NBA 2K9 Patch Details

The patch for NBA 2K9 will be available for the PS3 early Wednesday morning and should follow for the 360 in the near future. There are a pretty significant number of fixes and improvements included in the patch. It’ll be interesting to find out how much is seen in regards to online play, especially with the Team-Up mode. Continue on for the full list of what has been addressed.

Update: The patch is already out for the 360.

General

Inbound Bug – We have corrected an issue where teams would not inbound the ball after a made basket, resulting in a non-authentic experience. This turned out to be a timing-specific issue with regards to quitting out of another game mode.

Player DNA – We found an issue where face sliders were getting offset when downloading the DNA of a player that another user has previously uploaded. Downloaded players should now look identical to when the original user uploaded the Player DNA.

Created Player Scrolling Crash – When a player was created with the ‘Thick’ body type and was not placed on a team, on the Bobcats, or on the Thunder, the game would crash when attempting to load the player model in the create player screen or in-game. This issue has been addressed.

Exiting Game Mode Crash – A crash was identified when the user attempted to leave a game mode (Association, Playoffs, etc.) when starting the game mode after receiving an updated Living Roster. This issue has been addressed.

Development Drill Crash – Related to the issue above, a few users were seeing a crash when attempting to perform a development drill after loading an Association file. The triggering issue has been identified and resolved.

Substitution Issue – It was discovered that when the user would change their ‘Substitution Method’ to ‘By Rotation’, the CPU would remain in the ‘By Fatigue’ method which would result in inconsistent subs or none at all. The CPU will now replicate the ‘Substitution Method’ chosen by the user’s team.

2K Cam Framerate – We have greatly improved the framerate gameplay in the 2K camera. Additional cameras have also seen performance boosts with the changes made.

Injury Frequency – In-game injuries during The Association will now occur at a lower frequency. This is particularly true with hard fouls, loose ball dives, and general falls.

Association League Leaders – Users playing through The Association with 5 minute quarters were finding that their players who should qualify for the league leaders weren’t properly being listed. This issue has been corrected.

Association Simulation – The simulator inside The Association has been tuned to produce more realistic game results. We found the final scores for most games to be too high pre-patch.

Online

Player Match Crash – It was discovered on launch day that when a certain number of users simultaneously select the ‘Player Match’ option, the game will eventually crash when looping through the available players.

Team-Up Lag – An intense round of optimization has taken place for the Team-Up experience. The changes made grant significant speed improvements for users on slower broadband connections such as lower-end DSL connections. The end result is a much smoother gameplay experience for everyone.

‘2K’ Cam – In order to increase user satisfaction with the title, we have added the ‘2K’ camera angle as a playable camera angle when playing online.

First FT Lag / Difficulty – The first free throw of an online game had a variable amount of lag depending on which camera was chosen for the shot. We have corrected this issue by asserting a fixed camera for this shot that eliminates any controller lag. In addition to this, the ‘make’ window for free throws in online play has been increased to account for the timing difference.

Waiting For Opponent – Users with poor connections were causing the game to loop too long on the “Waiting for Opponent” dialog before continuing on into the game. We’ve cleaned up this behavior to place players into the game in a much quicker fashion.

Quick Match Connection Problems – An issue was identified where users were being re-directed to the online FAQ instead of being taken into a game. This message will now only appear in appropriate situations.

Online League Injuries – In online leagues, injured players that were taken off the roster weren’t healing. The game now properly detects injured players and heals them in the appropriate time frame regardless of where they are placed on the roster.

PS3 Voice / Team-Up – An issue was uncovered where voice chat would drop or become intermittent when more than two users were talking simultaneously. This issue has been resolved.

Team-Up Cameras – The Broadcast camera for Team-Up has been optimized to show the user a better balance of their player, the ball, and they player they should be guarding. Also, 2K Cam has been added to the list of cameras the user can use during Team-Up play.

Gameplay

Subbing Fouled Out Player – A bug was found where you could substitute in a player who had previously fouled out, only when using the quick-sub method of the On-The-Fly Coaching menu.

Resetting Substitutions – When the user queued up substitutions via the On-The-Fly Coaching feature, re-accessing the feature before the substitutions actually took place would cause the subs to be reset such that the user would have to manually perform them again. We have addressed this issue.

Points Off Turnovers – It was discovered that this statistic was not calculating correctly when it is reported to the server for online league games. We have isolated the issue in the AI and have addressed the problem such that the stat is correctly reported.

Double Dribble Issue – By performing a sequence of moves that ended in a hop step, the user was able to perform a double dribble. This issue has been corrected.

Jab Step Fixes – The ‘Jab Step’ move has been reconstructed to be more balanced in the post. Specifically, it should not be effective in user vs. user games unless the ball-handler touches the defender. Also, performing the ‘Jab Step’ should no longer make the defense go back when the ball-handler loses the dribble.

Points in the Paint – In an effort to increase user satisfaction, we have tuned interior defense in combination with shooting percentages for shots taken in the paint. The result is something we feel will be more in-line with what our users are expecting.

Shooting Percentages – Continuing with the above description, we have tuned down shot success of perimeter shots when the defender is amply covering the offensive player taking the shot.

PlayVision – PlayVision in Team-Up was showing everyone’s starting point with no indication on which was yours. We have changed the behavior to only show the floor art for the player you are controlling.

General Fixes – A large number of other smaller issues have been addressed with the aim of increasing user satisfaction. These changes, while minor, have improved the quality of gameplay.