2K, this is what needs to be improved

[centrifugal]

I'm going to post some suggestions here, hopefully some of the 2K team will read this. All suggestions are meant as constructive criticism. I'm a true fan of the game, I consider it to be the best sports series in gaming since I've started playing it (2k9). I'd love to see some of the following changes either in an upcoming patch or 2k16.

Graphics
1. The game needs better floor textures. We had floor mods in 2k14 that outshine 2k15 in every possible way.
2. Some faces need a lot of work. Splitter, Nowitzki and Teague for instance.
3. Court lighting. Some courts are too dark (Spurs for instance).
4. Plastic feel of the player's skin. It seems sometimes that all players have had a plastic operation or that they're wearing make-up. They can look sweaty, but not to the point that they look as if they've taken a bath in an oil pool.
5. Players should lose this always-angry expression... They're basketball players, they're not mma athletes nor soldiers. I've noticed this today, as I was watching Tony Parker in-game. Real life Tony Parker is an individual who looks rather happy when he plays basketball, throwing a smile once in a while. In-game Tony Parker looks more like a psychologically disturbed individual ready to explode in a burst of anger any moment now.
6. The cheerleaders look nice, but it'd be nicer if they weren't the exact same cheer-leaders in all courts, this ruins immersion.
7. Fix the basketball net. Now it looks like it's made of paper. You need better net textures.
8. Please add a rear-view or over-the-shoulder camera during free-throws. It would look fantastic if for instance you played an away game and the game's quite even, time is running out, you're shooting free throws and the whole crowd is booing you and try to make you lose concentration behind the backboard by waving their hands, rubber sticks etc.
9. Fix the uniform textures, we saw better textures by modders in 2k14 than your current textures in 2k15.
10. Fix the hands going through uniforms. the rim and other surfaces bug.
11. Keep the haze, but tone it down considerably. It looks like everyone is smoking in the arena at the moment.
12. Increase floor reflections, but only a tad, don't make it like 2k14 NG. A middle ground between 2k14 and 2k15 would be the best way to go.
13. Either reduce the players' size or increase the floor's size a little bit so that there's more space on the floor.


Gameplay and controls
1. Make the controls more responsive, the players feel unresponsive at times
2. Streamline the controls. This is a basketball game not a flight simulator. Now you need 4 different keys / buttons / directional axis for movement, 4 different for isomotion, 5 for pass/shoot/pivot/sprint, 1 for the playcalling board, 1 for swapping pages while playcalling, 4 more for choosing a play. You need to reinvent the controls and the way the game is played in order to be able to do complicated actions with a simplified interface. Right now it's very messy.
3. Trapping seems to be very weakened in 2k15. It's almost impossible to trap someone, especially during full court defense. If there were problems with people playing online trapping, you shouldn't remove a defensive weapon, you should instead give means to the offense to beat the trap.
4. Players take too long to set up their initial positions once a play is called.
5. Fix the way the CPU handles mismatches. It's good that you hire / listen to some of the fans of the game but it'd be nice if you also brought in an actual basketball coach to give you a tip or two.
6. Restore 1-3-1 zone, and in general fix the zone defense. I read in a thread that the excuse to remove it was that NBA teams don't use it as much and that people in online used it too much. a) If you don't want to have it because NBA teams don't use it, let me remind you that you also feature Euroleague teams now and b) if you don't want online players to use it then remove it from an option only during online games.
7. Improve post defense, give the defense weapons during the post, instead of just waiting for the offense to take action, defense should be able to use a trick or two to either force the offense one way, or not let them come close to the basket.
8. Make players choose lanes in a more organized manner during fast breaks.


Audio
1. Get new commentators / presenters. I think everyone agrees that by now Steve Kerr and company have run their cycle. We need new, more exciting voices to add to the whole atmosphere of the game.
2. Stop with the marketing gimmick of hiring popular hip hop artists to choose the game's music. I think the general concensous is that the soundtracks used to be better in 2k11, 2k10, 2k9 etc.
3. If you don't want to do 2, at least give us the choice to add our own songs to the soundtrack.
4. Record better crowd audio. This is just awkward noise at the moment.


Presentation
1. After the game is done, don't just feature a player of the game video. When a game is done, I want to see highlights of the whole game, I want to see what players from both teams did well. Basketball is a team game. In 2k14 I could go to boxscore and see highlights for individual players, but in 2k15, for some reason, you decided to remove background music in the after-game menu, so the highlights without music kind of suck. So it'd be nice to add highlights of the whole game, and during half time as well.
2. Remove the black and white effect from videos, this is basketball, basketball is colorful, it's not an artistic niche movie.
3. The Shaq and other guy before the game is a nice feature, but, the camera is too static (it could use some close-ups while they're talking) and the background looks cheap and cheezy. So keep the idea and improve on it, I'd love it we had a game review as well after the game...this could also blend with suggestion number 1, and we could watch game highlights and listen to them talk.
4. The menus are much better this year, but choosing uniforms is cumbersome. The 3d image of the uniform looks out of place with the 2D backdrop, it'd be best if while you rotate through uniforms the actual 2D photo of the team's player changed to another photo with the corresponding uniform.


Miscelaneous
1. Include the Euroleague league mode. It's nice to have Euroleague teams, but without an actual league it's more of a marketing gimmick than an actual inclusion.
2. Release mod tools. I know it. Leftos knows it. Jaosming knows it. Lebron James knows it. 2k knows it. The whole world knows it. We're going to mod this game. One way or another. You might as well win some points among the fans and make it easier for everyone. You'll build some support within the community.
3. Fix the game so that programs like RadeonPro and Sweetfx can be applied.
4. Fix the stuttering issues. They were present in 2k14, now we have it in 2k15 as well. Get rid of it.
5. Drop the "gangsta" attitude. It was worse in 2k13 and 2k14, it's better now in 2k15 but there's still some bad-boy vibe that just feels out of place (players looking sour all the time, myplayer character sounding like he's from the "hood".


That's it. The more I play 2k15, there's a chance I'll be coming back to this thread to add more suggestions. But for now these fictional modifications would make a hell of 2k16 (or a hell of a patch) for me.

[fjccommish]

Improve the announcing. The stories and little personal extras are nice the first time. But they become tedious, and they're often applied to the wrong situations.

- Talking about losing the last game because of late game FT shooting, when in fact the last game was a 20+ point blowout loss with the lead 20+ throughout the 4th Q, is misplaced. It doesn't fit.

- "So and so has been converting almost all his chances" followed by "So and so misses ANOTHER shot"

Give choices in MyCareer for different personality Myplayers. Not everyone wants to be an over-emotional guy who speaks in hip hop - "I got dis", "Dats who I am".

Improve MyCareer grading and GM decisions. If a player averages a point and a rebound per minute on the floor, why is the GM ditching the player? Why is a coach yelling at a player after he scored 5 points and had 5 rebounds in his 3 minutes of late 2nd quarter play, and after he stole the ball and fed a SG for a fast break basket?

Expand MyCareer to include story lines based on what the player is doing. Right now, no matter the player performance, it seems that the same story line proceeds in MyPlayer.

[centrifugal]

Ok I didn't notice this until now, and I'd like to believe that I'm just not seeing this feature. Where are the NBA Rules in options? 2K can't seriously have removed this option. Really I'd like to hear the lame excuse behind a decision like this.

So we're going to play 6 min quarters and players will only be ejected when they commit 6 fouls!?!?!?!?!?!!! Really? So everyone can just foul away without any restraint.

I can't possibly fathom the following: 2K decided to

1. Remove NBA Rules option
2. Remove 1-3-1 zone.
3. Remove full court traps - because it's almost impossible to apply them at the moment.
4. Remove floor reflections and darken the courts
5. Make the interface more difficult

Seriously, I'm liking this game less and less as I play more, that's not a good sign, it reeks of dumbing down to be honest. Please somebody tell me that it is possible to decrease the amount of fouls a player has to commit in order to be ejected. It's hard to believe that 2k makes the interface more complicated every year while at the same time we can do less and less with it.

[deihatein]

2. Remove 1-3-1 zone.

From what I've heard, they removed this one because it is rarely being used in the NBA and by the players.

[TBM]

Some of this stuff, like the cheerleader thing, is incredibly nitpicky, and borderline silly. Other things are pointless to mention, like the commentator thing, because obviously 2K16 will not have Kerr. That's all but confirmed. And then you ask for impossible stuff like completely removing clipping from the game.

As far as 1-3-1 zone, lolno.

[centrifugal]

2. Remove 1-3-1 zone.

From what I've heard, they removed this one because it is rarely being used in the NBA and by the players.

But they do include Euroleague teams and 1-3-1 is quite popular here in Europe where there is no 3-seconds in the key for defense rule. So why remove it anyway? What did 2K gain by removing it? What did the players who didn't use 1-3-1 gain by its removal? The answer is nothing.

But that's not a game-breaking issue...@TBM nor are the cheerleaders.

But not being able to set the amount of fouls needed for a player to be ejected is a game breaker. Trying to attack the other team with a player that is guarded by the other team's superstar in order to make him commit foul and get the other team's star out of the game is a strategy used by coaches all around the world. 6 fouls in a game with 6-min quarters is just insanse, it's like a player being able to commit 12 fouls before being ejected in a normal 12-min quarter game.

I'm sorry, but after 3 days with this game my impression is that this game is being considerably dumbed down for the console audience. It seems 2K is focused more on the idiotic Myplayer mode that is probably teaching young athletes around the world how to be a prick - I'm a basketball coach working in a basketball academy...seriously if one of my young players talked to me even remotely like the myplayer character does, he wouldn't be touching a ball for at least a week.

Playing defense this year is one-dimensional really. Just play half court man to man throughout the whole game. And trying to block is really lowered way too much (obviously because some from the community complained last year that it was too easy to block a shot - what did 2k do? Make it almost impossible to block a shot, even though you might jump at the same time with a taller player than the one shooting. The sad thing is that in order to implement that, 2k made the players jump strange ways, sometimes in directions opposite to the ball.

2K15 is a big step back in basketball video games compared to 2k14 in my opinion. The only thing that's improved is the graphics compared to the PC version of last year, and that's comparing only the vanilla versions. Anyway, I won't bother you any further with my opinion. I think the game is broken at this point. Some of you think the game is excellent. I'm glad for you and I hope you continue enjoying it, but unless either 2K or modders fix this, I'll stick to 2k14 for now.

[Evo]

this is an NBA game not an Euroleague game so whatever rules and tactics they have or use has nothing to do with our league and besides the 1-3-1 zone in 2K was completely broken and was being abused by players

[meaks]

Yawn

[centrifugal]

Yawn

Congratulations. You're the new target audience of gaming companies. The kind of individual who would post such well-written elaborate arguments.

[mortiis]

i also miss a lot this option to set number of fouls for ejection...
cuz im always playing on 9minutes quarter i like it when its 5 fouls and not 6...

[heyyou]

ellos van a vender igual,asi porque esforzarse tanto? ahahahah

siempre es el mismo juego

[bigh0rt]

ellos van a vender igual,asi porque esforzarse tanto? ahahahah

siempre es el mismo juego

English only, please.