Info from Chris Smoove & Ronnie stream

[ThePointForward]

This time I went through recent topics and didn't find it, so hopefully no blunder today

MyCareer

• Career starts in China and it's replacement for HS/College - lots of minutes on easy difficulty
• They weren't in starting lineup in their first game in China
• Apparently they played 7-8 hours and didn't get out of Prelude yet, so skipping for second char is essential
• "Quite a few games in China"
• Voice actors and announcers speak Mandarin
• MyPlayer is nicknamed A.I.

MyPlayer (creation/upgrading)

• Archetypes have "new ratings", whatever it means
• Buying VC can get you to 85 OVR, takes roughly 190K VC, so the better edition is essentially full upgrade start
• Player creation still doesn't show specific numbers for cap change on weight/height/... But apparently Ronnie himself found that nonsensical and this is subject to change.
• Archetypes info to be released in some form later.
• Player Progress is more closely monitored.
• Pure Playmaker PG has 7 (+-) HoF badges, low shooting and max speed. They didn't see another HoF Ankle Breaker badge on other PG archetype combos.
• Defensive second archetype is better than last year, doesn't reduce offensive skills as much.

Park

• Trailer coming, Smoove said "lots of people will be surprised about it".
• Date unclear, should be this week.
• Apparently the Park is physically big.

Pro-Am

• Ronnie will be on 2K League broadcast between Games 1 and 2 with news on Pro-Am.

Neighbourhood

• They apparently hinted on walking being reduced or having faster ways to travel around. (just give me a menu please)
• You can change clothes anywhere without going back to your court.
• "Lots of new clothes" - so much for NBA 2K not being a Barbie dress-up right?

Prelude

• You might be able to buy VC in The Prelude (well... at least we might see how big the grind is)
• The Prelude "could" have Quick Games but they "don't remember". (C'mon... That's one thing you really should add to the demo, 2-3 teams and quick games)

Gameplay

• Takeover mode is "incredible" and "very fun".
• Takeover lasts for a while, but half-time disrupts it.
• Takeover mode is manually triggered once you fill up the meter - but you can lose hotness (?) from bad plays and end of quarters.
• Rookie Difficulty in MyCareer - "can't answer that".
• Hard to make defenders fall over/lean in. Managed to do it in takeover mode with 86 Ball Handling.
• More ways to earn VC
  
  • Info with Park trailer next week (direct quote, was 3 days ago, so this week).
  • Daily ways to earn VC.
  • They want to "reward fans early".
  • They call last year Neighbourhood a "learning experience".
• Smoove: "There are goals that you can do ingame that give you a lot of VC"
• Smoove: "There IS a VC multiplier for difficulty in MyCareer"
• "The VC that you earn is still determined by your salary and other factors, there is no set number per game"

Others

• Smoove will be making videos about stuff he saw as he can say them before launch (so some kind of timed NDA, also take things with grain of salt since he's clearly working with 2K)
• Momentous trailer coming, will be last trailer before launch
• "Roughly" 3 trailers to go - includes mentioned Park and Momentous trailers.
• Ronnie got F from Combinatorics.

[sticky-fingers]

Except take over, the gameplay part is pretty empty

[ThePointForward]

Yep, though they market the takeover mode as big thing this year, so understandable.

Kinda sad we now include getting VC as gameplay though.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the recap, nicely done.

Taken at face value, there's some more promising information there. Multipliers for difficulty and fairer VC rewards, quicker ways of navigating The Neighborhood, changing clothes on the fly...I mean, it all remains to be seen, but if that's the case then it sounds like they have taken some feedback on board. The jury is still out on the Takeover system, hopefully it isn't overpowering.

It does sound like skipping The Prelude will be a must if you want to start over or create a second player. I'd advocate for the ability to skip it entirely, but at least there's a compromise there. If it takes 190,000 VC to get to 85, then the progression system may not be a whole lot better this year. I think the XP system is arguably the better issue there. It felt like more of a grind to get the cap breakers than it did to earn VC after a while. I also hope that Archetypes are addressed in terms of less broken and OP builds, and builds that lock you out of getting trophies/achievements, such as certain builds last year not having any Hall of Fame level Badges.

[sticky-fingers]

Takeover is not really a new thing. Players were hot or cold. They just add an animation and tweak the boost.
BTW "incredible" and "very fun" sound crap in my hears, it's pure marketing.

[ThePointForward]

Credit goes to Reddit, I just did some extra filtering.

The 190.000 VC to get to 85 OVR is more or less in line with 2K18 IIRC. Depends on how rewarding those "extra ways" will be. One thing I am worried is that they will be tied to The Park somehow since they are to be announced in trailer for The Park.

I for one didn't have issues with cap breakers in 2K18 because by the time I grinded to 75 I had caps unlocked to 90.

The attribute caps on creation screen were apparently added into the game on Friday after Smoove played the game. Sounds like detailed page which is definitely good.
BUT - it will not be in the Prelude demo.

Takeover is not really a new thing. Players were hot or cold. They just add an animation and tweak the boost.
BTW "incredible" and "very fun" sound crap in my hears, it's pure marketing.

Hence why I put them in quotes and said that "they market the takeover mode as big thing this year".
That said the manual trigger is new.

[Andrew]

I for one didn't have issues with cap breakers in 2K18 because by the time I grinded to 75 I had caps unlocked to 90.

Interesting. I did actually pay for some immediate boosts (because the NLSC squad dived right into Pro-Am and we wanted to have a chance of being competitive), so that might have contributed to the cap breakers feeling more like a grind, seeing as how I was already at a higher overall. That's actually not a terrible way of balancing things out with microtransactions, though it still felt like it slowed down a bit too quickly on the Road to 99.

Arguably, the bigger problem was the way that the next upgrade for specific ratings were unlocked with each cap breaker. I preferred NBA 2K17's approach of unlocking new upgrades past 88 Overall, and being able to decide which category (or "bucket", as I believe they once called it) you wanted to use it on. If nothing else, I feel that NBA 2K18's system would've been better if at each cap breaker, you were given the opportunity to upgrade a couple of ratings of your choosing, rather than the ones that were unlocked at set intervals. Too many times, it unlocked an upgrade for ratings that weren't that relevant to my style of play or the primary strengths of my Archetype, which made the grind feel even worse.

[ThePointForward]

Yeah, I got 5000 VC from standard edition. That was it for me.

The random unlocks were kinda bugging me too though as I did want to unlock for example mid-range and 3pt cap breaks early (slasher-defender arch SF) to add extra dimension to my game. I was stuck with very low ratings in both for a while.

[Andrew]

I believe it's vital for the RPG aspect of MyPLAYERs and MyCAREER to have a choice of upgrading any attribute with a cap breaker (or equivalent mechanic). You've still got to budget your VC and choose wisely according to your build and style of play, but you're not restricted to an upgrade path set for you by the game. If you want to max out a rating early at the expense of other ratings, you should be able to do so.

[[Q]]

China, huh? That sounds interesting and an easy way around the college licensing. I'd be interested to watch someone play through that to see what it's like.

[Andrew]

Sounds like it'll be easy to put up some big numbers.