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NBA 2K18

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biggs:
First and foremost, this is just for fun. I know a lot of people don't respect video games here, and often refer to lopsided/impractical trade ideas as "video game trades," so this is just a fun discussion about the game, the players, and of course the lopsided trades you pulled off in fantasy land as a GM ;)

Graphics- phenomenal. Huge boost in detail from last year's game. Available in 4k on PS4/P.C.  While watching an instant replay of Marcus throwing down the thunder on LeBron, I was able to zoom in and read the individual lines of cursive on his tattoo. Amazing.

-Kyrie is the cover boy!!

Customization- deep! New jerseys, multiple team jerseys. Create a player, etc. (Headbands are back!)

Gameplay- 2k is getting a little stiff for my taste. While it may be the best sports simulation out there, I wish it was just a little bit easier to "pick up and play" as they say.

Old school great teams- No big three Celtics???? Garbage. However, the all-time teams are great, and obviously the Celtics have the greatest collection of players ;)

Player ratings- Lonzo/Fultz first rookies since John Wall to have an 80 rating entering the league. Garbage. Of course Tatum comes in lower at 77, (which is higher than Jaylen)?? Also- Crowder is an 83??? Are you serious?? He was a bum!! All jokes aside, that is highly overrated.

Injuries/Health- WHY is Isaiah on the court in the opener???

And finally- GM mode- my favorite. Without getting too specific about the features, I love making trades and reforming the team. Feel free to say whatever you'd like about the game, but I would love to hear specifically what moves people have made to improve our team.

So, my first and only move thus far-

I sent out-

Shane Larkin 71 PG
Daniel Theis 71 PF
Abdel Nader 68 SF
Clippers first rounder and a couple meaningless 2nd rounders for-

Larry Nance Jr.- 77 PF/C
Ivan Zubac- 75 C
Tyler Ennis 72 PG

(From the Lakers)

Clearly, we would have to sweeten the pot a bit to get this done in reality, but I have to say- the team just felt complete having an athletic PF that attacks the basket, and a young conter that can bang off the bench.  If Horford is indeed going to play Center this year, PF is our biggest need.

Sure, you can slide in Morris for some small ball, and all the other hybrid wings we have, but rebounding was still a significant area of need for us last year, and I feel that we need to address this in the short term while we dream of AD joining us.

Anyway, would love to hear some of the moves you made and what direction you are taking the team..

Big up Celtics Blog ;)

Gonna be a great year!

PickNRoll:
Appreciate the review.  I've been on the fence.  When you say "big 3", you mean they don't have the 86' team this year?  Or you mean 08'?  I love playing with the 86 team.

crimson_stallion:
You think crowder is overrated? Try Derrick Rose.  He's rated like an A for playmaking ( after averaging just over 4 apg), a B for perimeter D (what the?) and a C for 3PT ( after averaging barely over 20% from three) for an overall of 78.

Bring those down to where they should be and he drops to a 74 lol

I am pretty sure 2K just decided what overall rating players should have and set their categorical rating to push up to that number, whether they make sense or not.

For example they give Isaiah (one of the quickest / most explosive guys in the league) a 65 for lateral quickness.  It's obvious why they have done this (lateral quickness ties in to overall perimeter defence rating, and they wanted his perimeter D rating to be poor) but it's still utterly stupid when I see Isaiah's lateral quickness rated in the mid 60's while Marcus Smart's Lateral Quickness is like 90 or so.  It makes no sense at all.  The ratings should reflect the skill they are based on - if that means your generalised top level ratings come out wrong (e.g Perimeter D) then you need to adjust that formula or change the way it's calculated.

Oh and Lebron James is of course listed as having no faults...that includes 3PT ratings on the mid 80s and a defensive consistency in the high 80 / low 90 range... which is utterly ridiculous for a guy who's never been a good 3pt shooter and shows horribly inconsistent effort on D.  But of course they need to get him that, 97 or whatever rating so just pump everything up.

Smart at 79/80 is generally too high too high - he should be more like a 76/77 IMHO. A score of 79/80 to me indicates a good starter - Smart is more in the raqnge of average starter / excellent 6th man. I feel he should be in the 76-77 range. 

Kevin love is also way off, and is rated way too high defensively with something like an A for post defence and C for perimeter defence.  Love should be a B- at best for Post defence, and a C- at best for Perimeter D.  He's a solid team defender (so I'm ok with his help D / P&R D ratings being strong) but he's a poor individual 1on1 defender, so those other ratings should be down.  His Lateral quickness for example is, from memory, in the mid to high 70s - higher I think then Jason Tatum.  That's silly...Kevin Love does not move like a SF laterally, not even close.

Big killer for me (and a big step back from last year) is the terrible cyberface creator.  Instead of being able to select a base head and fully mould from that head...you now only get a selection of about 10-12 cyberfaces to choose from.  You do have the ability to then adjust these faces (skull height, skull width, mouth, etc) but instead of being infinitely variable like those categories were last year, now you only get maybe 10-20 discreet values to choose from.  This leads to cyberfaces all looking like clones.  Where this is most laughable is if you look at the classic teams.  Check the lesser known guys on the rosters (usually the last 4 or 5 guys) and the results can be funny - one team I checked (cant remember which one) had about 5 end of bench guys who all had the exact same Cyberface - it was like a clone army.

My next criticism - I didn't honestly think this was even possible, but they have somehow managed to make the horribly tacky MyGM scripting EVEN WORSE.  Here is a breakdown of how MyGM started out for me...

1. Starts out with my guy being a star player for the Mavs (seriously, why the Mavs? I HATE the Mavs, and I don't want my guy to be a former Maverick!) who is in the locker room nursing an injury, in what proceeds to be one of the most tacky writing sequences in human history.

2. That scene finally ends, and next thing I am being hired by the Celtics as a GM - at which point I am introduced to the Celtics GM (who is basically a socially awkward freak show).  Not long later I meet Brad Stevens, who looks and acts absolutely nothing like his self. 

3. First moves I make for the season - I check free agency, and I see Chris Bosh is healthy.  Figure he'd actually be a nice fit for Boston, so sign him and start him at PF next to Horford, nice! 

4. Then I wanted to create playing time for Brown and Tatum, so I put Smart and Baynes on the trading block...and get offered a package based around Buddy Hield, Willie Cauley Stein and Skal Labissiere.  Seriously?  There is no chance Sacramento is offering that package for Smart and Baynes...but whatever.  Hield is listed at 6'4" which is wrong - he is 6'5".  I decide to ignore this.  Despite wanting to clear playing time, I felt the idea of adding a shooter like Hield to a core of Kyrie/Hayward/Bosh/Horford (in addition to a bright young bigs like Cauley-Stein and Labissiere) was too good to turn down, so I did the trade.

5.  First game of the season, Gordon Hayward, Kyrie Irving and Jayson Tatum all get injured and out for weeks.  Realistic...

6. At one point media reports rumors that the Cetlics are going to be sold off.  I have a one on one meeting with the Owner who outright denies this.  Then within a week, the team gets sold.  Realistic.

7. The new Owner comes in - tells me he a massive fan of basketball, loves what I've been doing, has no desire to push me to change anything.  Wants me to keep doing what I'm doing and will support my decisions.  Nice.  Then he comes at me a week later saying his "friend" who is an analytics beast is obsessed with three guys from the draft, and insists I do everything in my power to trade for a top 3 draft pick - "even if you have to trade Irving".  Really?   When would any owner ever tell you that you're free to put your 25 year old perennial All-Star on the trading block in return for a top 3 pick?  That's insanity unless you are planning to rebuild (e.g. Bulls this year trading Butler) and this team clearly isn't in rebuild mode.

8. Then I'm was called to the office with the Owner, Brad Stevens, and Jayson Tatum.  Brad was absolutely fuming because apparently there was a training session that was last minute changed from 11am to 9:30 AM, and Tatum missed the notification and hence was late to the practise...so Tatum was basically begging for forgiveness while Brad Stevens was furiously breathing down his neck llke a possessed dragon - and when I made the decision to let Tatum a warning, Brad was furious at me. Sounds like Brad...  :/

9. Then like 2 weeks later I get called into a meeting with the new owner.  He tells me that this is to stay between me and him, but he's made a decision to relocate the Boston Celtics to Seattle - purely because he is from Seattle and wants them to have a team.  Hmm...realistic, you'd move and rebrand the most storied franchise in NBA history in your first two weeks as owner?  Likely.  I of course have no say in this.

So that's where I'm up to so far in MyGM - it's all happened in the first month of the season....

---

Another feature that was annoyingly omitted - the ability to use a custom Roster in MyGM.  I wanted to adjust heights for some players who are listed incorrectly, adjust some ratings for some players I feel are off, and then run what I felt was a more realistic MyGM mode.  Can't do it.  You can use custom rosters in season mode, but not in MyGM.  Why?!?!

There's also one annoyance with MyCareer - you no longer get shown your skill ratings when upgrading your player, all you see is a set of 'star ratings' from 1-star to 25-stars.  For example, if you upgrade your 3PT to level 8 (or the 8th star) there is no number there to tell you what your ACTUAL 3PT rating is - 40, 50, 50?  No idea.  So if you want to aim for a certain rating (75 3PT, 90 ball handling, etc) you don't know what level you need to skill up to in order to reach that.  This is made all the worst by the fact that certain unlocks (moves, animations, badges, etc) actually do have prerequisite ratings of like 80/90 to unlock...so that's all quite silly.

Another annoyance (but much smaller deal).  They have finally introduced a way to change your My Player's body type - as you increase weight how's body gets bigger, and as you decrease it he gets skinnier. This is awesome and had been needed desperately for years.  But for god knows what reason this only worked for created players... if you edit an existing guys weight hits body your is not affected.  This imo kills immersion a bit because if i send one of my guys to strength camp, they usually gain 5% weight and a certain plus to strength.  If my guy is 6'8" / 200 lbs and i gradually beef him up to 225-230 lbs, then I want to see my dude get physically bigger... not continue to look like a stick figure.  Again it's a small thing, but I just don't get why it isn't in there. 

I also feel that shooting is pretty unrealistic.  Certain players who have nice shooting animations that are easy to time will tend to make everything regardless of their rating, while the opposite is also true.  For example, I routinely go 3-4 from three with Chris Bosh, who seems incapable of missing because his release is so easy to get right....but I routinely go 1-4 with Kyrie and Hayward, who seem to have more difficult shots to get right.

On the plus side the game does FEEL more realistic overall then 2K17 in terms of timing, tempo, presentation, etc.  For the first time in YEARS 2K finally has created player bodies that don't look inhuman and totally awkward.  Slim guys look slim but realistically so (not like a starving person from a 3rd world country).  Normal builds are a little bit bigger then slim, but still pretty realistic.  Large builds look about right too and no longer have biceps that are larger then their heads.  Every body actually looks realistic and lifelike, and that goes a long way to making the game look far more realistic then it has the past few years. 

Scoring inside is still awkward - bigs miss open shots 5 feet from the basket way too frequently, while if you know what you're doing it's capable to get in the lane at will with any relatively quick guard - for example, I have no trouble getting 20-25 effortless points with Terry Rozier.

I'll be honest...for the first time in years I played both 2K18 and Live18 and for the first time in about a decade, I think Live actually feels more like real basketball then 2K does. The player bodies look and move more real, post play (and moves around the basket in general) feel more natural, layups feel more natural, jumpshot timing has stronger consistency from one player to the next, defence seems to feel more natural...etc.  Also MyCareer mode feels so much more realistic, cinematic and immersive.  Including First Take actually works really well (as annoying as those guys are) and succeeds in making you feel like real people in the real world are actually talking about you - rather then the awkward cheesy jokes and crap you need to deal with constantly in 2K's narrative.  It's certainly not perfect and some controls especially are a bit awkward, but I have already decided I'm buying Live 18 as well this year. Sadly it's on Xbox only (I prefer to play on PC).

tarheelsxxiii:
Thanks for the reviews.  In general, it sounds like there have been some improvements from 2k17.  I've enjoyed the MyCareer mode in the last two versions, but it did have some glaring faults/annoyances.  Assuming the feature carried over, how is it this year?

DKClassic:

--- Quote from: tarheelsxxiii on September 20, 2017, 07:41:11 PM ---Thanks for the reviews.  In general, it sounds like there have been some improvements from 2k17.  I've enjoyed the MyCareer mode in the last two versions, but it did have some glaring faults/annoyances.  Assuming the feature carried over, how is it this year?

--- End quote ---

So far the only thing I've read is that it's way more microtransaction heavy than any of the previous games, which would really upset me because I don't have online capabilities for my PS4 all the time.  Still waiting to hear more about it though

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