The direction of NBA Live...

[Eugene]

Not all downhill, hopefully.

But with many games becoming almost exclusively online, wouldn't it make sense that a basketball game makes the same transition? Especially a sports game, since the essence of basketball is that it's a team game, meant to be played with other people.

I don't mean online leagues where one player takes control of a team. Instead, more like a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), where players create an avatar to play in a persistent league similar to the NBA. If each server hosts up to 400 people, that would be enough for one league (since the NBA has about 400 players).

None of this is revolutionary, of course. There is already one game like it in Korea: http://pc.ign.com/objects/824/824348.html and there was already some mention of it in this forum.

It has the same general idea, except its a much simpler game. But what if people joined the league (if they wanted to) as a player, coach, manager, and played in a league where the players governed themselves?

Players could be traded, coaches fired, and would have all the dynamics of a pro league. There could be points instead of money and the points could be used to purchase all kinds of neat things.

I mean, wouldn't this solve all kinds of gameplay issues with AI and such?

The only problem would be that people are fickle and you might have a tough time gettin enough players. Maybe if that's the case, if a player is unavailable, a bot takes his place and if said player misses too many games, then he is booted from the server (league).

I don't know, what do you guys think?

[Andrew]

That would be an interesting direction for the series to move in but personally I wouldn't be in favour of it replacing the traditional User vs CPU play and Season/Franchise/Dynasty Mode play that the game has always offered as I'm not really interested in MMORPG games.

I believe the appeal of Season/Franchise/Dynasty Mode has always been the ability to create our own NBA reality, which wouldn't be the case in more of an MMORPG format since we wouldn't have as much control over the proceedings. Certainly what you've suggested would add a whole new dimension to the NBA Live experience but I wouldn't want to see it replace what the game already endeavours to provide.

[deihatein]

here in the phillipines there is that game freestyle online. even thought it is not a MMORPG but still it is a great online street basketball(and also you can create a girl player.