Constructing a verbal display of our grievances.

[[Q]]

I thought the signatures at the end with the prominent members of the community was a great touch
makes it seem more official

[J@3]

I have uploaded the letter, so there is URL to directly get it. I may send the URL along to the media as it might be easier for them to just link to it.

http://www.nbalive.org/letter.htm

Make the font Verdana because it's pretty.

[cyanide]

Make the font Verdana because it's pretty.

I'd go with Georgia Add in a bit of CSS formatting, and it should look great!

[spreeul8r]

Yeah, only in a couple of games. I don't really mind them at this point because they've been in the series since at least Live 2003 and don't interfere too badly. Most games have weird engine glitches like that, I wish all the EA haters would direct me to the perfect glitchless sports game .

Have you ever played Pro Evolution Soccer 5? There probably are some extremely minor glitches, but the fact that i cant name any from memory tells you how minor the are. The gameplay truely represents football (soccer). When you play EA's Fifa 2006...and then you play PES5 or Winning Eleven, you realise that Konami have got the "feel" of the game down pat. They got the basics right, and built apon that quality core gameplay. There have been countless mods and gameplay patches released for FIFA, yet the gameplay, no matter how much you tweak it (and you can tweak plenty)...never quite measures up to the PES5 experience.

EA have to go back to the drawing board, and work on getting the basketball right. Forget FSS, dunk comps, espn intergration. Just build a solid core gameplay that captures the "feel" of real basketball. If EA had to scrap FSS in order to rebuild the game engine, i for one would have absolutely no problem with that.

[Voxel]

Have you ever played Pro Evolution Soccer 5? There probably are some extremely minor glitches, but the fact that i cant name any from memory tells you how minor the are. The gameplay truely represents football (soccer). When you play EA's Fifa 2006...and then you play PES5 or Winning Eleven, you realise that Konami have got the "feel" of the game down pat. They got the basics right, and built apon that quality core gameplay. There have been countless mods and gameplay patches released for FIFA, yet the gameplay, no matter how much you tweak it (and you can tweak plenty)...never quite measures up to the PES5 experience.

he's got a PES gamer tag on his signature...

and yes, PES is the best team sports game by a mile, which doesn't mean that everything else will suck... it's just that PES has this perfectly implemented physics that are unrivaled and that alone makes the game what it is.

even though the huge stupid bugs and defective AI kill nba live 07, at the very least there is a sense of improvement in the physics department. defending players don't magically catch up on fast breaks and defenders you got by don't come sliding into your face right away again, which has been a curse of the series. the catch-up logic is very toned down and the new on-ball defense animations/motions are great. i know that PG's slash into the paint at will, but that's how it is mostly in the real NBA nowadays anyway. the real problem is that the AI makes every guard/swingmen slash into the paint on every posession.

[J@3]

Yeah it's not really fair to compare how great Pro Evo/WE is to a basketball game. Different sports, different physics etc... I think it'd also be easier to make a game where the amount of player to player contact is alot less (like in football) as opposed to basketball where they constantly come in contact.

[spreeul8r]

Missed that. I dont pay much attention to "gamer tags".

And i agree that they have made slight improvements to the game, but like benji said in his letter, they are only touching up a crumbling building. The gameplay just doesnt feel like real bball. And as you mentioned regarding PES, the "perfectly implemented physics" are what make PES the best sports game bar none. Maybe thats what EA Canada should strive for, instead of putting bits of sticky tape on a bucket with more holes than swiss cheese.

[spreeul8r]

Yeah it's not really fair to compare how great Pro Evo/WE is to a basketball game. Different sports, different physics etc... I think it'd also be easier to make a game where the amount of player to player contact is alot less (like in football) as opposed to basketball where they constantly come in contact.

I dunno man... I reckon Konami would do a damn good job. Just look at the difference between FIFA and PES. Same sport, totally different experience.

Victorious boxers superiority to EA's Fight Night Round 3 is also very telling. Even though its not a Konami game, it is a small Japanese developer that managed to capture the "feel" of real boxing (in a PS1 game) BETTER THAN EA has managed using next gen technology. Whats with that?

[BigKaboom2]

Yeah it's not really fair to compare how great Pro Evo/WE is to a basketball game. Different sports, different physics etc... I think it'd also be easier to make a game where the amount of player to player contact is alot less (like in football) as opposed to basketball where they constantly come in contact.

I dunno man... I reckon Konami would do a damn good job. Just look at the difference between FIFA and PES. Same sport, totally different experience.

Victorious boxers superiority to EA's Fight Night Round 3 is also very telling. Even though its not a Konami game, it is a small Japanese developer that managed to capture the "feel" of real boxing (in a PS1 game) BETTER THAN EA has managed using next gen technology. Whats with that?

I am indeed a huge PES fan. There might be a decent argument against this, but I've always felt that the recent incarnations of PES would have been more buggy if they implemented 360-degree analog movement like Live and FIFA.

I'm well-aware that the 8-direction system is still very fun to play, but it's not exceedingly realistic. I don't even want them to change it, I'm just saying it's much harder to avoid strange glitches with EA's 360-degree movement.

[[Q]]

Yeah it's not really fair to compare how great Pro Evo/WE is to a basketball game. Different sports, different physics etc... I think it'd also be easier to make a game where the amount of player to player contact is alot less (like in football) as opposed to basketball where they constantly come in contact.

I dunno man... I reckon Konami would do a damn good job. Just look at the difference between FIFA and PES. Same sport, totally different experience.

Konami had their chance with NBA games. It was called NBA In THe Zone (with my man Glen Rice on the cover). Live 98, 99 and 2000 dominated it, along with SEga's NBA Action and Microsoft's sorry Full Court Press or whatever. I forget who made that Fox Sports one with Steve Smith on the cover.

[Nick]

Benji, maybe put a date at the bottom of the letter that was uploaded?

I forget who made that Fox Sports one with Steve Smith on the cover.

Umm, maybe fox sports made it?

I used to play that game. I think it was called NBA Basketball 2000. Played it before i was introduced to the NBA Live games. It was cool while it lasted!

[benji]

Well, let's not mix things up here. Full Court Press was atrocious and came out in '96, but NBA In The Zone (+2 and 98) were easily as good as Live 96, 97 and 98 on the Playstation. (Infact, most revewers at the time considered NBA In The Zone 2 to be superior to Live '97 and as good or better than ShootOut '97.) It was ITZ99 and 2000 that fell behind Live, as had Sony's game by that point.

Sega's original NBA Action (that they themselves developed) on the Saturn was probably the best basketball game of its time because of how deep it was, but the second Saturn version NBA Action '98 was just a port of NBA Fastbreak '98 for the Playstation. Guess who made that game? Yep, Visual Concepts. And if you play the PC version (available as "abandonware" on a number of sites) you can easily see where the 2K series was influenced. It plays a lot like the early 2K games do.

[[Q]]

Well, let's not mix things up here. Full Court Press was atrocious and came out in '96, but NBA In The Zone (+2 and 98) were easily as good as Live 96, 97 and 98 on the Playstation. (Infact, most revewers at the time considered NBA In The Zone 2 to be superior to Live '97 and as good or better than ShootOut '97.) It was ITZ99 and 2000 that fell behind Live, as had Sony's game by that point.

Sega's original NBA Action (that they themselves developed) on the Saturn was probably the best basketball game of its time because of how deep it was, but the second Saturn version NBA Action '98 was just a port of NBA Fastbreak '98 for the Playstation. Guess who made that game? Yep, Visual Concepts. And if you play the PC version (available as "abandonware" on a number of sites) you can easily see where the 2K series was influenced. It plays a lot like the early 2K games do.

oh yeah forgot about Shootout.
I actually had Action '98 for the PC and I loved Chick Hearn on mic. but yeah I remember they organized team by team name instead of city name like 2k does now. They also had practice mode with 2 players so you could play horse and around the world
it was a decent game, I liked the stat overlays they had, but my biggest gripe was that you couldn't edit players' jersey numbers... good god that pissed me off.

[Holop]

add me in.

[alexboom]

CanardPC, one of the biggest french newspapers dedicated to videogames, released a news on their site:

http://www.canardplus.com/news-06-10-20 ... #actu_2877

[Parisien]

What a bad day! I'm very disapointed after having read what it's said about live 07, I ntended to go out and buy it this morning, but now I think it would have probably been a waste of money. I really appreciate the fact you send a letter to the guys of EA, just like I read in one of the post, enough is enough,and it was high time NBA Live fans react.

Now I'm waiting for 2k7 game which is not released yet here in France, people-and most of them are fans- said it's a good game, I'll check it, it'll be a good experience anyway...otherwise I'm waiting for the next gen games, on ps3...