I suppose this maybe a controversial idea, but I honestly feel they could make NBA2K18 exactly the same as 2K17, with updated rosters, and just remove ALL the cutscenes from MyCareer and it will be a superior game.
Don't anyone get me wrong. I love 2K and I love My Career ... I just think they could do it soooo much better. Keep the shoe deals, keep the sponsors, keep the social media, the gym training and all the rest, just take out all the cut scenes.
Here are my reasons, in order:
How much money are they wasting on this?
How much do they have to pay all these NBA-stars to do voice recordings every year? Does anyone even watch the pre-game shows with Shaq? How about they take all the money and time they put into paying Shaq to make cut-scenes, and all these NBA stars doing half-time interviews that I'm pretty sure 99% of people just skip through and never watch ... and put them into improving the commentary for example? Or player-creation options? Or one of a million other things that would make the game better?
It's not really "My Career" ... it's The Pres's career (or Freq's career)
I dunno about you guys, but I want to put me in the game. A 7'0, skilled version of me.
And play out the experience of having an NBA career.
That is not what this is, but it is what it should be. This isn't your career. It's someone else's career. Freq's or The Pres's. Or Orange Juice's (what's with the cringe-worthy nicknames?)
The cut-scenes just mean you're watching someone else's career.
They're stilted, scripted and have virtually nothing to do with what's actually happening or how you want to play the game
What I think most of us want is the experience of an NBA career to play-out how we want it to, and you're just not getting that if it's totally pre-scripted. If there is some kind of story-line going on in your imagination, they totally ruin it.
Don't believe me? Start your My Career again. It's exactly the same. No matter what. It's so badly scripted that even if you trade out of your team you still get the same cut-scenes as if Justice is still on your side!
Anyway ... why is everyone treating your 57-rated starting player, the worst player in the NBA, who is getting five minutes a game like Michael Jordan? They just don't even make sense.
Why is my 7'2 center the size of a small forward in every cut-scene?
Why is Justice complaining about "taking all these L's" after game 1 of the season?
Why do I have the option to say, "I'll be the one who scores the most" when the commentator is asking me if I think rebounding is a crucial factor in the game? ... and I've scored 2 points so far?
They're extremely boring and repetitive
How many times do I have to watch a cut-scene of my coach telling us "there's one guy killing us out there"? It's like every time out of every game. What does it add? Absolutely nothing. The same goes for virtually every cut-scene in the game.
After a few games you decide you don't want to play as a guard after all and want to a MyCareer as a center? Forget about it unless you want to watch 40 minutes of un-skippable cut-scenes that are identical to the first time you tried ... and even after you get over the introduction, you have to suffer through the same stuff all season.
They're using them to rip you off
The number one reason I believe they keep including these "stories" is so they basically release what is really an "update" on the previous version of the game (as opposed to a new game by itself) and claim it's a totally new experience because they went out a filmed a bunch of cut-scenes.
It's a new story, not a new game. I want to play basketball, not watch a story line about some guy who seems totally unrelated to what my player is actually doing on the court.
They say it's a new game but the player creation, for example, has been identical for years. Down to exactly the same choices of hair style.
You can't skip them or disable them
How simple would this be to implement? What are they scared of? That nobody will watch them? In that case, they should ask themselves why are they bothering to include them? But we already know the answer to that (above). If you could disable or skip them then people would very quickly realize how little has actually changed since last year.
Wasting time and money on cut-scenes is a waste of resources that could be spent developing more important areas of the game
Having cut-scenes imposes so many restrictions on the developers. You have no choice in your background story, no choice in your voice, no choice in your personality ... you don't even have any choice in your body-type.
You can't be a beast like Shaq or Dwight Howard or a bean-pole like Manute Bol, or a tubby guy like Big Baby Davis. Obviously they have the ability for these things in-game, as those players are accurately represented on the court. But your player is stuck with one body-type because the cut-scenes wouldn't work otherwise. The same goes for your voice, personality, etc. It's limiting variety, not adding to it.
I'd much prefer to have those options and zero cut-scenes.
... in fact, I'd even prefer just to have zero cut-scenes, period.
Don't anyone get me wrong. I love 2K and I love My Career ... I just think they could do it soooo much better. Keep the shoe deals, keep the sponsors, keep the social media, the gym training and all the rest, just take out all the cut scenes.
Here are my reasons, in order:
How much money are they wasting on this?
How much do they have to pay all these NBA-stars to do voice recordings every year? Does anyone even watch the pre-game shows with Shaq? How about they take all the money and time they put into paying Shaq to make cut-scenes, and all these NBA stars doing half-time interviews that I'm pretty sure 99% of people just skip through and never watch ... and put them into improving the commentary for example? Or player-creation options? Or one of a million other things that would make the game better?
It's not really "My Career" ... it's The Pres's career (or Freq's career)
I dunno about you guys, but I want to put me in the game. A 7'0, skilled version of me.
And play out the experience of having an NBA career. That is not what this is, but it is what it should be. This isn't your career. It's someone else's career. Freq's or The Pres's. Or Orange Juice's (what's with the cringe-worthy nicknames?)
The cut-scenes just mean you're watching someone else's career.
They're stilted, scripted and have virtually nothing to do with what's actually happening or how you want to play the game
What I think most of us want is the experience of an NBA career to play-out how we want it to, and you're just not getting that if it's totally pre-scripted. If there is some kind of story-line going on in your imagination, they totally ruin it.
Don't believe me? Start your My Career again. It's exactly the same. No matter what. It's so badly scripted that even if you trade out of your team you still get the same cut-scenes as if Justice is still on your side!
Anyway ... why is everyone treating your 57-rated starting player, the worst player in the NBA, who is getting five minutes a game like Michael Jordan? They just don't even make sense.
Why is my 7'2 center the size of a small forward in every cut-scene?
Why is Justice complaining about "taking all these L's" after game 1 of the season?
Why do I have the option to say, "I'll be the one who scores the most" when the commentator is asking me if I think rebounding is a crucial factor in the game? ... and I've scored 2 points so far?
They're extremely boring and repetitive
How many times do I have to watch a cut-scene of my coach telling us "there's one guy killing us out there"? It's like every time out of every game. What does it add? Absolutely nothing. The same goes for virtually every cut-scene in the game.
After a few games you decide you don't want to play as a guard after all and want to a MyCareer as a center? Forget about it unless you want to watch 40 minutes of un-skippable cut-scenes that are identical to the first time you tried ... and even after you get over the introduction, you have to suffer through the same stuff all season.
They're using them to rip you off
The number one reason I believe they keep including these "stories" is so they basically release what is really an "update" on the previous version of the game (as opposed to a new game by itself) and claim it's a totally new experience because they went out a filmed a bunch of cut-scenes.
It's a new story, not a new game. I want to play basketball, not watch a story line about some guy who seems totally unrelated to what my player is actually doing on the court.
They say it's a new game but the player creation, for example, has been identical for years. Down to exactly the same choices of hair style.
You can't skip them or disable them
How simple would this be to implement? What are they scared of? That nobody will watch them? In that case, they should ask themselves why are they bothering to include them? But we already know the answer to that (above). If you could disable or skip them then people would very quickly realize how little has actually changed since last year.
Wasting time and money on cut-scenes is a waste of resources that could be spent developing more important areas of the game
Having cut-scenes imposes so many restrictions on the developers. You have no choice in your background story, no choice in your voice, no choice in your personality ... you don't even have any choice in your body-type.
You can't be a beast like Shaq or Dwight Howard or a bean-pole like Manute Bol, or a tubby guy like Big Baby Davis. Obviously they have the ability for these things in-game, as those players are accurately represented on the court. But your player is stuck with one body-type because the cut-scenes wouldn't work otherwise. The same goes for your voice, personality, etc. It's limiting variety, not adding to it.
I'd much prefer to have those options and zero cut-scenes.
... in fact, I'd even prefer just to have zero cut-scenes, period.
I didn't play any video games for years and just got back into basketball games a few years ago (2K15) and have '15, '16 and 17'.
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