(Felt bad I never answered a ton of the feedback I had on one of my articles, so just doing it now to get it off my to-do list so to speak, sorry for bringing an old thread back from the dead!)
Thanks for the feedback, good to know I was able to nail down a bit on something that was bothering you. I agree that the animations can suck up too much time at points on top of being over the top.
More or less, you could body up and put your hands on a player both on the ball and off more than you can in today's NBA. It's part of the reason the league is so "point guard driven" in 2016. The drive and kick is king as well and it does go in conjunction with rule changes both in terms of physicality and how teams are allowed to play team defense.
I think this is a really interesting point that I had not thought much about. The idea of "steering" or a smaller version of a mini-game of sorts where both guys are trying to guide the play during these two-man interactions could be interesting.
I know charges and the like are more a focus for NBA 2K17, so will be interesting to see if you're right here.
As for the court size, I know it's a topic every year but I don't feel like that's the core issue. If proper spacing is in place, the players wouldn't seem "too big" or whatever the argument tends to be here in my opinion.
I wish I could recall 2K14 better in terms of moment to moment gameplay, but you seem to remember it well so I'll take your word for it. The "slide by" animations that do exist in 2K16 do trigger, but they generally come with a slowdown where the defender sort of hip checks the player before he gets by so I get your point.
Haha well it wasn't that I don't want changes, it's just that I'm not entirely dogmatic in terms of what I want the outcome to be. The point I was trying to make is that I can only theorize on changes that make sense. Until they're actually tested out and we can see results, I'm just grasping to some degree -- that's all I was trying to say there. It's a really hard balancing act, which was my other point in terms of not wanting to overreact one way or the other.
I mean that's sort of a defeatist attitude you know? You can't make a game and then decide "we're not going to try because our users won't do what we want every time." You have to at least believe you can make a change otherwise what would you be doing there in the first place? And yes, that's a bit philosophical I guess but I think it makes sense.