Official NBA 2K18 Impressions Topic

[EMan]

Steam (also some PC gamers in general) can be super critical, even when it's unwarranted.

1. Hair (and facial hair) are RENTED in this game. You pay to unlock a haircut, equip it, and it immediately re-locks so if you want to change it in any way you gotta buy it again. (All of the facial hair/beards look like pubes right now, probably will get patched eventually.)
2. Connection issues abound. This will eventually get better once enough players get bored of this game and move on.
3. MyPlayer archetypes require certain very specific attribute/skill ratings to unlock moves, shots, dribbles, etc... The problem? You cannot see any of your ratings at all so you have to blindly spend points. Height plays a factor too, moreso than previous editions. You make your character one inch too tall or too short and you've locked yourself out of certain skills needed for certain archetypes.
4. More of the usual, VC randomly vanishes, MyPlayer randomly vanishes, etc...
5. Playing on higher difficulties doesn't get as much VC as it used to. You could win an NBA championship on the highest difficulty and only make enough VC to change your hair once or twice.
6. Face sculpting was locked out of creation everywhere except MyLeague rookies.
7. No previewing of hair, clothes, animations, etc... on your character before you equip them. You don't like something you added? You have to pay VC to change it to something else.
8. (This one is an opinion) I'm not enjoying the MyCareer story so far. Pretty cheesy and the cutscenes are all unskippable, even if you've seen them already.

My list could go on, but it seems to me that there are more than a few legitimate gripes here. It's silly to think that just because a game gets 'Mostly' or 'Overwhelmingly' negative on Steam that that is a direct result of "ungrateful people who expect perfection". The reality is that the game itself has some serious flaws and without people pointing them out on Steam reviews, other people will get burned when they spend their money on that particular game and end up hating it. There is no such thing as perfection and nobody in their right mind should ever expect it, but is it asking too much that when we pay $60 (or more) for a game that it NOT continually rape our wallets afterwards just because the publisher feels like all those pre-orders weren't enough money?

Take Two clearly based this years game entirely around VC and game play was a fleeting afterthought. Yes, some of the bugs will eventually get fixed, but a lot of these bugs are bugs we've seen before NUMEROUS times. The negative feedback on this game is not about expecting perfection, it's people wanting a stable game with decent game play that they can take offline or online whenever they want to and be able to play with friends or random people (and in most cases, be competitive). That is what this game should be about, NOT the microtransactions that the Take Two higher ups froth at the mouth over daily and nightly.

If anyone here thinks there won't be really annoying microtransactions in Red Dead Redemption 2 (and every Take Two/2K title from now on), you're kidding yourselves.

[maumau78]

Anybody else feel like the passing is delayed?

Me

also I don't feel like I have eought "weight" on my players......for me 2k17 (release day .exe) feels much better.....
...but I've spend like 1h with the game so I need to play more...

[Andrew]

Steam (also some PC gamers in general) can be super critical, even when it's unwarranted.

1. Hair (and facial hair) are RENTED in this game. You pay to unlock a haircut, equip it, and it immediately re-locks so if you want to change it in any way you gotta buy it again. (All of the facial hair/beards look like pubes right now, probably will get patched eventually.)
2. Connection issues abound. This will eventually get better once enough players get bored of this game and move on.
3. MyPlayer archetypes require certain very specific attribute/skill ratings to unlock moves, shots, dribbles, etc... The problem? You cannot see any of your ratings at all so you have to blindly spend points. Height plays a factor too, moreso than previous editions. You make your character one inch too tall or too short and you've locked yourself out of certain skills needed for certain archetypes.
4. More of the usual, VC randomly vanishes, MyPlayer randomly vanishes, etc...
5. Playing on higher difficulties doesn't get as much VC as it used to. You could win an NBA championship on the highest difficulty and only make enough VC to change your hair once or twice.
6. Face sculpting was locked out of creation everywhere except MyLeague rookies.
7. No previewing of hair, clothes, animations, etc... on your character before you equip them. You don't like something you added? You have to pay VC to change it to something else.
8. (This one is an opinion) I'm not enjoying the MyCareer story so far. Pretty cheesy and the cutscenes are all unskippable, even if you've seen them already.

My list could go on, but it seems to me that there are more than a few legitimate gripes here. It's silly to think that just because a game gets 'Mostly' or 'Overwhelmingly' negative on Steam that that is a direct result of "ungrateful people who expect perfection". The reality is that the game itself has some serious flaws and without people pointing them out on Steam reviews, other people will get burned when they spend their money on that particular game and end up hating it. There is no such thing as perfection and nobody in their right mind should ever expect it, but is it asking too much that when we pay $60 (or more) for a game that it NOT continually rape our wallets afterwards just because the publisher feels like all those pre-orders weren't enough money?

Take Two clearly based this years game entirely around VC and game play was a fleeting afterthought. Yes, some of the bugs will eventually get fixed, but a lot of these bugs are bugs we've seen before NUMEROUS times. The negative feedback on this game is not about expecting perfection, it's people wanting a stable game with decent game play that they can take offline or online whenever they want to and be able to play with friends or random people (and in most cases, be competitive). That is what this game should be about, NOT the microtransactions that the Take Two higher ups froth at the mouth over daily and nightly.

If anyone here thinks there won't be really annoying microtransactions in Red Dead Redemption 2 (and every Take Two/2K title from now on), you're kidding yourselves.

There are definitely legitimate gripes, and you've outlined them very well there. I absolutely agree that they've gone overboard with VC and it's pretty disgusting. However, a lot of user reviews on Steam could stand to be more detailed, and actually point out the issues as you've done.

[sticky-fingers]

At this point, i must admit i appreciate this release
the few games i did were pretty good.
Gameplay is an evolution of 2K17, in better way. Rebounds, passing, first step, lot of improvments.

As I dont care about mode using VC, i don't have to complain (yet ?).

[Dwell On]

One Name: Jonathon Simmons

Since 3 years, 2k is not able to scan Simmons face and body. He looks like the worst rookie the CPU do create before a season.

[ThePointForward]

All right, let's see.

Gameplay has definitely improved. You can now get by defender if you're fast enough. You can also fail miserably. What also seems to be improved is ball security - I do not see all those randomly lost balls due to a weird contact.
That said, players still can't catch the bloody ball. It's the first thing people are taught - how to hold and catch the ball.
Fouls aren't being called too well. Had a sequence where I've got no call on three shot attempts even though defenders' arms clearly clipped through the shooter's arms.
Some of the legacy issues persist as well.
And for all of you yelling "2K cheats" I just managed to one up all of you. Close game against Wizards, Wall gets a good screen, gets the ball from inbound, pulls up an scores a 3pt shot. The problem is that he was about a meter and half inside the 3pt line. He wasn't anywhere near. In the end it didn't change the result, but what the hell? That literally is cheating.
Oh and commentators are still high. I've had sequence where they announced that some player will shoot free throw after a fould on 3pt made shot. There was no foul. The game just continued.
Other than that they generally have issues with screens. They say on many occasions that the shooter got freed up by a screen even though the screen was on the other side and didn't work one bit. But those are legacy issues.

Presentation - They made some stuff faster (I no longer see those long waiting times before inbounding waiting for nothing). There are still many unskippable or have to wait 10 seconds to skip scenes.

Speaking of waiting, I counted it and because of immersion during MyCareer free throw drill I had to wait 21 seconds between two shots. The only two balls bounced off the rim (good releases BTW, it's a game of chance, but a "good" release was triggering "too short" animation while "slightly early" went in most of the time) and fucked off somewhere and the assistants just went after them. And I started counting and it really took them 21 seconds to get me a ball. That is unacceptable in a real practice, let alone a game.

CaP - I never got any satisfactory results with face scanning, so I'm happy with the CaP system. I can finally look like a human. They removed the sculpting but it seems the choices for stuff like eyes, brow, nose, ears, etc are bunch of presets for various sculpting configurations. I know this might seem like an unpopular opinion, but I consider this a major improvement.

MyGM - meh. Story cutscenes look like a cheap flash game where you get text and repeating animation. Other than that I haven't got far enough in the story yet to have any impressions.

MyLeague - I tried to create league with fantasy draft with all the teams (current, historic and all-time). It's buggy. Players are missing, seems somewhat random. Maybe player pool is too big for the game to handle.

MyCareer - what in the bloody hell.
The "open world" aspect is the overstatement of the decade. I understand, it's a buzzword, but that is not an open world game.
The story is absolutely terrible. I'll ignore the "streetballer to NBA in three matches", because that is not even remotely the worst thing about it. Honestly, I think that Ronnie2K played major part in writing the story.
Just the characters. Last year we had pro actor, Michael B. Jordan. And while some of the conversations were kinda weird, he played the role well and was really a professional. This year we got that asian girl (using race as an identifier because I can't honestly remember the name). It's terrible. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. If it's supposed to be a joke on stereotypes it's even worse. Tropic Thunder did it right when they were making fun of Hollywood "whitewashing" by casting Robert Downey Jr. and making him black. NBA 2K18 doesn't do it remotely right.
Then we get the "vet" Wells. I don't know about your games, but in mine he's a ball hog and passing him the ball is just another button to shoot (without the bad shot selection consequences). Again, is that supposed to be a joke on stereotypes? Because to me he seems absolutely unstable.
And supporting characters - the head of security "Boo Boo". Who the hell came up with that? Not only that, but in the beginning he treats you like trash. Your starting contract is over $1M. Who in their right mind gives attitude to a pro athlete from a position of support staff?

Now there are plenty of bad design choices... Actually too many of them for it to be coincidence, so I'll call them what they really are: anti-consumer design choices.
We can't see our attribute caps when creating a character and we can't see the improvements when buying the bloody upgrades. That way I found out that after spending 1K of VC on some speed upgrade, I improved my speed by exactly 0.
Huge amount of product placement. Honestly this is over the top, they are now advertising headphones. Crappy headphones at that. Is 2K getting extra money out of this? Damn, even Netflix has a warning for product placement.
Now the kicker - the amount of VC you have seems to be well hidden. It's not shown anymore on top of the screen, it's only on specific screens. In MyGM the only way I could find out how much I have is by going to the menu that allows you to buy next level. In MyCareer it's slightly faster to get to know how much you have, but still kinda hidden.
And there are reports that difficulty multipliers might be gone and that not all VC gained is actually saved resulting in a loss for no reason. The agent giving you the option to donate the VC from promo deal to charity is just an insult at this point.

[Dee4Three]

Anybody else feel like the passing is delayed?

Me

also I don't feel like I have eought "weight" on my players......for me 2k17 (release day .exe) feels much better.....
...but I've spend like 1h with the game so I need to play more...

This.

I am enjoying 2K17 release day .exe much more, because it feels more like real basketball and the players feel right. In NBA 2K18, players feel like they are skating, and everybody moves around the court like guards speed wise. Seeing Lenny Wilkins fire off quick dribble moves like he is Allen Iverson looks so odd...

Using Sprewell and Ray Allen feels exactly the same outside of shooting form. They move around the court at the same speed, they dribble the same, etc. Things feel out of control and unrealistic.

2K17 gameplay pre patches is a better experience. For the reasons above, 2K18 feels like it has a arcade nature to it that disregards most of what a player is really like. Using Westbrook on 2K17 is an advantage because you know you can utilize his speed and quickness, it is elite compared to others... in 2K18 he feels like just another player, everybody is blending in.

While sometimes the dribbling feels good, it's so fast sometimes it looks straight up silly. Some of the new size ups are literally impossible in real life.

Put those things together with the game being so dark, and not alive, I'm actually pretty dissapointed in 2K18.

[Dee4Three]

Oh, and I saw some people say it feels impossible to get by the CPU... not trying to be a jerk, but you have to be kidding me...

I literally feel like I can blow by the CPU on HOF on every single posession, it's really easy in this game. Using regular teams, classic teams, doesn't matter. Getting a first step has never been easier (even easier than 2K13). The team defense has improved, but the individual one on one defense is not good this year.

[Andrew]

My initial impressions are that NBA gameplay - and I'm including MyTEAM here as well - feels great. Gameplay in MyCAREER and the connected experiences on the other hand feels clunky and awkward, and is plagued by design choices that are very questionable to say the least.

Speaking of waiting, I counted it and because of immersion during MyCareer free throw drill I had to wait 21 seconds between two shots. The only two balls bounced off the rim (good releases BTW, it's a game of chance, but a "good" release was triggering "too short" animation while "slightly early" went in most of the time) and fucked off somewhere and the assistants just went after them. And I started counting and it really took them 21 seconds to get me a ball. That is unacceptable in a real practice, let alone a game.

MyCareer - what in the bloody hell.
The "open world" aspect is the overstatement of the decade. I understand, it's a buzzword, but that is not an open world game.
The story is absolutely terrible. I'll ignore the "streetballer to NBA in three matches", because that is not even remotely the worst thing about it. Honestly, I think that Ronnie2K played major part in writing the story.
Just the characters. Last year we had pro actor, Michael B. Jordan. And while some of the conversations were kinda weird, he played the role well and was really a professional. This year we got that asian girl (using race as an identifier because I can't honestly remember the name). It's terrible. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. If it's supposed to be a joke on stereotypes it's even worse. Tropic Thunder did it right when they were making fun of Hollywood "whitewashing" by casting Robert Downey Jr. and making him black. NBA 2K18 doesn't do it remotely right.
Then we get the "vet" Wells. I don't know about your games, but in mine he's a ball hog and passing him the ball is just another button to shoot (without the bad shot selection consequences). Again, is that supposed to be a joke on stereotypes? Because to me he seems absolutely unstable.
And supporting characters - the head of security "Boo Boo". Who the hell came up with that? Not only that, but in the beginning he treats you like trash. Your starting contract is over $1M. Who in their right mind gives attitude to a pro athlete from a position of support staff?

I couldn't agree more with this. I co-sign every single critique here.

The decision to take away free throw ratings for your MyPLAYER and make it Badge related is terrible. Absolutely terrible. It's ridiculous that my Sharpshooting Playmaker shoots worse than Shaq from the free throw line; the only way around that is to slowly grind up a Badge with a mechanic that seems broken, because Good releases seem to miss more often than not. An absolutely horrible change there. I've also run into the same delay issue. I know 2K wants the "realism" of having people chase down loose balls and whatnot, but there are times when it's acceptable to break from reality. There have been a lot of jokes about that kind of stuff over the years and the developers themselves have had the grace and good humour to take them in stride. Unfortunately, they haven't taken the criticism on board and changed it.

The story is complete and utter garbage. I know I've criticised the story-driven approach before, but even "Livin' Da Dream" wasn't as bad as this. The plot, the characters, and the acting are all awful. Bad fan-fiction awful. Shammy Wells is no Justice Young. There is definitely something uncomfortable about the friend character. It may sound over-sensitive or too politically correct to call it racist, but I agree that there's something really uncomfortable with her characterisation. All the characters are bad, but there's something really off about what they've done there. It's annoyingly and intrusively bad.

The Neighborhood is a cool concept in theory, and if I were younger and really into it, I'd probably enjoy it. As it stands, in practice I find it cumbersome. Now in addition to waiting for things to load, I also have to run up and down the street to find them first. More time spent to get to play the modes I want. There's no fast travel, no menu shortcuts for gamers who don't want to bother with it. There isn't even a map to help with navigation! I'm sure it's going to be well-received by a majority of the fanbase, but I personally find it to be somewhat of an alienating premise.

Now there are plenty of bad design choices... Actually too many of them for it to be coincidence, so I'll call them what they really are: anti-consumer design choices.
We can't see our attribute caps when creating a character and we can't see the improvements when buying the bloody upgrades. That way I found out that after spending 1K of VC on some speed upgrade, I improved my speed by exactly 0.
Huge amount of product placement. Honestly this is over the top, they are now advertising headphones. Crappy headphones at that. Is 2K getting extra money out of this? Damn, even Netflix has a warning for product placement.
Now the kicker - the amount of VC you have seems to be well hidden. It's not shown anymore on top of the screen, it's only on specific screens. In MyGM the only way I could find out how much I have is by going to the menu that allows you to buy next level. In MyCareer it's slightly faster to get to know how much you have, but still kinda hidden.
And there are reports that difficulty multipliers might be gone and that not all VC gained is actually saved resulting in a loss for no reason. The agent giving you the option to donate the VC from promo deal to charity is just an insult at this point.

Once again, I must agree. The VC paywalls in NBA 2K18 feel downright greedy. There's no better word for it. No goodwill at all, here. A lot of stuff is behind a paywall and the prices seem to have increased, but the VC rewards haven't gone up. If anything, they might have been slightly nerfed, for the second year running. It's disgraceful.

[sticky-fingers]

Oh, and I saw some people say it feels impossible to get by the CPU... not trying to be a jerk, but you have to be kidding me...

I literally feel like I can blow by the CPU on HOF on every single posession, it's really easy in this game. Using regular teams, classic teams, doesn't matter. Getting a first step has never been easier (even easier than 2K13). The team defense has improved, but the individual one on one defense is not good this year.

You're right. I ask this for times in my wishlists for next NBA2K, but now it's so easy, too easy.
It should be that way for fast PG and "aliens" (MJ, LeBron), but i can't accept that Beverley pass Payton so easily for example.

[StyxTx]

Steam (also some PC gamers in general) can be super critical, even when it's unwarranted.

1. Hair (and facial hair) are RENTED in this game. You pay to unlock a haircut, equip it, and it immediately re-locks so if you want to change it in any way you gotta buy it again. (All of the facial hair/beards look like pubes right now, probably will get patched eventually.)
2. Connection issues abound. This will eventually get better once enough players get bored of this game and move on.
3. MyPlayer archetypes require certain very specific attribute/skill ratings to unlock moves, shots, dribbles, etc... The problem? You cannot see any of your ratings at all so you have to blindly spend points. Height plays a factor too, moreso than previous editions. You make your character one inch too tall or too short and you've locked yourself out of certain skills needed for certain archetypes.
4. More of the usual, VC randomly vanishes, MyPlayer randomly vanishes, etc...
5. Playing on higher difficulties doesn't get as much VC as it used to. You could win an NBA championship on the highest difficulty and only make enough VC to change your hair once or twice.
6. Face sculpting was locked out of creation everywhere except MyLeague rookies.
7. No previewing of hair, clothes, animations, etc... on your character before you equip them. You don't like something you added? You have to pay VC to change it to something else.
8. (This one is an opinion) I'm not enjoying the MyCareer story so far. Pretty cheesy and the cutscenes are all unskippable, even if you've seen them already.

My list could go on, but it seems to me that there are more than a few legitimate gripes here. It's silly to think that just because a game gets 'Mostly' or 'Overwhelmingly' negative on Steam that that is a direct result of "ungrateful people who expect perfection". The reality is that the game itself has some serious flaws and without people pointing them out on Steam reviews, other people will get burned when they spend their money on that particular game and end up hating it. There is no such thing as perfection and nobody in their right mind should ever expect it, but is it asking too much that when we pay $60 (or more) for a game that it NOT continually rape our wallets afterwards just because the publisher feels like all those pre-orders weren't enough money?

Take Two clearly based this years game entirely around VC and game play was a fleeting afterthought. Yes, some of the bugs will eventually get fixed, but a lot of these bugs are bugs we've seen before NUMEROUS times. The negative feedback on this game is not about expecting perfection, it's people wanting a stable game with decent game play that they can take offline or online whenever they want to and be able to play with friends or random people (and in most cases, be competitive). That is what this game should be about, NOT the microtransactions that the Take Two higher ups froth at the mouth over daily and nightly.

If anyone here thinks there won't be really annoying microtransactions in Red Dead Redemption 2 (and every Take Two/2K title from now on), you're kidding yourselves.

I did not buy the game so I am going by what I'm reading, but it seems to me that 2k is incrementally, version by version, making everything so that VC is needed to do anything.

[hova-]

I am quite disappointed ... like the last few years actually. I don't play all this VC/MyPlayer or online stuff.

The gameplay has improved a bit. The CPU's errors on defense have been reduced. I like the post play more as I feel like I can pull off the right moves easier than last year.

But all this for 50 Euro? That is ridiculous. Then they add new teams but they remove others ... which in the end negates any use of the word "improvement".

Further the fps is bad for me and even when I change the video settings to very low I do not get a good performance. How can that be?

I like that they added more "speed" sliders so we will have a bigger chance to tweak the everlasting problem of game pace which is again not realistic.

The graphics are horrible. I only played a few quarters with some teams and I can already name double digit players that look like ridiculous cartoon figures.

Not to mention the arenas/crowds. It looks nothing like in real life.

I think the gameplay has potential to be a bit better than last year, but you could also argue that almost nothing has changed. It's us nerds who might see some differences, but it's not a really big improvement. The game also feels a bit sluggish and I don't feel like I have more control.

Let's face it: 2k has become a cash cow like Fifa or Dota. It's just the same. They spend money on licences rather than really improving the game. They changes things for the sake of change just to reintroduce them two years later and sell them as "new features".

The whole online content makes a lot of money for them, but the game is stagnating.

I will still play the game because I need that after watching NBA matches. And I hope for all the modders in the community that we can improve the game together.

But I heavily criticize 2k policy. Capitalism strikes again.

[ThePointForward]

I've also run into the same delay issue. I know 2K wants the "realism" of having people chase down loose balls and whatnot, but there are times when it's acceptable to break from reality. There have been a lot of jokes about that kind of stuff over the years and the developers themselves have had the grace and good humour to take them in stride. Unfortunately, they haven't taken the criticism on board and changed it.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind if it took 5 seconds tops. I could live with that. But if it took me that long to fetch the ball in a team practice (we do not have assistants so we train free throws in pairs/triples and fetch for each other) I'd hear about it from my teammates and coach. I do not see how it would be acceptable in the NBA where the guy is literally paid for fetching the ball.

The Neighborhood is a cool concept in theory, and if I were younger and really into it, I'd probably enjoy it. As it stands, in practice I find it cumbersome. Now in addition to waiting for things to load, I also have to run up and down the street to find them first. More time spent to get to play the modes I want. There's no fast travel, no menu shortcuts for gamers who don't want to bother with it. There isn't even a map to help with navigation! I'm sure it's going to be well-received by a majority of the fanbase, but I personally find it to be somewhat of an alienating premise.

Oh yeah and there is no map (or at least I haven't found it yet).


One thing I forgot to mention is the Locker before MyCareer games. Not the part where I have to watch the animation of me walking to my seat and then walking out. That is just another unskippable delay.
But the fact that I can pretty easily choose my accessories and shoes before the game is minor, but very nice improvement.

Sadly the rest of the game went in the exact opposite direction with the neighborhood.
Speaking of delays I just had to sit through unskippable conversation about nothing because I wanted to change my haircut because I overhauled my player's appearance. "Cool".

NINJA PRE-EDIT: Another thing I noticed, this time bad is lack of customization in MyCareer in terms of settings - for example I can't turn off the CPU shaking when shooting free throws.

EDIT: I'd say John Oliver can sum up our feelings about the Neighborhood (also tiny hamster eating a tiny burrito right after that, so keep watching till the end and it's pretty nice segment about death penalty before that):

phpBB [video]

[sticky-fingers]

That's why i've paid it 30€ on grey market.
This year, i will also ban their ads, hashtags and useless stuffs : game is blocked by my firewall. I will only authorize the connection for 2KShare.

As i wrote here many times, if 2K want to put microtransactions, even more at this year's level, they have to release the game as a F2P.
At this point, VC are a big F*** to all theirs costumers.

[Dee4Three]

All right, let's see.

Gameplay has definitely improved. You can now get by defender if you're fast enough. You can also fail miserably. What also seems to be improved is ball security - I do not see all those randomly lost balls due to a weird contact.
That said, players still can't catch the bloody ball. It's the first thing people are taught - how to hold and catch the ball.
Fouls aren't being called too well. Had a sequence where I've got no call on three shot attempts even though defenders' arms clearly clipped through the shooter's arms.
Some of the legacy issues persist as well.
And for all of you yelling "2K cheats" I just managed to one up all of you. Close game against Wizards, Wall gets a good screen, gets the ball from inbound, pulls up an scores a 3pt shot. The problem is that he was about a meter and half inside the 3pt line. He wasn't anywhere near. In the end it didn't change the result, but what the hell? That literally is cheating.
Oh and commentators are still high. I've had sequence where they announced that some player will shoot free throw after a fould on 3pt made shot. There was no foul. The game just continued.
Other than that they generally have issues with screens. They say on many occasions that the shooter got freed up by a screen even though the screen was on the other side and didn't work one bit. But those are legacy issues.

Presentation - They made some stuff faster (I no longer see those long waiting times before inbounding waiting for nothing). There are still many unskippable or have to wait 10 seconds to skip scenes.

Speaking of waiting, I counted it and because of immersion during MyCareer free throw drill I had to wait 21 seconds between two shots. The only two balls bounced off the rim (good releases BTW, it's a game of chance, but a "good" release was triggering "too short" animation while "slightly early" went in most of the time) and fucked off somewhere and the assistants just went after them. And I started counting and it really took them 21 seconds to get me a ball. That is unacceptable in a real practice, let alone a game.

CaP - I never got any satisfactory results with face scanning, so I'm happy with the CaP system. I can finally look like a human. They removed the sculpting but it seems the choices for stuff like eyes, brow, nose, ears, etc are bunch of presets for various sculpting configurations. I know this might seem like an unpopular opinion, but I consider this a major improvement.

MyGM - meh. Story cutscenes look like a cheap flash game where you get text and repeating animation. Other than that I haven't got far enough in the story yet to have any impressions.

MyLeague - I tried to create league with fantasy draft with all the teams (current, historic and all-time). It's buggy. Players are missing, seems somewhat random. Maybe player pool is too big for the game to handle.

MyCareer - what in the bloody hell.
The "open world" aspect is the overstatement of the decade. I understand, it's a buzzword, but that is not an open world game.
The story is absolutely terrible. I'll ignore the "streetballer to NBA in three matches", because that is not even remotely the worst thing about it. Honestly, I think that Ronnie2K played major part in writing the story.
Just the characters. Last year we had pro actor, Michael B. Jordan. And while some of the conversations were kinda weird, he played the role well and was really a professional. This year we got that asian girl (using race as an identifier because I can't honestly remember the name). It's terrible. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. If it's supposed to be a joke on stereotypes it's even worse. Tropic Thunder did it right when they were making fun of Hollywood "whitewashing" by casting Robert Downey Jr. and making him black. NBA 2K18 doesn't do it remotely right.
Then we get the "vet" Wells. I don't know about your games, but in mine he's a ball hog and passing him the ball is just another button to shoot (without the bad shot selection consequences). Again, is that supposed to be a joke on stereotypes? Because to me he seems absolutely unstable.
And supporting characters - the head of security "Boo Boo". Who the hell came up with that? Not only that, but in the beginning he treats you like trash. Your starting contract is over $1M. Who in their right mind gives attitude to a pro athlete from a position of support staff?

Now there are plenty of bad design choices... Actually too many of them for it to be coincidence, so I'll call them what they really are: anti-consumer design choices.
We can't see our attribute caps when creating a character and we can't see the improvements when buying the bloody upgrades. That way I found out that after spending 1K of VC on some speed upgrade, I improved my speed by exactly 0.
Huge amount of product placement. Honestly this is over the top, they are now advertising headphones. Crappy headphones at that. Is 2K getting extra money out of this? Damn, even Netflix has a warning for product placement.
Now the kicker - the amount of VC you have seems to be well hidden. It's not shown anymore on top of the screen, it's only on specific screens. In MyGM the only way I could find out how much I have is by going to the menu that allows you to buy next level. In MyCareer it's slightly faster to get to know how much you have, but still kinda hidden.
And there are reports that difficulty multipliers might be gone and that not all VC gained is actually saved resulting in a loss for no reason. The agent giving you the option to donate the VC from promo deal to charity is just an insult at this point.

Yeah the fantasy draft is buggy. It doesn't work right. You choose all teams, and it is missing a giant chunk of players.

I mean, John Wall is not the best PG of all time... when you choose that option, it makes him the best at 91 overall, and it goes down to 85 overall players after.

They need to fix that.

[ThePointForward]

I was missing Shaq and Kyrie (most noticeable) when I did the all teams.

[Dee4Three]

I was missing Shaq and Kyrie (most noticeable) when I did the all teams.

Well, I mean. Magic Johnson wasn't there either....

[ThePointForward]

I had Magic in my game. So seems random and probably whole bunch of plebs is missing and we just don't know because they're unnoticeable. That said Norris Cole wasn't in my game.

I think that the number of all players might simply overflow some maximum variable of player pool and the rest just gets cut.

[Dee4Three]

I had Magic in my game. So seems random and probably whole bunch of plebs is missing and we just don't know because they're unnoticeable. That said Norris Cole wasn't in my game.

I think that the number of all players might simply overflow some maximum variable of player pool and the rest just gets cut.

So strange.

And so many players are missing badges.

[Gerix]

+ AI is smarter, shoots when it is open
+ Few graphics improvements
+ Few small gameplay improvements

- No Euroleague teams
- Too much old teams. I mean, who gives a f*ck about teams in '70s? i dont understand, whats the point ? Comparing players from different centuries?
- Players are slow! Dont know why!? You cant attack C with PG, no way. He will catch you, no matter who is C.
- Paying too much attention to MyCarrer, which, btw, i dont like this year.

For me, Play now is the best game mode for enyoing truly in NBA 2K, because i dont have a time for other game mods. This year we got a downgraded 2K17 with better makeup.
Disappointed....sadly.

[ThePointForward]

So I was messing around some, for some reason they've made me starter (still OVR 66) and some of the features (negotiating contracts, user choice of drills, ...) are good.

For info, accessories from NBA store are 300 VC flat - that is both increase and decrease from previous years. Simple wrist bands used to be like 50 VC, but those padded sleeves were up to 5000 VC. So at the very least there is that.
The only exception is headband, which is 1000 VC (as usual).
Shoes in the store range from 750 to 4000 VC. Average 2000 VC I'd say.
General clothing starts at 600 VC, goes up to presumably a lot for stuff like jewelry.

The prices themselves didn't change that much with the exception of NBA accessories which I'd say actually went more affordable.

[joosegoose]

Having a lot of fun with the gameplay overall, but 2 things have stood out as either bugs or poorly thought-out features:

There is no controller vibration whatsoever. Well, except for a small amount of feedback on free throws, which I could hardly care less about. I'm using the same xbox one controller that worked fine for 2k17, so I hope this wasn't an intentional design choice.

Also, the entire camera seems to randomly shake when playing away games (to simulate crowd noise, I guess?). This is the most immersion-ruining thing I've ever experienced in an NBA 2k game (close second would be the watermarks that have been placed on screen during games before as advertisements). I see an option to turn of camera shaking for free throws, but not during normal gameplay. I really hope someone is about to tell me there's a setting I'm overlooking.

[soggycereal42]

Is an update going to come thats going to update the player portraits soon?

[Andrew]

I'm guessing that might come with the first roster update.

[dare]

Seeing all your impressions makes me scared to buy the game, actually I'm planning to buy it today. Do you guys think its worth it?