Game Informer 2: Electric Boogaloo (The Neighbourhood)

Full article: https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/20 ... ighborhood

Some of my takes:

Andrew, our pleas may have been heard! Gotta give this one to them.

Practice is another good example. If you play a game, you can go straight to practice from the post-game locker rooms. You don't have to go to the neighborhood."

More balanced archetypes:

"I think the biggest thing we did this year was to refine the different archetypes and balance them more," Bishop says. "For example, we did a lot of work on the defensive-minded ones to give them some offensive skills. They're no longer completely useless on that end of the ball. The goal is to make it so whatever style of play you prefer, you're not going to be at a disadvantage. We want them all to be relatively equal so we spent a lot of time evening those out."

Confirmed (again) addition of displaying caps in MyPlayer creation:

"You won't see it in The Prelude version, but once the main game hits, as you are changing your archetypes there's a button you can hit to bring up a list of what your max will be for each attribute. You can see how the different combinations affect it. Then when you move over to height, weight, and wingspan, it's the same thing.

60 OVR but faster start? Still think we should start higher though.

First, the bad news: you still start MyCareer as a talentless hack rated 60 overall.

But the good news is you won't have to grind as hard to become an average player.

Difficulty modifier is back... finally.

The difficulty modifier returns, so players who want more of a challenge can reap larger rewards for good performances.

Badge specific drills...

"One of the things we did in practice, for example, last year you had a set amount of drills and they were tied sometimes to multiple badges. You could do a drill and maybe not get any extra points toward that badge. This year, we have a drill that's one-to-one to every single badge, so if you want to go and target Ankle Breaker or some specific badge, you can be sure that you're going to get points toward that."

NO NO NO NO NO. You dong get to make this an improvement "look we are making this better for you" after removing it or putting it behind paywall.

but the best change is that haircuts no longer cost VC. You can even preview new styles (and adjust hair length of the various looks) before you tell the barber to get clipping.

This was actually requested here few times. Not bad.

The second [new store in Neighbourhood] is a MyTeam store that lets you create a card for your MyPlayer that can be used in the new Unlimited mode. This card is capped reasonably, so don't expect this to be an easy path to a Pink Diamond. You can play Unlimited games right from the store, but you'll have to exit The Neighborhood and visit the MyTeam hub if you want to go into any other part of the mode.

On daily trivia contest:

The one million VC pot is split evenly between any players who answer all 10 questions, which span in topics from hoops and pop culture to history.

Yup, it really didn't.

But at least B-Fresh isn't hanging around eating all your food and inviting strangers over. We got the message with her," Bishop says. "It really didn't work last year."

The part about B-Fresh is pretty hilarious, an admirably diplomatic way of admitting she absolutely sucked. At any rate, I'm glad they took the message to heart.

Going straight to practice after a game is handy, but I'd suggest taking it a step further and being able to go immediately to the major parts of the mode while it's loading; team practice, MyCOURT, The Playground, Pro-Am, and so on. Even if it's just a matter of spawning outside those locations it'd save time, though it'd be better to immediately load into them and not have to run around The Neighborhood at all. Maybe we'll be able to do that as well; if so, so much the better.

It sounds like they've taken feedback on board in regards to Archetype balance, being forthcoming about max ratings and caps, working on specific Badges, and things like that. If you run through a drill, you should get a minimum amount of XP (or MyPoints, as they seem to be calling it this year). Aspects like not having a free throw rating (and in some cases, not even the Free Throw Ace Badge) are bewildering design flaws, though admittedly we need some further confirmation on what's happening there. If the grind is reduced, and if the VC rewards are fair, then hopefully starting at 60 Overall won't be as painful and the push towards microtransactions will be somewhat less aggressive. It remains to be seen.

One thing that doesn't leave me feeling very optimistic about the approach to microtransactions is this:

The Neighborhood also has two new stores. The first is Wheels, which lets you buy skateboards, scooters, and various bike styles as you rank up. All move at different paces this year (and each is faster than walking on foot).

Last year bikes were free, so that's something else that's now behind a paywall. That's how it begins; we saw that with various animations last year. That doesn't fill me with confidence in terms of how the rest is handled, but again, it remains to be seen. I'll hold off on any scathing rant until such time as we know all the details.

Creating a MyTEAM card using your MyPLAYER is something I've talked about in a couple of articles, as it's struck me as a nifty idea. I know a lot of other people have suggested it, too. A shame it can't be used throughout all modes of MyTEAM, but I guess it stands to reason that there are some restrictions on it.

I agree that it's tough to give them a pass on the haircuts and difficulty multiplier. On one hand, I'm glad they listened to the feedback and made those changes, but on the other hand, they have to own those blatant gouges and attempts to force people to buy VC in order to do all the things they want without compromising their progress.

Overall, there's some potentially very good news there for MyCAREER and The Neighborhood, but I would suggest taking it with a grain of salt. The downsides obviously aren't going to be talked about, and they're only going to present themselves once people have dived into the mode and gotten hooked. If we're getting a kinder approach to grinding and VC spending in one area, I can't shake the feeling we'll have to pay for it in another.

Again, I'm ready to stick with MyLEAGUE this year, but I am glad that there's some good news on this front. I probably will still dabble with MyCAREER (if only for the sake of a full review), and even if I end up leaving it alone for the most part, I'd hope that the experience is better for the people who are going to be spending a bulk of their time with it.

From the video I found and posted: seems like starting free throw rating is 60.
So I guess Bronze is 70, Silver is 80, Gold is 90, and HoF 95-99.

Ugh. Still a bad way of doing it. It'd be one thing if there were caps on certain Archetypes/combinations for both free throw ratings and Badges, but it's ridiculous when a Sharpshooter starts out with a low free throw rating. Granted, not every three-point marksman shoots around 90% from the free throw line, but generally speaking, good shooters who are notably poor foul shooters are a rare breed.

Also, in regards to Got Next still being a matchmaking mechanic: I still say Got Next Gotta Go, or there needs to be a quicker option also available. I get what they're going for; I always have. It's just not a lot of fun running around and standing around, waiting for a game. At least in Pro-Am you can shoot around while you wait for the game to find you an opponent.

Trivia sounds like a great idea until you realize it's 2018 and it takes two seconds to look up answers in the internet. This would've been a great feature 20 years ago lol

If it's anything like trivia in the 2K Zone in NBA 2K18, there'll be a fairly short time limit. That's not to say people won't be fast enough on the keys if they want to look it up, but I tend to think people who know it already will still have an advantage. Besides, if it means everyone can get VC a little easier than last year, I'll take that over having my NBA knowledge stretched and put to the test.

Ben Bishop replied to my query on Twitter regarding free throws and MyPLAYERS.

There are a handful of archetypes that can’t upgrade it, all centers, so not Kawhi types.

Still not the ideal approach in my view, but it could be a lot worse. It's a bit restricting, but it's reasonable. Good to get some clarification.

Ok that makes sense if you have only a few seconds to answer

I think it's about 30 seconds so ample time to Google I guess, but yeah, still a lot easier if you know it.