Operation Sports at 2K Sports Part Two: The Misconceptions About Game Development

[BegBy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Black Bruce Wayne

I dont undertand the point of being here if you havent bought the game in two years. You dont add anything. And why would you like to see people go the same route? Everyone doesnt share your mindset. No offense, but tI dont understand guys like yourself and others, who continue to come to the forum for a product that they dont support or like anymore. I've seen many of your posts and I get it. How long are you going to keep telling us the same thing over and over? Why not divorce yourself completely from 2K? Alot of us still like the game and like to have conversations with others who do. I've been critical and yes there are flaws, but you have completely denoucned the game. Thats fine but why still be here? I just dont understand that, especially when you dont even want to help.

I bought the game every single year. Next year will be the first year that I don't buy the game. What I meant by me not playing a basketball game in the last 2 years is that I haven't really played 2K because I didn't enjoy 2K16 and I absolutely loathe 2K17.

I don't get your posts either, dude. You typically defend 2K like it's your job and tell people like me to stop posting because it isn't productive to bash the game. I totally understand your position. I'm glad you dig the game. Doesn't mean I agree, nor does it mean I don't want you to continue to post your opinion about it. You're entitled to write what you think and if I read it, that's on me. If I don't like it I'm not going to suggest that you stop posting. Think of that arrogance for a second. Seriously, it's pretty arrogant to think that some random guy you don't know should stop writing words about a video game because you disagree with him. Post every 20 seconds singing 2K's praises for all I care. It's your life.

I don't know how to help. If you mean help 2K, then yeah...literally no idea. I can make suggestions that I think are good, but that's not really a great idea because I'm not the demographic. I have no use for online matches. I'm not into paying for celebrations and dunk packages, and since that is their target audience, I feel my opinion would fall on deaf ears. If you mean help the 2K/OS community, then I have tried by having much more productive conversations than this, but ultimately there are people far better than me at both the written word and figuring out sliders/roster edits/strategies etc so I offer my opinion and mostly thank them for their efforts.

It's just a game. No reason to be upset with me or any other forum member, dude. Hopefully next year guys like me and guys like you can both be happy with the game and we can both be writing about how awesome the game is.

[Smirkin Dirk]

BegBy I completely disagree with the point you've made a few times that 2K markets at a casual and easily monetised audience.

The game has some very deep basketball concepts in there. We can disagree about how well they are implemented, but they are in there. They arent in other sports games.

Now sure there are modes in there for the people who want to run up and down and dunk and pay for dunk packages, but you're ignoring the fact 2K does not have one target audience. It tries to cater for everyone. Is that a weakness? Maybe, maybe not.

But that group can enjoy the game. I only play MyLeague and can there is a heap of stuff in there for me to enjoy. I keep saying it; no sports game has an offline franchise mode as deep as MyLeague.

[swac07]

This was a dope video...great to see how passionate these guys are about their craft and 2k

[BegBy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Smirkin Dirk

BegBy I completely disagree with the point you've made a few times that 2K markets at a casual and easily monetised audience. The game has some very deep basketball concepts in there. We can disagree about how well they are implemented, but they are in there. They arent in other sports games. Now sure there are modes in there for the people who want to run up and down and dunk and pay for dunk packages, but you're ignoring the fact 2K does not have one target audience. It tries to cater for everyone. Is that a weakness? Maybe, maybe not. But that group can enjoy the game. I only play MyLeague and can there is a heap of stuff in there for me to enjoy. I keep saying it; no sports game has an offline franchise mode as deep as MyLeague.

Fair enough. You're right in that I'm ignoring 2K targeting sim players as an audience. Definitely an exaggeration on my part, but I do truly feel that sim players are not their primary target. And on that note it seems like we're being ignored a lot of the time. I think MLB The Show has a really great franchise mode that easily rivals anything 2K has to offer. I also think that it does baseball strategy very well. Much better than 2K's basketball strategy in both theory and in practice. I guess that's apples and oranges though.

[nova91]

Quote: Originally Posted by Black Bruce Wayne

Yet you keep buying the product and keep talking about a product you just said is bad. Why? Are you just trolling at this point? For what? If it is this bad as you say, then cut your ties and walk away. Why can't you do that I wonder...

White Knight How is what I said trolling? Because I said your beloved 2K17 is a bad game? As far as cutting ties, I haven't bought a copy of 2K since 2K14 or 2K15. And even though 2K17 is bad, 2K as a company has earned a bit of support, faith and patience due to their previous high quality games and it doesn't hurt that 2K is the only playable up to date NBA game on the market. Instead of people blowing smoke up 2Ks butts, they should be holding 2K to the standard that 2K set for itself and not accepting the increasingly and shockingly flawed games that have been released. 2K has a wonderful development team in place, if they're able to take their ideas and get them to gel together where those ideas work like they're supposed to reamains to be seen.

[NoLeafClover]

Again, as someone who manages departments of a software team, we need to direct the blame more at the upper tier of 2K's corporate structure and project management than the developers. The devs have to follow the corporate instruction and deadlines they are set, and being a public company the higher ups are judged purely on how much they increase the value of shares for the shareholders.

This means that, unless they're willing to drastically increase the size of their dev team which requires $$ (and even then simply adding more devs to a new project doesn't necessarily result in increased productivity with a code base as large as 2K's would be) then resources will go towards whatever results in the highest quantity of VC bought.

You can argue that a lack of attention to bugs/details/simulation will offset some of that with more serious and long term players leaving, however all it takes is one new guy who drops $1k on MyTeam for every ten oldschool MyLeague players who never spend a time on VC and stop playing.

Trust me, I know how some of the management at 2K probably feel as there are features for our software apps I've been requesting since literally 4 years ago now and still haven't been implemented as the focus is always given to the quickest route to the $$ bottom line.

[Gosens6]

Quote: Originally Posted by BegBy

Fair enough. You're right in that I'm ignoring 2K targeting sim players as an audience. Definitely an exaggeration on my part, but I do truly feel that sim players are not their primary target. And on that note it seems like we're being ignored a lot of the time. I think MLB The Show has a really great franchise mode that easily rivals anything 2K has to offer. I also think that it does baseball strategy very well. Much better than 2K's basketball strategy in both theory and in practice. I guess that's apples and oranges though.

Ya know, I didn't want to chime in on this thread, but I had too.

I'm an avid baseball nut (maybe even more so than basketball) and if we're being completely honest, MLB The Shows franchise mode can't touch NBA 2Ks MyLeague with a 30 foot pole.

The Shows franchise mode is so shallow in comparison with everything that happens during a baseball season, and in the off season.

Hell, you can't even renew contracts during the season. Trades are still incredibly unrealistic, etc. It's the barebones version of running an MLB franchise.

The gameplay is top notch, bar none. But it can't even touch OOTP baseball when it comes to simulation management, and it's still not near the level of 2Ks MyLeague, plain and simple.

I'm an offline player exclusively and I barely touch MLB The Shows franchise mode because it feels so bare bones and uninspired. There's not even full career stat tracking. It's too shallow for my tastes.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[jfsolo]

A week ago in the Defense-main focus thread, the CZAR popped in and acknowledged that their implementation on defense this year fell short, said that they are going to focus even more on that side of the ball and that he would be helping out in that area.

With the way the game has played the last two years, I now view what is said with a lot more skepticism than I use to, but for me that modicum of transparency is still very important. I would have been disheartened, especially given the ease of communicating information these days, for them to have gone the the whole cycle without an explicit acknowledgement of the problems that existed this year.

So we'll see what ultimately happens with 2K18, but a least now I feel more hopeful than I did for most of the last several months.