What Changes Should NBA 2K19 Make to Its Dribbling Systems & Animations?

[jyoung]

Glossary of Terms

(**expand the video to full screen to make the text annotations in the top-right corner readable**)

Walking sizeups

I haven't played with/against anyone this year who tries to do these moves on purpose. I feel like all they do is trigger at random times when you don't want them to happen, popping up unexpectedly to interrupt combos that were supposed to involve other dribble moves. I can't think of any good reason why these walking sizeup animations should be in the game when you can just feather the left joystick if you want to walk the ball upcourt or do a moving hesitation/moving in-and-out if you want to temporarily freeze your dribble while sprinting. Those three animations can perform the same function as a walking sizeup without any risk of them unintentionally sabotaging your dribble combo at an unexpected time. At the very least, just give us an option in 2K19 to turn off walking sizeups in the controller settings.

Automated hand-switching animations

I've been ranting about these uncontrollable hand-switching animations all year long, as they and the walking sizeups are the two biggest culprits for why a dribble combo will get unintentionally disrupted in 2K18. I would bet that at least 10% of my turnovers this year have come from the game randomly changing my ball hand a split-second before I input a dribble move, causing a drastic change in the trajectory of the dribble animation that leads my character right into a defender's body instead of taking me away from/around the defender like I had originally planned to do. Again, we need an option in the 2K19 controller settings that will disable automated hand-switching and make that part of the dribbling fully user controlled. This way, the ball won't be switching hands unless the user explicitly tells his player to do so by inputting one of the right joystick dribble moves.

Lengthen the timing window for triggering all double move sizeups

I've lost count of how many times this year I've tried to perform a double crossover/double behind the back/double between the legs sizeup move only to have the game register it as a single crossover/single btb/single btl, with the second input getting completely ignored. The timing window for triggering those animations seems to be too small this year, and it needs to be widened for 2K19 so that the double move sizeup animations trigger more consistently.

Left-right zig zag cheese using only the left joystick

The quickness of the turning animation plus the amount of forward momentum that the dribbler is able to maintain while coming out of a sharp left/right turn both need to be reduced. There shouldn't be any possible way that a dribbler who's drifting back and forth across one or two tiles of floor space and is constantly turning left/right like he's modeling on a fashion runway should be more agile and more explosive than a defender who's hunkered down in his left trigger stance and is attempting to mirror the dribbler's left/right movement while sliding his feet laterally. The defender should always remain a step ahead of the dribbler in this situation, assuming that the two player's athleticism ratings are relatively similar. 2K19 should make dribblers use their right joystick moves to get open, instead of continuing to allow this unskilled, left joystick wiggling to work as a reliable method of shaking defenders.

Momentum crossover

The move itself is not problematic, apart from its tendency to trigger ankle breaker stumble/falldown animations at an excessive rate. What really makes this move a major gameplay problem is letting people break out of it mid-animation and cancel into other dribble moves. The initial crossover animation should have to fully complete itself before another moved can be branched into. Stopping this move mid-crossover to go into another move would be whistled as a carrying violation in real life. 2K19 just needs to eliminate the momentum crossover's move-canceling ability and tone down its ankle breaking tendency to keep it from being an overpowered maneuver again next year.

Hop dribbles & escape dribbles

In real life, these are "finishing moves" that people use to create separation right before going up with a shot. But in 2K, both of these moves can be spammed endlessly, with little drain to your stamina bar, allowing your character to teleport side to side like he was Dhalsim from Street Fighter. The simple solution for getting these moves closer to the purpose that they serve in real basketball is treating them as gather moves, and forcing the user to pickup the ball and lose his dribble if he does not shoot or pass immediately after doing a hop dribble or escape dribble. I would also remove the normal 14 hop dribble and the pro 3 + pro 4 escape dribbles from 2K19, due to the unrealistically large amount of lateral movement that those three animations generate.

Moving behind the back dribbles

The majority of 2K18's moving behind the back animations contain an exaggerated and unnatural amount of lateral movement and/or forward acceleration, especially when compared to how slow defenders are in 2K while backing up or sliding laterally. There's an obvious imbalance here between the dribbler's/defender's abilities that needs to be evened out in next year's game. The basketball should also be a lot more vulnerable to limb and body collisions while performing BTB moves in 2K19. That vulnerability existed in 2K16 and 2K17, but for some reason, 2K18 foolishly decided to protect all of these BTB moves by making them immune to limb/body collisions until the dribbler fully completes his BTB animation and regains the left joystick control of his player. I would also remove the pro 3, pro 5, and pro 6 behind the back dribbles from 2K19, given that the first two moves on that list launch the dribbler ahead with an insane amount of acceleration and forward momentum, while the pro 6 BTB just has a ridiculous amount of lateral movement that no defender (not even one with 99 ratings) can possibly keep up with.

Momentum behind the back dribble

Like all the other BTB moves in 2K18, this one needs to be more vulnerable to body/limb collisions. The ball should be popping out of the dribbler's control consistently if he doesn't have enough space to perform the maneuver. It also shouldn't be accessible to all archetypes. In 2K18, even a pure lockdown defender can do this move as long as he's 6'9" or shorter, since height is the only thing that can stop your MyPlayer from having access to the move. In 2K19, only the MyPlayers who are able to unlock pro dribbles should get to use this animation.

Moving crossover dribbles

These are all balanced pretty well except for the normal 2 crossover, which should be placed in the pro tier due to how quickly it animates and how much forward momentum/acceleration is creates. It doesn't have much lateral movement and provides less ball security/charge protection than those three behind the back moves that I mentioned above, so I don't think the normal 2 crossover needs to be removed from the game like those moving BTBs do, I just think a character should need to have pro dribbles unlocked to use the normal 2 moving crossover in 2K19.

Crossover reset and behind the back reset

Both of these moves were new additions for 2K18, and I haven't noticed any major issues with them aside from how frequently they cause ankle breaker animations. These are defensive dribbling moves designed for the purpose of stepping back, creating space, and setting up an attacking move, but for some reason, the game treats them like they are the final dribble in Tim Hardaway's "killer crossover" sequence. Just tone down the ankle breaking tendency of these moves and they shouldn't cause any balancing issues in 2K19.

Snatchback dribble

This is currently the most game-breaking dribble animation in 2K18 for several reasons:

1) Any MyPlayer build in the game can do snatchbacks, even 7'3" 340-pound glass cleaners. This move should only be available to MyPlayers who are able to unlock the pro dribbles.

2) Shooting immediately after you do a snatchback will trigger the difficult shots badge, which lengthens your "green window" and raises your chances of making the shot. This move should not be triggering the difficult shots badge IMO. That badge should only be activating on leaning jumpers, hop jumpers, and spin jumpers.

3) If the dribbler initiates body contact and puts the defender into a hip ride animation before attempting a snatchback, then the defender will get shoved backward so hard that it looks like the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi just hit him with a force push, creating an indefensible amount of separation and an easy "green light" jumpshot opportunity. For 2K19, the defender needs to maintain full control of his player throughout this animation transition (hip ride into snatchback), instead of temporarily losing control of his player and having the game automatically push him backward with a predetermined, unbreakable two-person canimation.

Ankle breakers

I realize that a large portion of 2K's fanbase loves watching defenders fall down to the ground like a courtside sniper pierced both of their legs with magnum rounds, and if that's your thing, then feel free to keep doing your thing in the Park, where extraordinary outcomes are supposed to be ordinary occurrences.

But in the modes that are attempting to replicate real basketball (Play Now Online/Pro Am), the frequency and severity of the ankle breaker animations need to be significantly reduced for 2K19. An on-ball defender gets dropped to the ground around a dozen times per year in the real NBA, but one player with gold or hall of fame ankle breaker can drop a dozen defenders in a single match of Play Now Online or Pro Am, if he knows the moves that have the highest likelihood of triggering those animations.

Defenders need to be able to move around freely in 2K19, with zero fear of getting stuck in a stumble/falldown ankle breaker animation. If my man beats me on defense next year, it should be because I got outpositioned or outmaneuvered, and not because the game made my character stumble or falldown. My own movements and button presses should be the only reasons that I'm failing to contain my main on defense, not some gold or purple badge that has the power to trigger a bunch of Tom and Jerry cartoon animations.

It's laughable that in 2K18, the best way to play on-ball defense against a "dribble god" is literally taking your hands off your controller and standing completely still. And even while playing that "statue" style of defense, there's still a good chance that your character will get hit with a stumble animation, unless you're also holding the "take charge" button to make your defender momentarily immune to ankle breakers. I don't think anyone who watches or plays basketball could read those last two sentences and tell me with a straight face that it's not a silly, illogical way of playing defense. But that farcical situation is exactly what the ankle breaker badge has done to playing on-ball defense in 2K.

Just make ankle breaker a Park-only badge for 2K19, please.

Stamina draining & refilling

With ankle breaker removed from Pro Am and Play Now Online, 2K19 would need a new badge to showcase the on-court impact that an elite dribbler has over a good dribbler, since the difference between an 86 ball control rating and a 99 ball control rating isn't very noticeable during gameplay.

To solve that problem, I'd like to introduce a new badge called tireless dribbler, which would determine how many consecutive dribble moves a character could perform before depleting his stamina meter. Hall of fame tireless dribbler could allow 10 dribble moves before running out of stamina, gold could get 8 moves, silver could get 6 moves, and bronze could get 4 moves. Players who don't have the badge at all would only get to make 2 dribble moves before their stamina meter empties. I should also note that when I say "dribble moves," I'm just talking about the special right joystick dribbling animations, not the regular left joystick movement.

Two other tireless badges could also be added to 2K19 to help distinguish players who excel at scoring with triple threat moves and/or post moves. A tireless jab stepper and tireless post scorer badge could use the same move-counting system to give players with a strong triple threat/postup game an increasingly higher number of moves to beat their man before they become tired and have to pass the ball to a teammate. Since triple threat and post moves animate much slower than dribble moves do, I would reduce the move-count tiers to 8 for hall of fame, 6 for gold, 4 for silver, 2 for bronze, and 1 if you don't have the badge.

Once it's depleted, the stamina meter needs to take longer to refill on offense in 2K19 than it does right now in 2K18. This year, you can refill an empty stamina meter just by standing still for 2 to 3 seconds. It should take at least 6 seconds for the meter to fully refill, so that "spent" offensive players are required to take a significant break away from the ball during the 24-second possession. 2K19 shouldn't reward the kind of isolation, superhero basketball that 2K18 does, where a single "point god" can dribble out the entire shotclock and "green" a stepback three after his 20th consecutive dribble move.

[Yesh2kdone]

Great list and I fully agree, especially the walking size-ups/hand switching animations that are just horrible and I have no idea who on earth thought these would be a good addition to the game.

Regarding the momentum behind the back; don't players need 86 BC to be able to momentum before the BtB? I think you're mistaken regarding which builds can/can't do this move as it's not related to height.

[jyoung]

Quote: Originally Posted by Yesh2k

Regarding the momentum behind the back; don't players need 86 BC to be able to momentum before the BtB? I think you're mistaken regarding which builds can/can't do this move as it's not related to height.

I've always called the move that you're talking about a momentum crossover + behind the back combo.

The move in the first post that I've labeled as a momentum behind the back is the one that I show at 1:55 of the video in the OP.

The move you're talking about does have an 86 ball control requirement. The move I'm talking about only requires your player to be 6'9" or shorter; there are no ball control requirements for it.

[jahswill]

I personally think 2K suffers dramatically ftom a lack of true physics. Example, rebounds are decided much more by ratings and animations, as opposed to position. Better rebounders can just warp through other players. In real life, better rebounders position themselves to get rebounds. I also hear a lot of people saying that the players don't feel explosive, physics would give different athleticism to each player., as well as have some weight to them. As it stands, everybody feels like they're sliding around. In my opinion, true physics are what i expect with the tech we have these days. It facillitates more feeling and immersion . Instead of waiting for animations to play out. My 2 cents.

[2_headedmonster]

I agree with everything you said except removing walking size ups.

[Yesh2kdone]

Quote: Originally Posted by 2_headedmonster

I agree with everything you said except removing walking size ups.

Just wondering why you think this? Any animation that just randomly starts without any user input can't be viewed as a positive, so interested in your opposing view.

[Yesh2kdone]

Quote: Originally Posted by jahswill

I personally think 2K suffers dramatically ftom a lack of true physics. Example, rebounds are decided much more by ratings and animations, as opposed to position. Better rebounders can just warp through other players. In real life, better rebounders position themselves to get rebounds. I also hear a lot of people saying that the players don't feel explosive, physics would give different athleticism to each player., as well as have some weight to them. As it stands, everybody feels like they're sliding around. In my opinion, true physics are what i expect with the tech we have these days. It facillitates more feeling and immersion . Instead of waiting for animations to play out. My 2 cents.

Re: rebounding animations - it's so annoying to see your guy go up slowly and with his arms out in front (like a mummy) and then some dude just reaches straight at the ball and takes it away.

[2_headedmonster]

Quote: Originally Posted by Yesh2k

Just wondering why you think this? Any animation that just randomly starts without any user input can't be viewed as a positive, so interested in your opposing view.

Because i dont want anything that makes the dribble game more creative taken away when it can be adjusted instead.