NBA 2K15 MyLEAGUE Interview

The first question is the question everyone is wondering, will virtual currency play any role in MyLEAGUE?

VC doesn’t play any part in this mode, except that you can earn VC as games are played. MyLEAGUE was created specifically for members in our community that wanted a way to spend their time playing the game at its core.

VC doesn’t play any part in this mode, except that you can earn VC as games are played. MyLEAGUE was created specifically for members in our community that wanted a way to spend their time playing the game at its core.

How will “injury effects” be handled in the mode? Can we change the type of injury someone gets or adjust the amount of time a player is inured?
This question allows me to introduce one of many new features that we’ve created for NBA 2K15. Injuries have been completely re-written for NBA 2K15; internally we like to call the new system ‘Injuries 2.0’. Historically, players in our game had a single Durability rating that would define how likely they were to get injured. When a player then got injured, a body part would randomly get chosen. Not great.
With ‘Injuries 2.0’, every player has a unique durability rating for 16 different body parts (think left foot, right foot, left ankle, right ankle, etc.). This level of control allows us to pick a player like Russell Westbrook and say that he has a right knee with a significantly higher chance of getting injured than his left knee, or any other body part for that issue. In short, player injuries are going to be a lot more relevant, and a lot less random.
Body parts are going to wear down over the course of a career, as more miles are put on the body. Significant injuries to a body part will often shorten the lifespan of that body part before it becomes a real problem later in a player’s career. These injuries, depending on the severity, can forever change a player. Some players will never get back to their former selves after they blow out a knee, for example. NBA 2K15 also introduces the concept of career ending injuries to our game. In truth, they don’t happen very often (as they shouldn’t!), but they do happen. Players with continued injury problems to a body part will feel those aches and pains and retire at an earlier age than a player who has managed to stay relatively healthy throughout their career.
When a player gets hurt, you’ll often (not always) see him nurse that body part back to health with the aid of an accessory. Sleeves on elbows, pads on knees. It’s small, but it’s cool to see when you are playing the game. And when a player returns from an injury, he doesn’t necessarily come back 100% right away (injury length obviously drives this one). Players will need playing time to work their game back to its optimal level. Injuries are no longer like on/off light switches, you will now have to deal all facets of what it means when one of your players gets injured.
Getting back to the original question at-hand, we keyed in on the sandbox philosophy of MyLEAGUE and allow you to customize the frequency of User/CPU injuries in addition to how much those injuries affect a player’s ratings. Heck, you can even turn injuries off all together, but do you really want to do that after you just read all of the above?
One more thing on body durabilities. They will a be ‘thing’ when it comes to how you scout draft prospects throughout the season as our Prospect Scouting feature got a major overhaul this year. We’ll be talking more about that later this summer. The ‘game’ in scouting rookies is back, and we think you will love it.