by Amioran on Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:04 am
- Next Gen for PC (imperative, at least for gameplay). For consoles they could easily scale back the next gen engine to make it work on old consoles while keeping the next gen engine improvements (I don't know if 2K has done this, one can only hope, but it would be a first) instead of having two completely separate versions, the old one still containing all the old legacy issues.
- Crossplay (at least for what it concerns sharing rosters, sliders, drafts), at this point it is a must. For PC we need at all costs a anti-cheat system, elsewhere we can never enter in the crossplay discussion for online play.
- Even if I know they will never do it, separate offline gameplay from the online one (there are many ways in which the matter can be approached without even the need to separate the modes completely). Even just completely different set of sliders (generating more realistic gameplay for offline and more arcade on online) along with a different emphasis on players' attributes vs user's stick skill, for example, would be a start.
- Speaking of sliders, they should add many more options to change (as for example contested shot chance, post fades/hooks chance, moving vs standing shot chance etc. etc.) because the ones we have now are not enough to really tailor the gameplay as one wants to (and most of the times it's necessary since the default sliders are usually tailored for online PvP). Also they should separate the slider set of AI from the user's one for those that play with player lock (elsewhere when you start increasing difficulty your team starts to miss all shots and generally play bad). Also giving the user the ability to change a limited set of sliders up to a certain point even for MyCareer would be a thing to take in consideration IMO.
- Less reliance on canned animations and more on natural physics. The game is slowly starting to show the same problems on the matter that Madden has, and that's never a good thing.
- Please bring back the "weight" (for lack of a better term) that movement/actions had prior to 2K18 (but even in 2K17 you could notice some difference on this aspect than before, albeit much much less than 2K18 onwards). I don't know why but even jump shot animations have not the same feeling as before (one just need to look at the difference that contesting a shot had on the shooter before vs now). Since the introduction of the new motion engine in 2K18 the game lost much of the sense of physics impacting the players. I cannot know why this happens ((I can come up with numerous hypothesis on why that's so but without knowing the internal implementation I cannot know for certainty) as probably just the contrary is true and the new motion engine actually introduced more physical calculations than before, but the final result gives this impression, making everything that happens on the court seem fake. As I said above the game feels much more tied to animations than physics and this gives the impression of having to do with objects moving on the screen instead of controlling real humans on a basketball court. Every action seem to have lost is impact and weight and players seem to just float instead of moving over a concrete floor. Next gen is surely an improvement on this direction but there's still much work to do to bring back the sense of weight players had before (and the physical impact every action had).
- The gameplay is too robotic, too predictable, not many random mistakes or unforeseen events occurring (and this is evidenced by the total lack of turnovers outside of steals or interceptions). I understand that if you add a random system in the online gameplay you will receive countless complaints, but that's another motive as to why it is imperative to separate the online from offline gameplay. Humans are not robots, they do mistakes once in a while (especially while under pressure and/or with lack of experience) and that's what also adds to the beauty of a sport.
- The shooting faults from outside the paint are still almost inexistent (yet another instance of online gameplay influencing offline one). The modern rules on the spacing needed by a shooter on landing seems to not be taken at all in consideration (or very little so). You can literally jump from 15-20 feet to contest a shot (btw it's totally unrealistic that everyone can do such a thing, a clear example of animations taking precedence over physics) landing where the shooter is without any fault called (while the shot is naturally heavily contested). Not only many of those contests will not trouble the shooting so much (since in many cases they happen after the release motion started) but they would be result in a fault 90% of the time in the modern NBA.
- Give us more freedom on what we do on the court. Many actions are decided contextually by the engine instead of being directed by our choices. For example if you move back (on the stick) while in the close shot area and shoot then you will do a fadeway shot, but if you do the same exact thing outside of the close shot area then you will do a stepback shot. Another classic example is that you cannot force a dunk; let me miss, even injure myself if I want to go against a 7'2 big dunking at the rim but give me the choice to do it if I actually want to do it.
- Please hire someone to work on tendencies of players and rosters because in the past year the vanilla roster is a total mess. For example just the intangibles rating messes everything when you do leagues of more than an year. I can understand that the majority of the money is on the online modes but there are still many people that play the game as a basketball sim and if you offer a NBA mode then you should put some actual work in the actual players.
- Please work on the post game because after 2K19 it has been nerfed too much (even because of certain defensive badges that shouldn't be in the game).
- Speaking of badges: please (please) remove the totally overpowered and completely unrealistic badges present (as intimidator, pogo stick, hall of fame posterizer etc.) and if possible (and this separating offline gameplay from online would immensely help) have the skill of players be more reliant on attributes than badges themselves.
- The best would be to rework the shot contest system as its results as things stand now are are totally inconsistent, but at the very least bring it back to how it was in 2K19 that you needed to actually - you know - contest for the shot to not be considered open. As it is now you just have to be in the close proximity to "contest" a shot.
- The sprinting animation is practically the same as the running one, apart from the speed. Sprinting IMO should have a separated animation (even better if possible if there are different sprinting animations for different players) blending with the running one depending on the speed of the player. There are many ways to approach the player's movement mechanic to be more realistic than it is now but this is not the place for it (as it would require a thread by itself to give it justice) so just making the visual aspect much more impactful than it is now would be a good start.
- Slow down the dribbling speed but have it be more impactful than it is now, so at to separate better good dribblers vs bad ones. Also the ability to execute (and the skill at which you do so) certain dribblling moves (and not just specific animations) should be tied to the ball control attribute and (in some specific cases) to position. In 2K21, for example, a power forward could do Curry slides in the same way as a PG could that's totally unrealistic.
- Bring back the "Become a legend" mode that was one of the best modes ever made. The possibilities of expansion for that mode are limitless and there's nothing like recreating the path of a player (or changing it) to become immersed in the game.
- The next gen MC builder is a good basis but more balance is needed between the various builds. If you want to give the ability to create superstars then you should give such ability to every role not just one or two. Also MC needs better branching options and choices that actually matter. Instead than focusing so much on long cutscenes imo it is much better to have shorter ones but spread in different scenarios and firing in many different circumstances. Interviews and the like also need more choices and different outcomes for the player. In short MC should be similar to a RPG in scope (naturally not with such a depth as that would require a standalone game) to really have the user feel immersed in the mode.
- Give us many of the options that you have in creating a player for MC for the roster player editing (good one for the tattoos, albeit now every single player in the vanilla draft is full of tattoos, that's a bit unrealistic).
For now I think it's enough, I will add some more later