by Andrew on Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:19 am
As I said in the other topic, the backlash was inevitable. It's been building up for some time, and certain issues in the past few years have caused the situation to come to a head.
Obviously there is a lot of comfort with 2K because EA hasn't been able to gain any traction with NBA Live, or get it to where it needs to be. There was a time when NBA Live was doing some creative things and was a very viable game for gamers who played the annual sim-oriented releases, but they started to play it safe on the creative front and dropped the ball with bad decisions that led to a lack of quality and of course, games that ended up being cancelled.
2K, on the other hand, kept going from strength to strength. Their games got better and better, reaching new levels of realism. They picked up concepts that NBA Live pioneered and did them better, like franchise mode. They came to PC when EA decided to stop releasing NBA Live on the platform. They did things we never thought we'd see in NBA games due to all the licensing issues, such as the historical teams and modes like NBA's Greatest and The Jordan Challenge. They won over people who grew up with NBA Live, and ran out in front. They had the superior game - and for a few years in this past decade, the ONLY game - which allowed them to bank a lot of goodwill.
And then, they got cocky and blew that goodwill in just a few years.
It's worth noting that gamers are part of the problem and we need to own that. Despite issues that have been present for many years, the game continues to sell well, do great business with "recurrent revenue", and a lot of people will still defend it no matter what. At the same time, if you do want to get a new basketball game each year, what other option do you have? NBA Live isn't where it needs to be, and no one else is throwing their hat in the ring. As Dee noted, there's a certain amount of social pressure to get the new NBA 2K game if you're a 2K gamer, or if you simply want to find people to play with and against online. A majority of the userbase moves on, so it becomes harder to stick with the previous game compared to how it was many years ago. And of course, despite the issues, a lot of people do have fun with NBA 2K to some extent, myself included. I can't begrudge anyone for not following through on a boycott, because it's easier said than done. That being said, it does make it harder to take a stand.
Despite the overall quality and previous satisfaction with NBA 2K, there are some key issues that have come to cause frustration and erode goodwill in the past few years. From a gameplay standpoint, there are a lot of legacy issues, be it in the movement, the AI, quirks such as canned rebounds and cheesy AI interceptions, and so on. With the modes, you've got bugs that break the experience, design choices that are less than ideal (or geared towards microtransactions), and features that are either removed or put behind a gatekeeping measure. Even though the game is now the base for an eSports league, the home version of its competitive scene suffers from a lack of balance and proper matchmaking. Gamers have increasingly been pushed towards buying VC if they want the optimal experience, or else grind until it's no longer fun, grin and bear the inferior experience, or simply give up on the game mode in question.
In other words, there are issues from how the game plays and how the modes work to how gamers are treated and the overall philosophy regarding design and player retention. These issues vary in severity and relevance to certain contingents of the userbase, but they are there and the longer they're a part of the game, the more troublesome they become.
Now, by themselves, a lot of those issues are things that people could forgive. We can accept that these games are made in a brutal development cycle, and that there's only so much that can be done within the space of a year. We can accept that there are limitations, and certain improvements have to wait until the tech is there to achieve them. We can accept that it's impossible to make a game that is completely bug-free. We can even accept that microtransactions have become a thing, at least if there are ways to enjoy the game without spending money if you're willing to put in the time and be savvy with the in-game currency that you earn.
What's harder to accept is when all these issues come together and continue to be compounded. Most gamers are reasonable enough to forgive an issue or two, especially if they're otherwise enjoying the game, but it all adds up, and it has been for a few years now. 2K has really pushed their luck with VC; it's gone from a subtle nod to a gentle nudge to a firm hand planted in the small of your back, pushing you towards spending more money on the game. Some of the legacy issues in the gameplay have been there for too long. The online scene has cultivated a toxic atmosphere and a style that is at odds with the sim nature of the series. The gatekeeping has gotten worse, promoting a sense of elitism. There have been more problems than solutions, and it's getting harder to avoid them by sticking to a particular mode. Even if you can avoid the situation - say, by playing MyLEAGUE and never having to deal with VC - a lot of people are nevertheless disgusted by the practices.
It also doesn't help that one of the things that 2K has always done poorly is communication. They don't like to deliver bad news, and so find a way to tap dance around it during the preview season instead of being transparent about it. That way, not only are people disappointed, they also feel deceived. A lot of the error messages in NBA 2K are strangely passive-aggressive, too. The infamous connection error is worded in a way that blames the user's connection, even when the problem is clearly at 2K's end. When there's a problem with the game accessing your MyPLAYER face scan data, the error message condescendingly instructs you to try again and "pay close attention to the instructions"; even when you've clearly done that and had a scan appear to complete successfully, only for something to go wrong at 2K's end (also, there are no further instructions in the companion app, nor clarifying details on how you supposedly messed up the scan). They don't communicate well at all.
That of course brings us to Ronnie 2K, who technically isn't a community manager by title, but fills a similar role. It's truly astonishing that he's still in that position, because he does an incredibly poor job of it. Oh, he hypes the game up fine, but he also displays disdain for the community. He's the guy who told someone asking about new hairstyles that NBA 2K is "more than a Barbie dress-up game"...24 hours before a new blog dropped, hyping up all the shoes that you could buy for your player (to say nothing of all the other clothes you can dress your player up in). He's the one taking immature and unprofessional potshots at NBA Live. He's the one acting like he's responsible for 2K's success, then throwing the actual developers and programmers (who do work incredibly hard) under the bus when there are complaints.
On top of everything else, he's the one giving out misinformation. During the preview season for NBA 2K20, he hit back at people who noted that The Neighborhood looked the same by saying that what they saw wasn't The Neighborhood in NBA 2K20. In fact, it was. He talked about how it would be possible to re-spec players and swap Badges in and out, and not have to waste VC on a build you don't like. None of that is the case. A couple of years ago on 2KTV, he talked about how Locker Codes would no longer be limited quantity, but timed so everyone had a chance to use them. That WOULD become the case in NBA 2K19, but it wasn't when he originally promised it. At best, he's given out information without understanding the situation and not bothering to check first. At worst, he's straight up lied about things.
It also didn't help when Mike Wang (Beluba) was asked about the re-spec issue, and said that wasn't the case and that he didn't know where it came from. Considering that it came from one of the prominent faces of NBA 2K - Ronnie - that statement doesn't look good. It looks like he's either trying to cover up the situation, or in the best case scenario, there's a huge breakdown in communication between the development team and Ronnie, the guy who's putting out information about the game. Neither scenario inspires trust or confidence in 2K, because either one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, or both are complicit in some deception. That does absolutely nothing for goodwill, and again, it all comes down to terrible communication. On a related note, 2K Support is pretty lousy too, and unfortunately they're often the only ones who can fix a problem with accounts, VC, and so forth.
Even the developer blogs during the preview season have revealed some shady deception in recent years. Things that were described as wonderful and intentional design choices one year are revealed to have been band-aid fixes and the results of technical problems in blogs for the next game. The previous game is thrown under the bus, leaving us to wonder what we can actually trust from the developer blogs. There's taking pre-release hype with a grain of salt, and then there's outright deception. Hype videos where popular YouTubers are shown pulling amazing cards in MyTEAM at community events and so forth are also rather on the nose. Rob Jones once defended VC by saying that multiple currencies would get confusing, only for the game to add a third currency to MyTEAM. They've gone back on their word, time and time again.
The bottom line is that gamers are fed up, and no longer willing to give 2K the benefit of the doubt. They've gone from the developer who saved the genre and took it to new heights when EA dropped the ball to the company that treats basketball gamers like ATMs. They were the team you could trust, the anti-EA. Now, they've done things that are - in terms of goodwill - worse than anything EA has ever done with NBA Live, which doesn't make a great deal of use of microtransactions. They've reached a point where it's hard to cater to offline and online players without doing so at the expense of the other. The combination of all the issues has just frustrated so many gamers year after year for a while now, and as they've pushed their luck, their audience is starting to push back.
It's unfortunate, because NBA 2K20 has some great features and ideas. I think the gameplay does need some tweaking, but certainly not in the way a lot of Park players want. There are solid concepts there, even if the execution needs some work. They made the Auction House easier to unlock in MyTEAM, and added nifty features like Evolution cards and daily login bonuses. Upgrades in MyCAREER are cheaper this year, and the Badge grind has been simplified. You have little things like a ball machine in MyCOURT's shootaround this year, and you don't even need to level up to unlock it. There's new retro content. There's good stuff, and it should be pointed out. It's certainly not all bad, and I've had some enjoyable games so far. I'm burned out on MyCAREER and the connected modes, but there's other stuff to enjoy.
To that end, some of the negativity and the review bombing is an overreaction, or at the very least, not the way to approach the problems. Like I said though, it all adds up and the game does have its problems, from a lack of customisation in MyGM to the same old primitive matchmaking in The Playground and 2K Pro-Am, to game-breaking and immersion-breaking bugs and features like Triple Threat offline not working properly at launch. Again, gamers are getting fed up dealing with familiar problems and new problems alike. It's all come to a head.
I think things will settle down a bit and there will be some more positive reviews that bring the score up, but I also think that 2K is going to have to work for that a bit. Technical issues need to be resolved as soon as they possibly can. Consensus about gameplay problems needs to be reached, and any tweaks in that regard need to be handled carefully. They need to improve their communication and transparency. They need to accept that they've pushed their luck and messed up in recent years, and start rebuilding that goodwill. Even if they can't give us a full breakdown of everything that's going on, they need to at least acknowledge the situation and refrain from misinformation. To be blunt, they need a better community manager/digital marketer/liaison to deal with everyone and be the face of the brand. Preferably someone who isn't more about rubbing shoulders with celebrities and building their own brand, such as it is.
Are the Metacritic scores and negative reviews entirely fair across the board? Admittedly not. However, with the way things were going, it was bound to come to this eventually. Yes, we need to be constructive in our feedback (and it's important that 2K listens to the right voices here), but this is a fed up community hitting back in one of the most effective ways they know how. As I said, it's hard to stick to a boycott when the alternative isn't up to par yet, and especially so in the years when they're literally the only game in town. When an anticipated game doesn't live up to the hype, when a company has blown through all of the goodwill that it's cultivated in years gone by, the backlash is going to be harsh. One might argue with the way some people defend 2K no matter what, the backlash has to go above and beyond so that 2K can't sit back, point at the positive reactions, and call everyone else a hater. Is it the best way of speaking out? Admittedly not. Is it effective? Well, we'll see.
I hope that something positive can come from this. I hope that people can put their money where their mouth is as far as buying the game and spending money on VC, because actions will speak louder than angry Tweets and review bombing. I hope we can get some swift resolutions to the problems in NBA 2K20, and that we can enjoy the positive aspects of the game. I hope that we can be treated more fairly by 2K, and that if we are, then we can reciprocate by giving them a fair go as well. Right now though, a lot of people are fed up by the combination of problems, and even if I don't agree with the methods or necessarily all of the specific criticisms, I understand where they're coming from.
The backlash was coming, and it's been even harsher than expected, but it's understandable. It'll be interesting to see where we go from here.
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