The latest patch finally stabilized NBA 2K15's troublesome MyPark mode and fixed the frequent dashboard crashes that had been disrupting online sessions since release day.

But even now, with MyPark mostly working as intended, the overall experience remains more frustrating than fun.

Developer Visual Concepts seems insistent on distancing this mode from expected "competitive online multiplayer" norms like pre-game lobbies and identical team uniforms. Yet MyPark's inefficient match-finding system and style-over-function design fail to justify all these unnecessary deviations from online gaming's traditions.
 

Remove Affiliation Restrictions

While it's great that NBA 2K15 now features five different parks to visit, the needlessly restrictive affiliation system, which prevents users from teaming up with players from rival cities, has only increased the difficulty of starting up a game.

When most visits to the Jordan Rec Center result in three Sunset Beach Ballers and two Old Town Flyers standing around impatiently, struggling to find a team of five, why not just let these fake “factions” join forces?

The Stage is currently the only area in NBA 2K15 where players can team up freely, without having to worry about where their teammates hail from. Yet this mode suffers from superficial limitations as well, with gamers being forced to gamble thousands in virtual currency just to play on these rooftop courts. All users, regardless of their selected hometown, should be able to play together at any time in NBA 2K15, without having to risk their VC stash.
 

On a typical day, most people come home from school or work with only an hour or two to spend playing video games. No hard-working person wants to waste that leisure time competing for a spot in a virtual line, when instead, they could be competing in a live match.

NBA 2K15's street ball, for the second straight year, stubbornly refuses to employ a traditional lobby/matchmaking system. Instead, it forces users to find an open “Got Next” spot, where players must wait for an ongoing game to conclude before they're finally allowed to step onto the court and challenge the victorious team. Whenever a game ends in defeat, the losing party might not get to play another match for a while, as all of the Got Next spots could fill up by the time they're forced off the court.

While the queues for two-on-two and three-on-three games (which are now played to 15 points) have been reduced, trying to find a five-on-five session in the Jordan Rec Center or The Stage can become stupidly time-consuming. Sometimes the Rec Center won't even load in enough members from your home city to create a full team of five. More commonly, all four courts will be full, leaving you waiting for one of these 30-minute matches to end.

NBA 2K15 already utilizes private lobbies and randomized matchmaking for its NBA All-Star Team Up mode, so why not implement that efficient system in MyPark?
 

Make “shirts” versus “skins” mandatory

Sports use uniforms for a very good reason: without clear wardrobe differences, distinguishing a friend from a foe while everyone is running around at top speed can be a difficult task. There are no standardized uniforms in MyPark, and unsurprisingly, it's extremely tough to spot your teammates in the unorganized mass of multicolored t-shirts and tank tops.

Real-life pickup games solve this problem of everyone coming to the park in different attire by making one team remove their shirts. NBA 2K15 could employ that solution, too, since shirtless player models already exist in the game; Visual Concepts just needs to automatically render the challenging team's players without their tops, instead of making "bare-chested" one of several dozen clothing options.
 

Regardless of which online mode you choose to play, there is no escaping NBA 2K15's crippling input lag. The game's netcode is so poor that it can't even handle a simple head-to-head matchup inside a normal NBA arena without severe on-screen delay affecting the timing of defensive movements and shooting animations.

The latency gets even worse when NBA 2K15 is tracking forty avatars spread across four different courts in the Jordan Rec Center, becoming unplayably choppy on the overhead “2K” camera setting. Selecting the side-to-side “Broadcast” view, which zooms in so tightly that spectators and participants from the surrounding courts remain out of frame, is all that users can do to improve the Rec Center's turbulent online experience.

Franchises like FIFA, NHL, too many first-person shooters to list, and even Mario Kart have proved that -- with today's Internet speeds -- it's possible to make multiplayer games feel latency-free. And while NBA 2K15 remains well-ahead of its peers with its impressive graphics, lifelike animations, eventful story mode, and TV-style presentation, it continues to lag far behind the rest of the gaming industry in the increasingly important area of online performance.

Until Visual Concepts' engineers figure out how to stop light/moderate latency from drastically delaying NBA 2K15's on-court timing, “ratings only” shooting needs to be enabled for online play.
 

Make “rep” more informative

Presently, a player's “rep” level is mostly just a reflection of his win/loss record, making it difficult to decide whether you should team up with "CarolinaBoi23" or "BeardMafia13;" just because a user has a high rep after devoting hundreds of hours to NBA 2K15 doesn't guarantee that he/she will make smart decisions on the court.

To make the rep system more useful in judging potential teammates, wins and losses should not factor-in at all. Instead, players should be able to rate each of their teammates' performance on a five-star scale after finishing a game. This way, annoying ball-hogs and steal-spammers will quickly earn a low-star rep, while players who consistently share the ball, box out, and guard their man are likely to earn a rep of four or five stars. To prevent this system from being abused, users should be unable to leave feedback for players who are currently (or have previously been) on their PSN/XBL friends list, and they should only be able to leave feedback once for every new teammate they encounter.

Visual Concepts also needs to stop putting important game features, like being able to catch alley-oops (level 5), trigger put-back dunks (level 6), and travel to other parks (level 6), behind leveling barriers. If the designers insist on having unlockables in this mode, the rewards should be limited to superficial vanities like new clothes, struts, and celebrations, not things that directly impact gameplay or hinder your ability to play with friends.
 

It's a minor issue compared to everything mentioned above, but it's a nuisance, nonetheless, that the shot timing feedback does not appear on-screen after attempting free throws in the Jordan Rec Center.
 

For some reason, NBA 2K15's officials are constantly getting in your way during live action, causing unnecessary contact animations to occur. They also take far too long to restart play or line everyone up after a whistle. Making these AI refs more adept at avoiding human players and much quicker to react following fouls and loose balls would help reduce some of MyPark's frustration and significantly shorten game times -- since nothing will ever stop the ignorant masses from spamming the steal and block buttons all game long, or continually throwing full-court fastbreak passes and half-court alley oops out of play.

How has your MyPark experience been since last week's patch? Do you prefer sports titles that take a traditional approach to team-based multiplayer, or are you on board with the new direction that Visual Concepts is charting?