NBA 2K24 Unveils Gameplay Improvements

[Steve_OS]

Ahead of NBA 2K24 being officially released on September 8, details were recently revealed as to...

Written By: Kevin Scott

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[Kushmir]

Directional Steals sounds good but I wonder if its FINALLY better designed for passing lane steals. just pressing square and your defender being sucked towards a pass was always bad. Its why we see guys sit in zone online and SPAM steal the minute a pass animation starts. ANTICIPATION is what we've always wanted here...R-stick towards where the ball is going (along with rating) should be what determines our steal success.

This would allow users to finally utilize pass variety to increase our chances at success since for example a defender would have to press "UP" for pass we're trying to put over them and "DOWN" for a bounce pass.

Lastly, any system that doesn't punish spam is USELESS. A badly-timed steal attempt should either cause the defender to lunge out of position or get them whistled for a contact foul.

[Caelumfang]

I've got some concerns after reading those blogs. I'm not popular enough nor well-known enough to have it read by and/or be responded to by anyone of importance, so I'll just vent them here.


ProPlay

While I do have a little faith here, I'm wondering if many of those things are going to be locked to the specific player's animation packages. By that, I mean having to actually EQUIP those animations to see ProPlay play out as intended. The dangerous part to me comes in the basic animations, like 'Basic', 'Normal', etc. If that's true, then will people be able to circumvent the 'cons' by simply equipping animations that may have never gotten upgraded?


Adrenaline Bars

While everyone is celebrating the new changes to the Adrenaline Bar system where the defense can get bumpy enough to drain the bars, I'm not sure people caught onto the 4 most concerning words that I saw: "ON A DRIVE ATTEMPT." If we are to go off of what has been said and shown in the past, the game considers something a 'drive attempt' when the ballhandler angles the left stick towards the basket in some way. So if the ballhandler never has to worry about losing adrenaline bars due to their dribbling, and can only lose those bars if bumped on a drive attempt, all they have to do is keep their player on a horizontal plane all around the perimeter in order to preserve said bars, and no amount of bumping will remove them. PLUS, being able to do speed bursts 'across short distances'. Doesn't that sound like 'left-right' exploiting is almost being encouraged, as long as the player knows not to angle their stick towards the basket? If we go strictly by their wording, then I can see this being the new major exploit going into 2K24.

Offense vs Defense

Many of the other things sound well and fine, but isn't it concerning that the offense gets YET ANOTHER SPEED BURSTING TOOL (this time, during off-ball movememt by tapping Sprint), while the defense has yet to receive a SINGLE SPEED BURST TECHNIQUE after all these years? How much more movement speed does the offense need, while leaving the defense out to dry?

[Yallasama]

And again nothing about passing, fast breaks and steal AI. I have a feeling 2k is purposefully ignoring parts simply because pro players and or they themselves don’t think there’s an issue or are not as vocal. Sucks…

[Kushmir]

I also saw the section about new Shot Blocks, Pump Fakes, Drawing Fouls and Contests. 1) I like the team at 2K but we hear some variation of that EVERY YEAR lol. Second, it ABSOLUTELY has to be coupled with the ability to strip the ball from people pump faking or being STATIC holding the ball waiting for the defender to jump. The Crowding animation that never gets used is also literally perfect for that kinda thing:





You guys know i've wanted to draw fouls more than anyone but nothing can be a 100% outcome or it'll be ABUSED, it has to be balanced with outcomes where the defender's momentum takes them out of the play (which is almost just as bad)

Lastly, hopefully contesting shots has a really low foul outcome. We need that mechanic as an option to defend without fouling. With some animations being physical like the ones below:

[RobotRosKO]

More freedom to dribble! More wide open lanes to dunk & to do even more layups. So they telling me, they refuse to go back to NBA2K18 or earlierways of the paint being guarded well. And more open lanes also mean, those God Awful backdoor cuts & God Awful transition defense is here to stay forever. Makes the game, so unenjoyable when there is 60 points in the paint & 37 assist a game and 20 plus of those assist are layups. But to those, who love this, not hating on it. It's just something I hate.

[blk5tar5]

This version of 2K is geared towards casual players as making things much easier to play and enjoy! For over the years I've been hearing from a lot of people complaining that I can't be bother with 2K cause of the shooting was to hard and so on. So I don't know what the meta data of the final figures of users who don't pay for the game but if 2K did take a lost this could be the reason for making the game easy to play.

[daveberg]

Quote: Originally Posted by blk5tar5

This version of 2K is geared towards casual players as making things much easier to play and enjoy! For over the years I've been hearing from a lot of people complaining that I can't be bother with 2K cause of the shooting was to hard and so on. So I don't know what the meta data of the final figures of users who don't pay for the game but if 2K did take a lost this could be the reason for making the game easy to play.

Similar to Street Fighter 6. Dumbed down the control scheme and gave all the casuals one button presses for special moves, just to attract more players.