[Thrustie]

Quote: Originally Posted by infemous

I am in total 100% agreement. This rating system is awful. I had a rec game where I got a 21 point triple double, held my matchup to 7 points and all my teammates left in the 3rd down 25+ brought the game back to a close loss and I got a straight 95 rating. I’ve also had games where I’ve scored 75% of my shots, had numerous “find open teammate” things flash up but didn’t get takeover because I wasn’t being fed the ball and timeouts/end of quarter decimate it and have gone down in OVR despite winning. I’ve even had an instance where I got 98.8 rating when I was on 98.3 and I dropped to 98.1. It’s literally broken, nonsensical and completely devoid of any logic. And as OP stated, systems like this promote playing in a squad which then makes playing as a solo player completely pointless. The matchmaking issue (in rec especially) then comes into full focus. A team of randoms get matched up with a sweaty squad of 99s and everyone quits or doesn’t bother playing defense, sabotaging my stupid *** for trying to play earnestly. The 2k community is toxic and the general basketball IQ is horribly low (especially in Europe) and the ONLY way to avoid coming into contact with it is playing in squads where you spend 99% of your games beating up on randoms. I used to have many many many thrilling games in pro am walk on in 2k16, 2k17 and 2k18 with randoms - now it is so few and far between I have started playing Red Dead again. Playing good, team oriented and smart basketball is so disincentivized through he horrible mechanics of the game that it has really turned this game into a frustrating experience that is losing all the good will that the actually wonderful gameplay gives. I’ve tried playing in park so that the horrible teammates at least don’t waste 40 minutes of my time and it’s even worse there. People are so dumb it is painful - and finding Park players to squad up with is equally as painful. Sure I understand they don’t want everyone to be a 99 all the time but there is no reason for the rating to use sound, intelligent means of evaluating your play. Considering how broken teammate grade is too (defensive breakdown because you get randomly switched onto a guy the other side of the court coz your teammate is flopping) it’s actually painful to say that I’d rather this 96 to 99 system be judged off of teammate grade than this win + takeover crap. Surely they could just count how many times you get “good spacing” “box out” “find open teammate” and “good shot selection” and judge the system off of that? Because seriously they are the only things that truly matter to incentivising these dumb *** players to learn how to play. Centres get rewarded for literally standing in the paint and clogging every lane - I’ve had Centres who have been out rebounded by 10+ and scored 5 points end games with A+ teammate grades because they set a few screens - when it was literally their idiotic play that cost us the game. I could rant forever because I’m super frustrated that a game that has brought me so much joy over the years is falling apart at a very fundamental level. Also I’d like to add that I wouldn’t care about staying at 99 if it didn’t mean that I could unlock new animations with the attribute upgrades and once you go below that new rating you have to reapply all your old animations again. It’s laborious and annoying and it should either stay or just not be possible. It’s nigh on impossible to maintain a 99 rating unless you are the star player on a good squad and again I understand the logic behind that - but this is a game! Let us have fun with it! It becomes almost a job having to navigate the egos of being in a squad and a 99 rating and a few new animations are not worth it 2k. Being deferential and being a compliment is punished through flawed mechanics. I should be rewarded for not being a prick - not trying to be Kobe all game. 2k really need to stop trying to treat the game as a breeding ground for the e-sports league and just let it be fun again. Rant over but thank you for the post OP you have my 100000% agreement and support and I think that the perspective you provided is sorely lacking for the devs. And sadly, I also just think that the devs have struggled for too long to identify what good basketball is and how to reward it for too long.

Fantastic post. Captured my sentiment better than I did.