Monday Tip-Off: Fixing The Connected Experiences in MyCAREER
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with my suggestions on how to fix the connected experiences in MyCAREER.
This is far from the first time that I’ve discussed criticisms of the competitive scene in NBA 2K, specifically the online team play experiences connected to MyCAREER. To that point, I’m going to be treading some familiar ground here today, from grinding to proper matchmaking functionality. That’s because the same issues continue to hold back the connected experiences in MyCAREER, and improvements are well overdue. As popular as the online scene in NBA 2K may be, the quality of the experience lags behind other games, and is nowhere near where it needs to be.
You can see the frustration everywhere. It’s been mentioned in our Forum, over on Operation Sports, on social media, and in numerous threads in the official NBA 2K subreddit. So many gamers see the issues, and apart from the ones who want to shout down all criticism – usually thanks to selfish zero-sum thinking – people want to see the scene improve. The concepts of the connected modes in MyCAREER have the potential to be so much better than they are, and I speak from my own experience when I say that they’ve shown flashes of that brilliance. Until these improvements are made however, the connected experiences in MyCAREER will continue to suffer.
First of all, we need to recognise the largest drawback of the current design. Through making MyCAREER into a connected experience, two different types of gamers are playing the same mode: offline/solo gamers who like the NBA side of MyCAREER, and online gamers who enjoy the competitive multiplayer scene. The advantage here is that one can go back and forth between single player and multiplayer and always make progress, so there’s no need to grind up separate online and offline avatars. The disadvantage with this approach is that to some extent, it forces gamers into playing a mode they’re not interested in, or said mode is still encroaching on their good time.
More specifically, even if you have no interest in the NBA side of MyCAREER, the need to level up your player so that they’re at least viable to use online will force you to grind away offline. In other words, sure, playing NBA MyCAREER is technically optional, but realistically, it’s almost impossible to avoid. Likewise, an offline gamer doesn’t need to actually partake in any online games, but they still must load into The Neighborhood or The City, and engage with it to perform several basic tasks such as purchasing and assigning shoes and accessories. It’s also worth noting once again that the connected experience has ultimately killed MyCAREER offline as of NBA 2K20.
At this point, one might advocate for the separation of offline and online, much as the franchise experience was split into MyLEAGUE and MyGM last generation. I’m sure many gamers would enjoy that, and it’d be great to have an offline MyCAREER for when the servers are shut down. Unfortunately, that’s not an ideal solution for anyone who plans to play online and offline. Again, the NBA side of MyCAREER is vital for online players who want to level up their avatar, get used to animations, and master mechanics before heading into Park, Pro-Am, and The Rec. If you don’t go through this grind offline, the online scene isn’t going to be welcoming or a whole lot of fun.
Limited matchmaking obviously doesn’t help here. Everyone’s just thrown into the same MMORPG-like open world, and left to find games themselves. This leads to bullying over ratings, win/loss records, and even cosmetic items, though in all fairness it’s understandable that experienced competitive players don’t want to team up with inexperienced newbies rated 60 Overall. We shouldn’t have to grind as much as we do to make our MyPLAYERs viable every year, but it might be tolerable if lower-rated avatars were matched up with and against each other. That way they can “get good” at their own speed, and won’t be dead weight if they don’t grind like gaming is their job.
Of course, this does highlight a clash between the philosophies behind MyCAREER and its connected experiences. Levelling up your MyPLAYER so that they can be successful online and offline requires you to put your avatar first, going for big stats and focusing on personal goals. That’s fine in a single player career mode, but having a Player One mentality in online team play isn’t conducive to chemistry and winning. In short, we’re encouraged to be selfish to level up from our paltry starting ratings, and that approach carries over into the online scene. You can’t condition gamers to play selfishly, and then expect them to know how to sacrifice for the good of a team!
The fixes to these problems are quite clear, and the fact that we haven’t seen them yet is why NBA 2K’s online scene is in the shape that it is. They’re feasible solutions too, but there are a couple of factors preventing their implementation. First of all, while the connected experiences in MyCAREER aren’t as good as they could be, they do work well enough. The problem with solutions that work well enough is that they’re the enemy of progress. As long as the connected modes can be described as functional and satisfactory – and people are still playing them – there’s less incentive for a major overhaul. Maintaining the status quo is thus feasible, as well as a safer design choice.
Secondly – and crucially – the current approach facilitates recurrent revenue. Normally we’d want to experience the journey of developing our MyPLAYERs into stars, but it’s become a monotonous grind by design. After all, the best way to push us towards giving in and buying VC to upgrade faster and forego the grind is for our avatars to be laughably underpowered when we start over every year. As noted, rapid upgrades are also necessary if we don’t want to be at an immediate disadvantage due to the lack of proper matchmaking. Further pressure to buy VC comes from promoting cosmetic items as status symbols. So much for being “more than a Barbie Dress-Up Game“!
With that in mind, fixing the connected experiences in MyCAREER and improving the online scene so that it’s as good as it should be is an uphill battle. It involves some changes that the suits probably won’t much care for, because they prioritise enjoyment over gouging gamers and/or forcing them to pad engagement numbers. Nevertheless, it’s worth making these suggestions and supporting them as a community. Sadly, not everyone is going to be on board. Elitists love gatekeeping, to the point where they’ll oppose improvements that could benefit everyone. Ironically, despite the fact they pride themselves on being elite gamers, they’ll prefer feasting on inferior competition.
Let’s not worry about them, though. They can go in the metaphorical bin along with the fanboys, shills, and apologists that don’t want to hear criticism, no matter how valid it may be. With that being said, what’s first on the agenda? Raise the starting ratings; not to a point where there’s no journey to be had, but start us out at a level where our MyPLAYER is realistically an NBA prospect, and usable in online play. This means competent skills in key areas according to the chosen build, and athletic attributes that are already close to their peak. A rookie should be more or less in their physical prime, and it’ll allow all avatars to keep up athletically in the online arena.
Next, make offline play truly optional for online-only gamers. Better starting ratings will already help here, but we also need to see proper matchmaking. The online scene will be far more welcoming and competitive if people are playing opponents who are at the same level. It will also mean that newbies learning the game and latecomers still grinding up their avatars needn’t interfere with gamers who have progressed far more quickly, and are already engaged in a higher level of competition. This could include having Park courts and Rec games that are only open to lower-rated MyPLAYERs; say, 75 Overall and under. Team Pro-Am also needs to have a better ranking system.
Indeed, while I’m on the subject of matchmaking, it would benefit NBA 2K’s online scene to have casual and competitive settings – or if you prefer, ranked and unranked play – similar to Rocket League. This could also allow the connected experiences of MyCAREER to cater to different tastes, such as bringing back the minimum of three users in 5v5 Pro-Am for people who liked it, and a “No AI Players” setting for those who don’t. You can have a scene for the elite competitors, and one that’s more like a social league. This should help cut down on toxicity, welcome new gamers with an enjoyable experience, and reward those who put in the time and effort to become elite.
“Got Next” will probably always be an issue in Park play to some extent. If nothing else, it’ll always simulate the least fun part of any activity: waiting in line. If there are parks for 75 Overall and under however, we might see much less standing around and ducking out of games. The sooner people can get into the online scene, the sooner that they develop skills and tactics that offline play doesn’t teach. They also don’t have to slog through NBA MyCAREER if they have no interest in it. This can be done via a combination of robust matchmaking and higher starting ratings. The only reason not to implement these solutions boils down to greed, complacency, and yes, elitism.
As for gamers who prefer NBA MyCAREER to the connected experiences, while it may be impossible to completely separate the two, older games demonstrate that an offline mode can still be fun. Achieving this could be as straightforward as choosing whether to load into an NBA-based hub, or The City/Neighborhood, with the latter becoming unavailable once the servers are shut down. As long as we can assign shoes and accessories through the NBA hub, and upgrade our players with offline VC, the traditional MyCAREER experience can remain available. To that point, I’m in favour of bringing it back for gamers who have no interest in playing the connected modes.
From a gameplay standpoint, the design and tuning of the connected experiences in MyCAREER have also been catered towards elite competitors. Concepts such as “Green-or-Miss” shooting mechanics, timing on layups with no Real FG% option, and alley-oop meters, are definitely attempting to implement a skill gap and reward skilful play. It’s a steep learning curve for newcomers to the online scene though, as well as alienating to anyone who’d prefer a slightly more casual experience; again, more of a social league vibe than “eSports at home”. This is another area where having ranked and unranked modes could cater to both preferences, and allow gamers to “get good”.
The ability to re-spec is also a must. Obviously we can create a new MyPLAYER whenever we like, but we have to commit to levelling up a build before we can tell if it’s viable or not for online play. It also takes too long to unlock Rebirth, and the new MyPLAYER still begins with laughably low ratings, meaning that there’s no avoiding paying or grinding all over again. Failing that, there should be clearer explanations about the impact of ratings so that it’s much harder to lock yourself into a broken build. I still feel that the current approach to the MyPLAYER Builder gives us the illusion of choice, since the OP builds are vastly outnumbered by ineffective ones.
Finally, there’s the memetic demand of “fix your servers”. Granted, competitive play requires a great internet connection, which is yet another reason why I’ve left that scene behind. Mind you, it doesn’t help when Australia and the rest of Oceania have to connect to servers in Japan! Even in North America though, gamers with speedy connections report issues with latency. Without rollback netcode – or some kind of much-needed improvements to the netcode, anyway – NBA 2K’s online modes will continue to lag behind; pun fully intended! As the connected experiences incorporate more mandatory timing-based mechanics, latency becomes an even bigger problem.
Once again, while the current approach does work – aside from the absence of offline MyCAREER from NBA 2K20 onwards of course – “good enough” isn’t good enough. The online experience in NBA 2K falls well short of other games, and where it should be at this point. In some ways, server issues are the least of 2K’s problems. As long as the focus remains on prioritising profits and fostering elitism rather than providing an optimal gameplay experience, nothing will change. For a series that now borrows so much from a variety of genres, NBA 2K refuses to take cues from games with great competitive scenes, resulting in connected modes that are embarrassingly subpar.
Right now, there are too many incompatible philosophies at play. Buying VC to skip the grind in MyCAREER undermines the concept of pure competition online, because you’re paying to get better. The grinding necessary to level up underpowered avatars, and the presence of temporary boosts and permanent augmentations, flies in the face the so-called skill gap. It also promotes selfishness that’s detrimental to online team play. The lack of proper matchmaking demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of sporting leagues and competitive balance. As I’ve discussed before, The City and The Neighborhood are poor takes on the concept of open worlds in video games.
These issues need to be reconciled and remedied in order to improve MyCAREER’s connected experiences. As long as MyCAREER remains a mishmash of incompatible concepts that are unfair to gamers because of a focus on recurrent revenue, its online modes will be a mess. I’m sceptical that we’ll see an improvement unless the bubble bursts on microtransactions, or the community as a whole abandons the game. All the same, it’s worth pointing out these issues, and suggesting possible solutions. Better starting ratings, proper matchmaking, and the return of an offline MyCAREER won’t solve everything, but they’d still go a long way in fixing the connected experiences.
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