then as a bandaid fix for the rest of 2K20, I'd prefer to just have all of my shooters spotting up right next the three point line instead of standing 3 or 4 steps behind it.
5) Increase the number of available pauses to 10 in online head to head matches, but keep the pause timer at 4:30 per game.
In real basketball, the best coaches are the ones who make adjustments to counter their opponent's tactics as the game goes on. But in 2K20, you are only given 5 total pauses per 30 minute match to make all of your offensive and defensive adjustments, and you usually have to waste 1 or 2 of those pauses before the game has even tipped off just to get your AI teammates playing properly (Why don't these strategy settings save permanently to my user profile? Or at the very least, let me set up everything before the game starts so I don't have to waste in-game pauses). I don't need that much time to make adjustments (it usually only takes 10 or 20 seconds to fix whatever I need to fix), but I do need more pauses, please. I've lost countless games of 2K over the years because I didn't have another pause available to change a tactic or setting that would've turned the game around in my favor and countered something that my opponent was doing to me on the court.
6a) Revert the shot feedback system back to how it was on day one.
When 2K20 first launched you had to "green" jumpshots to make them, and almost all poorly timed "white bar" shots wouldn't go in. This feedback system made it easy to adjust your shot timing based on the post-shot results, since you knew when your timing was good ("green") and when it was off ("white"). But then 2K changed shooting a few patches later to where many of your perfectly timed jumpshots will now get falsely displayed as "white" slightly early or slightly late releases. This makes it hard to judge whether or not you're actually releasing shots with good timing, since a "white" slightly early release could mean that you really did mistime your shot, or it could mean that you actually had a perfect release and the game just didn't acknowledge that by giving you a "green" bar. There's just no way of knowing which shots are perfectly timed and which shots are mistimed in the current shot feedback system. And when you combine that release timing uncertainty with the 2K series' longstanding online latency issues, the end result is an extremely frustrating shooting experience.
6b) Alternatively, just display shot feedback data in exact milliseconds instead of using vague words and meter colors.
Can we just get an option in the controller settings to show shot feedback in numeric form? If the game would explicitly tell me that I'm releasing the ball 15 MS late or 23 MS early it would be a lot easier to adjust to the inescapable input delay that all online matches of 2K have had since the Dreamcast days. We all know that 2K is an inconsistently laggy game, where the amount of lag varies wildly from one match to the next, so please just give us the tools to compensate for that input delay.
7) Lower the performance level of heavily fatigued players.
The orange gatorade symbol that pops up next to fatigued players just doesn't have enough of a negative impact on player performance. In 2K20 you can easily win games online without calling one timeout and without making a single substitution if the base ratings of your starters are high enough. Fatigue just doesn't drop their ratings low enough to where good players become ineffective players, once tired.
8) Reduce steal success against high rated/highly badged post players.
Having hall of fame post badges and a 90+ post moves rating should protect post players from strips during drop step and post spin animations. Currently, the steal success rate is way too high against those two post moves. The best defense against a highly rated/highly badged post player should be to deny the entry pass then bring a double team if a pass happens to gets through, not to mindlessly mash the steal button knowing that you have around a 75% chance of forcing a turnover and only a 10% chance of committing a foul (that's what the odds feel like right now). I definitely don't remember seeing Ewing, Hakeem, or any other legendary post scorer getting stripped every time that he tried to perform a post move, which is what's happening right now in 2K20. Even the basic post "protect stance" where you sit still while holding the left trigger isn't very safe right now and can easily get ripped.
9) Remove the pogo stick badge.
With the way that this badge is currently tuned, defenders with gold or hall fame pogo stick can just keep mashing the jump button repeatedly and will recover so quickly from their second, third, fourth, and fifth jumps that you can't consistently score on them (or even draw fouls) using patient pump fakes like you should be able to.
If the offensive player is smart enough to bait his defender into jumping on a pump fake, then the offense should be rewarded with either an open shot or a shooting foul the majority of the time. But those positive offensive outcomes rarely happen right now. The game should be designed to reward intelligent decision making, not button spamming. Keep kid-friendly badges like pogo stick in arcade basketball games like NBA Playgrounds.
10) Make deep outlet passes tougher to complete and remove the right bumper + left bumper passing command.
Most outlet passes in real basketball are just short dump offs to a nearby guard, yet 2K continues to allow big men with bad pass ratings to consistently complete blind, full court heaves by hitting the right bumper + left bumper as soon as the ball touches their hands, sending no-look outlets flying upcourt to the teammate that's furthest ahead on the fastbreak. In previous 2K games it was the breakstarter badge that made these cheesy full court outlet passes possible, but this year, you only need around a 60 pass rating + bronze breakstarter to consistently hit leaking teammates in stride. So it's not even the breakstarter badge that's the problem this year, it's just that outlet passes in general are tuned in a way that makes them far too easy to complete.
The game should be tuned to where 90% of the outlet passes have to be thrown behind the half court line, as is the case in the real NBA. But right now, 2K20 is tuned in the exact opposite direction, where 90% of outlet passes end up going past the halfcourt line, to teammates that the rebounder can't even see on his screen, but can still hit in stride thanks to the right bumper + left bumper CPU pass assistance.
11) Restrict the "openness" pass setting to offline modes only.
Just imagine how much criticism a game like Madden would get if it had a controller setting that allowed online players to simply press the A button and let the game automatically throw the ball to the most open receiver on the field. That's essentially what the "openness" slider can do right now in 2K20 if you choose to max it out. It lets anyone who picks up the controller look like they have superhuman passing vision, and while I can understand making "training wheels" like openness available to newcomers in offline modes, there's no acceptable reason for allowing such high levels of CPU assistance in online matches of 2K.
12) Let ball handlers pass out of bump animations, which a slight penalty to pass accuracy.
If you've tried to play as a ball handler this year then you've probably encountered those "bump" animations that stun your player for a second or two and put him in a temporary state of input paralysis where he can't do anything except pray that he doesn't travel or step on the halfcourt/out of bounds lines.
I feel like high rated playmakers should be able to pass out of those animations at any time, but their pass accuracy should be lowered a bit if they hit the pass button before the bump animation finishes. And the bail out badge could also activate in those situations, to better distinguish the ball handlers who can play through physical defense.
Comment