NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

The main thing for me, with a lot of the control, skill, rating and player differential issues comes down to differentials in player speed and agility. Quicker, smaller guards have not historically had enough of an advantage in this game, leading towards a "height makes right" approach in the Pro Am. This also goes for quicker, smaller forwards and centers.

Do we have greater diversity of speed to go with these snazzy new controls?(those sound great, btw, kudos to the team)

I spent a lot of time re-tuning the speed gaps between smaller vs. taller ball handlers. And Jers did the same thing with movement. We also added a new Speed with Ball rating to be able to differentiate players who could move fast without the ball but dribbled slow and vice versa.

[Eman5805]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

So I suppose the strong and evasive layups will be chosen by the CPU if you use the button then.

Works for me. I'll continue using the button to shoot and the stick to layup or dunk.

Also, are double clutch layups controllable now? Like if you hold the button down or keep the stick tilted?

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Customizable pass targeting sliders for Distance/Stick direction/Openness lets you configure directional passing exactly how you want it to behave.

New Overhead Skip Pass mechanic lets you quickly target farther away teammates when multiple are in a line


This sound interesting, can someone explain this more? Can I use this to make user pick n roll pass target better? Will this make it easier to choose if I want to pass to the pick guy or pass it across the court to the shooter? Too often in 2K I pass to the wrong guy, I hope this mechanic greatly reduces that.

Directional pass targeting is very complex. Some people are often way more off with their left stick aiming than they think. Others want the system to be more "intelligent" and bias toward open teammates. The new sliders give you the ability to set the weighting exactly the way you want.

Direction = how much we weight the literal direction of where you're pointing the left stick

Openness = how much we weight the openness of the receivers in the general vicinity of where you're pointing (you'd want this higher to always get the roll man for example)

Distance = how much we weight toward always picking the closer teammates. this is good if you tend to get unwanted skip passes.

[Ragnar53]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Yeah that's still in. Hold in any direction

With everything being timetable, I'm assuming this includes post layups as well? There were some beautiful animations when using them in the post, but because the game would alternate between treating them as hook shots (The post hook badge would light up about 8\10 times) and standing layups the ratio that they went in against a poor post defender or someone with less quickness was severely underwhelming.

Also, being able to chain a post layup into an up and under was extremely difficult depending on which animation you got, often leaving you underneath the basket taking a standing jumper from 2 feet away that your defender swats into the stands because now he's disengaged from you because of that awful standing jumper animation.

I love the animations you guys have for the post game, and with the additions of shimmy hooks you just added another layer of depth to, because there is now a counter to the counter, to the counter, back to using the original go to move. A lot like how Hakeem played in the post.

Also, Have you guys fixed the issue with being able to contest shots from 4+ feet away and it actually affecting the shot? Because as it is, unless everyone plays manual defense you guys are killing the triple threat and face up post game. Because as it is there's no point shooting over a smaller player with Durant or Melody, and using the jab step to shift your defender or watching his feet to see if he's playing the drive is useless. Especially if he doesn't have his hands up. In real life, if you don't already have a hand in Melos face and you bite on his jab step he's shooting and since he has a clear line of sight to the basket because there's no hand in his face by the time he releases its a good shot.

But trying that same sequence, jab step, defender plays drive, no hands up, you shoot, late contest, D+. If you haven't tuned it from last year is it still possible to tune it this year? Because not being able to do actual triple threat moves, except to drive to the basket, just feels like y'all can take it one step further.

[MFDOOMBOT]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Mike, We've also heard that there will be no private matchmaking in Pro Am this year, is that something that can be patched in at a later date? There are literally tons of Pro Am players hoping to be able to match up against other squads they know IRL, even if it was unranked.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Whew, just spent an hour reading through that super-detailed blog (I took my time) and I must say: YES. Those gameplay advancements are lightyears ahead of where 2K16 was. That new collision system combined with the injury system redesign is going to make a MAJOR difference in an 82 game season and then the postseason -- we could see some serious franchise-altering injuries occur for the first time in, what feels like, a few years and combining that with the advancements in MyLeague leads to incredible possibilities.

Question for Mike: Could you give some examples of "under the hood tunables" that are now able to be controlled by the user?

Amazingly well-done blog, by the way, and THANK YOU for the details and the hard work you and the other devs do.

Basically, I tasked the team with moving as much of our tunables to our slider system as possible because we now have the ability to tweak our default slider set post-ship with a roster update. This is especially helpful if we want to have offline be different than online (we can tweak Park differently from ProAM or Play Now Online, etc.)

So for example...

We used to have these shot tables that gave the human or CPU shot % boosts or penalties that the end user couldn't access. Those were merged into the Close/Med/3PT sliders.

There were tunables for thresholds for the allowable distances/angles we triggered 2P body ups. Those became a new Body Up Sensitivity slider.

Live ball was something that we could only tweak through patches last year. This year, there's a Ball Security slider. The higher it is, the less "live" the ball will be to incidental collisions. But if that slider is really low, you'll see the ball colliding more when it glances off of body parts.

[LorenzoDC]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Directional pass targeting is very complex. Some people are often way more off with their left stick aiming than they think. Others want the system to be more "intelligent" and bias toward open teammates. The new sliders give you the ability to set the weighting exactly the way you want.

Direction = how much we weight the literal direction of where you're pointing the left stick

Openness = how much we weight the openness of the receivers in the general vicinity of where you're pointing (you'd want this higher to always get the roll man for example)

Distance = how much we weight toward always picking the closer teammates. this is good if you tend to get unwanted skip passes.

Speaking of that left thumb stick directional input, I sometimes wonder at what point in the movement of the stick the game accepts directional input.

For example, if the input sensitivity is high twitch, then just landing the thumb on the stick before consciously inputting direction could lead to a "false" input.

If, on the other hand, the input only triggers when the stick achieves a certain level of "tilt" or deviation from dead up center, then there's less chance of input "error" from the user POV. But from a game play POV there may be more input lag and delay, leading to slight game play disruption.

So just out of curiosity, Mike, how does that work? For myself, I've sometimes experienced what felt like near 180 degree directional pass errors when I can literally see that my thumb ends up on the out rim of the stick circle in my intended direction. I sometimes wonder if the scenario I described may be the cause.

Thanks.

[iam31yearsold]

I'm going to cry.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

"Pump fake auto-fouls in the paint are gone. If you “do nothing” on the sticks as a defender, you won’t incur a shooting foul."

Hey Mike does this apply for jumpshots outside the paint as well? I hated when I would be controlling an offensive player, get a defender jumping with a pump fake, but my player would automatically draw the foul with me even touching a button. I'd much prefer to either draw the foul myself, so I feel like I can control whether or not the shot goes in, or be able to just drive around the defender while he is going for the block. Last year it felt like catching a defender with a pump would automatically initiate a shooting foul.

This was a bug in the contest system and should no longer happen in 2K17. Pump fake draw fouls on the perimeter should only happen if you actually press the block button to get into the air.

[ViolenceFight]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

I'm going to cry.

I-I'm..I'm not crying. Just...cutting onions. Lots of them.


This game. If it's even half as good as what's being promised sounds so far beyond what 16 currently is.

[stillfeelme]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

So I suppose the strong and evasive layups will be chosen by the CPU if you use the button then.

Works for me. I'll continue using the button to shoot and the stick to layup or dunk.

Also, are double clutch layups controllable now? Like if you hold the button down or keep the stick tilted?

Yeah I have question to follow up on this do you have to time the double clutch? I am talking the mid air change shot.

[Beluba]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Mike, excellent post.. Question regarding the new post up game, you mentioned the dream shake, are we going to have signature moves like that? If so, will the ai utilize the post up moves especially when playing as classic teams? I want to see the ai dominate inside with Shaq, the dream, Wilt, Ewing and others.

Sent from my E6833 using Tapatalk

That's a good question for Zach to answer. I don't know how many of his new post moves/shots are signature vs. packaged by player type. I have seen the AI use the post game quite a bit though. Young Shaq is a beast down there now.

We fixed post dunks this year too. So if you have a runt guarding a big down on the block, you can back him down and dunk pretty easily this year.

[MFDOOMBOT]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Also Mike,

Has the team figured out a fix for the replay presentation not working on PS4? I know there are limitations to how the PS4 handles scratch memory, but will we see highlights/player of the game replays no matter how long the quarters we play?

Thanks again for taking the time to chat with us

[stillfeelme]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Mike with all the changes in difficulty between user and CPU what is the game tuned for still SS?

[MeloJello]

Re: NBA 2K17 Gameplay Blog with Gameplay Director, Mike Wang

Yes to both, you'll see more blocking and charging fouls on dribbler/onball defender collisions this year. As I mentioned in the blog, it's important to take proper driving angles this year. If you try to truck through the defense it'll almost certainly be a turnover.

Pull-up jumpers have been re-tuned and we're bringing back the Shoot off Dribble rating, plus a Difficult Shots badge. Makes the pullup game much more usable this year.

Also, if you undercut shooters, there's a good chance you'll get called for a shooting foul this year. So you have to be careful about sprinting into shooter's legs as a defensive strategy.

Has loose balls being addressed, in nba 2k16 it was a huge problem. For example every time I block or knock the ball out of CPU hand. They recover the ball very quickly unrealistic fast.

Sometimes I will still be in blocking animation, the guy I block recover quickly and scores. It's really annoying. Sometimes I will block the ball hard sending it almost out of bounds but the CPU will make a Randy Moss catch to prevent it from going out of bounds.

Same things with steals, you knock the ball out of their hands and they recover so fast. While your player is in recovering the ball animation, the CPU already recover it and scores.

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