Following up on Scott O’Gallagher’s blog – ‘Mr. Shot Meter’ himself, Mike Wang, has a detailed blog for us. If you do not know who Mike Wang is, he works as a Gameplay Director for NBA 2k. Wang started out his career at 2k Sports, but briefly left and had a stint over at EA working as a NBA Live employee, but transitioned back to 2k for 2k11. Mike Wang is also the man behind the shot meter, which has a love/hate relationship with 2k Players.
You can read what Mike Wang detailed about NBA 2k16 in his 2k gameplay blog below.
- New Post Game! Post has been rebuilt from the ground up and is better than ever. We’ve moved post back to a hold of L2/LT to give you quicker access, free your right thumb up for other actions, and to better mirror defensive movement. There are hundreds of new animations, better freedom of movement, lots of new moves and collisions, a new post cutoff system, and just a better overall feel to the play in the paint.
- Loads of passing improvements: faster ball speeds, better pass animation selection, completely re-written pass lane selection, ability to immediately break out of catches, step in catches around the rim, step out catches when crowded, less sliding on standing catches, boat loads of new content, and much much more. We’ve even added a new option to allow you to pick what’s most important when using directional passing. So you can go with the default tuning or you can bias it more toward stick direction or receiver openness.
- New passing controls:
- A/CROSS = Best Pass (gives you the best pass for the situation you’re in)
- B/CIRCLE = Tap for Bounce Pass, Double Tap for Flashy Pass, Hold for dribble pitch/handoff (hold to bring the selected receiver toward the ball, release to pass or handoff if close enough)
- Y/TRIANGLE = Tap for Lob/Overhead Pass, Double Tap for Alley-Oop, Hold for Lead to Basket pass (hold to make the receiver cut toward the hoop, release to pass… awesome addition!)
- Improved pick controls and animations – Ability to quickly toggle between roll or fade as well as switch pick side without having to wait for a timer. You can also call for an early slip or fade at any point. The new pick controls give you ultimate flexibility to read the defense and adjust in real time just like an NBA point guard would.
- Controllable “flick flick” finishes give you the ability to control how and where you finish your up and unders and step thru shots (previous years you were stuck with whatever the animation wanted to do)
- Pump fake, draw foul shots have returned
- MUCH more responsive defensive movement both onball and off which feels fantastic and really helps balance the game.
- A bunch of new jump shot types to cover various cases to prevent weird facing and momentum pops. We’ve also given you the ability to maintain your dribble when pulling off a hop shot and tweaked shot release speeds to remove some of the delays and hitches you may have seen in the past.
- Support for signature size-ups in all 4 directions. Over 200 new size-up animations really boost the floor game and makes it a lot more fun to break down the defense with your favorite ball handlers. All size-ups are completely branch-able at any time and look great.
- Brand new dribble crowd system allows you to body up the ball handler while he’s standing in triple threat or dribbling. This makes the physical onball defenders feel much more dominant. The moving body up ride system also saw a ton of improvements. Collisions are much more appropriate, more intense, and more responsive for both the dribbler and defender. In a nutshell, playing onball defense is nice now.
- Speaking of onball defense, we’ve also added a new Dynamic Defense Assist feature. The harder you press the Intense-D trigger, the more assist we give you as an onball defender. I can’t overstate how much this feature improves the ability to play defense online. There’s also a slider, so you can tweak the strength yourself or turn it off.
- Boxouts and rebounding have been re-designed from the ground up. The major difference you’ll feel is that you now have complete control over how your player moves and interacts during boxouts. It allows players to read and react on the fly and turns rebounding into a game of skill.
- Blocking is another area that has gotten a lot of love. As a blocker, you can now choose to go up conservatively with verticality or more aggressively to try and make a bigger play on the ball. We’ve also implemented point IK, which allow blockers to track the ball in real time and react to different situations in a dynamic way. For me, swatting a shot into the stands is probably the most gratifying thing to do in NBA 2K16. The improved physics on blocks make these scenarios look great too.
- Layup strips have been improved and are a much more reliable counter against guys going to the rim.
- We’ve re-worked the offball collision system to allow you to deny with more physicality and chuck cutters away from the ball. It’s especially awesome to see guys trying to fight their man off while being grabbed to try and get open for those last second buzzer beaters.
- For jump shooters, we’ve added some of the post-release follow through antics that shooters tend to do in real life. So on high percentage shots you’ll see guys leaving their hand up on the follow through or heading back upcourt early as they watch the flight of the ball. You’ll see players try to “will the ball in” with their body language, follow their shots, or even celebrate early like Steph Curry on a buzzer beater. It may be a small detail, but it’s one of my favorite features this year.
- Shot percentages have been re-tuned and provide much more expectable results. We do a much better job now of detecting shot defense and responding with realistic outcomes (fewer missed easy layups, more bricks when heavily contested, and contested jump shot values that match real life stats.) Also, just about every variable we have in our shot heuristics can now be re-tuned post-release without having to create and release a patch, ensuring that we’ll be able to fine tune the system based on community feedback so that everybody’s happy.
- Ball handling saw its share of upgrades. Lots of new content to freshen up cuts, first steps, and overall movement… as well as plenty of ambient, bring the ball upcourt dribbles which the sim community loves.
- One quick gameplay camera thing… for fans of the 2K camera, we’ve added a “Flip Style” option that lets you choose between “Swivel” (what it’s always done) and “Cut” (immediately change camera angle with a cut.) So for those gamers who like playing “north/south” but hate the swivel effect on change of possession, there you go. There’s also a new “2K Wire” camera option which is kind of a hybrid between the 2K Cam and Wire cam. You might want to check it out.
- And last but not least, no 2K basketball game would be complete without a massive content refresh. Last I checked, we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000-10,000 new animations. So you’ll be seeing some new stuff for sure.
NBA 2k16 is officially less than a month away from release, so make sure to pre-order your copy for all bonuses.
