NBA 2K16 might be our game of the year for 2015, but no game is perfect, and that goes for NBA 2K16 as well. Now, the NBA 2K community on Reddit has banded together to inform the developers that yes, the game does have problems. Some are pretty bad. The post is effectively an open letter to 2K to address the community’s frustration with some aspects of the game. Redditor yyy2K has put together a list of the things that they think need improvement, and asks that the community iterate on it. Here are the bullet points listed:
- MyTeam Content: Dynamic+Moments+Diamond cards+New Gauntlet Boards
- MyTeam Play to Win not Pay to Win
- 2K MyTeam falling behind NBA Live UT
- MyTeam 0-0
- Pro-Am instability
- In game advertising
- VC purchase scamming
- 2K Support
- PC Cheaters
- Users being banned for uploading pictures
As you’d expect of such a passionate fanbase, the community followed through, and yyy2k was able to put together a final draft of the letter.
Here is the final draft of the community’s letter to 2K in full, urging them to fix these issues:
NBA2K Staff and Devs,
Happy New Year! We hope that all of you can read this but ask that at least lead developer Mike Wang, developer Da_Czar, developer Erick Boenisch, the MyTEAM development team, roster manager Mike Stauffer, and community managers LD2K and Ronnie2K read this as they have communicated with us in the past.
This is a letter from /r/NBA2k, a subreddit dedicated to the NBA2K game series. It’s safe to say that our community loves NBA2K and plays it almost religiously every year, awaiting the new release. As a company, you have always encouraged us to speak up and give feedback. Given the current state of the game, we feel the need to bring up the following issues:
MyTEAM
Our community loves MyTeam. It’s possibly the most engaging mode in NBA 2K. However, the entire mode has stagnated and it seems content has been stalled. The general consensus in our sub is that NBA 2K16 is, as a whole, a much better game than NBA Live 16 gameplay wise. However, while 2K16’s MyTEAM has limped around this year, Live 16’s UltimateTeam consistently receives updates and new content almost everyday to keep their game mode fresh. The problem has become apparent enough that some members of our community are considering settling for the lower gameplay quality in Live 16 just because their content is so much more fleshed out. We hope you will return to releasing timely content and re-prove not only why players love your game but also why NBA 2K16 is considered the best basketball game. Below are a few aspects of MyTEAM that we have some concerns for:
UPDATE: It’s great to see that in the past two days (1/6 and 1/7) we’ve received massive roster updates. We hope this can be continued through the rest of the NBA season and we hope you can come up with a schedule so we know when to expect roster updates. Thank you LD2K for reaffirming that we will be seeing more moment cards as well as announcing a brand new D’angelo card. It’s a shame that huge moments like Draymond and Butler will be missed out but it’s good to see more cards being released.
Dynamic Cards: During this past summer and during the build-up to 2K16, we were overjoyed when we heard about the additions of ‘Dynamic Cards’, something that had been requested for a long time. We were promised constant roster updates which would be reflected in these cards. This was great at first and we had timely roster updates at least once a week but we haven’t seen a roster update in ages. The rosters aren’t current and Dynamic Cards are being rendered useless. We hope 2K can implement a weekly, or even daily if possible, roster update to reflect the current status of NBA players.
Moment Cards: Another card addition that was announced were the ‘Moment Cards’. This feature was up to par in the beginning and we got cards like Moment Hassan Whiteside and Moment Andre Drummond. However, in the past month or so, we have gotten 0 new Moments cards even though there are tons of huge games in the NBA (a list can be provided: Draymond Green’s triple doubles and Jimmy Butler breaking MJs record are just two examples). We hope 2K can keep up with the NBA and give us quick turnarounds for Moment Cards as promised. We believe Moment Cards have massive potential and it’s a shame to see them being ignored.
Fantasy Diamond Cards: We realize that the ‘fantasy’ Diamond cards might be something 2K thinks is cool but the community feels cheated. Having a Diamond Luis Scola or Jamal Crawford that is higher rated than some of the best players in the history of the NBA is outrageous. The damage has already been done but we suggest that the remaining unreleased cards in this category should either never be released or have their ratings edited to be more realistic.
Play to Win not Pay to Win: We understand that the pack odds must be low to keep the game mode competitive. However, they are seemingly too low. The pack odds are so bad that the thought of acquiring some of the best players in the game is impossible to most people. Most people will complete Domination and then give up on the idea of even attempting to improve their lineups for RTTP or Gauntlet because they can’t. Completing collections are also no help this year because many of them give you a game ball as a reward instead of a great card or MT. There aren’t enough ways to earn MT, and without another way to getting a high tier player, so many people have given up. Even dedicated players among our community have almost no chance of obtaining any of the new Diamond cards. So imagine the majority of players who can’t even obtain a single amethyst card outside of domination: How can we help those players begin to enjoy the game mode more? There should be more incentive to actually play the game to unlock good rewards. Instead of buying MT to get the best cards and win, they should be earned. The Road to The Finals weekly challenges were a great idea as players must complete all of them to get arguably the best center in the game. However, at the rate they’re being released, the series won’t be done until April. We hope 2K can add tons more content that rewards the players including continuing the RttF weekly challenges every week, releasing brand new challenges (a suggestions list can be provided) and new Gauntlet boards or even something brand new!
Game-Breaking 0-0 Bug: As 2K likely knows, the 0-0 bug has been a huge problem since release. This is the bug when the score is, due to various reasons such as server connection loss, reported as 0-0 and the player is given a Loss. Casual gamers and dedicated players among our community have both expressed disappointments in this bug because this means a 30-45-minute game is not only voided but also counts as an undeserved Loss. As players, we have no idea what exactly is the cause of this bug but we hope 2K can patch this up quickly as it is game-breaking to the MyTEAM mode.
Misleading Dynamic Packs: Finally, we wanted to include a quick tidbit on the Dynamic Packs at the release of the game. The description on the pack market for these packs said “you will be guaranteed a dynamic rating player”. However, that was not the case. We feel as many people were tricked and essentially scammed when they opened those packs. The description was then changed without 2K ever addressing the issue or giving refunds to anybody who bought it. We believe that was unacceptable and hope 2K can refund users and at least make sure problems like that will never happen again.
Pro-Am
Pro-Am was hyped as one of the best new modes in 2K and, without playing it, it seemed revolutionary. However, four months into the game the mode is still broken. The instability of Pro-Am games is a huge problem. 90% of the time, at least one of five players will be disconnected and kicked out and unable to play. Players are them forced to either quit the game or play without their friend(s). What makes it even more frustrating is “ghost” players will have occupied the court and that court becomes unusable. We hope Pro-Am can be fixed and the vision that 2K had can be realized because the game mode really has lots of potential. The few times we have been able to start and play games, it has been wonderful.
Game Advertising and Faulty Promotions
We feel that it is very annoying for 2K to add in-game advertisements to the bottom left corner of the HUD. This is extremely distracting for some users and also detracts from the basketball simulation experience. As customers, we have already paid for the game and we shouldn’t be subject to other obstructive advertisements for companies such as Nike or even an advertisement for another game mode. For example, the MyPARK Nike billboard for Kyrie was neat but putting a permanent watermark everywhere in the corner of the screen is obtrusive to the game. We hope 2K will not add these types of distracting in-game advertisements again.
Another major issue is the false advertising in the game. When users get to the menu, they are sometimes greeted with a VC discount. Sometimes it’s discount of X% off. When users go to buy VC, the discount isn’t there. Sometimes it’s ‘buy 35,000 VC and get an extra X amount of VC’. The extra VC never comes. This is essentially a scam. 2K is promising users a certain amount of VC with their purchase but the extra VC never shows up. 2K needs to either give the users the VC they paid for or refund them. This leads to the next point…
2K Support
Not only are users being scammed but there is no support system in place to help them get the VC that they bought back or get a refund. It’s hard to describe how bad 2K Support is. We aren’t blaming the support team itself because they are just doing their jobs but the support system is horrendous. It is absolutely unacceptable that it takes an extremely long time to get a response (as long as one month!). When the support team DOES respond, 90% of the time, it’s a seemingly automated response that has no help for the player. Even when someone is asking to get VC that they paid for, they still get a response like “Restart the game”. On the little chance that they understand what you’re talking about, they ask for proof that you got the promotion. How is a user supposed to know to screenshot the promotion ahead of time? Users are completely being scammed out of their hard-earned money. 2K Support is one of the worst customer service systems in the gaming industry. It is frustrating and infuriating to deal with them and most of the time, there is no result. We hope that users can be refunded for their VC or actually given the VC and also that 2K Support is revamped/improved in a reasonable amount of time (hopefully before the release of 2K17).
Communication
It is disappointing to the players that the developers of one of the biggest games on the market (one of the statistically best-selling games every year) has almost no communication with the community. From the developers, to the community managers, all the way down to the support team, the communication between them and us is unacceptably bad and frankly, almost non-existent. If 2K could look at rival companies such as EA and what they do with Madden or FIFA it can immediately be seen the difference in communication with the users.
We hope 2K can improve their communication with us. This process starts with the developers. Anytime community managers LD2K or Ronnie2K are asked questions on the weekly broadcasts, they have to say “I don’t know” or “We’ll ask the dev team and get back to you”; we never get a reply. We believe them, they truly don’t know. We aren’t blaming them. 2K must understand that the community managers are the only line of communication we have with the developers. We hope the developers can establish a clearer line of communication to the community by providing the community managers information so that they can at least give us real weekly updates on all content/game news/roster updates. LD2K joining Reddit was a great first step that we applaud him for but it is not enough. Also, we hope there can be another form of communication other than the weekly Twitch broadcasts. Those are not accessible for all players and it would be much better if they could post content updates on Facebook or the official 2K website as well.
UPDATE: This lack of communication was given the spotlight today (1/8). The DPoY packs that were initially supposed to be released today were going to be delayed. If the community had not expressed their frustrations to LD2K and Ronnie2K, we would have been left clueless as to why we didn’t get the packs as promised. LD2K even admitted that he didn’t know why they weren’t released. It took over 3 hours for a response to be communicated from the developers to LD2K and then to the community. Luckily, the packs, albeit delayed, were still eventually released but the lack of communication is still an ongoing problem.
PC Cheaters
The problem of cheaters on PC must be addressed. It ruins all online modes for PC players who are playing by the rules. Players are using Cheat Engine to modify their stats in MyPARK and Pro-Am, give themselves all badges, or even be a 7’7 center with 99 speed and 99 3pt shooting, etc. Although there were bans in the past, they were easy to workaround. Nothing has changed. Those users are still ruining the game for everyone else. We hope 2K can address this problem and find away to not only patch the vulnerabilities that allow the game to be hacked but also permanently ban the cheaters and hackers.
User Bans for Photo Uploads
We have noticed that there are users in our community that are being banned for seemingly no reason. For example, we have had users banned for uploading pictures of NBA players or logos. The craziest scenario is a user who was banned because he reported a game breaking bug to 2K Support. The user was not given a thank you or a fix but instead a ban. These users are banned from every online aspect of the game (which is most of the game) and are now unable to play the game they love. We hope 2K can address this as it is completely unfair to the players. Users should be given a clear reason as to why they are banned. In the case of uploading pictures, users should be given clear guidelines as to what images are considered ban-worthy. Images of NBA logos should not lead to a ban. As for the user who reported a bug, there is no fathomable reason as to why he was banned.
We sincerely want to thank you for reading this! NBA 2K has been a staple in many of our game collections every year but we have just been somewhat disappointed with NBA 2K16. This should be viewed as a list of suggestions as well as an expression of our desire for 2K to improve as a company and uphold the high standards the community has. We hope these problems can be addressed in a timely manner and that NBA 2K16 can be improved.
The /r/NBA2k Community
It appears the 2K community on Reddit knows exactly what it wants out of its basketball game. Do you agree with these issues? Let us know in the comments or on social media!