NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

[supermanemblem]

I played the demo and I think the game is closer to being competitive than most think. Live has some of the same warts that 2K has with souped up cpu-player abilities, dumbed down human-cpu abilities, bad passing, cpu contacts affecting human shots, etc. 2k just does a better job of masking these. This reminds me of about 10 years ago, when Madden had the sizzle but 2K had the fundamentals. I can see Live getting there in two years. If they work on the laggy controls, improve all AI (human and cpu), and loosen up the collision detection and they may have something.

[Optik]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

Imagine EA does what they did in Football and scoops up an exclusive license for the NBA. We would all be doomed.

Exclusive deals and anti-competitive practices.... The loser is always the consumer.

Yeah, I hate it when people complain that PES 2014 hasn't got the licences of the German or English league like FIFA, and use it to bash PES. What the hell do these people expect Konami to do? EA have a bottomless pit of cash and have exclusive licences with those leagues, which allows them to get away with not having to innovate their game, which has looked the same for at least 4 years now.

[yungflo]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

anyone see holbert's feed?

its not a CAP

[elprez98]

When you wait as long as they did to release gameplay/features, we all already knew what was up.

[strawberryshortcake]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

Why is anyone surprised by this game? Look at who is making it. EA sports refuses to acknowledge or understand the idea of Real-Time Physics in sports games. They continue to use canned animations with scripted outcomes. Whatever happened to creating player models from scratch and using physics to create the animations?

Why is this so hard to do? I don't understand why motion capture is still acceptable on a next-gen system, with any sports game. And no one has been able to give me an answer yet. I mean, we saw backbreaker figure out the real-time physics so that no two plays were ever the same. THAT is truly next-gen. But, scripted animations and motion-capture are totally 2005.

While madden on ps4 is an improvement over ps3, it still uses the same canned animation and motion capture. Where is the REAL-TIME PHYSICS? And when will we get these in a sports game?

Also, NBA 2K14 does this same thing. How come some small, independent, EUROPEAN company can figure out real-time physics and create non-scripted outcomes and yet American companies either can't do it or refuse to do it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Is it really that hard?

I know backbreaker was not a great game, but that was mostly due to the camera angle and the inability to change it.

And I'm not saying that basketball games or any sports games should be like that game. All I'm saying is that the technology is clearly there to use real-time physics and non-scripted outcomes. How come no one is using that for next-gen games?

A completely physics based sports game is great in theory, but motion capture technology will always be needed if "signature style" movements is a want.

When gamers continue to harp on someone's shooting motion, or dunk packages, and the fact that they don't resemble what it looks like in real life, real time physics is never going to solve this problem. Backbreaker requires both physics and canned animation. Example: QB throwing motion and the runners juke move were both canned animations--all players had the same running, juking, throwing motion. Every movement was utterly generic, unfortunately.

Real time physics will not give you signature style gameplay, and that is important to gameplay. How do you replicate the running style of Adrian Peterson, the elusiveness of a Barry Sanders. How do you input "personalities" without motion capture tech. Real physics can only get you so far.

Real time physics would work when we're talking about contact in the paint or contact anywhere on the court.

[Rebel_INS]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

I'm not here to troll...just speak the truth - and I'll keep it short and sweet (sour depending on your position). I feel, knowing Live's recent history coupled with the minimal vids, screens and info we were provided leading up to it's next gen launch, if you still went and shelled out $65 for the game; you have no right to complain at all. They say a sucker's born every minute so go look in the mirror cause you're it. Common sense will take u farther than u think in life and all it took was a small dose of it to realize that this game was gonna be trash.

[Profit89]

I agree. Real time physics is only good with respect to collision detection. Reason is that you otherwise want individuality in movement and shots etc.

PES has a beautiful balance in that regard. Players move and shoot in their unique way and collisions are physics based. NBA 2K is also nicely balanced that way.

All EA games are awful: generic, generic, generic. Including FIFA and NHL. Just awful.

[Profit89]

I'm not here to troll...just speak the truth - and I'll keep it short and sweet (sour depending on your position). I feel, knowing Live's recent history coupled with the minimal vids, screens and info we were provided leading up to it's next gen launch, if you still went and shelled out $65 for the game; you have no right to complain at all. They say a sucker's born every minute so go look in the mirror cause you're it. Common sense will take u farther than u think in life and all it took was a small dose of it to realize that this game was gonna be trash.

I tend to agree now.

I remember the fellas at pcgamer.com once saying (during a podcast) that in this day and age you should never pre-order any game or any system. Given the widespread availability of review sites, social media, and demos etc, that you should never waste your money on a pre-order. Wait and test.

[jyoung]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

anyone see holbert's feed?

its not a CAP

I saw this guy come in off the bench for the Memphis Grizzlies as well in a Season Rewind game.

His name shows up as "Point Guard," and he's always a generic white guy wearing #0.

[TalenT]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

Very disappointing. I didn't exactly have high hopes for the game, but I was very hopeful that it'd be at least playable. I figured they'd incorporate the basics of basketball and build upon that foundation. I think they tried to do too much in too many areas. My question is why wouldn't they just work on the game until they felt like they had a solid build and THEN announce a release? I wouldn't have felt comfortable releasing this game. Should've skipped this year. SMH.

[chi_hawks]

Sounds like EA should be paying us 60 bucks to play this turd. Probably more.

[AlterEgoDuane]

A completely physics based sports game is great in theory, but motion capture technology will always be needed if "signature style" movements is a want.

When gamers continue to harp on someone's shooting motion, or dunk packages, and the fact that they don't resemble what it looks like in real life, real time physics is never going to solve this problem. Backbreaker requires both physics and canned animation. Example: QB throwing motion and the runners juke move were both canned animations--all players had the same running, juking, throwing motion. Every movement was utterly generic, unfortunately.

Real time physics will not give you signature style gameplay, and that is important to gameplay. How do you replicate the running style of Adrian Peterson, the elusiveness of a Barry Sanders. How do you input "personalities" without motion capture tech. Real physics can only get you so far.

Real time physics would work when we're talking about contact in the paint or contact anywhere on the court.

@strawberryshortcake.

Thank you. This is the best answer I have received yet on why RTP are not being used in games. Fair enough with the comment about signature styles. But, I still have a couple of questions. How did backbreaker make it so that no two plays were ever the same and the outcome was different on every single play? And the players' bodies, etc. contorted so beautifully and physics were actually used to determine outcomes.

Isn't there a way to use motion capture for signature styles AND incorporate real-time physics? For example, if LeBron James is Mo-capped and he is driving to the lane in traffic, isn't there a way for his animation to be interrupted in an infinite number of ways through physics and collision detection and what not in the lane on his way to the basket to make the outcome completely random and determined in real-time based on the calculations of the animations and the physics? Like, if LeBron was hit in a certain area of the body that caused him to try and lay it in from a certain angle at a certain velocity, it would be a miss because of physics, and also a foul. Is there any way to do that? That's the kind of stuff backbreaker was able to do and what I am looking for. There is just zero realism in collision detection and player movement or ball physics and everything is so pre-determined.

[strawberryshortcake]

Re: NBA Live 14 Next-Gen First Impressions

@strawberryshortcake.

Thank you. This is the best answer I have received yet on why RTP are not being used in games. Fair enough with the comment about signature styles. But, I still have a couple of questions. How did backbreaker make it so that no two plays were ever the same and the outcome was different on every single play? And the players' bodies, etc. contorted so beautifully and physics were actually used to determine outcomes.

Isn't there a way to use motion capture for signature styles AND incorporate real-time physics? For example, if LeBron James is Mo-capped and he is driving to the lane in traffic, isn't there a way for his animation to be interrupted in an infinite number of ways through physics and collision detection and what not in the lane on his way to the basket to make the outcome completely random and determined in real-time based on the calculations of the animations and the physics? Like, if LeBron was hit in a certain area of the body that caused him to try and lay it in from a certain angle at a certain velocity, it would be a miss because of physics, and also a foul. Is there any way to do that? That's the kind of stuff backbreaker was able to do and what I am looking for. There is just zero realism in collision detection and player movement or ball physics and everything is so pre-determined.

I'm going to say probably yes because that is what Backbreaker did; what you're describing is contact between two objects. It would probably even make developers lives easier as well considering they wouldn't have to motion capture falls, small bumps, contact in paint, posterization dunks if the tech was employed.

If you look at the Natural Motions' technology Euphoria and Morpheme, and what people have been able to do with it (as seen on youtube), it's definitely possible I think. Imagine if one of those youtubers decided a perfectly create a Lebron James model and use Euphoria/Morpheme. This technology is about self preservation from bodily harm.

One of the faults with this engine as seen in Backbreaker is the lack of weight. Some of the hits, contacts would result in bodies flying high in the air. If only they could move the center of gravity on the models lower to the ground towards the knee caps or shin, that might have stopped these strange flying in the air effect.


When you said no two plays were the same, aren't we simply talking about the tackles?

Morpheme with Euphoria combines all the power of Morpheme with the intelligent, self-animating AI of the Euphoria engine.

Euphoria allows characters to dynamically synthesise motion in response to events around them. For example, protecting themselves from a heavy fall or reacting to gunfire. This unique, ground-breaking system allows developers to create responses and characters that simply isn't possible with traditional approaches to animation, and is fully integrated into Morpheme.

[onetongwa]

Ok.....True Thoughts right here.... After time with NBA live 14, I honestly feel they have promise going into the future. They have great features and post game and half time shows that you can skip forward and backwards through. Top plays is great. They have tons of extra play type features. NBA Live needs to immediately fix all player animations and improve graphics overall, I wanted to have more fun with this game and to some extent, I was able to force my own true gameplay into this game for more fun. I am discouraged and pleased at the same dang time. I love how the game constantly updates itself every time you play. The game plays best as a herky jerky type of skip through animation and some player models look better than NBA 2k14, and overall they still need a more realistic and less plastic polish look to some of the players faces. The soundtrack is good also and you have the option eliminate play of music you hate. If EA sports has honest hardworking and in touch people working on NBA live 15 then I can foresee a better game. As of now its back to my NBA 2k 14 game. its just way way better even though it too has its faults. These words are from an original NBA live fanatic and a true basketball gamer. I tend to move towards the better looking games and great gameplay. Game on!!!!!

[bspang2]

I think I played the first quarter MAYBE before I had to just turn off the demo in disgust... just couldn't take it. I believe this was the last straw for me, and I am seriously considering starting a campaign to bring 2kFootball back.

#bring2kfootballback