Reactions to the NBA 2K10 Patch

With the highly anticipated patch release for NBA 2K10 yesterday (for the 360) I thought it would be a good idea to look at the reaction the patch was getting around the community as well as adding my own personal thoughts on it.

While 2K did an admirable job of getting the patch turned around relatively quickly there were some core issues with the game that needed to be addressed. Generally patches attempt to enhance aspects of the game or fix errors but don’t have to deal with things as major as framerate or attempting to provide functional online play. Past 2K patches which have attempted to deal with similar issues have proven largely unsuccessful.

The improvements seen with the patch are immediately evident. While the framerate is not perfect the patch has been able to alleviate the majority of the slowdown. My Player mode specifically, which is where I originally noticed the framerate problem, is now much better. The spotlights have been completely removed so that probably was a big factor in the slowdown. It still sometimes gets bogged down when there is a lot of action down low but outside of that the experience is vastly better.

Lead passes and alley-oops are less effective (though the CPU still attempts frequently). The defense plays their assignments better rather than inexplicably leaving players wide open. There is more player contact seen which helps tone down the effectiveness of paint scoring. Shot percentages are much more reasonable though still slant a little high. Uploading of screenshots to the 2K website now works and the quality of them is better. The autosave glitch has not been fixed so even while the feature is turned off it will continue to save. Custom settings for online play still do not save.

Basically the game feels as though it is more sim and less exploitable than it was before. This patch was not just cosmetic as it has made some big differences to the gameplay. Most will be happy with what has been done in that regard.

The very first game I played post-patch I was locked into a single player for some unknown reason. After re-starting I still could not figure this out and had to resort to searching on google to find an explanation. Figured this glitch would’ve been fixed in the patch as the game ends up setting a “preferred position” if you had previously played a My Player mode game.

My Player mode had some glitches addressed such as the crippling “clone” and now the user can set the quarter length. Though some problems in the mode remain most many could be considered subjective or by design. Substitution patterns and the Insider stating a decision needs to be made when there are no options to do so would be issues still worth noting. 2K has stated for the best result users should scrap their current My Player and restart the mode. For those who have sunk hours upon hours into their My Player having to restart is far from an appealing option.

The biggest problem with NBA 2K10 continues to be the online play where not only is performance inconsistent but advertised game modes are not functional. You can check out a video displaying some of the issues seen here. Pick-Up Games, Crew games, Team-Up, and Online Leagues are either very difficult to take part in successfully or just flat out don’t work at all. Here is an example of just one of the many threads in the 2K forum discussing the Online Leagues that have not worked at all this year.

2K10 was sold with promises of using your My Player online and the 2K series is well known for its popular Online League structure. Unfortunately 2K10 can not lay claim to actually providing either mode and understandably consumers are extremely frustrated by that.

Simple 1v1 ranked games are more reliable although some lag and occasional disconnects may still occur. Even after the patch it appears that results of ranked games are rarely recorded.

Whether or not 2K10 receives a second patch is an uncertainty right now. For the most part with offline play people seem satisfied with the result of this patch and the current state of the game. It is a definite improvement over the release product. However for those interested in online play the experience remains unsatisfying and things are not likely to get any better there this year.