Senior Producer at Visual Concepts, Erick Boenisch, posted a lengthy post on the 2K blog highlighting some of the improvements coming to NBA 2K16‘s MyLEAGUE and MyGM modes — spoilers: all of it is pretty great.
Everyone has their personal wish list of features that they want to see come to the NBA 2K franchise, however, given a very intense, limited development cycle the game usually only gets iterations, and the quality of those iterations varies year-to-year. This year sees a plethora of added features and re-works to the staple MyLEAGUE and MyGM modes that are sure to make the sim-crazy fans, like myself, happy.
Team relocation is finally here! Making an appearance for the first time in the series with NBA 2K16 players will finally be able to relocate their favorite teams to different cities. Visual Concepts has created dossiers for some major cities within The United States that weighs the population, the median income, the fan interest in a professional basketball team, and how many ‘TV homes’ are within that city.
Where you build your stadium in the city you’ve chosen to relocate your team to will also have weight to it. Building in the suburbs as opposed to a centrally located downtown area will affect how much the stadium will cost to build, in addition to, higher cost of operation.
After moving the team to a new city a full customization for the team’s branding by using the tools that were unveiled in the NBA 2K16 Pro-Am trailer earlier this year. Player’s will be able to change the team’s colors, customize the appearance of uniforms, and change logos using the provided Visual Concepts logos, or uploading an original image for the logo.
Arena customization is also included in the team’s relocation. Players will be able to choose everything from what the scorer’s table looks like, to the pattern of the hardwood, to the jumbotron — you can even choose a noise that plays when the visiting team misses a free throw. Obviously, I’ll be using Nelson form The Simpsons trademark, “haha.”
The way in which your team will be able to relocate differs depending on what mode you are playing. In MyLEAGUE you can relocate your team to your heart’s content. Alternatively, MyGM will be based off of completing goals the owner has set. The choice of city will also factor in; the owner is less likely for to relocate to a market that they do not see value in, which factors into the amount of money the owner is willing to contribute to the relocation.
The relocation also has to go through an application submission and Relocation Committee vote. During this process the committee will decide if the relocation will e in the best interest of the league. Players can also interact with other owners within the league to see how they are feeling on the relocation, and their opinions will vary based on where you are trying to move the team; for instance, if you are trying to move your team to Tucson the owner of the Phoenix Suns may not be too pleased with you possibly cutting into his profits — I live in Arizona there’s like two Suns fans. No owner wants to split that with a different team.
If the team relocation is accepted the NBA 2K16 will automatically realign the division in the league. This way the player doesn’t have to worry about being located in New York, but playing within the Pacific Division.
For me, this is such an amazing addition. I’ve spent many of hours in Madden relocating my team in the hopes of increasing over all profit of my franchise. Team relocation brings a new depth to both MyLEAGUE and MyGM. My only gripe with this mode is the application and approval process. NBA 2K16 needs to communicate to the player why the application was denied when, and if, it is denied and that denial needs to make sense to the player. The computer controlled teams can’t seem arbitrary in their logic in previous NBA 2K entries.
The off-season is also seeing a few changes. Staff hiring is entirely new with more control over the process than ever. Players can now pilfer staff members from other teams, or give promotions to members of their current staff. Staff will also have motivations of their own. Your assistant coach could have dreams of being a head coach and be hired by a team interested in giving him the head coach position. It’s an interesting addition that could force me to spend more time with the staffing portion of MyLEAGUE in NBA 2K16.
A new draft presentation has been added to the game with a new presentation that keeps Adam Silver, but ditches the annoying, un-skippable Madison Square Garden packaging from NBA 2K15 — thank you, Visual Concepts. Thank you.
NBA 2K16 is getting a new feature called ‘team intel’ that surfaces the motivation of other teams within your franchise. Team intel aims to fix one of my worries about the new team relocation feature. Teams will no longer live in the now according to Erik Boenisch. They will constantly will be evaluating what will be the best move; this includes looking to rebuild the team, dump draft picks/rising stars in order to acquire a trusted veteran that can help the team win right now, or even trading draft picks if it looks like it’s going to be a weak draft class.
This one feature does so much for the NBA 2K franchise. It communicates so much information to the player and takes away a ton of guesswork. I have personally ran into so many situations where a trade was mutually beneficial to the team I was attempting to trade with and myself only to be denied not knowing why. With team intel I can see what motivations a team has, and make decisions based off of that.
Additionally, GMs will send you feedback on why they are not accepting your trade — I could literally kiss everyone at Visual Concepts on the lips right now.
Some additions that I would categorize as house keeping have been added to NBA 2K16. Of these housekeeping additions are the new calender screen and SimCast Live. The new calender merges the social media feed into the calender, and adds customizable ticker feed that keeps track of upcoming games, and events taking place in the league like All-Star Weekend or the NBA Draft. SimCast Live let’s players control every aspect of a game without directly controlling the players. You can call plays, make substitutions all while watching ‘chips’ that relay where your players are in real-time. Players can also jump directly from SimCast to direct control with the press of a button with no load time.
NBA 2K16 was already positioned to be a interesting sports game with the hiring of the legendary film director Spike Lee to direct this year’s MyPLAYER, but these additions and improvements to MyPLAYER and MyGM have made me even more excited for the game; September 29th can’t get here soon enough. For the full list of all the upcoming changes, check out the 2K blog.
