[Game Informer] 44 Things We Know About NBA 2K15

[burnshroom]

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/nba_2k15/b/playstation4/archive/2014/09/25/45-things-we-know-about-nba-2k15.aspx

Earlier this month we revealed everything we knew about the improvements coming to the MyGM mode, which promises several innovations that could make NBA 2K15 the destination sports game for franchise mode fans. Now after sitting down with senior producer Rob Jones we have more details surrounding the game presentation, gameplay, MyLeague, MyCareer, and the popular MyCareer role-player mode. Check out the new intel below:

PRESENTATION

• As requested, NBA 2K15 ditches the simplistic menus from last year in favor of a much more visually stimulating user interface.
• The centerpiece of the new menu is 2KTV, a new weekly streaming in-game broadcast hosted by Rachel DeMita. No stranger to hoop life, DeMita is a former McDonald's All-American nominee who played college basketball at Old Dominion.
• 2KTV is a Visual Concepts produced show created to highlight community happenings (such as calling out leaderboard leaders, contest winners, or impressive user highlights), discuss game updates or strategies with developers, and showcase behind-the-scenes footage of the NBA lifestyle with some of your favorite players.
• The year brings back the pre-game show starring Ernie Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal, who analyze the matchup. Shaq will showcase his signature sense of humor as well.
• On-court visual enhancements include scanning close to 100 percent of the league players, including rookies. One of the most noticeable improvements is the animated hair, which now moves instead of looking painted onto the player sculpts.
• A new create-a-player interface gives you more tools than ever before to create players you can place on NBA rosters. You can tweak everything from forehead and jawline to ears, eyes, and lips. Many of the facial features and hairstyles are pulled from other NBA players, so if you want to rock the Ginobli bald spot with the sharp Artest cheekbones you can.
• For the first time in the series, users can scan their own faces into the game using PlayStation Camera and Kinect for the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.
• You can used your scanned player model across all the modes your MyPlayer appears in, including MyCareer and online.
• The in-arena experience has also been bolstered by the addition of cheerleaders, mascots, big heads in the stands, player introductions, the national anthem, more context appropriate crowd reactions, and more variation in their animations.
• After big plays, Visual Concepts has worked in new camera angles to highlight player reactions.

GAMEPLAY

• To help players who have trouble locking down the timing for particular players, Visual Concepts has built a new dynamic shot meter. This colored meter makes it easier to tell when your player is in a range where he is comfortable shooting from, as well as noting where hot and cold spots are for players. An indicator gives you a visual cue of when to release the shot, which is helpful since various players have different optimal release points.
• The new shooting system is not meant to be a shot meter that guarantees you making the shot. It's just a learning mechanism for teaching the player where the release is. The developers adjusted the way the programming calculates your chance of making a shot to make it more dependent on your timing instead of behind-the-scenes parameters. That said, the system is smart enough to make sure players aren't sinking 100-percent of their shots when they have a hand in their face or when shooting from a cold spot even if their timing was right on.
• To improve the defense and make A.I. players look more in control, Visual Concepts fixed how they move in small spaces, making it look less frantic. They are much better at avoiding overreactions and react more fluidly when adjusting to offensive movement. Since they stay at home, it's easier to re-orient yourself when you switch to a new defender as well.
• The developers spent time working on collisions to bring more realistic contact into the paint. You should see more post-contact animations and a reduced amount of clipping. If you go up for a dunk and get hit before you see the rim, you see the guy spill out and completely miss the shot instead of finishing it.
• To help differentiate between teams after a set play breaks down, each one uses their true base set in NBA 2K15. Now when you play the Heat, which Jones jokes doesn't truly have a big (sorry Bosh), they will run a four-out one-in set. The Spurs, on the other hand, will have three-out two-in base set.
• The enhanced A.I. also opens up repeatable conditions. Once you learn its tendencies with your team you can force a specific movement by either putting the ball in a particular spot or making particular movements. This should help you create ad hoc scoring opportunities on the fly when you're running out of your base set instead of calling a play.
• Points of emphasis return from last year, but in addition NBA 2K15 brings back the more granular strategy system from previous iterations that allow you to designate double teams and dictate how tight you want your players to guard specific threats on the opposing team.
• All the players have their signature size-ups, which you can activate by tapping the right stick toward the rim while stationary.
• Like FIFA, players are designated with badges in addition to ratings so you know what kind of style they bring to the court. Players can have up to 70 badges. The player with the most badges right now is (no surprise) LeBron James, with 47.
• 2KU has been enhanced with videos as well as the practice mode. Cover athlete Kevin Durant and other players have lent their voice to offer instructions.
• Euroleague returns with an expanded roster and playbook of plays tailored just for Europe. Euroleague is available for play in MyLeague as well.
  Read on to dive into the new features coming to the popular MyCareer mode.

MYCAREER

• Last's years role-playing experience complete with cutscenes was a big hit with fans, so Visual Concepts is doubling down with another story featuring a new player of your creation (your player from last year will not import into the game).
• Instead of focusing on relationships with made up characters like last year's rival Jackson Ellis, NBA 2K15 focuses on team relationships and learning to play the game of basketball correctly.
• To achieve this goal, Visual Concepts recorded audio with players from every NBA team, so no matter which squad you end up on you will have interactions with a mentor player.
• Instead of going through the draft process, you begin as an undrafted free agent who is hot under the collar because he was overlooked on draft day. Your agent works to get you tryouts with multiple teams.
• You choose which team to try out for, but you must keep in mind what the depth chart looks like. A handy hub screen gives you a quick glance at the current depth chart as well as the grade you'll need to reach to receive a job offer. If you want to crack the roster of a great team with depth, you will need to have a lights-out performance.
• Once you sign that first 10-day contract, it's up to you to make the most of the opportunity and carve a permanent position on the roster.
• During your second year, Doc Rivers will take over as the head coach of your team. Players will have a more intense relationship with Rivers than with the coaches from last year, as he has expectations for how he wants you to perform and what you should be focusing on in a particular game situation. These include tutorial-like pre-game meetings with assistant coaches where they go over points of emphasis.
• MyCareer also features all new endorsements for your player to earn through playing well and gaining more recognition throughout the league.
• The new MyCareer mode lets you skip games if you prefer to move more quickly through seasons. You can choose which games you want to play, and certain games against good teams or rivals will yield more VC than when you match up with a creampuff team like the Timberwolves or Pistons.
• To keep players from maxing out all their skills with 99 ratings, the developers are changing how you upgrade your player. Instead of micromanaging how points fall into individual attributes, you drop them into buckets based on specialties like perimeter shooting, dunking, defense, and passing. You can upgrade multiple buckets, but you have a limited amount of total upgrades. This creates more realistic progressions and guarantees that players max out in the low 90s overall instead of at 99.
• To reward those who play the game well over those who spend their way to a maxed out player, Visual Concepts is introducing badges to MyCareer.-Badges are earned by completing in-game feats and give you specific performance boosts that increase your overall abilities past the low 90s ratings cap. A total of 77 badge types are available, and most have bronze, silver, and gold levels.
• Some of the categories players can earn badges in include athleticism, rebounding, interior scoring, perimeter scoring, playmaking, and defense.
• 2K has tweaked the teammate grade slightly from last year, specifically removing the "call for bad pass" penalty.

MYLEAGUE

• MyLeague strips the role-playing elements from the MyGM mode and allows players to take control of every aspect of a league, including governing multiple teams. Everything else is in the game, including injury system, new scouting, trade mechanics, and SimCast.
• Customization options include season length, fantasy drafts, custom rosters, trade logic settings, controlling the player morale system, and tweaking draft class quality.
• MyLeague is not online this year, but 2K hopes to add this functionality in the future You can, however, still play in a regular online league.

MYTEAM

• MyTeam is bolstered this year with the addition of an auction house much like those found in EA's Ultimate Team modes. This is not supported by the companion app.
• New content, challenges, and players all make appearances this year.
• New players include legends like Bernard King, Bob Cousy, Nate Archibald, Rick Barry, Tom Chambers, and Kevin Johnson.
• Tournament mode features updated challenges your team must complete to win.

2K HEROES

• Replacing last year's Path To Greatness mode on old-gen consoles, this year Visual Concepts introduces a new mode called 2K Heroes where popular players select their dream teams from the vault of basketball history and pit them against on another.
• Participating players include cover athlete Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James, David Robinson, James Worthy, Clyde Drexler, and Michael Jordan. The players serve as the captains of their respective teams.
• Each team represents a charity, and 2K will make a donation to the charity for the team that wins the most games by the All-Star Weekend.
  
  NBA 2K15 releases on October 7 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Edited to include entire article ( ) For those not able to get to Game Informer.... hopefully this is OK. I know it takes away clicks from their site though...

[mantazzo]

Ffs, I can't even open any gameinformer links, it gives me "Internal server error" ._.

[bigh0rt]

Interesting ones of note, that I hope are more than just blanket sentences, and actually noticeable...

To improve the defense and make A.I. players look more in control, Visual Concepts fixed how they move in small spaces, making it look less frantic. They are much better at avoiding overreactions and react more fluidly when adjusting to offensive movement. Since they stay at home, it's easier to re-orient yourself when you switch to a new defender as well.

The developers spent time working on collisions to bring more realistic contact into the paint. You should see more post-contact animations and a reduced amount of clipping. If you go up for a dunk and get hit before you see the rim, you see the guy spill out and completely miss the shot instead of finishing it.

To help differentiate between teams after a set play breaks down, each one uses their true base set in NBA 2K15. Now when you play the Heat, which Jones jokes doesn't truly have a big (sorry Bosh), they will run a four-out one-in set. The Spurs, on the other hand, will have three-out two-in base set.

[chaim]

Ffs, I can't even open any gameinformer links, it gives me "Internal server error" ._.

same here

[Troyork]

During your second year, Doc Rivers will take over as the head coach of your team.

Scripting

[agolden]

During your second year, Doc Rivers will take over as the head coach of your team.

Scripting

yea, I don't like that (even though I haven't tried the game yet)

[Andrew]

Definitely good news in regards to the defensive movement. Solid, informative article all around.

As for Doc Rivers always taking over the team in MyCAREER...yeah, as always I'm iffy about things be too scripted and everyone getting the same experience in terms of those events, but I've resigned myself to the fact that that's the approach they're taking. It's not ideal to me, though I do understand why it's being done and the advantages it gives them in terms of the narrative and presentation. I'll see how it plays out.

[bigh0rt]

It sounds like what 2K is presenting as the MyCareer Mode, isn't in line with what some want. If people start looking at MyCareer as a specific path in a specific year, which is really what it's being presented as here, and following that path, and treating it for what is (seemingly) is, I think they'll be more satisfied, than to continue to harp for things that the mode, as far as I can tell, hasn't really even pretended to be. In 2K15, MyCareer takes you on a path from undrafted, through a series of 'checkpoints' as you build your career. Maybe 2K16 takes you through the route of the first round pick trying to live up to the hype, etc. Yes, it would be nice to have 10 different 'paths' to choose, but it doesn't seem like the mode is even really trying to present itself as that, so I'm not sure of the confusion. Admittedly, I almost never even touch the mode, because I'm disinterested in it, but it's weird to see the same commentary over and over, complaining that the mode isn't something that I've never seen it claim to try and be.

[Andrew]

Well, for me there's no confusion. I understand what they're aiming for, and why. It's not necessarily to my tastes, but that doesn't make it bad, and I expect I'm not in the majority.

The more storyline driven approach does differ from what they were doing in the previous generation, where your Rookie Showcase performance determined your position in the Draft, and you weren't bound to the same scenarios as everyone else. There was a bit of that - you generally became a starter within the first 5-10 games, if you were performing well - but it didn't feel as linear. You didn't have to go through the same checkpoints as everyone else in terms of starting the season riding the bench, arguing about playing time, finally getting your chance when a teammate gets injured, and so on.

Again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but to me at least, it feels like there's less control over your destiny, less branching. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think people who share that point of view are necessarily disappointed that the mode is claiming to be something it's not, just that it's not exactly the approach that they would like. For me, it's moved away from an approach that got me into the mode in the first place. I feel that the current approach is a bit more suited to WWE 2K15, though even there, more branching options would be ideal.

[bigh0rt]

Well, for me there's no confusion. I understand what they're aiming for, and why. It's not necessarily to my tastes, but that doesn't make it bad, and I expect I'm not in the majority.

The more storyline driven approach does differ from what they were doing in the previous generation, where your Rookie Showcase performance determined your position in the Draft, and you weren't bound to the same scenarios as everyone else. There was a bit of that - you generally became a starter within the first 5-10 games, if you were performing well - but it didn't feel as linear. You didn't have to go through the same checkpoints as everyone else in terms of starting the season riding the bench, arguing about playing time, finally getting your chance when a teammate gets injured, and so on.

Again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but to me at least, it feels like there's less control over your destiny, less branching. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think people who share that point of view are necessarily disappointed that the mode is claiming to be something it's not, just that it's not exactly the approach that they would like. For me, it's moved away from an approach that got me into the mode in the first place. I feel that the current approach is a bit more suited to WWE 2K15, though even there, more branching options would be ideal.

I think (and this is COMPLETE speculation by me) that they realize that this is a tertiary Mode that I imagine most patrons who purchase this game either play minimally, or not at all (again, I could be biased, because that's the cohort that I happen to fall into). If that's the case, you're not going to bury your resources into the mode, making it expansive, committing resources to it, so on and so forth. That's my guess, at least. If they eliminated the mode entirely from the game, it wouldn't change my personal experience at all (I know many would be crushed, and extremely critical of that move, were it to happen, though) -- I'd rather see time and resourced buried into improved precision and accuracy and detail in graphics and gameplay, and in Association (or MyLeague or MyGM or whatever they're calling Season/Dynasty Mode anymore)

[Andrew]

On the contrary, MyCAREER tends to be one of the most popular modes. I think they're pleasing the majority with this approach, which makes it difficult to argue against. It's something that I basically have to live with and come to like, or move away from the mode. And that's fine, you can't please everyone, and you're not always going to be in the group that's happy with things. As is often the case though, the displeased faction becomes a very vocal minority, hence the frequent complaints.

Reading through the article again though, a couple of other MyCAREER notes are worth highlighting:

To keep players from maxing out all their skills with 99 ratings, the developers are changing how you upgrade your player. Instead of micromanaging how points fall into individual attributes, you drop them into buckets based on specialties like perimeter shooting, dunking, defense, and passing. You can upgrade multiple buckets, but you have a limited amount of total upgrades. This creates more realistic progressions and guarantees that players max out in the low 90s overall instead of at 99.

As long as that's handled fairly, that might be for the best. My knee-jerk reaction is that I'd prefer to micromanage, but again, if it's handled fairly, then it might prove to be the better way to go. I'll wait and see how it works out before I make up my mind, of course.

2K has tweaked the teammate grade slightly from last year, specifically removing the "call for bad pass" penalty.

This is definitely stuff that I wanted to see improved, so that's good to hear. "Bad call for pass" always seemed too arbitrary, and didn't account for situations where a teammate was in a bind and calling for the pass meant that you avoided an eight second violation or helped restart the offense.

[dreadd41]

I can only see 3 pics in the first post. Lots of blank spaces.

[bigh0rt]

On the contrary, MyCAREER tends to be one of the most popular modes. I think they're pleasing the majority with this approach, which makes it difficult to argue against. It's something that I basically have to live with and come to like, or move away from the mode. And that's fine, you can't please everyone, and you're not always going to be in the group that's happy with things. As is often the case though, the displeased faction becomes a very vocal minority, hence the frequent complaints.

I'm extremely surprised by this. I never would have thought that.

[ColumbusBobby23]

I have always treated MyCareer as a stepping stone to the rest of the game. When I play the game for the first time, I start with MyCareer. After I'm done with the first season I know what it's all about and have learned enough know the differences in the game and the ins & outs of any new game play features and the like. Then I move on to the other modes like association and online mode.
Kinda like you would do for a first person shooter. You play the single player story and then you jump into multiplayer. I think as long as people don't put all their stock into just one mode, I think they will enjoy the overall experience much better.

[ColumbusBobby23]

I can only see 3 pics in the first post. Lots of blank spaces.

Click on the blank area.

[fjccommish]

Allowing users to create and edit Mycareer scripts would be good. You could, for example, write a script that has a coach with certain attributes and tendencies take over the team the year after a losing season.

"To help differentiate between teams after a set play breaks down, each one uses their true base set in NBA 2K15. Now when you play the Heat, which Jones jokes doesn't truly have a big (sorry Bosh), they will run a four-out one-in set. The Spurs, on the other hand, will have three-out two-in base set."

In an association as teams change, will these tendencies change? For example, if the Heat and Spurs trade all players for all players, will the Spurs adopt the set that works for their new Heat personnel, and vice versa?

In other words, as teams change their rosters as time passes, will they change their strategies and base sets to best take advantage of their personnel?

[burnshroom]

I have to wonder if they won't allow different storylines via DLC. The voices are nice, but we all saw in NBA 2K14 NG that the same storylines could be accomplished without actual player vocals.

This would obviously allow for more variety. Also keep in mind these players will not be around for all of your career more than likely... so as current stars retire or maybe even are traded away there will likely be non voiced roles taking place.

If devs are listening/paying attention... maybe they will see this as an idea and make it happen.

Just thinking out loud, about the many options here.

[T-Wave]

I have been playing MyCareer exclusively since 2k10. I am definitely in Andrews camp on this issue, I just rarely ever post, preferring to lurk most of the time.

Every time Andrew complains about the ever more "scripted" direction the mode is taking, I feel like he took the words right out of my mouth.

I keep hoping for more improvisation, more unpredictability. I hate the fact that I already know what's going to happen and when, even without having played the game yet. The knowledge that I'm going to be coached by Doc Rivers "next season" is a luxury that absolutely NO NBA player has right now, let alone any player in any professional league anywhere in the world.

With that said, to me the aspect of utmost importance is the game-play. The more realistic it is, the happier I am, even if I have to sit through scenes I already know are coming, without being able to skip them. Ideally, though, I'd like to be able to turn all this off-the-court stuff off completely, and just play basketball as a single player (MyPlayer) on a team.

[Andrew]

Good to know I'm not alone on this one, though we are still in the minority. I definitely agree that the gameplay experience is paramount, and if I'm enjoying that, then the mode itself is probably going to be fun enough to play through.

Having said that, it's important that there's good integration between the gameplay and the cutscenes. For example, we know from the previews so far that there's a cutscene where James Harden gives your player some words of encouragement after a win in which you don't have a great game, and another where the two of you talk about defense after a supposedly good effort at that end of the court. Ideally, those will follow performances where what actually happened in gameplay matches up with what's being discussed in the cutscene.

Otherwise, there's a jarring disconnect between what's being done during gameplay, and the progression of the story in the cutscenes. It'd feel silly to go out there and have a big game, only to get a cutscene where your player is moping about a bad performance. Likewise, if you weren't doing much apart from putting up points, it wouldn't make sense to talk about playing lockdown defense on your way back to the locker room. With that kind of disconnect, it feels like what you do during gameplay doesn't really matter as far as the story is concerned, so hopefully that won't be the case. At the same time, I hope that gameplay isn't too affected for the sake of the story; for example, suddenly making it impossible to hit a shot or do anything right, just to ensure that the "moping after a bad game" cutscene is triggered.

Using pro wrestling games as an example, several years back the WWE series fell victim to that a lot in its storyline modes. You'd need to win a match to progress in the story, but then a post-match cutscene would trigger where you'd actually be shown to have lost the match, or you're in bad shape despite dominating the match, or whatever. To that end, the gameplay just felt like a way of getting to the next cutscene, rather than an interactive part of the story. More recent games took a better approach where if you were meant to lose a match - say. via interference or whatever - you'd play through it until the point where you got screwed over, then you'd get the cutscene. That way, it felt a lot more organic.

In short, ideally the narrative elements should react to what happens in the gameplay, not dictate the gameplay or render it meaningless.

[mantazzo]

Definitely thanks for posting info it the first post. I can't understand why the website doesn't open for me...
Looks like this year's NBA will be a good one!

[FreeMayk]

Can anyone able to paste that 44 list from gameinformer, cos i cant like some others, to access on that F site!?

[Kevin]

It's right there covered with spoilers.

[cramsiaca]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/25/6840561/nba-2k15-preview-ps4-xbox-one-pc-mycareer-mygm

I was going to post a new topic but I don't want to spam the board. So I will just make a comment here. That Polygon article talks about how Visual Concepts made improvements to the game in may ways such as network infrastructures.

[ThePointForward]

Bits I think worth of pointing out for everybody:
About networking:

The studio rewrote the game's matchmaking logic as well as the way it delivers content to players.

[...] so if connectivity for, say, MyTeam goes down, the problem hopefully won't prevent people from playing MyCareer.

About VC paywalls:

Basic team management functions in MyGM are no longer locked behind VC expenditures; in fact, you can only spend money in the mode on a few optional accelerators. Spending VC is still the way you improve your created player's attributes in MyCareer, but the upgrade system has been tweaked to mitigate the ability to buy your way to the top. The only other places where VC matters is in buying cosmetic items for your player and, of course, in MyTeam.

About MyCareer:

For example, you'll put VC into improving your shooting, but you won't be able to specify layups versus mid-range jumpers.

About AI:

AI-controlled players don't do the odd-looking thing of sprinting just to move a few feet [...] they move more naturally.

[cramsiaca]

Thanks, Dommy!