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NBA Playgrounds |OT| More entertaining & less predicable than the NBA play-offs!

bumpkin

Member
Is it just my imagination or did two new playgrounds get added? They're both grayed out and I don't see tournaments to play at either yet. I fired up an exhibition game last night to mess with some players I got in a card pack, and I saw "Venice Beach" and one other that I don't think I saw before.
 
Is it just my imagination or did two new playgrounds get added? They're both grayed out and I don't see tournaments to play at either yet. I fired up an exhibition game last night to mess with some players I got in a card pack, and I saw "Venice Beach" and one other that I don't think I saw before.
You get Venice Beach and Seattle after the final tournament game in Las Vegas.
 

hbkdx12

Member
I could not get passed Chris Paul Blake Griffin and I was about to lose my mind. I finally did last night and beat the next tournament. I use either Ray Allen or Steph Curry (got him in a gold pack after Chris Paul challenge, was pretty happy). Pair one of them with a good big man, I was using Larry Johnson but switched to Patrick Ewing because I blocks better when they go for a dunk. Basically pass to half court, cross over, pop a 3. I hope this strategy works for the rest of the tournaments even though I hate playing this way I just want to finish these and then ill play different and try more players.

Believe me, It does. and even then you're still going to have a tough time. The only winning strategy is to straight up aggressively outscore the AI. I can't even imagine trying to beat this game "fairly"
 
Any tips for the Hail Mary achievement? I was able to score a 3 from behind the half court line without a power up, but the achievement did not pop. Do I have to be way back like in the opponent's paint area?

Yea, I've hit this shot twice now and no achievement. Both times I was just behind the half court line. Not sure if you actually have to be all the way back in the back court or something. Might be bugged?
 

Skyzard

Banned
So I watched GB's quicklook where they give early impressions and they don't seem too hot on the gameplay but I get the feeling they haven't put much effort into it.

Is it hard to understand the timing for the shots? Is there a tutorial that explain things - and are you finding it easy to understand how to do what you want to do?

Not too bothered about the multiplayer, just looking for some arcade fun but something I can wrap my head around without putting in 5 hours before I start to get it.


---seems quite a few here have similar complaints about the shot timing.

Maybe they should have had a golf game styled ideal timing bar for the button releases.
 

DrDogg

Member
Yea, I've hit this shot twice now and no achievement. Both times I was just behind the half court line. Not sure if you actually have to be all the way back in the back court or something. Might be bugged?

I got mine for shooting just beyond the half court line. Your achievement might be bugged.

So I watched GB's quicklook where they give early impressions and they don't seem too hot on the gameplay but I get the feeling they haven't put much effort into it.

Is it hard to understand the timing for the shots? Is there a tutorial that explain things - and are you finding it easy to understand how to do what you want to do?

Not too bothered about the multiplayer, just looking for some arcade fun but something I can wrap my head around without putting in 5 hours before I start to get it.

The shooting isn't intuitive unless it's a 3-pointer. You can't play this like you would a traditional basketball game or else you'll miss most of your shots. Once you understand how the shooting works, it gets a lot better.

Definitely far from great, but it's not terrible. It's about what I'd expect from a $20 NBA Jam clone.
 

Skyzard

Banned
@DrDogg how long do you think it takes to get the hang of the shooting release timing?

Are there decent tutorials for the other stuff like stealing or blocking?
 
Oh wow Paul George is good.

When it comes to rebounds offensively and defensively just don't jump glue those feet the floor and predict where the ball will land and the ball will appear in your hands.
 

DrDogg

Member
@DrDogg how long do you think it takes to get the hang of the shooting release timing?

Are there decent tutorials for the other stuff like stealing or blocking?

Once you understand how it works and how long to hold the shoot button on each shot, it doesn't take long. Maybe 5 or 6 games at most. It's just that a lot of people seem to have issues letting go of the more traditional shooting mechanics of other games.

I've been pointing people toward my guides here: https://www.primagames.com/games/nba-playgrounds/coverage/nba-playgrounds-wiki-and-guide-all-unlocks

Covers most of the basics and you can see stats for 95% of the players in the game.

Oh wow Paul George is good.

When it comes to rebounds offensively and defensively just don't jump glue those feet the floor and predict where the ball will land and the ball will appear in your hands.

While I agree it's easier to just grab the ball when it lands. If you can jump with really good timing you'll get an extra high jump like you get with good block timing, and the player goes right for the ball while it's still in the air.
 
Got a reply...

nbaplay.png


that's promising for sure.

'Hi team, a guy on Twitter said to make the graphics good.'
 

Dizzan

MINI Member
Purchased yesterday. Played the 1st game and had a reasonable time but had to stop playing and do life.

Looking forward to spending more time with it when I get a chance.

Picked up Patrick Ewing and a bunch of mugs.
 
ugh grind for a pack and get 5 duplicates smh

Yea, I'm at a point where I'm lucky to get more than 1 new card in a pack, yet there's still 60+ players left to unlock. They should add a way to earn gold packs beyond the tourneys. Every 50 levels is like some kind of sick joke.
 

DrDogg

Member
Yea, I'm at a point where I'm lucky to get more than 1 new card in a pack, yet there's still 60+ players left to unlock. They should add a way to earn gold packs beyond the tourneys. Every 50 levels is like some kind of sick joke.

It's not every 50. Once you hit 50, *every* level you get a gold pack. I haven't had a pack of all dupes yet, but most of my packs now are 4 dupes and 1 new player. I only have 12 players left though.

Having something else for the grind would've been nice, but given how much xp you get for online wins, it's more a matter of fixing the leaver issue for me. If no one left online games, I'd have all the cards by now, easy.
 
Netcode needs a lot of work too. The games where one side is not severely affected by lag are few and far between. I've played games where the other team literally would miss every single shot and it's clearly due to lag. This leads to a lot of quits.

Seriously, so many games end up like this for me:


Bless this guy for not quitting I guess. His 2 for 12 3pt says a lot. And I somehow ended up with 38 steals? Literally every time I would try to steal, it would be a successful strip. He had 0 steals and it's not like he wasn't trying. Something is really off. It's not that I'm that good. Just feels like I'm playing with cheats on or something. Of course, I've been on the opposite end of it as well, though I am usually able to compensate somewhat decently for the lag now.
 

The Ummah

Banned
Ok, Shaq doing the bass line to the Tom Tom Club - "Genius of Love" while doing the worm after a dunk is worth the $20 for me right now. All the clips from him make me laugh.

Are there any other players with audio in the game?
 
Ok, Shaq doing the bass line to the Tom Tom Club - "Genius of Love" while doing the worm after a dunk is worth the $20 for me right now. All the clips from him make me laugh.

Are there any other players with audio in the game?
The CEO said Shaq is the only player who provided voiceover because they were together for the Shaq Fu game and the timing was right. He also said the game was initially called Little Shaq and all the players were Shaq.
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
Got this for the Switch and so far, just a mediocre experience.

First of all, playing in handheld mode, the game looks blurry. There's no other way to put it. The characters on that screen should look razor sharp yet look like they've had vaseline used to outline them. Very frustrating. In docked mode, the characters looks better but the cars in the background driving buy look to be having framerate issues and it's the weirdest, most unnecessary use of the gpu/cpu anyways. You can put in cars driving by in the background yet don't give the Switch owners the shadows and other graphical bells and whistles the PS4 and Xbox One get? If there's a current title I'd expect total parity with graphics and framerate between all three consoles it would be this game. Leaving out PC because yeah.

Controls-Where to begin? If this wants to be the spiritual successor to "NBA Jam" then the controls are over complicated[/I]. I'm just fighting the controls and that's a HUGE deal breaker for me with video games. There's simply too many moves and crap and this is clearly a case where the developers said "well, yeah we got like 8 buttons, 2 sticks and a directional pad we have to use all of them" instead of giving us a super easy control option configuration like pass/shoot/jam.

Regret buying this for $20 on the Nintendo eShop. Unless they give Switch owners some love with some major updates via patches, the title will barely get any playtime.
 

newsguy

Member
This games garbage.. unnatural shot release mechanism kills it. I been trying to play this but I should not be missing this many layups.

How about we get on these guys' ass to update this and fix it, cause this is broken.

I love 2k, NBA jam, the goat NBA street v2.. this shit is trash.

I won't go this far, because just the fact that it's an arcade basketball game is a positive. I do agree though that the way the shot timing is done (especially for layups) is garbage. Switch resolution docked and undocked is a joke, and many player stats are straight up bs. Sometimes I have fun, but the more I play the more I realize that in it's current state this game is below average.
 
Some of you are a bit aggressive with how you express your issues with the game.
Check out their Twitter, they are working on fixes for most of the "problems" it has.
They even are working on additions like new playgrounds(6 on the way) and tournaments.
It's fine to point out issues but they said this a "living" product which will get much better as time goes by.
You could very well argue that's shitty but that's modern day gaming of rushed incomplete projects.
At least they seem to be addressing and implementing improvements to many complaints.
It's a very fun game that just needs to be refined.
 
What's the quickest way to get XP once you beat the tourney?

Online if people don't rage quit. Seems to be a much bigger problem on consoles than PC. I've only had 1 person actually rage quit on PC without giving me experience. Majority seem to quit via the menu which awards experience to the winner. I'm leveling up every 3 wins or so, which is not bad.

Otherwise, exhibitions with rules set first to 10. Once you level up to the teens and beyond, it starts taking ~10 games to level up so it becomes a real boring grind. This is made even worse by the fact that the game has to go through its full lengthy loading process, even if you hit rematch with the same teams.
 
Yea, I've hit this shot twice now and no achievement. Both times I was just behind the half court line. Not sure if you actually have to be all the way back in the back court or something. Might be bugged?
I was finally able to get the Hail Mary achievement. You don't have to be all the way back. The first time I hit a 3 was with a leaning shot and the achievement did not pop. Then I tried again with a regular looking jump shot from just behind the half court line and the achievement instantly popped. So yeah, leaning shots don't count for Hail Mary.
 
I was finally able to get the Hail Mary achievement. You don't have to be all the way back. The first time I hit a 3 was with a leaning shot and the achievement did not pop. Then I tried again with a regular looking jump shot from just behind the half court line and the achievement instantly popped. So yeah, leaning shots don't count for Hail Mary.

Damn, I think both of mine were leaners now that I think about it.
 

DrDogg

Member
I had some good games online but others were extremely laggy. This was the worst experience: https://youtu.be/QpP7dK79v6Q

Never seen it that bad (playing on Xbox). Worst I've seen is when I go for a 3 and get pushed. The 3 goes in, then suddenly the opponent has the ball and they're halfway down court.

I've also seen teleporting players, but it's only very short distance teleports. Never invisible blocks like that lol.
 

Hexer06

Member
So I got this in hopes to play with my brother online.. But there's no matchmaking? Are they planning on adding it, does anyone know? That's seriously disappointing if I can't play with my friends/family online. Please tell me I'm missing something.
 
So I got this in hopes to play with my brother online.. But there's no matchmaking? Are they planning on adding it, does anyone know? That's seriously disappointing if I can't play with my friends/family online. Please tell me I'm missing something.
Yeah, it'll be amongst one of the first things they are adding.
Their Twitter feed is very active and tells what's going on but they don't usually give specific timeframes.
 
Every player can do crossovers and has crazy good handles basically. It's not like NBA street where you cough up the ball by doing too many crossovers if you don't have the stats.
 

arimanius

Member
Played this off and on this weekend. Would be a pretty fun game if the AI wasn't so cheap. This game aggravates me to no end on how cheap it is. Can't wait for online to be patched in. Hopefully that will be fun.
 

This is why I never trust publishers and wait on patches to be released before taking the plunge.

When they said "Switch online will come a few days later" it was a big red flag for me. Then I saw the sub native resolution on portable and figured I could wait it out. If they patch it, I;ll jump in. Plenty of other games to play in the meantime.
 
also shawn marion a cav? i'm down with kemp being there but...the defending nba champs with legends like world b free, mark price, etc and marion had to be pulled out of the bag? just give me ilgauskas, christ
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
I bought this and I suck at it.

Trust me, you don't. It's the controls you're fighting. They're horrible.

If I may, I want to re-post my earlier post in this thread where I posted impressions
after playing it with my son for a couple solid hours. Not 5 minutes or so but a good
2 hour plus frustration filled play session!

Got this for the Switch and so far, just a mediocre experience.

First of all, playing in handheld mode, the game looks blurry. There's no other way to put it. The characters on that screen should look razor sharp yet look like they've had vaseline used to outline them. Very frustrating. In docked mode, the characters looks better but the cars in the background driving buy look to be having framerate issues and it's the weirdest, most unnecessary use of the gpu/cpu anyways. You can put in cars driving by in the background yet don't give the Switch owners the shadows and other graphical bells and whistles the PS4 and Xbox One get? If there's a current title I'd expect total parity with graphics and framerate between all three consoles it would be this game. Leaving out PC because yeah.

Controls-Where to begin? If this wants to be the spiritual successor to "NBA Jam" then the controls are over complicated. I'm just fighting the controls and that's a HUGE deal breaker for me with video games. There's simply too many moves and crap and this is clearly a case where the developers said "well, yeah we got like 8 buttons, 2 sticks and a directional pad we have to use all of them" instead of giving us a super easy control option configuration like pass/shoot/jam.

Regret buying this for $20 on the Nintendo eShop. Unless they give Switch owners some love with some major updates via patches, the title will barely get any playtime.
 
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