Tag Archives: MyCAREER

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #480 of the NLSC Podcast!

NBA Live 15 generally wasn’t well-received when it was released, but might it be somewhat overlooked today? A fun session playing the game over Parsec prompts us to take a deep dive into all of its pros and cons. Suffice to say it’s a mixed bag, but it might just work its way into our rotation! We also connected to play NBA Live 06 PC with a 2012 season roster, and were reminded of what a special release it was. In this week’s mailbag, we join the community in talking about how we play basketball in real life. Which players would we compare our style of play to, and does that at all influence the creation of our players in career modes?

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:01 — 53.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a frank discussion of how MyCAREER absolutely sucks in NBA 2K23.

Whenever I talk about playing NBA 2K14 MyCAREER or upload videos, I anticipate a few different responses. There are lovely people who take an interest in that journey, and the updates that I share. It’s prompted a few people to reflect on the fun that they had with NBA 2K14, and either resolve to dust it off, or wistfully wish that they still could. And of course, there’s the occasional person scoffing at the idea of not playing the latest game. “There are people still playing NBA 2K14? Why?” Incidentally, I do actually play NBA 2K23, but not MyCAREER, because it sucks.

Part of me wishes that I could phrase that sentiment more eloquently, and less like a clickbait video. It’s always my aim to be constructive and analytical when I assess a basketball video game and its features, avoiding hyperbole and insulting phrasing as much as possible. In this case however, it’s a suitably succinct way of expressing the view that MyCAREER in NBA 2K23 has a strong case for being the absolute worst iteration of the mode to date. It’s not altogether surprising, as in many ways it’s a culmination of years of discouraging design choices. That doesn’t make it any less disappointing though, especially when earlier games provided superior experiences.

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Season 7 will be tipping off this Friday in NBA 2K23, which means Patch 7.0 has been pushed through. As of writing, it’s available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The PC patch should be out in time for the new Season. As always, the patch will be downloaded automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console/Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

In addition to preparing MyCAREER and MyTEAM for Season 7, the patch includes a handful of player likeness updates and stability fixes. Notably, it resolves a rare hang in MyTEAM when two cards from the same pack receive a walkout reveal, fixes an errant wipe in Rec and Pro-Am games, and addresses a bug with Start Today related to Playoff progression.

You can find the full notes for NBA 2K23 Patch 7.0 below, as well as in the Next Gen and Current Gen update histories in our Wiki. Feel free to add your impressions in the comments below, as well as join in the discussion in our NBA 2K23 Forum!

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five concepts that must never return in future basketball games.

One of the benefits of revisiting older basketball games is rediscovering features that have since disappeared, and would make a welcome return in new releases. Over the years, we’ve seen a number of features and mechanics brought back due to popular demand, which has always been a cause for celebration. To that end, I’m sure we all have further suggestions for aspects we’d like to see again. Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of those concepts will return at some point. Some of them just aren’t feasible, while others are outdated ideas and no longer relevant to modern design.

And then, you have the concepts that must never return in a future basketball game. These are the bewildering ideas and design choices that didn’t just fail to make their games better, but in many cases made them actively worse. Even if those concepts didn’t entirely ruin a game, they unquestionably impacted the fun, or displayed a complete lack of goodwill. Some of the concepts that I’m discussing here do seem unlikely to return, but we can never be completely sure of that, as some games have revisited undesirable ideas that we hoped were gone for good. You may disagree with one of the below examples, but for the most part, I think we’ll all be on the same page.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some reflections on how I prefer to start a game with realistic rosters, but end up with fictional lineups and outcomes.

Realism is relative when it comes to the virtual hardwood. I’m sure I’m not alone in admitting that as basketball video games became more sophisticated and encouraged a more strategic approach, I realised that my style of play wasn’t as “sim” as I thought. If nothing else, I was quite content to toss a more realistic style out the window if I desperately needed buckets, and use reliable tricks that would help me get them. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. The goal is to win – whether you’re up against the CPU or another person – and to enjoy the games that we play.

My point is that even those of us who value the sim style will take some liberties with realism from time to time. Indeed, it’s inevitable in franchise and career play. Those modes invite us to create our own reality, whether it’s placing ourselves in the league, or donning our GM suits to make the trades we wish our favourite team would in real life. The fictional results and player movement make playing through multiple years in franchise and career modes interesting, creating alternate history and fun scenarios. However, despite the appeal of these fictional outcomes, I’ve always preferred to begin new franchise games with real rosters, rather than shake things up right away.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five fun details that could be found in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story.

Since their introduction in NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, MyCAREER stories have been controversial. Some of them have been intrusive, poorly-written, or both. Others have been more enjoyable to play through, though many gamers still opt to skip the better ones. This ability to skip the story was first implemented in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER, but that wasn’t the only good addition that year. Indeed, some of the fun details in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story made it worth playing through at least once, if not twice. I personally played through it on both PC and PlayStation 4.

Unfortunately, NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story is no longer playable, as the server shutdown has left the game with the stripped-down offline version of the mode. As such, these fun details are now permanently lost. It may not be a big deal to everyone, but it’s a shame that the single player portion of MyCAREER is now so intertwined with the connected experience that it’s limited – or completely absent – following the servers being shut down. NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story had some fun details that could’ve potentially made it an enjoyable retro gaming experience, but I’m glad I was able to enjoy them when I could. Here are five of those details that stand out to me.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with my thoughts on ensuring that the journey is worth the time and effort in basketball video games.

In recent years, there’s been a puzzling acceptance of the notion that we should have to work to have fun with the basketball video games we play. I’m not talking about the time and effort it takes to master strategies and stick skills, complete challenges, and level up accordingly. A game that’s over too quickly is generally unsatisfying, unless you’re attempting a speedrun. The best rewards and whatever counts as being 100% completion in a game shouldn’t be quick and easy to attain. For most people, it isn’t fun to be handed absolutely everything.

These are uncontroversial statements that I’m sure we can all agree upon. However, the sentiment has mutated into a bad faith argument about gamers wanting everything right away. That may be true of a scant minority of less patient basketball gamers, but most of us just want a rate of progression that’s fair and enjoyable, with rewards that make the journey feel worthwhile. Again, the key to that bad faith argument is in the wording: “you don’t want to put in the work“. A video game should not have to be treated like an occupation in order to be enjoyed, or feel like a rewarding journey. It’s therefore vital that any rewards system makes us feel like it was time well spent.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five annoyances in basketball video games that ended up becoming novelties.

I’m still a sim gamer at heart. When I play franchise games, I prefer to start with real rosters, and allow the alternate reality to develop “organically”, rather than hold a fantasy draft or create fictional scenarios. I want to see sim games strive for a realistic depiction of the sport and its players, with acceptable deviations such as the precise number of dunks. To that point though, I’m not so inflexible that “realistic” means everything is accurate and true to life, down to the last detail. I’ve had fun attempting to play as realistically as possible, but I’ve also enjoyed a looser approach.

With that in mind, there are some things in basketball video games that were once annoyances for me, but now I don’t take them so seriously. Indeed, some of them are now novelties, and nostalgic in their own way. That’s not to say that I’m necessarily walking back on my criticism of them, but my stance has changed from “Ugh, this is awful” to “Actually, this is kind of fun”. It definitely helps that basketball games have improved in many ways throughout the years, with the best ones achieving things that once seemed impossible. When I do go back to some of the older games though, I will see novelties where once I had gripes and annoyances, such as these five examples.

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Today’s mod releases for NBA 2K17 feature an update from Botytec that converts the offline Skill Points in MyCAREER to an offline version of Virtual Currency. Check it out at the link below!

Botytec
VC Mod

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five lists five intriguing ideas that are sadly unlikely to work in practice.

If you glance back at Wishlists over the years, it’s fair to say that we’ve all had some great ideas for the basketball games we enjoy. I don’t want to sell the developers short either, as many of them are likewise creative and passionate basketball fans with an eye for detail, and they’ve come up with ideas that we’ve never thought of. Not all ideas are feasible of course, but imagination has allowed the genre to continually innovate and expand far beyond the earliest classics. It pays to think big, and then work out what is and isn’t possible, and how the possible can be implemented.

Of course, some ideas are technically possible, but nevertheless impractical. They’re great concepts and potentially useful features, but implementing them simply wouldn’t be a good move. There might be a major drawback that would make an idea divisive, and detract from the experience if it’s not optional. An idea may seem like a great solution on paper, but would be too reliant on goodwill and the honour system in order to work effectively. That’s not to say that all of these ideas absolutely couldn’t ever work, but sadly I don’t think they would without closing a bunch of loopholes and detoxifying the userbase, particularly online. They’re intriguing, but unfeasible.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #472 of the NLSC Podcast!

NBA Action ’95 for the Sega Genesis was a game ahead of its time, yet it’s often overlooked compared to other 90s hoops titles. As such, we’re making it the subject of a deep dive this week, from its gameplay to its historical content to the interesting history of the NBA Action series. A listener question also prompts us to compare the NBA Playgrounds games to NBA Jam: On Fire Edition; do Saber’s games hold a candle to EA Sports’ second (and to date, final) NBA Jam release? We also catch up on the latest from Year 5 in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, and some other fun happenings around the community, including the 100th edition of the Top 10.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:16:16 — 52.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five lists five decisions that burned goodwill with basketball gamers.

As a fanbase, we basketball gamers have demonstrated that we’ll put up with a lot. There have been a number of decisions and debacles with hoops gamers over the years that should’ve cost companies dearly, but most of us are back the very next year, buying the new release. In our defense, we do have an interest in getting a new game for the latest season, and unfortunately we don’t have the variety in the space that we once did. At the same time, we’ve become far too tolerant of issues that other fanbases would protest far more passionately.

With that being said, there have been decisions – particularly from EA Sports and 2K – that have burned goodwill. Quality was obviously a problem for NBA Live that ended up eroding significant trust in the brand, but to that point, it also squandered goodwill that it established in its heyday. NBA 2K has maintained a higher quality and sold far better, but there are gamers who do follow through on their insistence that they’ll boycott future releases. Even if the bottom line isn’t affected, these decisions that burn goodwill still damage a game’s reputation, to the point where we don’t feel the same brand affinity as before. In short, this is how publishers have lost face and fans alike.

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Patch 6.0 is now available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions of NBA 2K23, with the PC patch coming soon. As always, it should download automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

The patch prepares the game for Season 6 in MyCAREER and MyTEAM, which will be tipping off this Friday. It includes some cosmetic updates such as the Knicks’ Willis Reed tribute stripe, and a correction on the Lakers’ alternate uniform. There are also a handful of player likeness updates, as well as some technical and gameplay fixes.

At the time of posting, only the patch notes for Next Gen have been made available. You can find them below, as well as here in our Wiki. Once the Current Gen/PC patch notes are posted, I’ll add them to this post and the update history page. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on Patch 6.0 for NBA 2K23 in the comments below, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum.

UPDATE: The Current Gen patch notes have been posted on the official NBA 2K Discord, and have been added below and in our Wiki accordingly.

UPDATE #2: PC received Patch 6.0 last Friday, April 7th.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a recap of my Drive for Five in Year 5 of my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER.

At this point, my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER is well beyond being just a kick. It’s become one of my all-time favourite basketball gaming experiences, and a staple of my rotation on the virtual hardwood. Even though I enjoyed NBA 2K23 far more than NBA 2K21 and NBA 2K22, it couldn’t replace NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4 as the star of my lineup. And honestly, why should it? While I do consider NBA 2K23 to be the strongest release in the last few years, if I’m enjoying an older title even more, there’s no reason to put it aside just because it isn’t the latest game.

Year 5 proved to be another captivating journey. As I’ve said before, I’ve greatly enjoyed how each season in this NBA 2K14 MyCAREER has ended up telling its own story, even if they’ve ultimately culminated with a similar ending. To that point, though every season has ended with my player celebrating a championship, the road to that destination veered off into different routes that were all fun to travel. While the numbers may suggest otherwise, the Drive for Five actually stands as one of the most challenging seasons so far in my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER. It demonstrates the value of playing through multiple seasons, and experiencing an ongoing alternate reality.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at the “No Portrait Available” placeholders that are a staple of old basketball video games.

Beyond obvious examples such as dated graphics, fewer modes, and less bonus content, there are some hallmarks that immediately identify basketball video games as old school. They are the approaches and design choices that modern games eschew, either because they’re no longer necessary, or newer technology facilitates preferable solutions. These days, you’d never see a Free Agents Pool that’s limited to the same number of players as a regular team. No active players will be represented by Roster Players, since the entire league is covered by the current licensing agreement.

That brings us to another staple of old games that we no longer see: a generic portrait for players who are missing a proper one. If you’ve been playing basketball games for a long time, these players with no available portrait will be part of the nostalgia that you feel for old favourites, whether it’s the approach in general or some more specific examples. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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