NBA 2K14 Euroleague Q&A

[mango_prom]

Quote: Originally Posted by Melbournelad

Had any great meetings regarding assocition?

What do you expect? The core problems of association haven't changed since 2k3. They really haven't fixed even the most basic issues in more than a decade...

[KyotoCarl]

Quote: Originally Posted by mango_prom

What do you expect? The core problems of association haven't changed since 2k3. They really haven't fixed even the most basic issues in more than a decade...

What are the core problems with association? I haven't noticed any glaring bugs.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[mango_prom]

Quote: Originally Posted by KyotoCarl

What are the core problems with association? I haven't noticed any glaring bugs.

1) Generated rookies have been way overpowered since 2k3. The main point of the whole mode is to play more than one season. If you do this, the league will turn into 99 OVR teams all over the place because of screwed up potential logic and way overpowered rookie classes.

It's common to see multiple rookies rated >80 OVR already, with 5-10 more guys >70. Basically, most draft classes are already better than a few NBA teams combined. Which is ridiculous.
This leads to vastly overpowered teams after a few years in combination with a very bad player regression model that doesn't take into account decline of athleticism at all, leading to uber athletic 36 year olds dominating the league.
Also, too much talent in the league means free agency crowded with high rated players no team can afford.
Basially, you need 0-5 players rated >70 OVR each year to maintain a league roughly as strong as the current NBA. Would be easy to fix, but 2k doesn't care. This has been a problem since 2k3.

2) Attribute/Tendency distribution for generated rookies is a joke. 2k uses very lazy approaches of tying values to play styles regardless of whether they make sense for a particular player.
You'll regularly see big men with low 3pt ratings jacking up lots of 3s (screwing up simulated stats btw), because their play style is set to "defensive", which is tied to a high 3pt tendency for no reason. The same with play types, so you'll see 7'2 centers having "cutter" as their main play because the play style scripts dictate it with no reason behind it.

3) Touches distribution for rookies is just as bad. There's simply no thought out scaling involved, comparing player skills to their touches ratings shows no coherent logic whatsoever. Now this isn't a big deal since touches is flawed anyway. But in the improbable case that 2k actually fixes play calling, association gameplay would still be a mess, because generated players make no sense at all.

4) 2k uses different AI management scripts for user controlled teams set to auto manage and AI controlled teams. If you want to control all teams to fix rotations on the fly, you either have to do every micro management decision for each team, or use the flawed auto manage logic, which is inferior to the one used for AI controlled teams, especially regarding free agent signings. That's just lazy.

5) Playcalling is messed up. Generated/Traded PGs don't get any plays called for them except you completely redo touches scaling using some very extreme differences between positions. Makes AI controlled teams with superstar PGs pretty much useless. You'll see plays for them only out of scripted mismatch quick plays or broken down High/Low sets ending with a pick. Again, just lazy. Has been that way since 2k11, at least on PC. Don't know about consoles though...

I could go on, but in the end it's all subjective. If you like association mode, that's cool. For me, it's pretty much unplayable right now. Maybe that's all just nitpicking to you. In my opinion, these issues are defeating the purpose of the whole association mode. And it's no rocket science either. Takes one hour max to figure this stuff out...

[BreaksoftheGame]

Wow. Awful contrite answers.

[OkayC]

Quote: Originally Posted by mango_prom

1) Generated rookies have been way overpowered since 2k3. The main point of the whole mode is to play more than one season. If you do this, the league will turn into 99 OVR teams all over the place because of screwed up potential logic and way overpowered rookie classes. It's common to see multiple rookies rated >80 OVR already, with 5-10 more guys >70. Basically, most draft classes are already better than a few NBA teams combined. Which is ridiculous. This leads to vastly overpowered teams after a few years in combination with a very bad player regression model that doesn't take into account decline of athleticism at all, leading to uber athletic 36 year olds dominating the league. Also, too much talent in the league means free agency crowded with high rated players no team can afford. Basially, you need 0-5 players rated >70 OVR each year to maintain a league roughly as strong as the current NBA. Would be easy to fix, but 2k doesn't care. This has been a problem since 2k3. 2) Attribute/Tendency distribution for generated rookies is a joke. 2k uses very lazy approaches of tying values to play styles regardless of whether they make sense for a particular player. You'll regularly see big men with low 3pt ratings jacking up lots of 3s (screwing up simulated stats btw), because their play style is set to "defensive", which is tied to a high 3pt tendency for no reason. The same with play types, so you'll see 7'2 centers having "cutter" as their main play because the play style scripts dictate it with no reason behind it. 3) Touches distribution for rookies is just as bad. There's simply no thought out scaling involved, comparing player skills to their touches ratings shows no coherent logic whatsoever. Now this isn't a big deal since touches is flawed anyway. But in the improbable case that 2k actually fixes play calling, association gameplay would still be a mess, because generated players make no sense at all. 4) 2k uses different AI management scripts for user controlled teams set to auto manage and AI controlled teams. If you want to control all teams to fix rotations on the fly, you either have to do every micro management decision for each team, or use the flawed auto manage logic, which is inferior to the one used for AI controlled teams, especially regarding free agent signings. That's just lazy. 5) Playcalling is messed up. Generated/Traded PGs don't get any plays called for them except you completely redo touches scaling using some very extreme differences between positions. Makes AI controlled teams with superstar PGs pretty much useless. You'll see plays for them only out of scripted mismatch quick plays or broken down High/Low sets ending with a pick. Again, just lazy. Has been that way since 2k11, at least on PC. Don't know about consoles though... I could go on, but in the end it's all subjective. If you like association mode, that's cool. For me, it's pretty much unplayable right now. Maybe that's all just nitpicking to you. In my opinion, these issues are defeating the purpose of the whole association mode. And it's no rocket science either. Takes one hour max to figure this stuff out...

Some of this stuff i was unaware of. other things you mentioned is why i don't play association anymore, and when i did it was short lived. I feel its on the right track with alot of ideas, but this mode is something thats geared toward people with high knowledge of the sport of basketball, and since 2k clearly doesn't cater to those people, the mode feels to ameteurish to me.

[Melbournelad]

Quote: Originally Posted by KyotoCarl

What are the core problems with association? I haven't noticed any glaring bugs. Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

Really? Really? Wow.

[Melbournelad]

Quote: Originally Posted by mango_prom

1) Generated rookies have been way overpowered since 2k3. The main point of the whole mode is to play more than one season. If you do this, the league will turn into 99 OVR teams all over the place because of screwed up potential logic and way overpowered rookie classes. It's common to see multiple rookies rated >80 OVR already, with 5-10 more guys >70. Basically, most draft classes are already better than a few NBA teams combined. Which is ridiculous. This leads to vastly overpowered teams after a few years in combination with a very bad player regression model that doesn't take into account decline of athleticism at all, leading to uber athletic 36 year olds dominating the league. Also, too much talent in the league means free agency crowded with high rated players no team can afford. Basially, you need 0-5 players rated >70 OVR each year to maintain a league roughly as strong as the current NBA. Would be easy to fix, but 2k doesn't care. This has been a problem since 2k3. 2) Attribute/Tendency distribution for generated rookies is a joke. 2k uses very lazy approaches of tying values to play styles regardless of whether they make sense for a particular player. You'll regularly see big men with low 3pt ratings jacking up lots of 3s (screwing up simulated stats btw), because their play style is set to "defensive", which is tied to a high 3pt tendency for no reason. The same with play types, so you'll see 7'2 centers having "cutter" as their main play because the play style scripts dictate it with no reason behind it. 3) Touches distribution for rookies is just as bad. There's simply no thought out scaling involved, comparing player skills to their touches ratings shows no coherent logic whatsoever. Now this isn't a big deal since touches is flawed anyway. But in the improbable case that 2k actually fixes play calling, association gameplay would still be a mess, because generated players make no sense at all. 4) 2k uses different AI management scripts for user controlled teams set to auto manage and AI controlled teams. If you want to control all teams to fix rotations on the fly, you either have to do every micro management decision for each team, or use the flawed auto manage logic, which is inferior to the one used for AI controlled teams, especially regarding free agent signings. That's just lazy. 5) Playcalling is messed up. Generated/Traded PGs don't get any plays called for them except you completely redo touches scaling using some very extreme differences between positions. Makes AI controlled teams with superstar PGs pretty much useless. You'll see plays for them only out of scripted mismatch quick plays or broken down High/Low sets ending with a pick. Again, just lazy. Has been that way since 2k11, at least on PC. Don't know about consoles though... I could go on, but in the end it's all subjective. If you like association mode, that's cool. For me, it's pretty much unplayable right now. Maybe that's all just nitpicking to you. In my opinion, these issues are defeating the purpose of the whole association mode. And it's no rocket science either. Takes one hour max to figure this stuff out...

To add one more, the rigid potential system really needs to be changed, every association should be dynamic.

[mango_prom]

Quote: Originally Posted by Melbournelad

To add one more, the rigid potential system really needs to be changed, every association should be dynamic.

Yeah, Sega shows how to do it with the FM series. The Eastside Hockey games were great in that regard, too. And since you've mentioned more dynamic associations...another thing I've noticed is that it seems like generated player variety has decreased over the years.
I remember that 2k11 had more different types of players available. Some guards were pure shooters without much dunking ability, others could slash but were useless on the perimeter. In 2k13, it's all the same. Good guards have dunking/layup at least >85 in the beginning and become rated around 90 in every shooting category later on. And since sig skills are awarded when reaching fixed rating cutoffs, you'll see dozens of completely overpowered all around GOAT candidates for no reason. Just a very generic experience.

And potential is a good topic to bring up...I haven't played PES for a few years, but they had different types of developing presets with a few different timespans of players hitting their primes and so on. You know, stuff like players making huge jumps for a few years, then maybe regressing quickly while others improve rather slowly before making a surprising leap later on. Would be great to have that kind of model incorporated into 2k14 if there's still some time left after including Lebron's hand picked soundtrack suggestions...

Other things are mainly aesthetics, but give the impression of devs not giving a f*ck. Do all talented perimeter prospects need to have the Air Jordan package? Teams will sometimes have half a dozen players finishing like MJ with default rookie classes, quite often some white 6'0 PGs.
The same is true for jumpshot animations.
Would it be that hard to limit unathletic big men to getting assigned random set shots mainly? Maybe depending on shot ability and vertical? Right now, you'll see 7'2 centers having hangtime jumpshots like Dominique or Nate Robinson. Some 5'9 PGs on the other hand will jack up 3s with some useless Kevin Duckworth set shot...
Also, besides the generic all around megastar prospects, solid role players excelling at a few skills are pretty much non existent. Not much variety at all.

Association could be a great mode. But they should finally start to work on easy to fix issues which could go a long way improving the whole experience in a big way. If Sega can do it with some dry text based soccer manager, 2k with a multi million dollar budget and more than a decade of experience with assoc can't?