 So I just uploaded a documentary talking about the rise and the fall of 2K. It's had some incredible games and some horrible games. True. Well, in this video here, I want to go from 2K21 next gen to what we have coming next. This is the time they're developing it, so for me to get feedback, this would be the most appropriate time so that by the time the game comes out, maybe they can implement some of the stuff that I'm talking about here in this video. I'm getting pretty in-depth and I'm only talking about the game modes that I frequent. I can't talk about my team in them because I don't play my team, so I wouldn't be a good spokesperson for that. In this video, I'm going to be talking about the city, I'm going to be talking about Pro-Am and I'm going to be talking about Quick Play. Now the quintessential NBA 2K21 experience goes as follows. If you look over here on my screen, I have a game cut up. I was the first game I played in the city in a while and it's exactly what I expected and it's the exact experience I got for the remaining hour that I play. I'm going to be honest with you, the experience on the city is a smoother, better experience than the one on Pro-Am, but it's significantly less fun and here's why. The entire game runs off of RNG. If you've ever played FIFA and you hit the crossbar six times in a row, that's what playing on the city feels like. Let me walk you through this one game I played. It was my first game played in a minute. Things start to other teams bringing the ball up. They're doing a little bit of isolation action. He dribbles through me, fates accidentally. And even he was surprised that he hit the shot. Was the defense bad? Yes, but did he accidentally pull up for his shot and get surprised that he hit it? Yes. Next possession he pulls up for all of it. He hits it. And I know it doesn't happen too often, but when it plays like the one I'm about to show you in a moment happened, it absolutely takes me out of the experience. Just check out this wild contest. And considering I'm a lockdown, shots like that should almost never go in. And then I eventually finish it off. The point isn't that we won the game. It's that no matter how perfect of a game you play, the worst opponent can still win. When that happens in a video game, it kind of takes the joy out of being good one and winning games too. So when it doesn't matter whether you're good or you win games, it kind of makes the experience feel pointless. That's kind of what Park felt like. Since the last next gen 2K21 spring update they added, they kind of blurred everything in the background. You can see in the back, the textures are a little bit, they're not crisp, they're not clear. They're doing that in an attempt to just help optimize the game that's going on. And I'm going to say this, the Park experience, not too bad. Especially once you go to the program and you have to deal with all the latency and the lagouts there, what I experienced on the Park was pretty decent. But again, there just was no fun involved. It felt like I was playing a no stakes game. And because they took the stage out, there was no place that I can go to increase the stakes. So you kind of have to do it on your own. You either wage your people yourself or join amateur competitions just to give the game some meaning because it lacks it. Anyway, that's just a clip I wanted to show you guys. Let's get into the actual wish list part and we can start with the city. The first thing is the menu responsiveness. That's when I click options and I'm scrolling through the menu or when I'm going through my phone, the whole process is just like slow. I have to click buttons a couple times because it dropped inputs from time to time. And when I click a button, it takes a minute for it to register. It's a small fix that would just make the overall experience when I'm joining a friend, changing your animation better. It would also be nice if we could seamlessly switch players. So I'd have to hop back into my menu and then go to another player and then load into the city again. If I could just be like from the city, just switch characters into the already positioned that I'm in. I feel like that'd be a great, useful feature. It'd be nice to have faster transportation in and around the city. I get like the skateboards being clunky, 2K is not a skating game. So I didn't expect the physics and the feel of that to be perfect, but it would be nice to just have things that move faster. The bikes move a little bit faster, but it's like, this is a big city. You made a big city and there's a lot of empty space in between where I'm trying to go. It would be nice to just speed up all the transportation devices a little bit just so we can get to where we want to go faster. For some reason, 2K thought it was acceptable to have different burrows, which is a good idea, but then for some reason penalize you when you want to play in a different burrow's park. So if you have a friend that's a North Side City night's heights with your South Side City Viper of Hypers, it's like you guys can't play together or one of you guys barely gets rewarded for it. You're decentivizing cooperation right now. If anything, you should get a boost for playing in a park that's not yours. They need to absolutely remove that from the game. To me, that makes zero sense. Without a shadow of a doubt, this goes what I was saying and everyone knows this to be the case. They need to return the stage full-time. The stage being a park event makes no sense. It's really the only place where it feels like there's any stakes to playing in this overall pretty casual experience. So to give people some meaning, it would be nice to be able to go to the stage. And then on top of that, increase the VC prices. Over the years, 2K has continuously reduced and reduced and reduced the VC prices. And we're playing stage games for like 500 VC at this point. 250 VC. For what? I remember back in the day, you could play for 25,000 on the high rollers. 2K needs to bring that back. This goes without saying, there's no explanation necessary. 2K needs to nerf contact dunks. It takes over the gameplay. It is literally the meta of the game and it shouldn't be that way. It should be something that happens every once in a while. So that way it's actually exciting when it does happen. When it happens nine times a game, it's difficult to be excited about it. Now personally, I don't want 2K to be exactly like real life, but the one batch that does need to be murked from the game immediately is bailout. If you are in the middle of a jump shot because you made that decision, you shouldn't be able to pass out of your shot across the goddamn court with pinpoint bullet pass accuracy. Literally nobody does that in the NBA. And I hate to be the nobody does that in the NBA kind of guy, but what this badge is truly frustrating because when I contest you, I want to be rewarded for the good defense I played. You shouldn't be, and by the definition of the badge, bailed out. They're never going to do this. Maybe they'll hopefully do it on the PC side, although they never really show love there. It would be nice to have your ping number available on the top left. So you could just see what the latency is. Will 2K ever do that? No. Actually, I don't even think I know of a console game that doesn't, but it's very common on PC. And I know 2K doesn't ever show PC love. It would be nice to just have a feature. So I know when I'm playing in bad server or good server conditions, it would be nice. This is a no brainer. It's something that the 2K community has been begging for for a while and 2K has not obliged, but new and enjoyable rewards. When I'm ranking up my player and I'm reaching new levels, I should be like excited that I'm about to get something lit. And it used to be the case, man, back in 2K 15, 16, and 17, but 2K has slowly lost their way. Man, we went from jetpacks and tigers to joining the park in a helicopter. But like, I guess? In your my court, you can add a little mini hoops basketball game mode? What? We need to just think of new stuff, yes? Bring back the old lit stuff, yes? But give people a reason to want to do that grind. Trust me, it'll pay off. When I'm in the park and I hop on the Got Next and I'm in my warm-up, that's dope. That's actually a fantastic new feature in 2K 21 Next Gen. But for some reason though, I can't look to see who else is on the Got Next. I can't see if one person's standing, two people are standing. I don't know. And therefore I could be waiting there indefinitely. Now, after you do win a game and you're on winter spot, you can look onto the side and see who's coming up. That's dope. But this should be a way for me to switch cameras or just to look over to see how many people are waiting for the game. That way I'm not just waiting with the empty park for a game that's not gonna happen. I can save myself the time and just move to a different server or a court that does have a game going on or is about to. For some reason, the way that 2K shows streaks in the game doesn't make sense. Sometimes one, they just don't show it at all. And other times they just get your streak wrong. Don't know why, but when you are going on a little binge session, you're playing for hours of streak that's important, especially once you start passing 15, 20, right? So 2K, it shouldn't be too much work for you to just display it correctly and all the time. In my opinion, I do understand they're being mayors and they have to put designs on the court, but the court designs, especially in South Side City, Vipers, Hypers is corny. It just doesn't really add much to the experience. The overall aesthetic of the park looks dope, but then I look at the courts and it's just like, that's a lot to put on a court. It actually detracts, I feel like, from the overall vibe of the court. And I believe all the affiliations, their branding almost seems like elementary eSports team branding looks. Like if I reached out to a designer, I was like, make me a design with a snake on it. This is what they would make. It doesn't feel like something done professionally. Maybe that's just me nitpicking, but I would like for that to be redone. I think most people can agree on this. Defense needs to be buffed. I mean, Hall of Fame blinders kind of put a spotlight on what we already knew to be the case that in NBA 2K, for the most part, in most games that they've dropped in the past decade, defense didn't really matter. If I can test a shot, I want that shot to miss. And then I just gave you an example of a game earlier where I was playing defense and I'm a lockdown defender, so you can't tell me my defensive attributes aren't wavy. I even have a locked takeover, right? So my defense should really, that's all it should take if I'm smothering somebody. And then when help defense is coming and they still make a contested layup, it's like, what are we talking about right now? I don't care if you're a slasher. Defense should matter. And I want to be rewarded for playing good defense. And anytime I'm not, it just decentifies this playing on the defensive side of the court and not everybody's offensive minded because defense really don't matter. Just score more on offense, outscore opponents like the Houston Rockets with James Harden. The build system had good intentions and I don't even believe it's horrible this year, but there's some small, I don't argue pretty large problems with it. The fact that everybody makes power forward builds because a lot of the time they're faster than point guard builds is crazy. Just making adjustments to the build system so that there's more diversity would be nice. If you have a logo, any type of logo, whether it's the speakers, because you're a rapper, whether it's the 2K logo because you're a content creator, when you hop on the court, you can't see it. So you can't actually get games with the logo. So it really doesn't serve much of a point unless you're just perusing around and loitering in the neighborhood, the city, the park. I've been calling it everything this video, but in the city. After winning a game and waiting on the court, you can't look at your map or change badges, simple quality of life stuff. You should be able to change your badges or change your jump shot or change your animations while you're waiting on a court or when you're in the prime arena. That's all simple stuff that should be available. This is something that affects me because I'm a gamer and I love playing in great conditions, 300 FPS, 20 milliseconds ping, all of that goodness. But on NBA 2K, I don't get much of that. I was playing on the park today and it was a good experience for the most part that out of nowhere latency picks up and it just feels severely delayed. Happens out of nowhere. Because of some of the changes they made to the engine in this year's version of the game, I'm seeing more clipping than ever, especially in dribble contact animations where I'm trying to blow by somebody. You'll see clipping through people's knees, sometimes through people's sides and it kind of just gives me a real amateurish vibe, especially after they dropped all those blog posts talking about the improvements they made and how little clipping was gonna be in this year's version of the game. So let's try and avoid clipping for the next one. Anytime I'm phasing through another player to make a move happen, that's bad physics. The last one I wanna mention for the city is the jump shot creator. For some reason, it happens from time to time, not every single time, but when you boot up the jump shot creator, it'll take like two minutes to load up. Yeah, it's a glitch, it's a bug and just like the Zion loading screen, it's something that has to be addressed. Next one I wanna talk about is Pro-M and I'm actually severely excited for what 2K can do with Prime if they just gave it the chance. It seems like a game mode that has had a little bit of attention, but never from gameplay developers and so it always has kind of been left in the dark and any improvements made to the mode were made very, very oh so slightly and it's a shame because in my opinion it could be one of the if not the biggest mode in 2K if it just got that chance. If someone's gonna invite me to be a part of their Pro-M team, you actually have to be in the same park as them to make it happen. I should be able to invite people to a Pro-M team regardless of which city they're in at that 2K. You should be able to change your badges, your attributes, your jump shots, everything about your player from the Pro-M arena while you guys are waiting for a game. It would also be nice to be able to change the cameras in the warmup arena, you know, drop it to 2K low, drop it to broadcast, whatever the case. We are NBA players technically, but we don't have rebounders. So like they just leave the balls on the floor. They don't even have ball racks anymore. You have to go pick up the ball from the floor and then rebound your own shot. The whole point of warmups is to warm up. It should be, it would be nice if you just had like a AI there, make it Mike Wang and he could just rebound us the ball and pass it to us the way that it happens in the training facility. That should be a thing that exists in Pro-M warmups. Small thing, but it would make the process that just actually warming up easier. It's sad that I have to say this next one, but let's bring the arena back. For some reason, that stadium that you could play in if you got to a high enough rank in previous versions of 2K, they just took it out the game. So the only prime you could actually play in is the facility that you're warming up in. What a shame. And on the topic of bringing things back, 2K added this league night feature where every week there's gonna be one day that's gonna have ranked games. Everybody has to hop on and play their ranked games. And they completely abandoned the idea, but they took out the ranked mode for league night. But now there's no ranked mode at all. So you either just play unranked games or play private matches or play 3v3 prime. And it's like, you just took out a feature and then just pummeled the feature that was supposed to replace it. So now there's nothing there for it. It makes the overall competitive vibe that's supposed to be prime, feel like a pointless grind unless you're joining amateur competitions and just creating value in your own way outside of 2K. For the ranked mode, I think you guys should completely remove the ranks that you guys previously had. Bronze one, bronze two, bronze three. It's too much to remember. Make it simple. Bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond. That's what every other game does. Just make it simple. Why are we overcomplicating bronze one, bronze two, silver one, silver two, gold one? You don't have to do all of that. You don't have to do all of that. When ranks are easy to remember, people can really, like, I'm a platinum. Yeah, my prime team is platinum. My prime team is silver two. Which one sounds better? Which one sounds better? 2K, just rename the ranking system and simplify it. They don't need to be that many ranks. Just make them like five, six ranks, just like every other ranked mode in every other video game. I don't think 2K will ever do this. And I've been saying this for a while, but it would be cool if when you call a timeout in prime, there were actual timeouts. They weren't just like breaks you take for two seconds. And you could actually switch to other players that you have loaded on 2K. So maybe your sharpshooter's not doing it. You could pull out your two-way, you know what I'm saying? And then you could put you on small forward and then the other person on shooting guard. That's all stuff that should exist. Ever since like NBA Live 10, Adidas Live Run, that's things you can do. You can user a player and then boom, take him out. You can do it in all-star team up. God damn it. You should be able to use your other players. Like load in with two players into the prime. And if you're not feeling the one you're using, you should be able to sub him out and change lineups on the go in the game. That'd be dope. I think 3V3 prime needs like a facelift. Like I need to be able to play 3V3 prime the way that you play ruffles or park events. Like you just load up matchmaking the way you do a 3V3 prime, but then you're playing in Shanghai or you're playing in London, you're playing in Hoopdome, Toronto or in Rucker Park. In just iconic places around the world that would be very dope to play in. That would be such a dope vibe for 3V3 prime. And you see in the likes of NBA Live doing it, plenty of the arcade-y style basketball games do it, but 3V3 prime just feels like a last-minute decision. And this year, and I might as well get into it, you don't get any rank for playing 3V3 prime. And so unless you just wanna play for the sake of playing, nobody's playing that game mode anymore. In my opinion, it was one of the best introductions 2K made, especially to the prime scene in years. And so to just gut it and make it an absolutely useless experience makes no sense. A lot of people to rank up playing 3V3 prime one. And two, let's play on unique dope real-life maps. That'd be such a great facelift for an otherwise very, very potential-filled mode. I think they need to adjust free throw difficulty. I'm playing with competitive players and they're all missing free throws. I don't know what the deal is with free throws this year. And there's always seems to be a deal with free throws. Either it's incredibly easy or incredibly challenging, but 2K can't seem to find the middle ground when it comes to free throws in pro-amp. There was a year on 2K where like, you had to do some kind of like badge glitch just to get your free throws up because there was no realistic way to do it. And it seemed like every year there's a problem with free throws. It should be the most simplest part of playing a basketball game. This is something that existed in 2K16, but they've took out since. You should be able to transfer ownership. Like, if I want to go to a different prime team and just play for the night, I should be able to transfer the ownership of the team I currently own to another person I can leave play with that team and then come back to my original team. What you had to do since 2K16 is just disband your team and then that name that you had for that team, you'll never get it back. Because once you disband a team with the name, it's gone forever. So now teams are just being created and disbanded left and right, but transferring ownership is a simple thing that I don't know why 2K ever took out their games. I think 2K needs to do a better job of placing importance on team rankings. And I know they show it on the billboards in the prime arena, but they really need to really push for it. They want prime to be a competitive mode. They have to give people a reason to care about grinding up those leaderboards. And for the most part, every time I talk to someone that plays prime, they couldn't give less of a who's number 10 on top 10 on the leaderboards, nor do they ever care to get up there. I remember even, I think it was in 2K17, like that was, if you were on the billboard bro, like that was something to be. Now it's like an irrelevant thing that nobody really cares or ever goes for. What a shame. I don't know why people are opposed to this personally because it already exists in the city, but I would like to hear the other team in prime. I would like to hear what the other team is talking about and all of that. And then I would also like for there to be a mute all feature when I don't want to hear what they have to say. So I can't talk my smack if I need to, just like the city, but I can just mute them all and focus on the comms with my team if I want to as well. That'd be dope. It would be nice to be able to load in directly from the menu into prime. Cause right now you have to go into the city and then go into prime, but it'd be nice to just be able to go straight there. Because if that's the mode that I know I'm hopping on to play, there's no reason for me to peruse around the city. They're never going to do this. I don't think, but it would be nice if there were like weekly or monthly tournaments. I remember in 2K14, if you played my team, they had these virgin gaming tournaments where the virgin gaming ran them, but it was through 2K, like you can actually click it on the game and you can sign up for tournaments and win money and do all type of stuff. And it doesn't have to be something like that, but from time to time, just every month just run some kind of in-game tournament with the $25,000 prize, something just to give something for people to look forward to. Like at the end of the month, I know there's a tournament. I want to grind my player, make sure my badge is looking right and my team chemistry is looking right because I want to compete. This is a pretty unique idea I had and I think 2K should implement it. If I'm playing in the wreck with a team and I'm loving it, like, wow, we really got along. Everyone had mics and they're cool people. I should be able to like click a button at the end of the game and like re-up with them or create a prime team and hop, go straight from the wreck until like loading into a pro-am with those people. Just make that whole experience seamless because like, oh, I really f*** with this team. They f*** with me? Say less, we could do that. In Rainbow Six is the same thing. After you play a ranked game, you can decide to stay with your team or switch out and just rematch make with a whole another team. That'd be a dope feature. I think so. And obviously like in any ranked mode, you never want to show the other team's rank before people hop into the game because sometimes people get frightened seeing another team's rank and they would just immediately dash. So hide that rank until the game has already started and then there's a penalty for leaving. That way people are incentivized to stay in games and not rage quick. Now on the quick play side of things, this was kind of difficult to think of like creative ideas because it's quick play. Like it's been done for over two decades now in NBA 2K, but it's difficult to come up with new dope stuff to include in the game. That's simple to do because if it takes any amount of work, 2K is probably not going to do it because that mode rarely ever sees attention. That being said, like when you pull up to your friend's house, that's a game old y'all are usually playing, right? Quick play, people just run on the 5v5. I think there needs to be like a dope NBA 2K title card. If I reached a certain rank on Play Now Online, I should be able to have that title card appear on my team so people know I reached the highest rank in the other mode or in park. That kind of stuff should be transferable. So that way it's almost like, yeah, I did this. Like I'm proud of what I accomplished on that other mode. Let's see what I could do on this mode. And it's like a badge of honor for people that play Play Now Online. They also need rankings that are easier to remember. Their current rankings is like eight deep and it's like freshman, this and that and pro and hall of fame. And it's like, no one's gonna memorize all of that. If you tell me your hall of fame rank, I'm not gonna know what the fuck that means because it's too many ranks and they're too random. Let's simplify it 2K. How about freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and then pro? That's very easy to remember. All stages of college and then you're a professional and that would be the highest rank. I think anytime you complicate that process, you're not really adding nothing to the game and you're actually devaluing the actual ranking system itself. Because the whole point of me saying that I'm ranked Valorant in Valorant is that everyone knows what that means. If nobody knows what rank freshman means because it's too many things to remember, especially for people that don't frequent the mode, then it really holds no value to really anyone but the people that obsessively play it. Obviously there needs to be a ranked unranked mode. I believe this to be the case in just about every mode 2K has. There needs to be a casual, relaxed experience for the people that wanna kick back and then a ranked experience where you can climb leaderboards and play competitive sliders for the people that wanna try hard. Now, if you are gonna divide that experience like that in a ranked mode, it would be cool like in other games if there was a ban and save. So I could be like, I don't really wanna play LeBron James for the ninth time in a row. I'm banning LeBron's team, ban the Lakers. And then on your side, you can save. I wanna play with the Warriors, maybe I'll save the Warriors, right? This ban and saves in plenty of esports and competitive modes in gaming. So it will be like a unique introduction, especially if you are gonna divide that experience but only if you're gonna divide that experience because the unranked people shouldn't need to play with your bans and saves. That's not an unranked chill experience. Sometimes I just wanna chill and get contact dunks with LeBron. I think it would be kinda cool in a ranked mode personally. And they're probably never gonna do it, but in NBA 2K2, 2K3, 2K4, they had a mode called Street where you can take NBA teams and play 2V2, 3V3, 4V4 in unique parks around the world. They're not gonna, I'm just saying it for the sake of it. It'd be kinda cool if they found a way to integrate that. Instead of playing in an arena, you could play in the rooftops. If Philly, that'd be dope in my opinion. I know sometimes 2K developers would say things like, ideas are easy, execution is hard. I know that to be the case, you know what I'm saying? But sometimes y'all also have bad ideas. So I presented plenty of great ideas in my personal opinion. Anywhere from simplifying ranking modes to just making the overall experience of enjoying yourself a little more seamless, 2K22 has to bang. I feel like NBA 2K21 next gen has the core of what can be a great experience. A lot like NBA Street Volume One, like it had this stuff there, but NBA Street Volume Two was the true ultimate experience that made fun. So I think NBA 2K22 has the potential to be that. I know this is around the time where they're deep into developments of the game. And so hopefully they can implement some of these things. I believe it'd make for a better game. If y'all enjoyed the video, make sure to drop a like, subscribe to the channel, man, y'all are new. Hey, just dropped the documentary, make sure to go ahead and watch it. So my titty right here, fellas, make sure to click my titty and watch the documentary. We talked about the rise and the fall at 2K, the best and the worst 2Ks of all time. It was a dope video. I was wearing a ghillie suit. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.