Depending on where you are at with your 2K experience, NBA 2K14 is either amazing or a disaster.

The NBA 2K series has enjoyed plenty of success since it launched NBA 2K11 with His Airness gracing the cover. Ever since then, EA Sports has been treading water while 2K has steadily improved year after year.

But then the next generation happened.

Despite having solid game play and – in my opinion – the absolute best graphics of all next-gen games, NBA 2K14 has plenty of areas that need improvement, and fast. Here are three specific areas which should be tuned in the next patch to fix some of the biggest complaints with the game -- outside of the still reported crashes and save file issues of course.

Make Virtual Currency What It Used To Be

In no living world should ANY sports gamer have to pay any sort of currency to change a lineup or fire a coach. For us who shelled out $400-$500, then another $60 on the game, that last thing we wanted to be told was that we had to pay for the ability to change a lineup. Sure it’s only 200 VC, but it slowly begins to add up the further you get in your career. It’s never been an issue when purchasing My Career upgrades; it’s been in games since MLB The Show’s Road to the Show mode was introduced. Nobody complained.

I’d love to get rid of VC all together, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. But I can all but guarantee 2K will start losing ground if they continue with this. If NBA 2K15 shares the same philosophy, be prepared for an uproar and one PR battle that you won’t want to be a part of.

There are also plenty of other issues that My GM faces that stem from the use of VC, which deserves an article for itself. Without a good chunk of VC, you can’t experience what it’s like to be a GM. Instead, it feels a lot like the old Association Mode with a bunch of annoying interactions and cut scenes. Those interactions don’t get interesting until you can afford to purchase negotiation tactics. Even after you can buy those tactics, it's more of a cheat than a negotiation. This needs to be adjusted, and the option to "force" trades should return.

Trade Logic

This section will be brief, but is one of the biggest issues with the game's main team mode. For years trade logic was a pain in everyone’s behind. It’s never been perfected, mainly because nothing feels “real” until it actually blows up on Twitter. But when it’s literally impossible to prevent players from being traded during a season in My GM, it kills the mode. Why can't we turn off trades? By the time the playoffs come, it’s a fantasy draft, which makes me prefer selecting to play a Season rather than the career. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Ball Control

Ball handlers are too careless with the ball a lot of the time, which leads to ridiculous turnovers. Obviously you can’t run around in circles, spinning and crossing over, until you find an open lane. But if you’re walking it up with LeBron and do a quick, step-back hesitation, you should be able to keep control of the ball. Instead, the ball will fall out of his hands and slowly dribble alone until someone manages to pick it up. This doesn't happen all the time, but it does enough where you'll notice it. Even passes end up flying through the air when you're at a stand still. Then again, the Pacers looked like this in the first quarter against the Heat last night.

It’s a quick fix that I believe can be taken care of in the next patch. When the game released, corner 3 specialists would always be standing out of bounds, but the first patch sort of fixed that. The players started standing on the line instead. Since, it has all been fixed (to my knowledge) to where your corner treys are actually corner treys. If that can be fixed, so can the ball control.

Final Thoughts

NBA 2K14 on next-gen isn’t far from the original 8.5 I scored it in the official OS review, but the longer it takes to fix a few of these problems, mainly the VC, that score will slowly go down, down, down -- at least mentally. It keeps us from the “in-depth experience” that we expect from 2K, the same one that is always promised.

What do you think needs to be done to fix NBA 2K14 on next-gen?