Eight Exciting Changes Coming To NBA 2K19's Gameplay - Game Informer

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https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/20 ... s-gameplay

New Takeover System

One of the more noticeable changes coming to NBA 2K19 is a new game system that celebrates the idea that any NBA player can take over a game at any time. Think of this Takeover concept as a more nuanced take on the “On Fire” system from the arcade classic NBA Jam.

The way Takeover works is players of each archetype have unique ways to exert their dominance during a game. For instance, playmakers take over by setting up teammates for easy buckets, rim protectors change the trajectory of a game by locking down the paint, etc. As the player exercises his will against the opponent using his specialties, he builds up a takeover meter. Once activated, you will see an on fire badge underneath the player on the court, which indicates the player has unlocked a new tier of special animations and badges that align with their archetype. For instance, playmakers like Rajon Rondo won’t suddenly be raining down threes while on fire NBA Jam style. Instead, they may get Dimer and Ankle Breaker boosts.

Holding the left bumper button, you can check where all your players on the court are at in terms of activating their Takeover. Multiple players on the same team can activate Takeovers at the same time, as well, making for some intriguing combinations. But beware, if your players struggle they can also develop cold streaks. These diminish gradually over time, but you can try to accelerate coming out of their funk by calling a timeout.

"I like it, it's a little meta game to think about how you play with players,” Wang says.
Dramatically Reduced Clipping

The switch to the new motion system in NBA 2K18 brought some unexpected problems. Immersion was often shattered due to excessive clipping where limbs, heads, and basketballs morphed through players’ bodies. Making it worse, these rough animations weren’t just limited to the high-traffic areas; we saw them in one-on-one situations on the perimeter as well.

“It was embarrassing,” Wang admits. “There was a bug that we didn't find until very, very late with the collision detection. That's another thing that we're working on right now. We're spending a lot of time trying to make sure you just can't go through players and stopping them when you try to run into guys.”

I only played four or five games of NBA 2K19, so I’m reporting off a small sample size, but during each game, I paused and watched instant replays when bodies clashed in the paint and on the perimeter to see if the collisions were still compromised, and all the animations looked clean. Arms reacted naturally to contact and bodies slammed into each other instead of clipping through. Wang says Visual Concepts is continuing to hone this in the lead-up to launch to minimize clipping as much as possible.

“It's hard to make it foolproof because it's a game and if we made it so every time a limb got hit the ball would knock loose it would be chaos,” Wang says. “But you definitely won't see the major bodies going inside other bodies and heads.

Rebuilt Stealing System

We’ve all been in a situation defending off-ball and see an opportunity to swipe at an unprotected ball, yet nothing happens when we press the steal button. Visual Concepts has wanted to re-examine this system for a while now, and finally had the time to address it with NBA 2K19.

Successful steal opportunities are now governed by a zone system that judges vulnerability. Defenders who recognize prime stealing opportunities where the ball is exposed – during open-bodied hesitation dribbles and when post players aren’t protecting the ball from secondary defenders, for example – will be rewarded for their smart timing. Dribblers can’t just string together moves with no concern about the defender’s reach anymore. Reading those situations correctly and stealing at the right time will pop the ball out a lot easier.

But these aren’t always clean wins with unobstructed paths to the hoop; building off the more unpredictable loose balls of NBA 2K18, sometimes both players will scramble for possession when it's knocked free.

Returning Skill To One-On-Ones

Last year’s new motion system made it easier to blow by defenders with speed, but it went too far. Even lockdown defenders could be taken right off the dribble with startling regularity. This has been reworked in NBA 2K19 to make stick skills matter more than before and restore balance to the one-on-one interactions.

"We have to make this game more about bringing back the skill gap and making it about the users, the skill on the sticks to be successful,” Wang says. “It's all about matching your stick to where the guy's trying to get to. That's where you'll get the set-offs, the brick walls. You'll get blow-bys if the guy's stick is the wrong way."

Defenders also can’t just rely on holding the left trigger to be in the ideal situation to contest a shot. The automated contest system has been removed, so defenders need to actively get a hand in the shooter’s face by using the right analog stick if they want to affect the shot.

Offensively, the dribblers have some new tools at their disposal as well. Flicking the right stick activates signature walking size-ups. Wang also says good ball handlers should find NBA 2K19 a lot more responsive and fluid in terms of branches and combos.

Last edited by TGsoGood on Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

NBA 2K19 has a lot to live up to considering NBA 2K18 simultaneously became the best-selling entry in franchise history while also alienating some hardcore fans with its approach to microtransactions and server instability. While developer Visual Concepts isn’t talking about those elements of the game just yet...

Of course not. I doubt they will, because if they tip their hand about the implementation of microtransactions in this year's game, it'll probably have a negative effect. Same reason they didn't feature upgrades and VC in last year's Prelude, after they did in NBA 2K17's version of it.

The Takeover system sounds interesting, but it's also the kind of gameplay mechanic that can be wildly unbalanced, especially online. Better clipping remains to be seen, but that was a big issue with the new motion system, so I'm glad to hear it was worked on. A better stealing system sounds good on paper, because I'm tired of the "press steal to foul" dice roll mechanics from recent games. The bootleg footage doesn't really bear out claims of improvements to one-on-one situations, but such footage doesn't always show the game in its best light with optimal gameplay settings. Additional streetball moves for The Playground is a good idea; I'm not particularly excited about that, but it is nifty. Improved shooting mechanics, bringing back the meter on layups, and having the old meter option available does sound good, though I wonder how two different meters will work with the same shooting mechanics. Interior defense and AI should obviously be areas of focus as well, so it's nice to hear.

However, we have heard this before, and gameplay improvements have stagnated in recent years, or changes have been for the worse. The balance between offline and online gameplay also remains a large concern. These are promising improvements to tout and since there was hands-on here it sounds like a small sample size is suggesting some positive change, but again, we've heard this before. At the very least the offline experience may be improved, but they're going to have to sort out issues with stability, microtransactions, grinding, balance, and matchmaking for some of their flagship modes to be better.

Honestly the only interesting thing they talked about was the Takeover system but that sounds like what NBA Live did with the unique boosts for the different archetypes

I was thinking that too, with in-game mechanics that were similar to Freestyle Superstars or perhaps X-Factors. It sounds like a new momentum/hot & cold system with a bit of player differentiation on top of it. It's a good idea in theory, but again, if it's unbalanced - especially online - it might end up being too powerful and not sim enough. Obviously that remains to be seen, but that would be my initial concern.

As I said, I like the idea of a new and better stealing system, so I'm hoping for the best there. Right now, it's too canned and predetermined; "press steal to foul", essentially. Even if you tap the button once at what seems to be an opportune time to try for a steal, quite often you'll start wildly grabbing at your opponent or sloppily slapping at the ball, immediately committing the foul. That would be fine if you were spamming the steal button as you should get punished with your player being reckless and committing a foul in that situation, but it also happens on a single press when the ball is exposed and a steal attempt is sensible. Again, that makes it feel very canned.

Every year they make announcements like this, only to screw them up completely in patches and updates. The proof is in the pudding.

In some cases, it's not even patches and tuning updates that mess things up. The game just fails to live up to the hype and promises out of the box.

When you go back and look at last year's gameplay blog, it's hard not to be cynical. Beluba's remarks about the problems in last year's game are in stark contrast to what he said about it at the time. Let's pull a couple of quotes from the Game Informer article (emphasis is mine):

“It was embarrassing,” Wang admits. “There was a bug that we didn't find until very, very late with the collision detection. That's another thing that we're working on right now. We're spending a lot of time trying to make sure you just can't go through players and stopping them when you try to run into guys.”

"We have to make this game more about bringing back the skill gap and making it about the users, the skill on the sticks to be successful,” Wang says. “It's all about matching your stick to where the guy's trying to get to. That's where you'll get the set-offs, the brick walls. You'll get blow-bys if the guy's stick is the wrong way."

“Interior defense was really rough last year,” Wang says. “When we went to the new motion system we ended up taking out a lot of the multi-actor animations that we had in the past, so it made it really tough to protect the rim. That's why there were so many missed lay-ups, it was kind of a band-aid to fix all that because you could pretty much get them at will. That's a lot better now, and so is the hit detection of when you are actually covered and when you are not.”

Now compare that to the aforementioned NBA 2K18 gameplay blog (again, emphasis is mine):

SKILLS STILL MATTER

Last year I mentioned how much we focused on the skill of the gamer being king in deciding who wins and who loses. With NBA 2K18, that focus remained but definitely evolved from last year. I think the main course of the evolution was defining what “skill” meant. Last year, NBA 2K17 put a very large focus on stick skills. And while that focus was good, it also took away from some of the aspects that traditionally make 2K gameplay so great.

With shooting for example, last year we introduced shot aiming and put a heavy emphasis on shot timing deciding makes and misses. The unfortunate side effects to some of these changes were that it became very difficult for us to balance the “stick skill gap” between new users and pro gamers, as well as across the various archetypes. So in many ways, it ended up de-valuing player attributes, defensive impact, and all of the other factors that go into shot success. So we took a step back and looked at the pros and cons of NBA 2K17’s shooting system compared to how we’ve done things in past games and married the best ideas together to create a new system for 2K18. This year I think we’ve struck a great balance between the importance of stick skills and basketball IQ.

On the defensive end of the floor there were a ton of improvements as well. The biggest thing for a lot of our users was the dribble drive game. This is something we spent a lot of time on and it’s come a long way since last year. Many people complained about “stonewalling” defenders that were able to clamp down ball handlers regardless of their ratings and, somewhat unrealistically, stifle the dribble drive game. The interactions and logic for ball handler/on-ball defender collisions were reworked and it feels MUCH better. In NBA 2K18, if the ball handler can get a step on his man or is a Westbrook or LeBron coming downhill prepare to see a blow-by for a clear drive to the hoop. It feels really good now to get your defender leaning one way, attacking his drag foot, and seeing your ball handler quickly swim by the defender without getting snatched into a heavy bump animation. Sure the Kawhi Leonards of the league can still clamp down slower ball handlers, but for the most part, you’ll see a lot of “hip riding” this year compared to the knockbacks and dribbler stuns from the past. If you find yourself matched up with an extra pesky hard-nosed defender, I recommend pulling off stepback moves from the rides. They’re extremely deadly this year. The whole revamp of the 1-on-1 chess match really opens up the floor game and makes going to the basket with a playmaker much more realistic than before.

You’ll also notice that we significantly reduced the number of multi-actor layups in NBA 2K18 and that was intentional. It felt a bit in past games that you could get really good shot defense just by being there and getting pulled into a contact shot. This year, we wanted to make playing defense as a rim protector much more engaging so the onus is now on the gamer to recognize guys attacking the rim and timing their shot blocks accordingly.

Some clear contradictions there. It's funny how removing multi-actor layups was touted as an intentional move and key improvement last year, but is now being described as an unfortunate side effect of problems with the new motion engine. Last year was meant to address the skill gap and making sure skill matters, but so is this year, apparently. Once again, the previous year's game has been thrown under the bus and aspects that were touted as strengths are now being described as problems that are being addressed. While I like the sound of what was said in the Game Informer article, we've heard it all before, and there are some clear contradictions that make it difficult not to be sceptical.

It may be a matter of management and decision makers who make bad decisions or don't have an idea on how to fix things

God knows that's a problem in the company that I work for

Well, on top of everything else, they're putting a lot of time and effort into a product they want to sell. They're not going to come out and say "Some things went badly awry and it's kind of a mess, but please buy the game anyway, we will get it right at some point!". They're going to do the best they can with bandaid fixes and the like, tout the game's merits, and keep working on it for next year. They do have a pretty brutal development cycle, after all. If developing the perfect game was as effortless as snapping one's fingers, it would have been achieved by now.

It's just that stuff like that looks really bad when you go back and compare what was said last year to this year, and we as gamers and consumers can't help but become cynical when we see it.

Visual Concepts heard our complaints and is including a shot meter on all lay-ups in NBA 2K19.

Kinda annoyed they push it as a new feature when you would sometimes get the shot meter for a layup in 2K18 too. It's almost as if there was some simple condition they could've removed to make it work last year.

You can choose a meter that goes by the players’ hands, the players’ feet, turn on both, or turn them off altogether.

That is actually good, when you can, just put an option in the menu and let players decide.

In addition, you can customize the color of the shot meter. The options I saw included team colors, white, and magenta.

That was in 2K18 too? I remember using magenta meter, but the team colours might be new.

When moving into high traffic areas, the new stealing system gives bigs the awareness to take a swipe at exposed balls

Kinda has me worried you'll lose ball very often when driving. Hell it was happening somewhat often in 2K18 too. Overall the players weren't capable to hold the ball to save their life even though the first thing any competent couch teaches a 6 year old kid is to how to hold the ball firmly.

Visual Concepts also did work to improve the transition game lane principles so players fill the lane appropriately and space into the corners for kick-out threes.

I mean... last year my problem was that bigs that couldn't shoot for shit went to the 3pt corner instead of going to the rim.

New Takeover System
[...]

So... does that replace and enhance the hot/cold system with the 2K17's pro badges?

“It's hard to make it foolproof because it's a game and if we made it so every time a limb got hit the ball would knock loose it would be chaos,” Wang says.

All I want in this regard is to get same treatment as AI. Because they could clip the ball through me all the time, but if I as much as touched them on offence I lost the ball.

Balance is admittedly at risk of becoming a buzzword, but it is such an important issue moving forward. As you noted, the AI seemed to have a much easier time clipping through defenders and maintaining possession by having the ball warp back through the player you were controlling. It's not just that the collision detection in NBA 2K18 was bad, it also seemed to be skewed in the favour of the CPU as well. I'm likewise concerned that we could be seeing too many lost balls on drives, while the CPU is able to consistently keep possession and drive at will. Artificial difficulty at its finest, when that sort of stuff happens.

The Takeover system does sound like a refined momentum/hot and cold streak system, though again, I'm worried that it'll be unbalanced. If so, it's going to make online play even worse, though it might at least work out alright for offline play. Options for shot meter colours were in NBA 2K18 with team colours being one of them. Sounds like there are less options in that regard this year, as there were a few colours to choose from in NBA 2K18.

In some cases, it's not even patches and tuning updates that mess things up. The game just fails to live up to the hype and promises out of the box.

When you go back and look at last year's gameplay blog, it's hard not to be cynical. Beluba's remarks about the problems in last year's game are in stark contrast to what he said about it at the time. Let's pull a couple of quotes from the Game Informer article (emphasis is mine):

“It was embarrassing,” Wang admits. “There was a bug that we didn't find until very, very late with the collision detection. That's another thing that we're working on right now. We're spending a lot of time trying to make sure you just can't go through players and stopping them when you try to run into guys.”

"We have to make this game more about bringing back the skill gap and making it about the users, the skill on the sticks to be successful,” Wang says. “It's all about matching your stick to where the guy's trying to get to. That's where you'll get the set-offs, the brick walls. You'll get blow-bys if the guy's stick is the wrong way."

“Interior defense was really rough last year,” Wang says. “When we went to the new motion system we ended up taking out a lot of the multi-actor animations that we had in the past, so it made it really tough to protect the rim. That's why there were so many missed lay-ups, it was kind of a band-aid to fix all that because you could pretty much get them at will. That's a lot better now, and so is the hit detection of when you are actually covered and when you are not.”

Now compare that to the aforementioned NBA 2K18 gameplay blog (again, emphasis is mine):

SKILLS STILL MATTER

Last year I mentioned how much we focused on the skill of the gamer being king in deciding who wins and who loses. With NBA 2K18, that focus remained but definitely evolved from last year. I think the main course of the evolution was defining what “skill” meant. Last year, NBA 2K17 put a very large focus on stick skills. And while that focus was good, it also took away from some of the aspects that traditionally make 2K gameplay so great.

With shooting for example, last year we introduced shot aiming and put a heavy emphasis on shot timing deciding makes and misses. The unfortunate side effects to some of these changes were that it became very difficult for us to balance the “stick skill gap” between new users and pro gamers, as well as across the various archetypes. So in many ways, it ended up de-valuing player attributes, defensive impact, and all of the other factors that go into shot success. So we took a step back and looked at the pros and cons of NBA 2K17’s shooting system compared to how we’ve done things in past games and married the best ideas together to create a new system for 2K18. This year I think we’ve struck a great balance between the importance of stick skills and basketball IQ.

On the defensive end of the floor there were a ton of improvements as well. The biggest thing for a lot of our users was the dribble drive game. This is something we spent a lot of time on and it’s come a long way since last year. Many people complained about “stonewalling” defenders that were able to clamp down ball handlers regardless of their ratings and, somewhat unrealistically, stifle the dribble drive game. The interactions and logic for ball handler/on-ball defender collisions were reworked and it feels MUCH better. In NBA 2K18, if the ball handler can get a step on his man or is a Westbrook or LeBron coming downhill prepare to see a blow-by for a clear drive to the hoop. It feels really good now to get your defender leaning one way, attacking his drag foot, and seeing your ball handler quickly swim by the defender without getting snatched into a heavy bump animation. Sure the Kawhi Leonards of the league can still clamp down slower ball handlers, but for the most part, you’ll see a lot of “hip riding” this year compared to the knockbacks and dribbler stuns from the past. If you find yourself matched up with an extra pesky hard-nosed defender, I recommend pulling off stepback moves from the rides. They’re extremely deadly this year. The whole revamp of the 1-on-1 chess match really opens up the floor game and makes going to the basket with a playmaker much more realistic than before.

You’ll also notice that we significantly reduced the number of multi-actor layups in NBA 2K18 and that was intentional. It felt a bit in past games that you could get really good shot defense just by being there and getting pulled into a contact shot. This year, we wanted to make playing defense as a rim protector much more engaging so the onus is now on the gamer to recognize guys attacking the rim and timing their shot blocks accordingly.

Some clear contradictions there. It's funny how removing multi-actor layups was touted as an intentional move and key improvement last year, but is now being described as an unfortunate side effect of problems with the new motion engine. Last year was meant to address the skill gap and making sure skill matters, but so is this year, apparently. Once again, the previous year's game has been thrown under the bus and aspects that were touted as strengths are now being described as problems that are being addressed. While I like the sound of what was said in the Game Informer article, we've heard it all before, and there are some clear contradictions that make it difficult not to be sceptical.

Great great post
this kind of post, debriefing of kept and broken promises, would deserve a front page article

Funny how they never screw up the VC gouging aspect of the game. It's the only part they seem to get right all the time.

“It's hard to make it foolproof because it's a game and if we made it so every time a limb got hit the ball would knock loose it would be chaos,” Wang says.

All I want in this regard is to get same treatment as AI. Because they could clip the ball through me all the time, but if I as much as touched them on offence I lost the ball.

This point is one that I have harped on in the past, the inability for the human player to do things the AI players could. That is just plain wrong.

Great great post
this kind of post, debriefing of kept and broken promises, would deserve a front page article

I've been thinking of how to approach a feature like that, discussing legacy issues and contradictions during the preview season. I'd ultimately want it to be constructive though, as it would be too easy to come across as snarky or like I'm out to bash the game and the developers.

Funny how they never screw up the VC gouging aspect of the game. It's the only part they seem to get right all the time.

Indeed, that stuff all works as intended. It makes it difficult to believe that those mechanics aren't the priority in designing the game.

This point is one that I have harped on in the past, the inability for the human player to do things the AI players could. That is just plain wrong.

It's one of those issues that still persists in basketball games. The AI needs to have a few advantages to keep up with the user so in some cases it's a necessary evil, but when it's blatantly unbalanced, it's just artificial difficulty.

I don't like the idea of this takeover system. One of my biggest complaints about the gameplay has been how it feels like the outcome is scripted or out of my hands much of the time. In my opinion, 2K13 plays better than 2K18, and it's because they keep adding features for the sake of adding them. Gotta justify charging $60, but either re-do your engine or leave it alone... This is probably just a gimmick that will probably be OP in this year's game, then be nerfed into irrelevance in 2K20.

While I'm excited about the additions they keep making to myLeague, I think I'll wait on purchasing this one. I did say that about 2K18, but after playing that one way less than I expected to, I think I mean it this time...

I don't like the idea of this takeover system. One of my biggest complaints about the gameplay has been how it feels like the outcome is scripted or out of my hands much of the time. In my opinion, 2K13 plays better than 2K18, and it's because they keep adding features for the sake of adding them. Gotta justify charging $60, but either re-do your engine or leave it alone... This is probably just a gimmick that will probably be OP in this year's game, then be nerfed into irrelevance in 2K20.

While I'm excited about the additions they keep making to myLeague, I think I'll wait on purchasing this one. I did say that about 2K18, but after playing that one way less than I expected to, I think I mean it this time...

Of the same opinion. 2K13 absolutely plays better than 2K18. I play 2K13 all the time.

Some more info about the takeover mode:


Higher Green Release % in takeover mode.
(source: https://twitter.com/Beluba/status/1027616606296268800)

+12 to primary skills, +6 to secondary, badges get upgraded, unique skills based on archetype, boost counts over 99, "It's not as OP as it sounds". The +12/+6 values are subject to change.
(source: https://twitter.com/Beluba/status/1027580732372267009)

On one hand, the "not as OP as it sounds" disclaimer actually doesn't fill me with confidence. On the other hand, it's not like having a rating in the 90s has ever guaranteed success every time without mastery of the controls and mechanics, so it's not a given.

True, but the badges did make a big difference.

I can see that there' will be bunch of sharpshooters with 99 in all three 3pt attributes, HoF Limitless Range and Deep Range Deadeye.
All of a sudden those attributes are up to 111 and those badges presumably get some extra boost as well. Not to mention the "unique skill".

Maybe they'll manage to balance it out... Or maybe next year we'll hear "well, it didn't work out" similar to quotes above.

That's unquestionably a concern. Even putting aside pay-to-win mechanics, online play was in no way balanced in NBA 2K18.

This takeover is more refined hot/cold system. Before if you blocked a shot with let's say Pau Gasol few times his 70s three pointer would shoot to high 80s and he'd be unstoppable because big men would not guard him tightly. This ensures that his playstyle dictates what gets a bump. So for Pau it'd be midrange, passing and post play instead of every single attribute. This is much better system.

That is definitely a better way of handling it.

I think that that would be a better way to explain new system instead of +12 and +6 to some attributes. Just creates confusion and anger with fans.

Also, another example that'll make the most sense is Rondo. He can make few passes and score a layup on a fast break and in previous games he'd get a boost to his 3pt, mid range, defense but since his playstyle is playmaking and slashing he'd get a boost to layups +6, floaters+6, passing +12. Which is way way better.

At least this is how I interpret it.

Balance is still a concern, though. Even if only the appropriate skills are boosted, an already unbalanced Archetype is potentially going to become ridiculously overpowered.

Mike Wang tweeted that it's not gonna be +12 and +6 but more like +10 and +5. Still not definite.

True, but I have faith in devs after that MyLeague blog. Also it's been reported that max weight for MyPlayers is 290 as that's the heaviest a player is today. I like that