NBA 2k20 was supposed to be good, but money is a powerful thing.

[awg811]

NBA 2k20 was intended to play how it played on day 1 and it’s proof that the devs could make a great game if it wasn’t for “money”.

I’ll explain in detail and provide links and quotes from the devs before release.

Money, or more importantly greed, is why NBA 2k20 is a mockery of the game of basketball.
2k could make an absolutely beautiful basketball simulation if they didn’t have to make the game for the non-skilled casual masses that want to spam and exploit the game. 2k does this in the name of maximizing profits.

I argue, that profits would only slightly decrease if they made the game difficult and skill based.
Some of the greatest games of all time, and most critically acclaimed, were some of the most difficult and skill based games made.
Making a game difficult and skilled based doesn’t necessarily make it draw less money or have lower sells.
Making the game more basketball and less “cheese” makes everyone have to adjust, learn, raise their basketball IQ and knowledge, and improve at the game of basketball.
An all around win for everyone.

Now to the proof that 2k intended this game to be much different than it currently is...


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[awg811]

The speed of the game on day 1 was drastically different than it is today.
This decrease in speed helped with everything and made the game more realistic, more difficult, and more sim.
Mike Wang explains here.

Quote:

Proper footwork is a core foundation of basketball, and replicating that properly is vital to balancing the interplay between offense and defense. Without realistic movement, everything else falls apart.

Quote:

Some of the advances that you’ll immediately see and feel when you pick up NBA 2K20 are better foot planting, momentum modeling, and motion style variation. Players have a much better sense of weight and plant their feet properly when cutting or exploding from a stand. And thanks to the addition of motion styles, you’ll quickly feel the difference between a lumbering big vs. a quick, explosive guard. The motion team spent a lot of time researching and analyzing sprint speeds and acceleration times of real NBA players. This helped us tune our player speeds to more accurately depict the speed of the NBA game, especially in the open court.

Stamina was supposed to be something that was valued and important. Holding in the turbo button was supposed to be a thing of the past and it was when the game released.

Quote:

This research also led us to re-design how sprinting works. We really wanted sprinting to be a valuable resource and not something that everybody automatically does everywhere they go. This year, you’ll notice a flashing yellow effect around the Stamina bar when your energy level drops below a certain threshold. Once hit, you’ll quickly ramp down to a run speed and get tired much faster. So it’s important this year to pick and choose when you want to explode with your first step and not abuse the Sprint trigger all game long.

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[awg811]

Mike explains how ball handling will be much more skill based and be unique from player to player.
Over-dribbling will be a thing of the past, like it was on release day.

Quote:

The new size-ups really give you the freedom to create your own unique rhythm. When mastered, you’ll be able to break off even the best on-ball defenders. But when over-dribbling or trying to perform the wrong moves at the wrong time, you’ll see players fumbling the ball or easily getting ripped by their defenders.

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[awg811]

Playing defense was supposed to be more predictable, less ice skating, and meaningful.

Quote:

The new size-ups really give you the freedom to create your own unique rhythm. When mastered, you’ll be able to break off even the best on-ball defenders. But when over-dribbling or trying to perform the wrong moves at the wrong time, you’ll see players fumbling the ball or easily getting ripped by their defenders... Thanks to the motion engine upgrade and its improved defensive footwork, as well as a greatly improved body-up ride system, 1-on-1 battles now resolve in a much more predictable way...

Quote:

Under the ball handler, you’ll also notice the indicator ring change from a solid circle to broken up lines... The more broken up the circle, the more vulnerable the ball handler is to losing the ball. To further emphasize this, we re-tuned on-ball steals to be much more predictable. So for NBA 2K20, it’s more important to read what the ball handler’s doing and reaching at the right times rather than running around randomly spamming the Steal button.

I don’t think anyone can honestly say that on-ball steals are more predictable or that the ball is more vulnerable.
Ball handlers spam dribble moves right into a defenders chest for 23 seconds with no recourse even when the defenders hands go right through the ball on steal attempts.
This didn’t happen, at least not as often, on day 1.


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[awg811]

Paint defense and hop steps were supposed to have their place and they seemed to work well on day 1 before the speed increase and stamina buff.
Since then hop steps, including traveling and broken jam ups where the hop stepper will go right into another hop step, are broken and now unstoppable cheese.

Quote:

Forcing a gather into heavy traffic or directly into a defender will lead to jam ups...

Sounds like skill and IQ were intended and forcing your way into traffic was supposed to result in missed shots and turnovers like real basketball and how it was day 1.

Quote:

Paint defenders who have good timing and decision making will be a force to reckon with and you’ll definitely have to think twice when going head to head against them inside.

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[awg811]

The speed and stamina increases effectively broke the game.
Things that worked and had a place before they were implemented are now useless.
Foot planting and right stick off ball moves no longer mean anything and have no place in the game.

Quote:

On the offensive side, NBA 2K20 brings back an old beloved feature… off-ball juke moves.

Quote:

With simple Pro Stick gestures, players have access to fake first steps, spins, and stutters that you can chain together or immediately branch out of to perform flare cuts, dive to the hoop, or spot up for open J’s. The moves are also broken down into three levels to separate elite off-ball players from the rest.

Getting open was supposed to be hard for weaker off ball offensive players against good off ball defensive players, but the speed and stamina increases made everyone basically the same.

Quote:

Defensively, off-ball collisions were reworked from the ground up to take advantage of the technical advancements we’ve made to our body-up system over the past couple years. If you can read where your off-ball offensive opponents are trying to go, you can cut them off and put them in a box, making them work extra hard for every look.

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[awg811]

Screens...do I even need to say anything?
Take it away Mike...

Quote:

Screens, both on-ball and away from the ball, were also rebuilt and feature much better interactions between screeners and screen defenders. The new content offers complete control to help defenders navigate around screeners much more effectively and get into better position without getting stuck on other players.

Quote:

We’re also introducing the concept of quick screens, performed by tapping the Set Screen button. It carries a high risk/reward and must be used sparingly, but can be a great tool to quickly rub your cutting teammate’s defender and slow him down just enough to help your teammate get open.

I think I’ve seen about 10 illegal screens called all year out of the thousands of times it should have been called.
Ok, I’m sure I’m exaggerating, but we all know that they are hardly ever called.


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[awg811]

I am the first to be hard on the devs, I’ll admit that, but it appears that I’m hard on them for the wrong reasons.
They do have great talents and vision for what needs to be done to get this back to a basketball sim. They just don’t have the backbone to stand up to the Twitterverse cheesers that have no desire to play “basketball”, and just want a “video game” that they can pretend to be good at through cheese and exploits.
Those Twitterverse YouTube “stars” have a loud voice and that noise gets to Take2 and their investors and effectively ruins the game.
If the devs had the backbone to stand up to Twitter, YouTube, and mainly Take2, we could have the basketball sim we’ve always dreamed of.

Link to the gameplay blog...

https://www.operationsports.com/nba-...dges-takeover/


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