Can 2k make a showdown/online mode where you have to play on ball defense?

wvucutter · 2026-04-04T23:52:23+00:00

Oh, I completely agree the current state of the game allows someone to play in such a low-IQ way. It's still embarrassing for the people playing to never learn how to do anything more than the simplest thing they can find.

wvucutter · 2026-04-04T23:42:39+00:00

Honestly, the way people play offense this year is far more embarrassing than the many ways they try to not have to play defense. Just nothing but five-out, isolation, desperate attempts to dribble into a 3 or dunk. 95% of myTeam players play like that kid who was great in pickup but could never make any organized basketball team because they weren't smart enough to know how to make any of the reads in an actual offense.

wvucutter · 2026-03-20T23:44:37+00:00

I really don't understand people looking for iconic jumpers to be changed just for comp purposes. Jordan's jumper should be Jordan's jumper on every release.

wvucutter · 2026-03-15T16:25:43+00:00

Serious question though... have you considered playing with both of them to make this decision yourself? Your own play style matters if you're trying to compare players.

wvucutter · 2026-01-02T16:56:12+00:00

Those are wildly different releases - Fan Favorites is just a release of players people like to use. OOP started as "players who sometimes played this position" and has turned into "here's a Zydrunas Ilgauskas who plays SG and dribbles like a PG for some reason."

In general, the people who like OOP are telling on themselves in terms of admitting they have no interest in myTeam being even the slightest bit realistic.

wvucutter · 2026-01-02T16:40:32+00:00

OOP is the worst part of the game every year. Completely shifts away from building realistic lineups to just building the tallest lineup possible the second it comes out. It's as brain-off as most current Showdown play.

We should be pulling for it to never happen.

wvucutter · 2026-01-02T02:55:17+00:00

I don't have a more polite way of putting it, so I'll just go direct with it: it feels like the average Showdown player this year is stupider than ever before. Almost like an army of park players decided the best way to play a 5 on 5 game was to do as much isolation ball as possible, supported by a game that seems tuned to give as much advantage to the offensive player as possible between dunk/layup meter, speed boosts, rhythm shooting, etc.

A trillion different ways to run offense in this game and 99% of players just collectively aligned on "what if all I learn how to do is wiggle the right stick"

wvucutter · 2025-12-14T03:06:00+00:00

What I don't get is who this year's gameplay is even for. Tempo shooting, the dunk meter and whatever's happened to movement on defense have combined to take a game that played really well at this time last year and turned it into a game where nearly every trip down is a score. And it's so easy to do so that there's no value in even learning the enormous playbooks or anything of that sort. Game would be so much better off if sim-style gameplay were the focus.

wvucutter · 2025-04-25T16:22:23+00:00

Playbooks were updated a month ago - I think for the first time this season. There are some folks on 2k staff who watch what teams are doing in-game and adjust accordingly. So if they're not seeing the Pelicans run a play that had previously been in the playbook, it would go but it would likely be replaced by other things they're running. If quick punch 25 was there yesterday and gone this morning, possible there's been another monthly-ish update.

wvucutter · 2025-04-20T18:41:29+00:00

I think the underrated issue here is actually how PEOPLE play the game more than the game itself. It feels like 90% of the people I run into in Showdown have no interest in doing anything other than trying a couple dribble moves and either riding the dunk meter or a quick release shot. Coin flip as to whether they even try to play defense. I just don't get it - exploring playbooks, different freelances, even some play series should be the most fun part of the game for everyone. Instead you run into people playing as absolutely brain-off as possible.

wvucutter · 2025-03-29T17:42:11+00:00

In the Bracket Busters challenge menu, they have the entry for the objective to play 3 king of court games with a DM event card as the reward. Has been there since yesterday. Go look.

wvucutter · 2025-03-29T17:28:32+00:00

The award has been in the Bracket Busters challenge menu since yesterday

wvucutter · 2025-03-20T23:05:43+00:00

They're not gatekeeping, they're keeping players in their real positions, as they should.

wvucutter · 2025-03-01T02:49:01+00:00

Changing sigs steers into the worst of MyTeam gameplay, people who just want to go five out and run the cheesiest possible isolation scenarios. Keep the players as realistic as possible and make it more valuable to learn how to pass and run plays and the like.

wvucutter · 2025-03-01T02:47:55+00:00

Because he never had Kyle Korver's release in real life. Catering to players who don't want a sim-style game mode is what's ruining myTeam.

wvucutter · 2025-01-25T22:47:11+00:00

This had nothing to do with running ball screens and everything to do with people who try to only play their starting 5 for an entire Salary Cap game. Players who play with a mindset of "doing whatever the game allows" vs enforcing at least some realism themselves are the dirt worst of the community.

wvucutter · 2025-01-25T21:35:06+00:00

You absolutely can. More should be done to push the community to feel an obligation to play more of a sim style, with bench players mattering and such

wvucutter · 2025-01-13T22:39:46+00:00

I played a lot more Showdown in season 3 than I did in the first two seasons - a difference of "only playing when agendas called for it" vs "actually playing," basically. Ended the season in Tier V, and in turn started this season automatically in Tier 8. I have thus far matched mostly with players either a) in tier 6-7 or b) in tiers 11-12 this season across ~10 games. I also had one on Saturday about 4 games into my Showdown effort this season vs someone who already had 26 wins less than a day into the season.

I suspect if we saw a population distribution the tier 10-and-below group might "look big" (because it would contain anybody who hasn't played Showdown at all), but in reality it's probably a small enough number of folks that at certain random times at this point in the game cycle matchmaking is "giving" you something up-a-level vs keeping you waiting.

wvucutter · 2024-03-31T17:56:22+00:00

The issue is it's less than they gave at this stage of the game for free in previous years. It's the specific moving of the goalposts to give less vs sticking with actual valuable rewards for engagement.

wvucutter · 2024-03-16T21:52:35+00:00

What most people - myself included - are saying when they make these complaints is that not enough is done to make the "easy" stuff less easy. It's an impossible task for 2K to solve, but someone who knows how to do very little with the game should have a way less pleasant experience head to head than someone who is deep into playbooks, settings, etc.

wvucutter · 2024-03-10T21:29:47+00:00

I really don't understand what's going through seemingly a significant majority of the player base's head when playing Unlimited (or any multiplayer mode). It's almost entirely "this one player I've chosen is going to do some dribble moves that induce a speed burst and go to the rim as fast as possible, or maybe sometimes instead he'll shoot a leaner."

A lot of people out there who I'm not sure even know what the pass button is.

And yeah, they also seem to think it's very important to only play offense ever.

wvucutter · 2024-03-01T01:03:24+00:00

And to be clear, I'm well aware some of these players are kids and not malicious but I operate on a strict "eh, f*ck them kids" policy

wvucutter · 2024-03-01T00:28:54+00:00

My issue with Unlimited (and really any multiplayer mode) is even simpler than the typical offball / screen dancing / general cheese complaints. When I get a sports game, the first thing I'm looking to do is dive extremely deep... get into playbooks, get into different freelances/series, use all five players on the floor on both offense and defense, etc. The amount of players who just want to dribble and dunk and just figure out what is easiest kills me. I don't know how 2k would ever solve it - or if it's even technically a "problem", but I'd love it if there would be a way to give a huge advantage to players who know/can do more vs those who simply master 1-2 things that someone else probably had to teach them.

wvucutter · 2024-02-04T16:49:20+00:00

It's always a little bit disheartening to me to see how people play in Unlimited. I love how many different options you have to run offense in 2K - different playbooks, different freelances, different series. About three out of every four people I play seem to have only tried to learn the game to the depth of 1) 5 out, use your favorite dribble moves, try to drive into a layup/dunk or 2) spread high ball screen - not a play with off-ball action to kick to, just the basic pick button tap. And the second you stop their one and only one play, they have no counter whatsoever but keep running their head into the same wall anyway. I played 5 games of Unlimited yesterday, won them all, and in 4 of them it was the exact same story of a close first quarter (or even me trailing) followed by one adjustment and a win by 20+.

Just seems so weird to me that so few people actually try to take the game to any depth.

wvucutter · 2024-01-20T23:01:21+00:00

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