A Few More Thoughts on Club OTP
by 
After playing some more Online Team Play tonight in NBA Live 09 I realized I forgot a few things in my initial write-up. There were also some thoughts that came to mind since then. I included a few screens of the club area and the grading that is done after a game is completed. I’ve also added a poll to vote on the current team assigned to the club. So far club Pasta Padre is struggling but enjoying it despite that.
Fun fact: The Pasta Padre club has the most members of any club at this time.
As a team it seemed like we started to play better last night and got into more of a rhythm. Unfortunately there is little that can be done on defense so there isn’t much incentive to playing in a team oriented fashion.
I was able to switch the team for the club so that is good news. I’d prefer it though if we could just choose a team at the matchup screen instead of having to be locked into the one set for the club.
This brings up a concern I have and that is how only the top teams are being used. Rockets, Celtics, and Lakers primarily. There isn’t any reason for a club to not play with one of the best teams. Personally this takes some of the fun out of it for me as I’d like to have a wide variety of matchups. There doesn’t seem to be a way to get a balanced matchup between two of the lesser teams since no one is going to choose a team for the club when they know that a random pairing will almost certainly result in playing the Rockets, Celtics, or Lakers.
So we have all these different teams in the game but the majority seem unlikely to ever be used in OTP. This includes the FIBA teams. Just for fun we set it up with Team USA and our potential opponents laughed and backed out which was to be expected. Hey we are desperate for a win and were hoping they wouldn’t notice. I know I would really like to play with the FIBA teams and rules but just doesn’t look like it will happen because there is no way to prearrange matchups or discuss them before linking up with an opponent and being locked into the current club team.
In a full 5v5 I don’t believe there is a way to intentional foul. If there is I haven’t had any success with it. I can understand why there might be concern about an intentional foul button but if someone wants to ruin the experience of others they’ll find a way to do so. Hopefully they didn’t remove that functionality out of fear that it would be used to cause problems because it can be a necessity.
In addition to the problem where two players are started way in the back court by the bench at the start of the second half there have been instances, from what I remember usually on inbounds plays in the front court, where it is almost as if the entire team on defense is running in late from the other side of the court. It has allowed the offense to get some easy scores with the defense being completely out of position like that.
I feel bad for people who are controlling bigs. On one hand they do get a lot of chances to score and grab rebounds. But they also end up taking the hit when the player they are assigned to defending scores at will also. So far it definitely seems easier to work up a good grade as a PG, SG, or SF as opposed to PF or C.
I’m still unsure if you can view your own or your club member’s stats as broken down by position. You can with the free agents which is neat to look through.
I do really like how quickly the OTP games are breezing along. That may be due in part to the frantic pace of the games and few stoppages in play though. On average I’d say from start to finish each game is taking about 25 minutes. It’s nice to be able to get a handful of games in within a smaller chunk of time. Still it feels long enough that better teams will be able to separate themselves from the competition and teams that fall behind would have the opportunity to make a comeback.
I really hope that all the club records and player stats are cleared when any improvements or fixes are made to the mode. Right now all the stats are relatively bloated and it really isn’t representative of skill or level of teamwork.
Now that I have been able to change up the club team I was curious how often everyone would like it to be switched? I understand right now we pretty much have to use one of the best teams in order to compete so that limits the options. When I’m online I can change it as much as possible but when I’m off it ends up stuck on a single team.
There are two things we can do. The first is that I can assign a couple people GM duties which would mean that they could invite or boot people from the club but also believe they’d be able to change the team. The other thing would be for me to ask everyone what team to set for a particular period of time. So for now I’m going to put up a poll asking which team you would like that to be right now and we’ll go from there in a few days.
October 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm
First????
October 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm
[quote comment="41547"]First????[/quote]
Yesssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My life is complete
October 10, 2008 at 3:45 pm
alright pasta, im gonna be on tonight and i havent had a chance to play with you yet so i hope you are on for the first or second game of the night
October 10, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I’ll try to make it on for a game or two tonight. If I can’t then I’ll be on some tomorrow.
October 10, 2008 at 3:49 pm
nice, I can play most positions but im best at C or PF
October 10, 2008 at 3:55 pm
DAM i’m slippin
if ur NOT 1st ur LAST
KidN
@ N e 1 who might kno I see dey got Scottie & Rodman in 2K so are deer N e GOOD MJ caps out yet
or
has da On-Line problems affected dat 2
October 10, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Yeah doesn’t look like I’ll be making it home in time to hop on tonight but I’ll look to play some tomorrow.
October 10, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Thats cool that this is the biggest club in the world.
October 10, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Pasta since EA said they would
update new stuff daily are they going to put goggles
on Amare Stoudemire since he has to wear them now?
October 10, 2008 at 5:34 pm
are you going to do a write up of the online play single player?
October 10, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Hey Pasta man, add me 2 ur friends list homie, I say we should have kept the Blazers. The people runnin with em just werent good enough with em. I’m a beast with Aldridge. So if we go back to em i’ll use Aldridge. But i’m best at running PG. If I had to choose out of the teams up their i’ll go with the Hornets.
I could use Chris Paul pretty efficiently.
October 10, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Pasta,
The Way You INT FOUL Is By Hitting The Back Buttin Near The Ball Handler And The Game Will Auto Foul Him For You…A Team I Was On Almost Came Back Using This In The Last Minute Cause FT Are Somewhat Difficult For A PF/C…I Dunno If I Like The Multi GM Deal Cause its Ur Club…Just Keep The Voting And Switch Between 1st Class Teams, Im Sure Use As A Club Will get Better With Practice No Matter What The Team…
October 10, 2008 at 7:01 pm
pasta did you find out if they are going to patch the new hornets court in?
October 10, 2008 at 9:06 pm
hey has anyone noticed that the rosters arent updated? shaun livingston isnt on the heat, jr giddens on the celtics, will solomon on the raptors, michael ruffin on the bulls, player #s arent right, other than that online is frickin sweet cept for people using the same teams over and over
October 10, 2008 at 9:08 pm
*giddens,solomon,ruffin arent on the teams but they are suppose to be
October 10, 2008 at 9:57 pm
can someone from asia join the club?
October 10, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Pasta,Live has the clubs but Im telling you 2Ks 5 on 5 is so much better than Lives.After watching some of the videos you posted from your club play,I came away very discouraged cause of the lack of defense and franatic play.
In 2K9s 5 on 5 you can block shots steal the ball,and there is better body detection on the players.Also you can set picks, call for the ball, and with the trigger buttons you can juke your defender to get open when the ball isnt in your possesion.
October 10, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Pasta I hope you get a chance to post some impressions on 2Ks Team Play 5 on 5.
October 10, 2008 at 10:20 pm
My biggest issue with Live online is the pass beneath the basket. It seems like everyone just runs up the court, throws the ball under the bucket, dunk/99% lay-up, rinse and repeat.
Club OTP games, after one night, are a thing of the past for me. I’ll stick to OTP games with guys I know.
October 10, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I hope Pasta goes into detail on how sweet the 5 on 5 team play in 2K9 can be when not lagging or getting disconnected.Unlike Lives defensively challenged 5 on 5.
October 10, 2008 at 11:09 pm
yea U can also grab ur man ala Ron Artest vs Paul Pierce 2 slo him up
October 11, 2008 at 6:09 am
Pasta,
I went ahead and created my own custom sliders, using Playmakers as a baseline and then making my modifications from there. Game play is much improved offline (especially the 70% FG issue). I only tested it out on Super Star mode, and it’s better for 10+ minute quarters. The final score is not indicitive of how competitive this game was. I’ll be tweaking with 2K9 sliders shortly as well.
EA Locker: cabrillo24
Manual input:
http://www.pastapadre.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1469
Results (keep in mind I’m pretty damn good at NBA Live)
9 minute quarters
Lakers (user) 91
Trailblazers (cpu) 75
Trailblazers kept it close in the first half (Lakers had 5 point lead); however, the depth of the Lakers bench was too much in the second half as the Blazers were outscored by 4 points in the 3rd quarter and by 7 points in the 4th quarter.
CPU starter stats:
Oden: 6 points, 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 3 steals, 3/5 FG
Aldridge: 20 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assist, 2 steals, 5 TO, 4/5 FT, 8/14 FG
Webster: 7 points, 2 steals, 3 TO, 3/4 FT, 0/4 3PT, 2/11 FG
Roy: 15 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 steal, 8/10 FT, 0/3 3PT, 4/9 FG
Blake: 9 points, 3 TO, 5 assist, 1/1 3PT, 4/9 FG
The offense appeared to flow through Aldridge and Roy a lot. Roy took a lot of the shots, but was fouled in the act so I would say he took about 15 shots vice the 9 that shows up on the official box score. He was definitely hounded by Bryant.
Oden wasn’t a focal point in the offense, he had an OK game, but I think Bynum and Gasol were just too much for him. Oden played 26 out of a possible 36 minutes.
October 11, 2008 at 6:32 am
where are the lakers stats? also can u show team stats ex. fg%, steals, fast break pts..
October 11, 2008 at 6:40 am
NBA 2K, I’ll post those, I’m playing the Clippers right now in dynasty mode, so you’ll have to give me a minute. I just didn’t post those stats because I controlled them and I dictated the offense and who got what shots. I’ll post them more on the this thread so people can follow along and it doesn’t make this blog off topic
http://www.pastapadre.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1469
October 11, 2008 at 8:12 am
[quote comment="41600"]NBA 2K, I’ll post those, I’m playing the Clippers right now in dynasty mode, so you’ll have to give me a minute. I just didn’t post those stats because I controlled them and I dictated the offense and who got what shots. I’ll post them more on the this thread so people can follow along and it doesn’t make this blog off topic
http://www.pastapadre.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1469/quote
coo thanks.
October 11, 2008 at 8:59 am
[quote comment="41562"]Pasta since EA said they would
update new stuff daily are they going to put goggles
on Amare Stoudemire since he has to wear them now?[/quote]
The should be able to. In the latest roster update they made the changes below. So I’d imagine they’ll keep updating accessories (assuming goggles are in the game now which I didn’t check on)
-Iverson finally isn’t wearing red kicks
-Kobe’s away shoes are his black hyperdunks
-Mo Williams has a headband
-Sean Williams has his high socks
October 11, 2008 at 8:59 am
[quote comment="41585"]I hope Pasta goes into detail on how sweet the 5 on 5 team play in 2K9 can be when not lagging or getting disconnected.Unlike Lives defensively challenged 5 on 5.[/quote]
I will, I’ve tried probably 30 games of 5 on 5. In two I actually made it past tipoff, and the one was the worst lag I’ve ever seen. The other disconnected soon after.
Don’t give up completely on Live’s. I know of several changes and fixes that are going to be made that will make things much more balanced and enjoyable. Though I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics, if you read my impressions of OTP the last few days I’d say a good deal of the things that are bothering me are going to be addressed in some form or fashion. I’m not sure how soon we’ll be seeing those, but they are coming.
October 11, 2008 at 9:04 am
[quote comment="41570"]pasta did you find out if they are going to patch the new hornets court in?[/quote]
I’ll ask about this again.
October 11, 2008 at 9:14 am
Pasta in 2Ks 5 on 5 I noticed the only way to get a lag free game is to play with only 6 to 8 people until 2K fixes there servers.
October 11, 2008 at 11:54 am
Pasta-
I say we switch up our team every week. Why not buck the norm and play with international teams/scrubs. I say we vote every Friday for the team we play with on Monday.
Who cares about winning, I say we just play and have a blast- even if that means we play as Lithuania one week.
October 11, 2008 at 11:56 am
[quote comment="41633"]Pasta-
I say we switch up our team every week. Why not buck the norm and play with international teams/scrubs. I say we vote every Friday for the team we play with on Monday.
Who cares about winning, I say we just play and have a blast- even if that means we play as Lithuania one week.[/quote]
Yeah we could try something like that. I’m hopeful that the changes/fixes being implemented will make it so you can compete with a wide variety of teams anyway. So it looks like we’ll stick with the Hornets for now, I’ll change to them next time I hop on, and after that we’ll mix it up.
October 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm
JR, your sliders aren’t public on EA Locker. Change the permissions so we can see them.
October 11, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Just like madden in the past the game only works when the players play it correctly. Otherwise you get a bunch of stuff that makes the game look like an arcade game. In OTP everyone just runs in a straight line from goal to goal and hit the dunk button over and over and over. No ball movement, no defense, no real basketball. I hoping for a patch that will just change the sliders online making the dunk less effective and defense more effective. This will make dunks only effective when its open, so then people will have to work on making jump shots and moving the ball around to get an open shot.
I think the game works good on 1 on 1 mode, but OTP is no fun as it stands now unless you can get all 10 players to play real basketball.
October 11, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Jason, how about now, can you see them on my EA Locker (Xbox Live), cabrillo24. I set it for public.
October 11, 2008 at 2:11 pm
[quote comment="41610"][quote comment="41562"]Pasta since EA said they would
update new stuff daily are they going to put goggles
on Amare Stoudemire since he has to wear them now?[/quote]
The should be able to. In the latest roster update they made the changes below. So I’d imagine they’ll keep updating accessories (assuming goggles are in the game now which I didn’t check on)
-Iverson finally isn’t wearing red kicks
-Kobe’s away shoes are his black hyperdunks
-Mo Williams has a headband
-Sean Williams has his high socks[/quote]
They have a EA guy on Operation sports asking everyone who isnt right with there accessories and fixing it in real time.
October 11, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Got the sliders now JR
October 11, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Tell me what you think Jason.
October 11, 2008 at 3:37 pm
@ tristate or who eva might kno
wen U join a Team Play match how do U change da View cuz all dat spining of da camera
is more hassle dan help (@ Least 4 me)
I just wanna play on sumthin close 2 broadcast camera angle
October 11, 2008 at 5:19 pm
i was in the club but then when i went on there today i wasnt in the club anymore can i get anotha invite xbox 360 gamertag bballfan18
October 11, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Sdot press down on the d pad to change the camera angle.I think there are 3 or 4 different camera angles for team play.
October 11, 2008 at 8:39 pm
JR, I played your sliders… got beat by 40. lol
I found shooting a little tough for me, and CPU bigs tough to stop from mid-range. Overall though, I liked it. Sub-patterns seemed better.
We are going to make the Locker share stuff a little more obvious next year.
October 11, 2008 at 9:03 pm
good lookin out tristate
October 12, 2008 at 12:55 am
iminurbase, honored to know you have played it, and thanks for all the NBA Live information you gave us over the past few months and the plans for the future. I know it’s not easy trying to answer everyone’s questions.
Yeah the EA Locker Share is awesome this year. I like how you can make it public instead of getting a million invites like I did last year.
October 12, 2008 at 12:57 am
iminurbase, also says a lot that a Live Developer got beat by 40. I’m winning by an average of 10 – 20 points, but then again I’m playing as the Lakers and won against the Blazers, Clippers (twice), Nuggets and Rockets (got beat by 12 as the Rockets rallied back from being 10 points down in the 3rd)
October 12, 2008 at 1:03 am
Yeah, the problem with Locker is I think a lot of people are in the same boat as you were… uploading content privately and not realizing it. Oh well, hopefully the word gets out and people start sharing created players and everything else.
October 12, 2008 at 3:33 am
pasta is ur nba rewind loading.i can’t get any rewind games,only one time did they actually load.
October 12, 2008 at 6:18 am
iminurbase (nbadev), never seen you on here until today I hope you become a regular on here as a huge NBA Live fan base is on here and more importantly a large basketball fan base. I remember reading about the EA Locker on one of the boards that you had answered, but Pasta had to remind me, because I had totally forgot about it.
October 12, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’ve been lurking for a while…
I got beat by 40 mostly because I’m not a gameplay producer.
I find my biggest struggle with b-ball video games is I want to always play ‘the right way’ and not the way to win in the game.
Some of the rewind games aren’t showing up due to a small server issue. Should be fixed in a few days, sorry about that.
October 12, 2008 at 1:33 pm
lol i sent u a message sayin 2-16 lol but then u replied sayin 5-19. So it seems you guys are improving. The big man is very hard to stop is this game thats why we use Rockets, Lakers, and Celtics.
October 12, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Well good big men are hard to stop. Yao Ming has been the only big man that has given me issues. So far, him and Jason Kidd are the two players that really stood out to me playing NBA Live. They really play a lot to their true to life forms in the game. iminurbase. I’ve released a final version of my settings tonight, so try those out whenever you get a chance. The A.I. shouldn’t get as many blocks, and there should be less missed layups (but still some when contested or in traffic).
iminubase. While I’ve played the game I’ve noticed that whenever the A.I. takes a time out, they seem to go on a run. Do time outs actually affect the game play this year? Also does home court advantage play any effect? I’m finding the A.I. always making a push whenever they are the home team in the second half of games.