What you really want to see in NBA Live 2005...

[beau_boy04]

Every production team should prioritize their tasking. Such tasking should be separated into 2 groups. The "needs" group and the "wants" group. Not what "they want" in their list but what "we want" in the game. Thats why we're the customers right?
I can not see why is it so difficult for them to satisfy their customers or at least 75% of them. I guess this is like politics, they dont want to make the near perfect game because they want us to keep coming back. The day will come when all their lovely and loyal fans will quit buying Live and hopefully they'll wake up out of their sweet dreams =)
I think they should select one of us to be part of their production team.... "a real customer" being part of the house! how cool! that way he can scout what the other side of the house want and implement some of them into the game.

Thank you.

[Andrew]

OK, you've posted the same sentiment in at least three different topics now. You're not happy with the NBA Live Production Team, you have low expectations of NBA Live 2005. We certainly get your point and know where you stand. But some of us are looking forward to NBA Live 2005 and would like to discuss our hopes and speculate on the features of the new game.

[Colin]

It's not that complex at all. We could get half the scouting they have in madden and it would still be a huge improvement. Making scouts for different areas isn't that hard, the players they scout would have different names and places of birth and would have different tendencys eg. Euros would be better shooters and americans would be more athletic.

[gergerjai]

take this serious...make the shot blocked as a miss and NEVER treat out of bounds at the defensive end as turnovers~

[misow]

The AI need to be patched to let the others 4 players of ur team shoot without your intervention wen they got a shooting position, (when ur playing in locked pos mode only)(depending in ur players capacity attac? defence?).
Sorry for my english i'm a french native language(african).

[Metsis]

The AI need to be patched to let the others 4 players of ur team shoot without your intervention wen they got a shooting position, (when ur playing in locked pos mode only)(depending in ur players capacity attac? defence?).
Sorry for my english i'm a french native language(african).

I usually play with switch, but I've dabbled with the player lock in my day. It used to be like what you want, the AI would shoot when it saw it best. But they removed it from 2004... Kind of a dumb idea when you think of it...

I usually ended up with the player lock getting so ridiculous scores all the time with the one guy that it wasn't very realistic. Of course you want to be involved in everything on the court etc. And thus atleast I ended up doing almost all the shooting, rebounding etc...

I remember playing Live 97 with a friend of mine. We used to play with the Jazz, he'd be Stockton and I'd be either Malone or Hornacek... I remember this one game where we combined for over 90 points with Stock and Horny. It was just a brutal beating from behind the line. Ofcourse things have improved since, but I'd like to play a franchise type of game with a friend. Too bad I ain't got no one that close anymore.

The AI needs to improve alot, in every circumstance. I'd like to see more activity from the AI. I especially hate the situation when I dump the ball down low and force a double team (my center has the ball and the guy guarding my pf comes to help) then the guy defending the shooting guard on the arch comes to cover my power forward. And he places himself so that he can and usually will intercept passes to both the pf and sg. That just sucks... And it's unrealistic. You should be able to put the ball over the guy to the sg for the open shot with ease. Or the shooting guard should move to a better position on court when this happens. But in reality he shouldn't have to move, the pass should be made 95% of the time instead of the 40% that it is now. Double teaming always leaves a guy open and that is always an easy shot when you get the ball to the open man. This was a problem in Live 2003 as well as I recollect... 2003 had a lot of issues with passing. Live 04 was better by far.

[nickjgar]

Improved gameplay is number 1 on my list. But is there any hope that they will finally add some of the great teams from the past. They mention it every year and they never come through.

[JasonLin]

Association with TNT, including broadcasting style menus, graphics, in-game stats and replays.

[3dfxrain]

instead of just the resolution of 640x480 for the menus, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864 and higher as well because I can see more stats and it looks much better than 640x480

id like to see people on court fall over when they get bumped too hard when they take difficult shots like fade aways

players fumbling the basketball, around the rim when rebounding, when dribbling, ive seen them do this in the NBA when watching games

[Metsis]

instead of just the resolution of 640x480 for the menus, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864 and higher as well because I can see more stats and it looks much better than 640x480

id like to see people on court fall over when they get bumped too hard when they take difficult shots like fade aways

players fumbling the basketball, around the rim when rebounding, when dribbling, ive seen them do this in the NBA when watching games

640x480 resolution is for the tv and that is what the consoles use. As this is by now primarily a console product we PC users have to cope with crappy user interfaces until hell freezes over... It's nice when I have a 19" tube screen that I could crank up to 2000x1600 resolution and see all the screens of Live 04 in one picture, but no... I have to look at those awful fist sized pixels on my screen... Ingame resolution is a little bit is adjustible which is nice. I would like to see a roster screen where I wouldn't have to scroll to see all my players on the active roster. It a pain moving a guy from IR list to your starting lineup and it's all because EA won't give us a good UI.

I'd like to see players off the active roster listed somewhere. So if you hold the drafting rights to an european player and decided that he should stay over seas for another year or two you could. You could send your rookies to your affiliate teams in NBDL. Then you could possibly activate them during the season if they were playing in north america. Couldn't if they went to play in Europe.

It would be nice to kind of send your players to other systems to get better. What would be even nicer, would be that different systems would yield different results. Like in north america the player would get stronger and more athletic, but in Europe he would develop his team game more and become a better passer etc. More likely that is...

There could be an item for this in the roster management section. 'Players off the active roster' or something... And from there you could see where they are playing at and from this screen you could activate them to your active roster if you wanted to with the exceptions described above. This would enable you to manage your young players without sacrificing roster space. It would be cool too if you could then trade these drafting rights with other teams. Kind of as a deal softener... "How about if I throw in this good project we have playing in Europe?"

This would again add a whole new depth level to the game.

[Andrew]

Even if the players were in the Free Agent pool but could not be signed by anyone else as long as you held their draft rights, I would be happy. If you relinquished or traded their draft rights, other teams would be free to sign them/trade for their draft rights/sign them if they own their draft rights.

[Metsis]

Even if the players were in the Free Agent pool but could not be signed by anyone else as long as you held their draft rights, I would be happy. If you relinquished or traded their draft rights, other teams would be free to sign them/trade for their draft rights/sign them if they own their draft rights.

This could work too... But still a screen from where you could see your players that are not on the active roster would be welcome...

But it would be cool to control a little what those players are doing.

[Andrew]

Absolutely. I just think the players should (and probably would) show up in the Free Agent pool too, along with all other players who aren't signed but cannot be signed as another team holds their draft rights. I agree there should be a screen that displays the unsigned players whom you hold the draft rights for.

They could probably be displayed in at least three screens, actually: Sign Free Agents, Manager's Statement, and their own Unsigned Draftees screen.

[diafenes]

just a couple of ideas that would strengthen the game...

I want exhibition games.... with a 20 player roster all playable.... They could use a system where there is a 5 game exhibition schedule, where you choose which teams to play against but you cant play the same team twice. The roster -you don't need to sign anyone but have people play for your team with the incentive of them being able to keep a roster spot and getting signed before the season. Once the exhibition schedule is completed you are prompted to cut the roster down to 15 before you can continue. I reckon this is a great idea and its sorely missing from the current offseason mode.

I also want to have an expansion draft implementation -just like it is happening now. Protecting players, exposing players to the draft, offering the expansion team money/draft picks to take players . It would be cool to be able to have the expansion anytime in the dynasty, like schedule it to happen to years in advance.

[Andrew]

The SNES version of NBA Live 96 actually had an expansion draft that you could choose to simulate or select players for the Grizzlies, Raptors, or both. It would be pretty cool to hold your own expansion draft for the Bobcats, but one of the reasons the SNES version of Live 96 had the expansion draft is because it was released before the Grizzlies and Raptors' rosters were set through the expansion draft and some of their early signings (if I recall correctly).

[End Boss]

MULTIPLAYER

- More than 2 players over internet/LAN for god sake. You can have a game with more players on the one computer than you can with 2 computers (or more if it were in fact possible). Does anyone not see how absolutely ridiculous this is. I have atleast 10 friends with broadband and who are bball fans and I think it's about bloody time we were able to all connect to the one game (from our respective computers) and control 10 individual players. I've been playing online games since 1995 and back then I could team up with my friends and go against another group of opponents.. EA you've had 10 years.. and I'm starting to get pissed here.. think about it.. quake, halflife, quake2, counterstrike, battlefield, unreal tournament, everquest, ultima online, day of defeat, city of heroes, worlds of warcraft, lineage, call of duty, medal of honor, quake III arena, natural selection, action quake 2, tribes.. all of these popular multiplayer games because of the communities built around them when groups of players playing simultaneously form groups/clans/teams and compete against each other for supremacy.. and the best EA can offer is 1 on 1.. its getting beyond a joke.. I can see their ethos.. it takes time and money to write solid network code and provide reliable services for larger scale multiplayer games.. people seem to be buying the games regardless of the absence of any appealing multiplayer features.. who cares about pc users anyway.. making a game with too much long term appeal could be dangerous to our seemlingly never ending payroll garnered from making minimal improvements and roster updates year in year out.. etc.. I can see where they are coming from.. but if they could manage to do something in this area I would consider it as a personal favour to me... kk

thats it for now.. back with more later..