What's the point of buying 2K25, you can't mod it anymore.

[Uncle Drew]

I think I'll pass on 2K25. They've somehow shut down all the modding sites. That was what made the game worth having and playing.

[bikerjimuk]

No they haven't and there are a fair few mod out there but lots of people are wanting paying this year.

[Dee4Three]

A couple things

1. Most mods still work, and I have seen plenty released that people are enjoying.

2. It's worth buying a video game for MANY other reasons outside of modding. Maybe you want the most recent NBA game release? Maybe you like the way the game looks and plays? Maybe you like the depth? etc etc

Basketball video games on PC are not all about modding. I haven't modded, or used mods, for NBA 2K25 (Outside of one Shaq face), and have put over 250 hours into it since release. Co-Op MyNBA seasons, drafted WNBA seasons, etc.

Mods can be a bonus on top of a game that somebody already likes.

[JusGame]

I think I'll pass on 2K25. They've somehow shut down all the modding sites. That was what made the game worth having and playing.

Believe it or not Shuajota is back up plenty of mods there

[coolbreeze24]

A couple things

1. Most mods still work, and I have seen plenty released that people are enjoying.

2. It's worth buying a video game for MANY other reasons outside of modding. Maybe you want the most recent NBA game release? Maybe you like the way the game looks and plays? Maybe you like the depth? etc etc

Basketball video games on PC are not all about modding. I haven't modded, or used mods, for NBA 2K25 (Outside of one Shaq face), and have put over 250 hours into it since release. Co-Op MyNBA seasons, drafted WNBA seasons, etc.

Mods can be a bonus on top of a game that somebody already likes.

Thanks Dee4Three!

I just purchased NBA 2K25 on PC from the Steam winter sale. My main purpose is for MY NBA Eras. Is that mode as bad that a lot of reviewers are saying?

[Dee4Three]

One of the problems is that the Eras rosters are very uninspiring gameplay wise, and require a lot of edits to make them even somewhat accurate. Coming from 2K19, I think you will be disappointed in the gameplay.

[Uncle Drew]

A couple things

1. Most mods still work, and I have seen plenty released that people are enjoying.

2. It's worth buying a video game for MANY other reasons outside of modding. Maybe you want the most recent NBA game release? Maybe you like the way the game looks and plays? Maybe you like the depth? etc etc

Basketball video games on PC are not all about modding. I haven't modded, or used mods, for NBA 2K25 (Outside of one Shaq face), and have put over 250 hours into it since release. Co-Op MyNBA seasons, drafted WNBA seasons, etc.

Mods can be a bonus on top of a game that somebody already likes.

I get that. I have more of a problem with resources to play the game, than the gameplay itself. I've heard from some that the gameplay is just marginally better than 2K24. The modding is important as far as I'm concerned, as the parent company doesn't do nearly as good of a job, as the modders on this site. However, they've made it so you have to have a very high-end computer to take full advantage of the game. I'm not at liberty to spend large sums of money to upgrade my computer as currently constructed. They did the same to Madden 25. You are sitting on the sidelines if you don't have the horsepower to play.

[vetmin]

I just purchased NBA 2K25 on PC from the Steam winter sale. My main purpose is for MY NBA Eras. Is that mode as bad that a lot of reviewers are saying?

Eras is simultaneously an incredibly impressive thing for the devs to have created and gotten into the base game and an incredibly inferior retro experience to basically any ambitious old-gen (or even old-old-gen) retro project. The hope is (or maybe was) that a modded Eras would be the ultimate retro experience, but unfortunately Eras is within a game that has been heavily walled off from a lot of the modding that makes a retro virtual hoops experience really pop.

Eventually the base game (be it 2K26, 27, etc.) will probably be so much more advanced than older-gen games that most of us will be willing to sacrifice the greater historical richness of older retro mods for a better on-court experience (or for even a better off-court experience, for instance via AI-powered CPU team-building, trade negotiations, etc.), but currently (IMO) 2K25 is really only worth considering if you're into Modern Era NBA. Even there I don't prefer it, but there's at least an argument to be had. For retro there's no argument. Old-gen retro mods / rosters > Eras (even modded Eras).

[clamel]

I just purchased NBA 2K25 on PC from the Steam winter sale. My main purpose is for MY NBA Eras. Is that mode as bad that a lot of reviewers are saying?

Eras is simultaneously an incredibly impressive thing for the devs to have created and gotten into the base game and an incredibly inferior retro experience to basically any ambitious old-gen (or even old-old-gen) retro project. The hope is (or maybe was) that a modded Eras would be the ultimate retro experience, but unfortunately Eras is within a game that has been heavily walled off from a lot of the modding that makes a retro virtual hoops experience really pop.

Eventually the base game (be it 2K26, 27, etc.) will probably be so much more advanced than older-gen games that most of us will be willing to sacrifice the greater historical richness of older retro mods for a better on-court experience (or for even a better off-court experience, for instance via AI-powered CPU team-building, trade negotiations, etc.), but currently (IMO) 2K25 is really only worth considering if you're into Modern Era NBA. Even there I don't prefer it, but there's at least an argument to be had. For retro there's no argument. Old-gen retro mods / rosters > Eras (even modded Eras).

With those words I, as a brand new 2k owner too (2k25 my first), wondering what older on PC version could be the very best to go after if wanting to play something like a historical save from perhaps early 90s. What I see in this 2k25 and what's up on 2kshare is very shaky draft classes going forward from lets say Jordan Era. It takes a lot of own editing to make this work.

The Historical DC having so many "holes" in them on players they can only be used as a starting point on editing. Yes many better DC are on 2k Share after we get into 2000 and after that.
The silly thing is 90% of DCs one finds on that 2kshare is the naming people have on them. "Complete", "Ultimate", "All Rookies" and such is ridiculous since at least a dozen players on almost every DC lacks those players that had minor roles in the years after draft. They might not have been in the 2 rounds of draft but several of the undrafted had 2-4 years career with up to 40-50 games of more and some even +10 games started in one or several teams. Playing a save, like in other sport manager games, you just need to have a better in-coming player pool to make it realistic.

My problem is what is on hand on old 2k versions ? 2k Share on them closes so maybe hard to DL stuff. Then how is the mod community on these old games. Download links maybe just show Error.
Looking at prices on old versions even are very high, if not buying from off-steam sellers. But playing old version most be 100% offline I understand.

So what are the suggestions if not just playing out Modern Era on this 2k25 ?
What "things" in those older games made an impact on a Franchise run save, like I now understand 2k25 can't hire or fire Ass.Coaches anymore (at least not you as a GM), Training camps have been taken away in 2k25, and whatever more thing that could have big impact on playing a GM.

[vetmin]

I just purchased NBA 2K25 on PC from the Steam winter sale. My main purpose is for MY NBA Eras. Is that mode as bad that a lot of reviewers are saying?

Eras is simultaneously an incredibly impressive thing for the devs to have created and gotten into the base game and an incredibly inferior retro experience to basically any ambitious old-gen (or even old-old-gen) retro project. The hope is (or maybe was) that a modded Eras would be the ultimate retro experience, but unfortunately Eras is within a game that has been heavily walled off from a lot of the modding that makes a retro virtual hoops experience really pop.

Eventually the base game (be it 2K26, 27, etc.) will probably be so much more advanced than older-gen games that most of us will be willing to sacrifice the greater historical richness of older retro mods for a better on-court experience (or for even a better off-court experience, for instance via AI-powered CPU team-building, trade negotiations, etc.), but currently (IMO) 2K25 is really only worth considering if you're into Modern Era NBA. Even there I don't prefer it, but there's at least an argument to be had. For retro there's no argument. Old-gen retro mods / rosters > Eras (even modded Eras).

With those words I, as a brand new 2k owner too (2k25 my first), wondering what older on PC version could be the very best to go after if wanting to play something like a historical save from perhaps early 90s. What I see in this 2k25 and what's up on 2kshare is very shaky draft classes going forward from lets say Jordan Era. It takes a lot of own editing to make this work.

The Historical DC having so many "holes" in them on players they can only be used as a starting point on editing. Yes many better DC are on 2k Share after we get into 2000 and after that.
The silly thing is 90% of DCs one finds on that 2kshare is the naming people have on them. "Complete", "Ultimate", "All Rookies" and such is ridiculous since at least a dozen players on almost every DC lacks those players that had minor roles in the years after draft. They might not have been in the 2 rounds of draft but several of the undrafted had 2-4 years career with up to 40-50 games of more and some even +10 games started in one or several teams. Playing a save, like in other sport manager games, you just need to have a better in-coming player pool to make it realistic.

My problem is what is on hand on old 2k versions ? 2k Share on them closes so maybe hard to DL stuff. Then how is the mod community on these old games. Download links maybe just show Error.
Looking at prices on old versions even are very high, if not buying from off-steam sellers. But playing old version most be 100% offline I understand.

So what are the suggestions if not just playing out Modern Era on this 2k25 ?
What "things" in those older games made an impact on a Franchise run save, like I now understand 2k25 can't hire or fire Ass.Coaches anymore (at least not you as a GM), Training camps have been taken away in 2k25, and whatever more thing that could have big impact on playing a GM.

Well actually it's in terms of rosters and draft classes that I'm least concerned about 2K25. Yes there's not a great selection of high-quality retro rosters and draft classes, but that's just because the game has only been out for 4 months. The roster/DC-editing capabilities we have are worse on 2K25 than the old-gen PC titles, and -- assuming 2K doesn't reverse course on its anti-tampering efforts and general priorities for the NBA 2K franchise -- it's likely to remain that way, but the 2K community has never needed anything outside of the base game to create super fleshed-out and well-playing rosters/DCs, and a major advantage of 2K25 over the old-gen titles is that it has cross-gen 2K Share, which means 2K25 gamers can enjoy the roster/DC work of everyone on console, too. So while the roster/DC situation on 2K25 would certainly be improved by having better roster/DC-editing capabilities, that's not really what I was alluding to.

The main issue is just the lack of looyh's Hook, which was the foundation for all 2K modding from 2K20 to 2K24. The stuff you can do on each game varies a bit, but since my preferred game is 2K23, here is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of things that the Hook enables you to do (in some cases using additional plugins/tools) that you can't do in 2K25:

- Use arbitrary ID numbers for cyberfaces, which is critically important for inserting missing players into the game. For instance, if I want Charles Barkley in 2K23, I can just pick an unassigned ID number and slot him into it. On 2K25, since there is no Hook, the only way to 'insert' a missing player is to replace someone else, so if you want Barkley in the game, his 3D character model is going to have to overwrite someone else's. Fortunately there are a lot of goofy MyCAREER characters and stuff that most people don't mind overwriting, but -- especially considering that not every default model can be overwritten with every custom model -- if you're trying to add a ton of missing players then it will be a massive, massive headache.

- Start a new franchise-mode save with the calendar set to any year from 1980 onwards (so the earliest possible season is 1980-81). Note that this doesn't mean that the entire NBA roster is accurately reset to that year; you still need to provide your own roster, but that's effectively just as true of default Eras since the default Eras rosters are so shoddy that you wouldn't want to play the mode without custom rosters.

- Save edits to all roster/DC variables. There are tons of ID codes and under-the-hood settings in this game for players, teams, arenas, jerseys, etc. etc. etc. and while it's technically possible to edit them all even without a Hook, certain ones will only save (or saved edits will only load) with a special plugin for the Hook. Among the unsaveable ID codes are arena IDs, so it's not possible to fix something like multiple retro teams thousands of miles apart being assigned the same generic arena, as they are in 2K25. This general roster/DC-saving issue affects other things as well.

- Assign photo portraits to players who don't already have them, which is more essential for 2K25 than it really should be due to the fact that the rendered players all have psychotic facial expressions in the roster view (they just look normal on old-gen, same as how their faces look on new-gen when you open them up in the Edit Player interface).

- Use different cyberfaces for a player based on his age, so for instance if you have two Reggie Miller cyberfaces -- one with hair and one without -- you can assign the hair version to his younger years and the bald version to his prime/older years such that it changes automatically when he gets to the defined age.

- Organize your mods into toggleable-in-game folders, which is incredibly useful for retro stuff in particular (since you can take advantage of this functionality to toggle to different uniforms, logos, scoreboards, etc. based on the season). This functionality can be somewhat replicated with 2K25 using JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler, but it's not even close to as smooth of an experience as toggling folders via the Hook.

- Use custom soundtracks, which at least for me is important for the retro experience, since I like to have era-appropriate music playing when I'm in the menus doing all the off-court stuff in my retro season. Again you can kinda mimic this functionality by doing what console players do and just muting the game with Spotify playing in the background instead, but it's not as seamless of an experience as just having the proper music in the game itself.

The above is just a partial list. Also, my earlier post was alluding to reduced flexibility from a modder's perspective as well. I don't want to get too technical, but basically many core modding techniques for many different types of assets (from scoreboards to arenas to broadcast music and more) do not work on new-gen or are much more tedious to implement well. Of course, people will learn more and discover new things about new-gen over time, but without getting too technical there are just changes to the way it processes various game files and types of data that I don't foresee quick solutions too, particularly since these are things that very people even tried to tackle on old-gen, where it was much easier. All of these hurt the quality and realism of the mods we can make for 2K25, and since retro mods really depend on achieving the particular look and feel of each retro time and place as much as possible, 2K25 just isn't really ideal for the retro experience, IMO.

Re: the best 2K for an early '90s save: The best 2K for retro (period) will be 2K23 when I finish the big retro project I'm working on. It'll be bring-your-own-roster (and cyberfaces) since historic rosters are not really my thing, but I'll be adding draft classes over time and it'll be the best for actual retro mods. It's not out yet though, so for now... I don't know from experience but I would guess probably 2K20 using ThunderShaq's stuff would be best.

P.S.: For PC versions of NBA 2K games, the eventual shutdown of each game's 2K Share server is not a real issue, since on PC we can share the actual save files with each other directly (they are literal, individual files on your computer). The only issue with a game's 2K Share shutting down is that, if there was anything on it that you hadn't downloaded and saved to your computer before the server was boarded up, it's gone forever, so you just need to be sure to grab what you want to keep before that happens. Otherwise 2K Share's only real value to a PC player is convenience, and the fact that some creators may not bother to share their work outside of 2K Share.

P.S. 2: You're right that 2K has made a mess of the Staff aspect of franchise mode. It is simpler and better functioning on old-gen. Also you're right about no more Training Camps. Other stuff has been removed too like being able to set your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd option for Sim Stats. There also seem to be more serious franchise-mode glitches in 2K25 than old-gen (or 2K23 at least). These are small enough though that I'd just brush them aside if 2K25 had a Hook; after all there's cool things 2K25 has that old-gen doesn't have, like the ability to edit more body proportions in-game rather than via mod. But 2K25 has no Hook...

[Brisket]

I just purchased NBA 2K25 on PC from the Steam winter sale. My main purpose is for MY NBA Eras. Is that mode as bad that a lot of reviewers are saying?

Eras is simultaneously an incredibly impressive thing for the devs to have created and gotten into the base game and an incredibly inferior retro experience to basically any ambitious old-gen (or even old-old-gen) retro project. The hope is (or maybe was) that a modded Eras would be the ultimate retro experience, but unfortunately Eras is within a game that has been heavily walled off from a lot of the modding that makes a retro virtual hoops experience really pop.

Eventually the base game (be it 2K26, 27, etc.) will probably be so much more advanced than older-gen games that most of us will be willing to sacrifice the greater historical richness of older retro mods for a better on-court experience (or for even a better off-court experience, for instance via AI-powered CPU team-building, trade negotiations, etc.), but currently (IMO) 2K25 is really only worth considering if you're into Modern Era NBA. Even there I don't prefer it, but there's at least an argument to be had. For retro there's no argument. Old-gen retro mods / rosters > Eras (even modded Eras).

With those words I, as a brand new 2k owner too (2k25 my first), wondering what older on PC version could be the very best to go after if wanting to play something like a historical save from perhaps early 90s. What I see in this 2k25 and what's up on 2kshare is very shaky draft classes going forward from lets say Jordan Era. It takes a lot of own editing to make this work.

The Historical DC having so many "holes" in them on players they can only be used as a starting point on editing. Yes many better DC are on 2k Share after we get into 2000 and after that.
The silly thing is 90% of DCs one finds on that 2kshare is the naming people have on them. "Complete", "Ultimate", "All Rookies" and such is ridiculous since at least a dozen players on almost every DC lacks those players that had minor roles in the years after draft. They might not have been in the 2 rounds of draft but several of the undrafted had 2-4 years career with up to 40-50 games of more and some even +10 games started in one or several teams. Playing a save, like in other sport manager games, you just need to have a better in-coming player pool to make it realistic.

My problem is what is on hand on old 2k versions ? 2k Share on them closes so maybe hard to DL stuff. Then how is the mod community on these old games. Download links maybe just show Error.
Looking at prices on old versions even are very high, if not buying from off-steam sellers. But playing old version most be 100% offline I understand.

So what are the suggestions if not just playing out Modern Era on this 2k25 ?
What "things" in those older games made an impact on a Franchise run save, like I now understand 2k25 can't hire or fire Ass.Coaches anymore (at least not you as a GM), Training camps have been taken away in 2k25, and whatever more thing that could have big impact on playing a GM.

This has completely infuriated me all these years following the 2K Share scene. Dudes have the actual audacity to label it in such a manner and then call it a year after doing an update in-between September to December. Then rinse and repeat on the tried and true formula each 2K cycle on the clickbait titles.

[Skysect]

The point is probably to play with the current rosters without much effort. Otherwise, I’ll stick with NBA 2K20 for my modded games forever. But I’m aging too, and my favorite players are starting to retire one by one. So that will end eventually. Then, there might be no point in buying it, other than for archiving purposes. But mostly, nowadays, I only buy when there’s a 75% discount.

[johnwest1985]

Anybody figured out how to use a modded global.iff after the last update ?