Wishlist

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of items that were often included in or suggested for our old Wishlists, which now seem odd and unnecessary.

If you want to see how far basketball video games have come over the past twenty years or so, one only needs to fire up an old favourite from the turn of the millennium. If you don’t have one of those games or the necessary hardware set up, you could also take a glance at our old Wishlists. So many things that we wanted to see added to the virtual hardwood have made it into games at some point, from franchise and career modes to deeper controls and retro content. Between NBA Live and NBA 2K, many of our wishes have come true.

Not all of them have of course, and while that’s disappointing in some respects, it’s arguably a good thing in other ways. If nothing else, in hindsight some of our wishes and suggestions weren’t particularly good or useful ideas. Now, basketball gaming has obviously changed, which means our needs and desires have also evolved. It’s very easy to dump on the past because as the old saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, and not everything ages well. Still, it’s funny to look back on those Wishlists, not only to see some seemingly lofty suggestions that became a reality, but also a few ideas that NBA Live and NBA 2K simply didn’t ever need to seriously consider, let alone implement.

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It’s that time again! The NBA Live and NBA 2K development teams are hard at work on the next titles, which means we need to get our feedback in as soon as possible. I’ve created our official Wishlist topics for NBA Live 20 and NBA 2K20, so that we can compile our suggestions and send them along to EA Sports and Visual Concepts respectively.

As always, we’re looking to compile a comprehensive but concise snapshot of what the basketball gaming community wants to see in the upcoming games. Whether it’s new features, fixes and improvements, or bug reports, it’s all useful feedback for the Wishlist. Bullet points are best and far preferable to long-winded essays and videos, though at the same time, don’t just say things like “make the gameplay better”. We need to explain how we want the gameplay to change, and what would make it better. The same goes for modes, and all other aspects of the two games.

Just a reminder that we are focused on constructive feedback here, so please leave out the snark and insults. Venting about the games is perfectly acceptable in other Forum topics, but these topics are about compiling useful suggestions, not yelling at the developers. By all means constructively criticise and point out problems, but please be aware that we’re not going to pass along profane suggestions!

Once again, we want to get our Wishlists in as soon as possible – ideally before the end of January – in order for them to have the most impact possible. To that end, sign up for a Forum account (if you don’t have one already), and start posting your ideas! We’ll be organising a Top Wishes section to concisely explain what we most want to see, so feel free to prioritise your lists. The first post in the Wishlist topics provides further information about the best format for your feedback, in case you’re looking for a guide. With all that being said, start posting those wishes!