NBA 2K17 MyTeam Wishlist

Since the dawn of MyTeam, I think it’s fair to say that the game mode has

progressively gotten better and better; although, most MyTeam fans would rather look

at what the mode doesn’t have rather than how much it has improved in it’s short

lifespan. Not to say that the mode couldn’t do with (a lot) more content, but at the very

least look at how far it’s come. And while the developers have made their biggest effort

of any 2K updating the mode this year, they still haven’t even scratched the surface of

how much potential MyTeam has.

Road To The Playoffs

Let’s be real, this quickly became the most repetitive and bland form of online play in

MyTeam. It’s disappointing to say that the main way to play the mode has been the

exact same since it was created. What’s more disappointing is that extensions and

suggestions to prolong the life of RTTP have been on countless 2K wishlists every year –

but to no avail. The ideas that people have had for this sub-mode range from more

player rewards, equalized team matchmaking, even actually making the playoffs and

playing for rings for your franchise. But instead of asking for all that, the simplest and

most effective request that could be made is for MT rewards. The new big thing in 2K

this year was the buying and selling of MT, popular topic in the FIFA and Madden

communities as well. But if there were ways to make more of it by actually playing the

game, maybe it would discourage people from having to buy in-game currency.

Repeatable seeds with MT rewards, simple and clean. Because if you’re a MyTeam

player, what’s the biggest knock on RTTP? What to do after you finish. Maybe a sizeable

amount of MT each time you beat a seed would entice people to embrace the challenge

of beating that cheese multiple times to build the team of their dreams rather than

buying it. A win/loss leaderboard and some more pack/player rewards for beating each

seed don’t sound too bad either.

Challenges

I don’t think many MyTeam players did more than just the Diamond Kareem challenges

this year. This year, almost all challenges were pointless. In 2K15, they at least had some

worth to finish for a few good player rewards to improve your team, or sell and buy

someone you actually want to use. Why they deviated from that for the entirety of 2K16,

we may never know. Other than the almost as bad as Andre Roberson player rewards in

the Road To Kareem challenge series, the only worthwhile player you could have earned

was Kareem himself. And even that took almost until the end of the 2K year. What would

be so wrong with weekly challenges releasing popular players as the year goes on? It

took up until 2 weeks ago for the best version of Jason ‘White Chocolate’ Williams to be

released. If he was a challenge reward at some point this year, he may have been the

best one not named Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). We’re not asking to be able to

make a super team with weekly challenges, but at least give us some incentive to

actually want to finish them. After all, one of the biggest knocks on MyTeam earlier this

year was the release rate of content; this could help remedy that.

Tournaments

This isn’t actually a mode of play in MyTeam, but I’m sure fans wish it was; yet another

thing that was being done right in previous 2Ks but only to be discontinued. Does

anyone who played MyTeam in 2K14 remember the cheese pizza, sapphire Scottie

Pippen online tournament? Possibly one of the most stressful and fun things ever to

happen to the mode. At the same time, it brought a whole new level of competition to

playing with your ultimate team. When you saw someone with the player reward of that

tournament, you prepared yourself for the rage you were about to go through.

Tournaments in MyTeam wouldn’t just give the community more ways to play, but it

would give them a greater sense of competition to beat out everyone else for that rare

player card that everyone wants. This could also be another way to earn more MT and

who doesn’t want that?

Be sure to stay tuned to SGO for the latest NBA 2K17 news!

NBA 2K17 MyTeam Wishlist

Madden NFL 17 NEW Features Wishlist - Part 1

As part of our continuous coverage of what we think would be the best content possible in a game that could use a few ideas, we wanted to cover more things on our Madden 17 wishlist. This time around, we’re dedicating time to completely new features such as an opponent scouting system and a possible practice still feature, among other things.

Scouting an Opponent

What would be nice would be to open Madden and receive an immediate on-screen “Scouting Report,” if you will, of your upcoming opponent. This report should include that opponent’s play styles, common situational play calls, possible personnel mismatches or exploits, and overviews of their behavior in key plays. There are a variety of tidbits the game could tell you right off the bat, such as if they prefer to run or pass the ball or if they have a more aggressive, blitz-happy defensive style. This information would be determined through their plays. Therefore, your plays and practice would have to adapt to different styles.

Right now, many of these pieces of information can be uncovered or inferred by digging around the game’s menus. Sure, I could look at my opponent’s depth chart to see if their QB is mobile or if they have any particularly dangerous star players. In previous versions of the game, I could even look up the play-calling strategy for any given CPU team; though, I think this feature isn’t available anymore since the

play-calling strategy for 16 is cloud-based and not locally accessible.

I could dig through game and season stats and box scores to see who their preferred receivers and sack leaders are. But I shouldn’t have to. It could be streamlined and more intuitive because that’s what should be on my mind. Tabulating little but important information is a great place to start.

CFM Online Resume

In Madden’s offline mode you have the ability to resume an unfinished game. While I”m sure there are technical reasons why this exact feature is not available for online play I don’t see why something similar could not be implemented in the future. After each quarter locally or on the servers the time remaining, down, distance and score should be saved. So if a game is ever disconnected you would be presented with a RESUME option that would simply take this automatically saved data, recreate the scenario and reconnect both players. This would avoid players having to start every disconnected game completely over.

Film study

An intriguing (and under-utilized) feature of the play-calling screen is a small widget in the corner that shows the previous play including both the offensive and defensive play calls. The outcome and average success rate of that play are displayed based on global user stats. This is actually a really useful piece of information to have, and it’s available on every play! The game’s “Highlights” menu in the pause screen also includes a list of every play that’s been run, including replays for some of those plays. The downside is that none of this gets saved or recorded for your review later. Every play of a game is logged, so why not save this log for review in the next week’s “Game Prep”?​

These elements could be expanded. This information could be saved and recorded to a log. During the game prep for the following week, you could then review your plays from the previous game. Madden could even combine the results of repeated play calls to show you the average, best and worst outcomes alongside the respective play calls by the opponent. This would be an effective simulation of watching “game film”. You can look at your plays that went well; examine why they were successful; and you could look at your plays that went poorly and examine why they failed. Then, it would be a matter of if those plays are worth keeping in your playbook.

If saving every play isn’t feasible for technical reasons or whatever, then EA could alternatively provide an option for the user to tag a specific play for film review. This could include reviewing an interception to find out what mistake you made while reading the defense, or a failed blitz that left a huge hole for the opposing running back. You can review what play you called, what play the opponent called, how you were so open and be better able to recognize a similar opportunity in the future.

Practice Drills

Previous versions of Madden actually had drills and workouts that improved only

specific sets of skills, but this could be improved. An alternative could be for such drills to provide temporary boosts to the relevant skills.

Using the tackling drill, for example, would provide general experience that can be used for any attribute, but would also provide +1 to the player’s tackling skill for some duration. This duration could be as short as one day or it could last for several weeks. Getting a higher rank in the drill could perhaps increase that boost or lengthen the amount of weeks that the bonus applies, and more drills would provide different bonuses. You could also drill to level up certain attributes faster through experience boosts.

Conclusion

These are just a few ideas was to what we could expect to see in an ever-evolving franchise that is still filled with potential. Advancements such as these could make the game great even if it does take a few development cycles to implement.  Be sure to stay tuned for part 2 of our Madden 17 New Features Wish List here at SGO.

Madden NFL 17 NEW Features Wishlist - Part 1