MyLeague Online Discussion (Great dev post kickoff)

[23]

Quote: Originally Posted by SimBaller

Hi folks, In hindsight, I don't think I did a good job of eloquently explaining why MyLEAGUE Online is what it is, and how it came to be in 2K16. About 5 years ago, I made a strong push to management to give me the resources to provide a fully featured online franchise mode, which later came to be known as The Association: Online. Ambitious, and by-and-large, it worked. Sure, there were some quirks or design decisions that people didn't like (e.g. the moving window of advancement). Once that project was complete, my team and I moved on to other areas of the game. Having watched Online Leagues in NBA 2K14 and NBA 2K15 falter (for lack of a better word), I went back to management very early this year and told them I would be taking over the online league experience once again. This wasn't up for debate. To be fair, the people at VC that worked on this mode the last two years did a very admirable job, they just didn't have the experienced resources needed to deliver the proper experience you guys were craving. Those guys were hungry this year to right the ship. I loved seeing it. For NBA 2K16, we combined our resource pools, which gave us the opportunity for me to allocate some of my more specialized and experienced engineers on this project. One such engineer, Brad, spent the majority of his year coming up with a completely new server-based architecture that is the heart and soul of NBA 2K16's MyLEAGUE Online feature. This brings me to my main point for writing this. I've seen a few mentions (and about 12 of the same post from ataman (oh snap!)) and assumptions of this being the same mode as last year with potentially x and y feature added. This really couldn't be further from the truth. This is a completely new experience built with an all-new backend driving it. Gosh knows it won't be 100% perfect (though we certainly hope it is), but you do have my word that we will give you 110% until it is. We'll work through anything that comes up. Heck, Leftos won't sleep until issues are resolved. Brad is the same way. You guys got the 'A' team supporting you at this point; these are some of the brightest guys in the industry. I played last year's Online Leagues pretty heavily. MyLEAGUE Online isn't last year's leagues. It may not have the offseason you covet, but it does contain the features that make MyLEAGUE such a special experience. You will be able to (and I can't believe some of these weren't there last year, sorry): Make Rotational adjustments Implement Gameplans (and everything that comes with that) Utilize custom playbooks Adjust gameplay sliders (at the admin level) Adjust MyLEAGUE-specific sliders like Trade Negotiation Difficulty (at the admin level) Custom Roster support Control everything as an admin (trade approval, force winners, force losers, reset games, etc. etc. etc.) I see people mention things like, "did they fix the bug about being able to rejoin the league once you leave?" To that, I say no. No, we didn't because this an entirely new experience. That bug never existed in this experience. Unfortunately, time IS a factor when you release an annual title. It's not an excuse I use, because it is my problem, not yours. You want (and deserve) the universe. That being said, I'm tremendously proud of the people who managed to create an all-new online league foundation (that will serve us well as new features are added) while simultaneously making what I think is probably the biggest single year jump in our franchise in a long time. Lastly, I truly appreciate the discussion taking place within this thread regarding MyLEAGUE Online. I'm not one to shy away from a solid discussion or get my feelings hurt because someone doesn't like the way something isn't done. While this is business, this is my passion. This is the same for Leftos, Dave Z, Brad, and everyone else that played a major part in these modes. We WANT to hear your thoughts on what we're adding (or not adding if the case may be). At the end of the day, if it's not abundantly clear even after reading the "Little Things" section of my blog post...We've got your best interests at heart. Enjoy the mode(s) this year.

I only did this so you guys can talk about this specifically here and it not be mixed in and jumbled and hard to follow in the other thread.

Thanks SimBaller

[Epyc]

From the other Thread:

I understand what you are saying and I really apreciate you and your Team for "reviving" this mode!

But you have to understand us, who thought this would be an Franchise mode just like MyLeague OFFLINE. Thats what I thought when I saw the title of the mode.

This is not the mode where you can build your Team over a couple of years and where your rookies can develop into superstars. Now you have to pick a contender in order to stay competitive against other Human players, because you have no chance to improve your Team in the offseason.

I hope you understand our point on MyLeague and why we are not that hyped but GLAD you brought us this mode back. I hope you will improve this mode over the years and don't remove it like in 2k13.

[silverskier]

The post from Simballer clarifies a lot of questions that I had. Thank you very much Erick for the post, and 23 for starting a new thread.

[lvnba]

Our feelings from this 4 year period where you moved on to other things:

[chrizz15]

Thank you SimBaller, I really appreciate your honesty.

I have to admit I still am a little disappointed that it is supposed to be a single season experience, because I wanted to make the Lakers contender again, which will definitely be a job for more than one year!

Just to clarify, even though we are able to carry over our trades from season 1 to season 2, we aren't progressing to year 2, right? So we just restart the 15-16 season as many times as we want but there is no player progression, aging, expiring contracts etc?

Also, with custom rosters and fantasy draft implemented in 2k16, will we be able to make a fantasy draft that contains all the players from classic teams AND current players? This would kind of level the playing field.

Again, thanks for your post, I guess you did what you could in one year and I'm happy to see that 2k hasn't given up on an online franchise mode after all. After the letdown with online leagues in 2k14 and 2k15 (which you explained) I was doubting we would see the mode make a comeback in the foreseeable future, but after your post I'm hopeful that we will have a working multi season MyLeague Online "back" very soon.

[dwnz]

I see this as a great base moving forward, if you guys can get this right then multiple seasons can be looked at for the next version (which I hope is the vision you guys have). As long as you guys are looking in that direction, I'm happy.

[Lakerf57n]

I love what this mode is coming with but i hope when u say custom roster options that means we can edit all players and use our face scan players in the place of auto generated create-a-players.always felt like it was a step down to be able to face scan your Mycareer player and not your Myleague players. Better than the alternative.

[FriendlyAtheist]

I just really, really want FIBA National Teams this year. Doubt it happens though.