2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

And that's a problem imo. Long read ahead.

I mentioned it before in the drop step thread but I picked up Mortal Kombat 11 about a month and a half ago and while it's not my first fighting game, it's the first one I really want to get good at, not tournament level, but competent enough to hold my ground online.

Naturally, since I'm new to the game, I'm a complete scrub, so the first place I'm heading towards is practice mode. I was absolutely blown away by how in-depth their tutorial mode and practice mode. Obviously the beginner stuff was good to learn but I was really blown away at the fact that they went into the more advanced fighting game mechanics such as frame data, spacing, meter management, pressure, punishing, safe and unsafe attacks.

What really got me was just how awesome their practice mode was. Quick list of things you can do in it:

-Set up a dummy player to fight back on any difficulty levels
-Have the dummy record 4 different actions (such as combos) and have them replay it back randomly so you can practice defending against it
-Set the dummy to block randoms strings to practice hit confirming
-Have the dummy do wakeup attacks

Now most of you don't even know what half of that nonsense means and I could go on and on but that's not the point. The point is as a guy whose main game is NBA 2K I think to myself where are all of those features for this game?

Surely the game of basketball is at least half as deep as a Mortal Kombat fighting game but our tutorial modes aren't anywhere close to what that game is?

Why is this acceptable? I'm going to say it now 2KU is a complete JOKE, in all caps. It's NOT a tutorial, it's an interactive manual. It throws out random tips with no real context as to how or when you should use it in a REAL GAME.

There was a thread on here a few days ago about the pick and roll controls. Why is there no tutorial IN-GAME showing how to properly run a pick and roll? How to use it effectively? How, when and why you should use the slip feature? How, when and why you should press down on LS to make the screener switch sides? How, when and why you should go opposite the screen? What to do when someone blitz you on a pick and roll? When the defender goes under the screen? When the hedge man drops back? The pick and roll is the most basic play in yet also one of the most unstoppable yet no where in the game do they show you how to run it. That's why all these players online do is just wait for you to get sucked into the screen and just pull up for a jumper.

What about dribbling? Nope. No real tutorial on how to properly dribble and chain moves together. No tutorial on when to use a hesitation, behind the back or in and out move. None. So now that the devs don't teach you, people go online and watch some scrub "dribble god" teach them how to momentum dribble all game.

Post game? Haha. Everyone just post-spins and drop-steps with the occasional fade. It's one of the more complicated parts of the game and no one really shows you how to effectively use it so why bother?

I actually picked up Madden 19 this year and as much as people like to clown on that game their Skills Trainer mode also blows 2K. One of the first things I noticed was that they actually broke down each coverage and play type and showed you how to beat them! WHAT????

I give 2K props for their Practice Plays mode but they can still do so much more. Not everyone is a pro-basketball player or has been playing this game for months. Go in-depth and break down what each play type does. What is a Horns play and why do I use it? What is a Fist play? What is a Punch play and why do I use it? What about High? What about Floppy? When do I use these plays and when do I not? What situation should I use a play versus running a pick and roll?

How many Freelances are in this game again? Give real explanation as to what each freelance does and why should I use it? Show me the weaknesses of these freelances. What type of personnel should I have to run it? Is a 4 out 1 in an effective freelance if my power forward can't shoot at all?

Defense lol. What in the world do any of these defensive packages do? I'm literally asking this right now lol. I've been playing this game for about 9 months and I still don't know what "Four Out Corners Tight" does. There is no explanation in game as to what this does and that is UNACCEPTABLE. A player should NOT have to go on Operation Sports or YouTube to find out the basics of what these defensive schemes do.What is a 3-2 zone and how do you beat it? What are it's advantages and disadvantages? When should I run a full-court press versus a half-court press? Again, stop assuming everyone knows what these schemes do. If you're going to put it in the game then explain how and why you should use it and how to beat it.

Another quick thing I want to touch on are badges. Can we get a real description as to what these badges actually do?

"Limitless Range - Knocks down very deep threes better than most"

Um what? How about some actual numbers? 2K13 had this right.

"Spot-Up Shooter - This skill allows a player to make shots more easily while they are standing still. It decreases the shot penalty by 30%. Keep in mind you have to be standing still to activate this skill while taking a shot at the hoop."

That's a very good description?

What about personality badges? Are they just there for show? What do they really do?

Give us a REAL practice mode where we can choose our teams and adjust settings for both teams. It's crazy that when I go online and face some cheese I can't head to the lab, set the AI team to simulate that action and figure out ways to beat it. A record function in practice mode would REALLY help this game. Bring back situation mode and put it in practice mode. Allow me to adjust defensive settings, timeouts left, what quarter where in, whose bring the ball up, score etc.

Anyway, I've been sitting on this for a while, glad to have finally gotten written this up. Hopefully a dev sees this or one of you guys sends it to them.

Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

Agreed for sure. 2K does a mediocre job of teaching you how to play a video game, and nothing at all to teach you how to play basketball.

IMO it really hurts the gameplay;since most people don't have a good concept of when to employ moves or what different play actions are they rely on what they know, namely flicking the sticks around until a good animation happens.That this still occurs fairly commonly even at the E-League level should be an indication that the game really needs to do a better job teaching the more technical aspects of team basketball.

2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

What’s even worse is that 2k’s teaching mode is MyCareer, where the objective is to ball hog, take every single shot, not play defense so that you can get off more shots, never pass unless it’s an oop, and dribble out the clock trying to get ankle breakers.
I’ve said this before in other threads, but badges caused most of this and is part of the reason I wish they would take them out.
All of this carries over to online play and helps ruin any hope of playing anything resembling basketball.
This is what 2k teaches you about basketball and there’s NO downside to playing this way on or offline.
Where are the negative badges to deter this type of selfishly bad “basketball”?
If anyone ever played irl basketball with players like we have in 2k, those dudes would never get the chance to step back on the court because no one would play with them.
There are way more people that play this style of basketball than anything resembling actual basketball. And we have no way of knowing who we should run with other than checking their records on the phone before stepping on the court with them and worse in the JRC. Where what we have to go by in their is record, teammate grade (which isn’t strict enough against this style of play), and one stat. And the part that make it worse, is that backing out is nearly impossible without quitting the app.
The way you earn badges is ridiculous. It doesn’t have anything to do with skill, only repetition.
Player skill and basketball knowledge is what basketball is supposed to be about. Yet, in 2k, neither of those matter at all.
The archetype system also hurts the realism.
You shouldn’t just pick an archetype and immediately be good at certain things because your archetype is overpowered at those things and will get favorable outcomes even when making bad decisions.
The Slasher for example. You shouldn’t be a good slasher just because you can turbo towards the basket and hit a button regardless if there are 3 people waiting for you.
You should have to actually have the knowledge to know when it’s the right thing to do and not get bailed out when you take bad shots just because you’re a slasher.
If badges were skill based, I could understand. Simply getting them because you are repeatedly spamming them a thousand times a game regardless of the defense, I cannot.
If archetypes were skill based, I could understand. Instead we get people taking dumb shots because they know they will get bailed out because of their archetype.
Instead of archetypes, we should just be able to place attributes where we want them and let that determine what our archetype is.
Or let us chose, at player creation, what we want our caps to be and let that determine our archetype. Still allow us to place our attributes where we want within our caps as we earn them, though.
Or maybe best, only let us earn attribute points for skills that we are good at. If you’re taking open shots and making them consistently you gain points towards shooting. Seems simple enough to me. What your good at, you’ll become. Instead of what you want to be good at, regardless if you’re good, you’re amazing at regardless of defense.
There are many other options to the archetype system that I can think of, but those would call for an actual new game to be made instead of update.


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Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

I dont think 2k wants or cares to help make people good at their game, i could get in depth, but think about it, if everyone mastered the game/mechanics from playing tutorials and practice modes etc, then playing online they could hold their own without having say, better cards in myteam, better upgrades for their myplayer, stuff like this, as long as people stay bad that may keep them frustrated enough to buy more VC for things in the game, as opposed to a 2k veteran who knows the mechanics and can hold his own with a team of lower card players in myteam, or lower overalls in myplayer.



I dont think things like this go unnoticed by take two/2k when the majority of revenue comes from people purchasing their microtransactions.

Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

Fully agree, they would rather do a bare minimum job and make money off of microtransactions from players who think if they just got their OVR up they'd be good than, you know, releasing a quality product centered on skill and effort as opposed to just buying more VC.

Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

Man what is with this super negative mindset? You're telling me the team that includes guys like Mike Wang/DaCzar are lazy and not giving it all? They aren't doing the "bare minimum". The games do keep getting better and better.

I've played more of the series in the past few years because of the leaps they've made. The animations continue to improve, the AI becomes more fun/engaging/dynamic to play against which is awesome.

No game is going to be perfect. Each year will have flaws that many people on this forum can nitpick all day long. Yes the microtransaction stuff is terrible, there is no doubt about that. But the core gameplay is still very solid.

Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

However their tutorial system and explanations of what every setting does is really bad


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Re: 2K Doesn't Teach You How To Play Their Game
 

I'm not saying that all, what I'm saying is tutorial/practice wise the game just gives you a somewhat lacking explanation of controls, and no kind of "virtual coaching" at all on the actual art of basketball(fundamentals,move timing,set plays,etc.).