Gamespot Q&A staff blog

[Patr1ck]

Several staff members of GameSpot are answering questions about Nba Elite 11 after playing a build of the game that they received.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6275489.ht ... Btitle%3B2

[Andrew]

But there are also things that don't make sense--like how a simple layup is still much more difficult to consistently pull off than a three-pointer.

Would you agree with that, Pat? Or is there something he's missing/not explaining very well?

My main issue with defense is that teammate AI can be rather inconsistent. A number of times, teammates near the rim refused to go up for the defensive rebound, letting the ball bounce lazily into the hands of the offense for another shot attempt.

That's been one of my pet peeves for a while now, the CPU's ability to grab two or three offensive rebounds until they finally score because your teammates aren't aggressive enough (as well as the rebounding "warping" in previous games). Switching to a defender near the hoop when the shot goes up might be in the cards.

Lazy passes are frequently picked off, and it's not that easy to drive through the paint unless you're controlling some superstar player--but even then, it's a challenge.

Hopefully that's balanced between the user and CPU. Between sliders and difficulty settings you can usually make it difficult for yourself to get into the paint and force yourself to make smart passes to avoid interceptions, it's the CPU's ability to get into the paint and make impossible passes that tend to be the problem.

Not too much in the way of new info but a couple of snippets there and interesting to hear some more hands-on impressions of the game. Worth a read.

[Patr1ck]

He did say it took him a while to get the controls down since he bounced back to the old scheme for a bit before trying the original controls down. So I think he was just having difficulty scoring in the paint or doing the quarter circle rolling motion to perform the layup. Looking at the developer videos, they didn't have many problems getting in to the lane and performing dunks, so maybe the GameSpot build had better interior help.defense or he needs more time with the game.

You think about it, though. Holding directly up and releasing with no direct contact is going to be easier than rolling the stick up with potential contact. Practice will eventually make it become second nature.

[Andrew]

True. It shouldn't be too easy to score inside anyway so if you have to think about it a little and make use of "stick skills" rather than just hitting a button and sitting back then so much the better; as you said, most people should get it in time and if they really don't want to then the classic control scheme is there.

[Patr1ck]

I wonder why they chose the rolling left or right mechanism. Since pushing straight up on the right stick and pushing towards the basket to perform a dunk is much easier, why not keep the control for dunks, but have them perform a layup if your direction isn't directly at the basket? It kind of goes against the new control scheme, but they could then utilize the rolling left/right control for choosing to perform a wide layup to avoid defenders.

[Andrew]

Maybe it's to allow a little leeway on the dunking controls. Make it too precise and it might be too difficult for some people to pull off a dunk on cue.

[Patr1ck]

That brings up another thing about layups that no game has really implemented. Each layup always has a finishing spot somewhere around the basket and the animation causes the player to warp or snap to that spot. With RTP and the new controls, they should allow players to keep their directional momentum from a gather when performing a layup. I think that would work well with my last post about just pressing up for layups. Imagine holding up for a layup and being able to just roll it to the right or left to change it. Hell, with the inverse kinematics technology they have, they could set the rim as a target and have players auto-dunk by grabbing the rim when they are in range. Resulting in infinite dunking animations.

[Andrew]

That'd be awesome.