NBA 2K16: Aggressive On-Ball Physicality

[BustinLoose]

Good article, but I'm more concerned with the offensive rebounding bug, that has been in the game for the past few years. Is it ever going to be fixed? Tired of having 3 players around the boards, and teams still get 3 or 4 offensive rebounds per possession. It's ridiculous.

[PPerfect_CJ]

I set the CPU blocking fouls to 100 and they STILL bump into you to stop fast breaks and rarely get called for it. This really needs to be tweaked in one of their "secret patches."

[bakan723]

Haven't tried this game in years, but I remember never being able to play man to man defense at all (actually guard the ball with the player I was controlling) because it felt like my player was sliding around on ice.

[ehh]

I got back into this game after a few months off - this is the biggest issue with 2K16 by a mile, especially on harder difficulty levels. The bottom line is that 2K looks nothing like the real-life NBA in this regard. It feels like you're playing 90s basketball, not the modern league.

As others have said, there are no charges on drives. There are very few plays with a ton of extra passes where the CPU is really scrambling. 2K just doesn't look like today's NBA. Others have recommended more charges when HUM players force the dribble drive, that's a good idea. We also need a cleaner "stop and force the ball handler to pull back or change direction" animation for the D.

[hear me now]

Quote: Originally Posted by jeebs9

The only chargers I've done myself. This one was weird.... I didn't even understand what happen here. And here is the other one I got by luck.... Still don't understand this one either Most of my charge come from the CPU playing offball defense. It's usually guys like Tony Allen or K-Why.

That was one of those random off the ball fouls. Watch the paint.

[ChaseB]

(Felt bad I never answered a ton of the feedback I had on one of my articles, so just doing it now to get it off my to-do list so to speak, sorry for bringing an old thread back from the dead!)

Quote: Originally Posted by Ichi

I love this post. I was just discussing this in the MyTeam forum. Too many times you get cut off with the kind of animations that are clearly a foul, and those animations are so long that you can't do a dribble move to counter, so not only is a foul not awarded, you can't react and loose precious seconds of the shot clock. They really need to reduce the physicality drastically and let us defend by cutting angles and closing out shots.

Thanks for the feedback, good to know I was able to nail down a bit on something that was bothering you. I agree that the animations can suck up too much time at points on top of being over the top.

Quote: Originally Posted by strawberryshortcake

For those who have a solid recollection of the NBA of yesterday (I've been watching the NBA since the 1980s but it's been so long I don't remember much), how was defense refereed? It was more physical was it not? Does this factor in how NBA2k' defensive gameplay is constructed considering NBA2k does have classic teams? Is it truly possible to create two separate 2k gameplay eras? If you stack a classic team vs a current team, how should 2k "enforce"/"implement" on ball defense?

More or less, you could body up and put your hands on a player both on the ball and off more than you can in today's NBA. It's part of the reason the league is so "point guard driven" in 2016. The drive and kick is king as well and it does go in conjunction with rule changes both in terms of physicality and how teams are allowed to play team defense.

Quote: Originally Posted by ILLSmak

It's like this, as I stated in my mostly-unread defensive post: You are right about the physicality, but the issue is that within a certain space the ball handler and the defender are bound. That means, your reactions will actually affect them. With a bit more space, they are completely open and untied to you... if they would widen the 'bind' they could remove some of the physicality on ball and allow you to actually affect the ball handler... thus making it more realistic. I don't mind the stickiness as long as there are more outcomes. -Smak

I think this is a really interesting point that I had not thought much about. The idea of "steering" or a smaller version of a mini-game of sorts where both guys are trying to guide the play during these two-man interactions could be interesting.

Quote: Originally Posted by tril

great article. to remedy this situation- 2k would have to fix the foul logic in this game. not enough blocking or charging fouls are called. In the videos provided- you clearly illustrate both type of fouls. I see alot of blocking and some charging. In addition, I believe this also has to do with spacing. The court needs to be a little bigger in realtion to the size of the players. Everything is too condensed. But again great write up

I know charges and the like are more a focus for NBA 2K17, so will be interesting to see if you're right here.

As for the court size, I know it's a topic every year but I don't feel like that's the core issue. If proper spacing is in place, the players wouldn't seem "too big" or whatever the argument tends to be here in my opinion.

Quote: Originally Posted by alabamarob

Great Article that is on point. I think 2k14 last gen had the best balance with on ball defense. That game allowed contact on the perimeter for good defenders, but it gave a good ball handler a slide by animation when guarded tightly by a poor on ball defender. Just increasing the frequency of the "slide by animation" on poor on ball defenders would be good. Additionally, increasing the frequency of blocking fouls on the perimeter when contact is initiated by the defender would help with realism. Finally, there needs to be more charges called to deter offensive barreling.

I wish I could recall 2K14 better in terms of moment to moment gameplay, but you seem to remember it well so I'll take your word for it. The "slide by" animations that do exist in 2K16 do trigger, but they generally come with a slowdown where the defender sort of hip checks the player before he gets by so I get your point.

Quote: Originally Posted by kolanji

@Chase wow bro such a great argument with solid evidence...a bit shocked at the conclusion though like ur just pointimg it out and not really wanting any changes.... I am 100% in agreement with ur points though..... Like i always say nba 2k9 was for me the most satisfying when it comes to defense and playing offense...with ride along animations dominant instead of OP bumping

Haha well it wasn't that I don't want changes, it's just that I'm not entirely dogmatic in terms of what I want the outcome to be. The point I was trying to make is that I can only theorize on changes that make sense. Until they're actually tested out and we can see results, I'm just grasping to some degree -- that's all I was trying to say there. It's a really hard balancing act, which was my other point in terms of not wanting to overreact one way or the other.

Quote: Originally Posted by jdareal21

"Of course, this is not real life, and so you have hard heads who will instead plow into a defender multiple times like we see with Lowry and Jackson in the 2K GIF" This is pretty much the end of the conversation IMO, because no matter what developers do, there will always be people who abuse the mechanics of the game to manipulate it. I don't think we'll ever be technologically advanced enough to outwit a human mind that's deliberately trying to play wrong...

I mean that's sort of a defeatist attitude you know? You can't make a game and then decide "we're not going to try because our users won't do what we want every time." You have to at least believe you can make a change otherwise what would you be doing there in the first place? And yes, that's a bit philosophical I guess but I think it makes sense.

[El_Poopador]

This is a great write-up, and something that has bothered me about NBA 2k since I started playing.

At the risk of starting a war here, I honestly believe the only way to really improve upon these issues is to go away from the two man animations to a dynamic, physics based animation set. Instead of having to hope the right animation plays out (assuming there is a good animation in the game for the situation), having players' movements and physical reactions based on weight and momentum makes more sense.

Once they have a system like that in place, what we see happening would make more sense, and they can tune the foul calls appropriately.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by El_Poopador

This is a great write-up, and something that has bothered me about NBA 2k since I started playing. At the risk of starting a war here, I honestly believe the only way to really improve upon these issues is to go away from the two man animations to a dynamic, physics based animation set. Instead of having to hope the right animation plays out (assuming there is a good animation in the game for the situation), having players' movements and physical reactions based on weight and momentum makes more sense. Once they have a system like that in place, what we see happening would make more sense, and they can tune the foul calls appropriately.

I don't think any sort of war is started by saying this, I guess the question would be why don't you think animations can lead to similar results? I think a lot of the time what I'm seeing are just animations that don't fit in terms of being overly physical. We also see plenty of good animations play out.

Which isn't to say I don't think going physics-based is a bad thing, just that it doesn't have to be the only solution. I do think having more control in those two-man interactions is a must either way though, as well as a way to tune them to allow more foul calls.