NBA 2K16 released its sixth title update last week on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PC users are still waiting to receive the patch), fixing some of the most popular gameplay exploits in the Pro-Am and MyPark modes.

Ninety-foot outlet passes finally fly off-target at an acceptable rate (though I'd like to see the error percentages increased even higher), paint campers can't reset their three-in-the-key count by stepping out of bounds, and the dance between dribblers and defenders has become more believable with the elimination of unnatural speed boosts. Certain hop steps (Stephen Curry) and hesitation moves (#3) still animate much faster than the highest-rated defenders in the game are able to react. But this is probably as balanced as NBA 2K16 can be without significantly reducing the speed of those lateral dribble moves, or adding some new defensive slide step animations that can keep pace.

The purpose of this article, though, isn't providing gameplay impressions (there's already a 400-post thread discussing that), it's figuring out why it has taken until May (seven months after the game's September 25 launch) for Visual Concepts to finally achieve reasonably balanced gameplay in their online MyPlayer modes.

One large contributor to these long stretches of unbalanced gameplay NBA 2K fans suffer through every season is the developers' insistence on using the same grind-intensive MyPlayer system in their online and offline game modes. Each year, it takes a few months before the general population of online MyPlayers becomes 99-rated, 60-badge superstars. After users have finally maximized their first MyPlayer's abilities, they are still limited to providing accurate feedback for only one player build, since several dozen hours of earning badges and unlocking attributes are required to make a firsthand comparison between, say, the outside skills of a five-foot point guard versus a six-foot point guard, or the inside capabilities of a six-foot center against a seven-foot center.

Because of this grind-heavy player-building model -- something that no other major eSport uses -- it's difficult for NBA 2K fans to provide quality gameplay feedback during the weeks when the developers are most capable of making changes (immediately after launch). The community cannot know right away whether something is fundamentally wrong with the gameplay, whether their individual character simply needs improving, or whether an on-court problem can be solved by switching to a different player build. Gameplay exploits also take longer to emerge because cheesers can't sit in their labs repeating experiments and fully dissecting the game until they have access to its full toolset.
 

Take for instance, the absurd passing boost that was being generated by the gold Breakstarter badge, which was allowing centers with a 60 pass accuracy rating to complete 90-foot outlet passes at a 90 percent success rate. Because it took so long for centers to unlock this badge, Breakstarter is something people didn't start abusing heavily until January. But once the community discovered this exploit, it plagued Pro-Am's gameplay for the four following months. That's far too long for an exploit of this magnitude to exist, especially when it's a key contributor to the success of teams that are competing in a $250,000 tournament. Having played against many of the teams at the top of the weekly leaderboards, I have no doubt 90 percent of the clubs who qualified for NBA 2K16's Road to the Finals tournament got their spot by abusing the gold Breakstarter badge. For Visual Concepts to finally patch this problem on the last qualifying weekend, even though it was killing Pro-Am's gameplay for several weeks before the tournament started, shows that the company's current method of discovering and addressing gameplay flaws (at least, the ones that aren't related to shooting percentages) isn't working very well.

Next season, Visual Concepts needs to decide whether it wants the online MyPlayer modes to only be a cash cow or only be a competitive playground, because the past two years of balancing failures have shown that these modes cannot successfully mix both elements. NBA 2K15 is still remembered for the seven-foot demigod glitch that never got fixed and permanently ruined its Parks and Rec Center. And regardless of last week's changes, NBA 2K16 will be remembered as a year where the game was dominated by five-foot speed boosters and seven-foot quarterbacks.

If NBA 2K17 wants its online MyPlayer modes to become a serious eSport, then the developers must eliminate all of this badge earning, attribute grinding, animation unlocking, boost buying, park-card purchasing nonsense. Everyone who picks up a controller should instantly have access to the same characters with the same ratings and the same movesets, just like they do in Street Fighter tournaments. If microtransactions and account leveling have to stick around, then their benefits must be limited to cosmetic items only, like the extra flags and wheels in Rocket League. People should get to equip only a few badges from carefully segregated categories, similar to how Call of Duty's perks work. And players should be forced to select one of several prebuilt characters, like in NHL 16's EA Sports Hockey League. This way, all of the different player builds can be easily tested by the community and easily tuned by the developers: