Please be good.
I used to be a 2k addict. I was ranked #3 on the Xbox leaderboards back in 2k8 (bit of a brag but it was honestly awful, you should have seen/heard the hatemail I woke up to each day). It was basically all I played.
Fast forward to now...I didn't buy 2k17 at all. The non-stop focus on MyPlayer and in your face microtransactions is staggering. People like to shit on a variety of games for their microtransaction practices, but no company is worse than 2k here.
The last time I played the series, 2k16, on the Online Ranked menu there was an option to "buy wins". Literally pay for wins to climb the ladder. Granted this was with "VC points", but then they're selling you $50 packages of it in their store.
On top of that...the gameplay innovation just isn't there anymore. They still use a lot of the same recycled animations going back to the last generation of consoles. The lazy canned "bump" animations that make handling the ball feel clunky. Even going to shoot around in the practice gym - you often come to a full or complete stop when you're player is picking up the ball because of the animation length, those same animations were there in 2k11.
2k17 shooting animations were great, I'll give them that.
Live 10 (the year EA stole Mike Wang) was a fantastic game with a ton of potential. General movement and shooting mechanics were extremely crisp and responsive. If EA puts the focus on innovating from a gameplay/physics perspective, adds a solid online "dynasty" type mode, and lets the rest build off of that, they'll be able to take back market share over the next few years.
Sure, a lot of kids will still go 2k to play in their "park", but there's a big community of "sim" basketball gamers out there who have been left out to dry the last few years.
