 Dear NBA 2K, I'm talking to you specifically this video, all right, because it seems like, according to Mike Wang, you guys are looking to introduce a skills gap to the game. I'm with it. I think everybody should be with it. If you're a good player, that's great. You could differentiate yourself from the garbage players. If you're a garbage player, it gives you something to work towards. That's why games like Rainbow Six are so popular. It's because they're challenging, but once you get good at it, or even a little bit better, boy is it addicting. So I see that Mike Wang is looking to do the same for NBA 2K, and I like that. But here, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. You're going to launch the game, and off rip, everybody's going to be like, Oh my God, I can't hit my shots. I'm so angry. Why do I keep shooting all whites? And you're going to hear all those complaints from the sim players that want a realistic basketball experience. And you're also going to hear from the people that are just frustrated with the inconsistency. And that's because the game just launched. Nobody is perfect at shooting it and or found any jump shots that didn't make them fantastic at the game. Seems like you're also looking to introduce a skills gap. You added a new stealing system. We're going to get into the whole game and four article here in a second, but let me just play this out after everybody gets angry, like they always do at the beginning of every NBA 2K because it's too challenging. Mike Wang, you will succumb to the pressure because you can be like, Listen, we don't want these guys to stop playing the game because you've given people a unrealistic expectation that NBA 2K is an incredibly easy game. And the second it stops becoming easiest, it's going to be a weird shift. And then it's going to be on you to decide whether you want to keep the skills gap that you work so hard at balancing and introducing to the game, or you want to just revert back and make NBA 2K the boring, incredibly easy game that it always ends up being Mike Wang, I guarantee you this, if you put a good progression system into 2K 19 and introduce a skills gap, that's how it works with every single game. That's why you want to introduce it to your game is because it makes it fun to grind and to get better. There's no worse feeling than playing a game for 20 hours and knowing you made zero improvements because there's no improvements to be made. All right, on that note, let's take a look at this game and for the article. So there's, there's the article is pretty deezed. I read through it already. So I'm going to summarize the most important parts that you care about. The first thing and you may be already heard about this is the new takeover badge. Apparently it's supposed to do similar things to what the grand badge allowed. So if you're a playmaker, you get boost to your ball handling. If you're a sharp shooter, you get boost to your shooting. I don't like the badge. I never liked the grand badge. The fact that they introduced it was ridiculous because it was very hard to trigger the grand badge when somebody was actually doing something great. How many times is your playing 2K 17 and you, you didn't do shit, but your team got to stop defensively and then your grand badge activated as a sharp shooter. It wasn't adding up, right? So maybe if it triggers in moments where it makes sense and it's not too overpowered, I could roll with a system like this. But the way they described it is actually pretty interesting. So let's read it. As a, as a player's exercise, what a weird way to word of sentence. Oh my, I'm just trying to read, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't drop out in grade one, but wow, just you think that if you work for a gaming former, you can form regular sentences. As the player exercises his will against the opponent. Oh, I've never heard any commentator or basketball pundit ever phrase something like that. Exercising your will against the opponent. Is this a Shakespeare novel? As the player exercises his will against the opponent using his specialties, he builds a new takeover meter. Once activated, you'll see a fire badge underneath the player on the court, which by the way already exists in 2k18 and you get a plus five to all your attributes, whatever, which indicates the player has unlocked a new tier of special animations and badges. Badges would be interesting and that aligned with this archetype. For instance, the playmaker, I already explained this, but interesting. This is what Mike Wang described it as, which I found weird. I like it. It's like a little meta game to think about how you play with players. And apparently you can click a button. I don't know what trigger it is. And it'll tell you how close you are to reaching your takeover badge or your takeover system, whatever the fuck they want to call it. And once you, so basically, you can like almost, yo, our sharpshooter right there is gone. He's almost can get the takeover shit. And then you can hit it to the sharpshooter. And then when he drops the bucket, you'll get the extra points. And then now you can run some plays with him for the next few possessions. So if you could see how close you are, you might even be able to use it strategically. Do you watch color duty eSports? When someone is incredibly close to a kill streak, they let that guy plant the bomb so he gets his kill streak. So I'm just saying it would be an interesting way if they show it. So maybe it's going to be a little bit different than the Grand Badge. I'm excited to see how they implement it. Please don't mess it up or make it too overpower. Please do not make it too overpowered. The next thing they talked about and they had a whole section about this was clipping. And so if you don't know what clipping is, it's basically like if this was a player and I'm a player in NBA 2k, my hand goes through this bottle. It's unrealistic and they talked about how they added a new motion system in NBA 2k18. And there was a couple of bugs in it. But the way Mike Wang described it, he was almost apologizing and or admitting. He almost, let's just, hey, let's click on it. Okay, this, he said it was embarrassing, Wang admits. There was a bug that we didn't find until very, very late within the collision detection. That's another thing we're working on right now. We're spending a lot of time trying to make sure you can't just go through players and stopping them when you're trying to run into guys. The only time I've seen a dev apologize about a game, the most recent one, was No Man's Sky. And we know how big of a disaster that was. I don't know if it was embarrassing, Mike Wang. I think Mike Wang is, he's being too humble right here, Mike Wang. All right. I'm doing some clipping issues for sure. I didn't know it was because of a bug in the motion system. So you just told us that. Thank you very much. I wish you'd put out like Mike Wang, please put out a patch note. Just describing stuff like this. It'd be so fantastic. I have something to show you, Mike Wang. You're going to love this. You've probably already seen it, but I think everybody else should see it as well. Okay, Mike Wang. This right here is an article. And you might be like, is this patch notes? No. So do you guys remember when Fortnite tried to introduce the playground mode, but there was major bugs. So they took it out and they were like, listen, guys, there's delays and they kept delaying it. And eventually, like a week or two later, they brought it in. They literally dropped a whole article that they didn't have to do detailing why it was they took it out. And then they got into the specific reasons and the bugs and how they overcame it. And I was just looking around like I ain't ever in my life seen a dev team describe the technicalities of the server and why they were having issues. Once we identified the root of the problem as the exhaustion and sessions from localists, the solution was to give the cluster the ability to bulk, rebalance. What the fuck does that? I don't know. But I'm just like, their willingness to just be transparent. So anyway, I mean, you told Game Informer, but it would have been cool if you just put up like an article on your own too. I think that would have went a long way if you just put it up. I'm just saying. Anyway, stop being so humble. Okay, it wasn't that big of an issue. I've never complained about clipping all year. Anyway, you finished saying it's hard to make it foolproof because it's a game. And if we made it so that every time a limb got hit, this is why you don't drop out of college guys. It's hard to make it foolproof because it's a game. If we made it so easy every time a limb got hit, the ball wouldn't be knocked loose and it would be chaos weighing says, but you definitely won't see the major bodies going inside of other bodies and heads, which is cool. All right. Never noticed too much clipping in the game. I've never slowed it down and complained about it every once in a while. Maybe, you know, on the park, but maybe it was just, it was just blow by your blow by system is horrible. Okay. So they talked about rebuilding the stealing system. Now there's going to be a zoning system. And they said that when someone's doing a hesitation, for example, there's going to be more likely to steal the ball, which isn't new because I feel like that's the case already for NBA 2k18. Nothing really interesting, but I felt like they almost forced it in that article, but whatever, a new stealing system, please don't make stealing overpowered. The one thing I hate is you do like two dribble and people just spam square when you're a sharp shooter or even when you're a playmaker. And then you start to stumble and it messes up your animations. Don't make it overpowered. It becomes incredibly frustrating guys. Punish the, punish those guys. Punish the guys over abusing the square button going for steals. They need to be punished. Unbelievable. Hey, if I was blood arena in the hundred, they're going in the pit. Those guys are fighting it out. They don't deserve to be on the same court as me. Just saying. Okay. So this is the most interesting part for me. Read the title. Returning skill to one-on-one. This is the bit where he talked about reintroducing a skills gap into the game. We know they were going to do this because if you followed Mike Wang's Twitter a couple months ago, he was talking about reintroducing the skills gap to shooting and he also wanted an alternative for people who didn't care about improving in the game. So that's why they have the real shot percentage. So if you don't care about timing your shot, you can flip to that option and then every shot you take will be 40% for example, or whatever your archetype or your NBA player using it. Okay. This is this is what Mike Wang said. So they said this in 2K16. I remember, do you remember, do you remember that whole skills matter thing they did? They're doing it again. I hope they're right this time because Mike Wang said, we have to make this game more about bringing back the skills gap and making it about the users, the skill on the sticks to be successful. It's all about matching your stick to where the guy's trying to get to. That's what, sorry, I just had some Popeyes. I'm trying not to eat as much Popeyes and you guys like to make memes, but it is the best chicken. So I had some this morning. That's where you'll get the set offs, the brick walls. You'll get the blowbys if the guy's flicking his stick in the wrong direction, which is an important note because the people at the event, some of them told us blowbys were gone and I was like, come on, there's blowbys in every 2K. They were just never as horribly abused and implemented as 2K18. So apparently there is blowbys, but they're saying that it happens the most when the defender makes a user error, which like hallelujah. Do you remember 2K16? There was definitely blowbys in the game, especially like if a slasher came up on a sharpshooter for example. But it was never, actually, did they even have rocket types? No, that was definitely in 17. But you know what I'm saying? When there's a major strength imbalance, it makes sense for there to be occasional blowbys, especially, especially, especially when the defender is out of position. No one's saying it shouldn't be in the game in general. We're saying nerf the shits and it seems like they did. He follows up to say this. He didn't follow up to say shit. I could have swore he said more than that. I literally just read the article like an hour ago. Anyway, he did also mention that from now on on, the players won't automatically contest the ball for you. You'll have to manually do that. Obviously, I don't even know why that was ever an automatic thing. And that's crazy because some people are going to complain about that. And it's like, yo, what are you talking about? You telling me you want the CPU to contest for you? What if they mess it up? It's not a hard, you just, where's my controllers? Just move your right stick in the guy's direction. Listen, if you can't do that, just put the controller down and play Roblox, my guy. Just put it down. Okay, so apparently Mike Wang was taken serious when he put out a poll last month and he asked us whether we wanted the game to be more arcade-y or we wanted it to be more sim. Because this next section talks about street ball moves, ladies and gentlemen. And they said that they brought in professional street ball individuals to do the mocap and get the animations. I cannot wait. This is what I'm talking about, Mike Wang. Got to differentiate part from these other game modes. Now, I hope it's not abusive. I hope it takes some skill to execute. I hope it's not like as simple as flick the stick this way and then he does the craziest move like that. And then you're like, all right, then everybody's going to do it and it's not going to be special. The reason that trick shot and blew up in the Call of Duty community is because it took a lot of skill and it looked really good, especially when I was like 13 years old. I loved it. So I'm just saying if it takes some skill to do, you might be onto something like Wang. Stronger interior defense. We heard the people that came back from the event say the same thing. There was nothing really added here. It was just the waste of two paragraphs. AI enhancements. We hear about those every single year. Dear NBA 2K. It seems like you're making the game more complex. I like it. All right. And I think that anybody, whether you're a casual player or you want to play competitive, is going to like it because it gives you something to work towards. I'm a super casual Rainbow Six player, but every time I hop on, I have that desire to rank up. Right now, I'm like a gold of five or four or something like that. I don't know. But I want to get to Platinum on PC because I just started playing PC and it's addicting. So I'm just saying if you want to make your game addicting and not a boring grind, then you're on the right path. But you can get some pressure, Mike Wang. I'm talking to you right now. You can get a lot of pressure. And these guys are going to come at you and say, Mike Wang, I don't want to time my jump shots because I suck at the game and I'm a miserable human being. Mike Wang, please do not listen to those people. Mike Wang, if you listen to those people, you're going to ruin the game. And you're going to make it as easy as 2K18. And then anybody who wants to play a game that requires even the littlest amount of skill is going to abandon the game because there's no longer going to be fun. But just say you stick with it. Come December time, come January time. It's a new game, right? You've got to give people the time to master said new game. And trust me, I'm going to come out with my jump shots. If you pass to Mike Wang, I will fight, all right? It's going to do not patch my jump shots next year because I will be putting them out. And then we're going to have a situation where there's actually a skills gap and now I'm getting too excited. Mike Wang, you really know how to hype people up, my guy. And right now I'm hyped up, okay? I'm just letting you know right now you're going to receive that pressure. You did it last year and you succumbed to the pressure. I'm going to need you to stick with it, Mike Wang. And if you do that, NBA 2K19 will be a success. That's what I'm telling you. I cannot wait to play the game in person, Mike Wang. Next time I see you, I'm pulling you aside for an interview. It doesn't matter how busy you are, okay? I just, I think that's what the people want to see. Imagine an interview with me and Mike Wang, okay? Just imagine that. All right, guys, do you hear me? Do you see me smiling? You might even hear my smile. You might hear it back there. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. But agent, calm down. Can't get too excited. You never know what's going to happen. I'm going to catch you guys on the next video. I'm out. Peace.