My worries about this year's Live

[Larry Bird]

If we look back at the past 4-5 years of NBA Live, a definite pattern has developed.... Each year the makers of the game completely screw at least one aspect of the game up, or they completely forget about another, the major ones in the past few years have been speed, injuries, and rebounds... We complain, and, thankfully, EA listens.

The problem, though, is that the next year EA drastically overcompensates for their over (or under)sight. One year there was way too many offensive rebounds, so the next year it was nearly impossible to get an O rebound. 2002 was beyond slow, so in 2003 every player was simultaneously hopped up on speed, coccaine and starbucks. There's more to add to the list, but you all know what the complaints were. Now our major concern has been the injuries.

I'm just worried that there is going to be an injury or two every game in 2004, and i have a feeling that there aren't going to be minor injuries where a player has to sit out for a few minutes in this year's addition. I bet there will only be multi-day or even weeklongers.... I hope I'm wrong, but there is a definite pattern of EA tyring far too hard to make up for their past mistakes. They finally put the sliders in, so we can compensate for most things we deem wrong... i just hope there's an injury slider this year.

[Andrew]

I think most aspects will be adequately controlled by the sliders. I'm not sure if injuries will have a slider, but I don't think there'll be a problem of too many injuries, unless you constantly risk injury with your style of play (say, always attempting highlight reel dunks in traffic).