Sages
October 21st, 2004, 04:46 PM
For the record I originally just intended for this to be for nba inside drivebut I decided to post it here for the good of all especially since I love Espn Basketball. I hope the devs read this!
Email:DataChyme@hotmail.com
Hey, I just wanted to stop by and give you guys some ideas for the next version of Inside Drive. A while back I heard that y'all would be skipping this year's release so that y'all could make the game better so I was thinking i'd better give y'all a few ideas before it is to late.
First let me start by sayin I haven't played the inside drive 2004 and sosome of the things I say may not apply to it but in general most of this stuff goes on in just about any basketball game. I'll just give you a few points as to what I really look for in a basketball videogame to start out.
*Defense-
(A) I absolutely love playing defense. But I feel like no videogame has yet to really let me be a defenesive stopper. I want to be able to choose from all of the zones. 2-3,3-2,1-3-1,halfcourt-trap,full-court press etc. Now some basketball games have all of these features but often times the only useful one is the 2-3 zone. Basically make sure all the defensive sets have a specific use don't just make them lineup to look pretty make sure they work.
(B) I can't tell you how many times I have stood in front of a player while on defense and the person i'm playing throws it directly at me and their man magically gets the ball. Make sure the steal button works but if my body is in the way the ball should bounce off me not teleport in the offensive players hand.
(C) I think one of the greatest additions to basketball games was the double-team. Not only does it help lockdown a offensive player but it also helps to push the tempo along. I just have only one complaint please make sure that when double teaming occurs that the defense dosen't have an invisible vacum cleaner and sucks the offensive player into a trap. If the offensive player is running away from the double team and the defense happens to get close the offensive player shouldn't just stop and allow itself to be double teamed.
(D) Make the game come alive! When the shot goes up I want to see players boxing out getting ready for the rebound and guards running in trying to steal it away before the defense can get it. Or when a ball bounces off a player I want to see players hustling to get it by diving on the floor or perhaps leaning in to one another trying to gain some leverage.
*Offense-
(A)One thing that I particularly liked about inside drive was the post game I really enjoyed throwing it down to shaq or even posting up with kobe and tearing up the defense. It would be nice if the post game was expanded upon and just made to look alot more authentic.
(B) Ok here i'm gonna suggest something that i've never even really heard of before but why not go the football route and let us create our own basketball plays. It won't be too big for casual gamers but for us hardcore gamers the ones that enjoy playing the dynasty mode etc. A create a play feature would go a long ways in keeping us interested. We would really feel like we're actually contributing to the game. Just think about it when phil jackson came to the lakers everybody knew that he would be bringing the complex triangle offense with him. So when us dynasty players come in with our newly created coach(which i'm sure you will allow us to do in the next version of inside drive)we want to feel like we are bringing in our new system. Or when we play our friends we want to whoop them with our new play.
(C) Another thing about inside drive that I liked was that I noticed that when I passed the ball around and then shot a jumper open or not I was alot more likely to make it then if I just created my own shot. Now i'm not sure if I shot the ball better or if y'all actually put this into the game but either way I would like this to be fine tuned as it really gave me a feel for an nba game and actually made me want to move the ball around. Besides the nba live mentality of find one star score every single time with them or anybody that shoots threes.
(D) And like before I need to feel the offensive game. I want it to feel like i'm there, i'm not saying I want a new camera angle, I'm saying I want the players on the court to act realistically and for the action to look authentic. When my point guard crosses the half court line and I start passing the ball around on the wing I want it to feel like the nba. And in the NBA the low post is for the big men down there wrestling. So II should see bodies colliding and post men fighting for position. I want to see the occasional flopping, and the flying elbows etc. And when I reverse the ball back out to my point guard and wait for my shooter to coming off the screen I want to seethe defender bumping him and pulling on his jersey doing all he can to bother my shooter.
*Dynasty Mode-
Now to the really good stuff. First let me start off by saying it needs content nowadays the simple you can trade,re-negotiate contracts, win a championship etc. Is just not enough. Why you ask? Because we have beem dooing that for the last 7 years. And nowadays everybody has it. So you really ned to spice up this mode. I could literally write a close to a 50 page essay on how you could go about setting all this up so if you want me to elaborate on anything drop me a email and let me know.
(A)Ok, you could start off by designing a simple setup for doing things in dynasty mode. I know all those fancy words and fancy graphics look good but sometimes especially when you are new to the game it can be a pain when your trying to figure out how to do everything. I remember it took me forever just to figure out how to resign players in espn football. All i'm saying is presentation is great but simplicity and ease of use is better so find some kind of middle ground and you'll be set.
(B) I know we are playing a sports game but that dosen't mean you can't take elments from other genres and put them into the game. One particular thing that I liked about ESPN Basketball was they tried that in incorparating the experiment called 24/7 Mode now I call it a experiment because in my eyes it is something that was an absolute great idea but failed because it has absolutely no point whatsoever. You train your character by going to the gym and doing various excersies to improve your skills. Very much like you would do in a RPG this part is extremely addictive and it is what I liked alot! However from there you are forced to do continuous challenges like one one match ups and two on two games etc. Just to increase your rank enough to qualify to beat the next boss. So after I beat the first boss I just quit as I saw no point in continuing.
(A.1) The thing I would suggest is devloping an all new mode or perhaps a mode to tie in with the dynasty mode. You could call it NBA Life or something to that effect. First you would create your player and then you would come into the NBA as a rookie in the draft. And before I really get started let me tell you there are almost limitless possiblities that are avaliable with this you just have to sit down and be creative. Anyways once you enter yourself in the draft you are playing as that character you don't control the franchise the comp does or it could be optional. Either way you are in control of the player so whats your first order of buisness? Well you should be taken to a screen that looks much like it does for a General Manager except you view it from a players point of view. Instead of scouting rookies you will scedule times to meet with NBA scouts. Instead of viewing rookie stats after the inital rookie traing sessions(In which your stats will grow depending on how you do and you'll play a few games against other rookies possibly gaining some respect from your peers and scouts) you will be there going through the drills. After you have met with all interested parties and completed the rookie combine, next comes drafting day. You get drafted and negotiate a contract. Now it's up to you to show the rest of the NBA and the world if your all hype or the next big thing. From here you go through off-season training lifting weights getting ready to get into nba shape.(You could use your imgination to come up with some things to do here)
(A.2) Then season starts and is where the real fun begins.You'll be challenged on a nightly basis perhaps your know as a defensive specialist or your higher stats favor defense. Perhaps the daily newspaper will read Kobe vs "insert name" can he put the stop on kobe ? And it will be kinda like your special boss challenges where you can gain alot of fame or respect. I believe that both of them should be tracked. Fame being how well known you are and how talked about you are by just about everybody especially the sportscasters who do the post game show.(Something I hoped gets added)They should have some interesting things to say about the game and should always mentio something about you. And as the season goes on it should feel like a living breathing season where they talk about certain events happening and like removal of the three point line and having an age limit. And you go on having your different challenges etc. Again there is a lot of room for some really good creativity going on here but this is getting rather long so i'll try to tie it up.
(B) Another thing the legacy mode like they have on ESPN 2k5 college hoops seems pretty interesting where after you reach a certain milestone you get a point to improve one letter grade in like5 categories or something ranging from offense, defense, scouting teaching etc. This would be a very nice feature to add to the create a coach in dynasty mode along with the create a play would make for a truly powerful gaming experience. I mean can you imgine people playing their friends head to head and others online and they load their created coach who has their created plays loaded on them. That would truly add a unique dynamic to player games. This is one example of a feature going beyond dynasty mode maybe it should be a option in game. The coach would be like your profile and he would gain experience the more you played him and perhaps their are certain abilities only unlockable by doing certain things in dynasty or reaching certain milestones with your coach. Like winning a championship with the chicago bulls might unlock the triangle offense so it can be used and edited by players. Or ten straight wins on the highest difficulty against players, gives your coach the temporary momentum bonus which lasts as long as you keep winning.
PlayerModels and created players-
(A)First off one very annoying thing about Espn 2k5 is the crazy amount of glitchesit has with a created players. Please take the time to get the graphical glitches out so I want have to worry about my created players hair coming out right if in fact htey don't make me bald. Or my leg or arm bands come out differet colors.
(B) Another thing about player models that I think will make things very interesting. Is not just the height of players but there actuall body lenghts and body proportions. Is it possible to make some players have longer arms then others? The reason why I ask because it is such a huge factor in real nba games. Look at last years NBA finals Detroit vs LA. Tashuyun Prince gave Kobe trouble because of his extrmely lon wingspan. I remeber for the longest time thats all they were talking about was how he was only about 6"9 but the lenghts of his arms gave him the wingspan of someone 7"2. I think proportions would add a interesting dynamic in nba game not a neccesity but just something to think about.
*Just a pointer or two-
When making a sports game it is imperative to a lot of hardcore sports fans not neccesarily hardcore gamers but fans that there are a huge variety of stats. Just be creative. I mean don't go counting how many time the ball was bounced in one game bt give me some juicy stuff as well as comparisons between players. And do it often even during the game. And tell me when players break or are on the verge of breaking a NBA record. And don't just limit it to the players tell me when me the user is about to break a record in game. When my point guard is taking the ball up court let me know that if I score 10 more points it will be the 6th game in a row coach(whatever his name is) team has scored 100 or more points on the pacers or whoever.
Last thing whenI load up the game and wanna check my user profiles(or what I hope will be called coach profiles) I want easy navigation to check those records and see what I have accomplised, check my stats and see what i'm about to accomplish. Don't make it a pain finding out stuff like that . And when we view make it worth our wild not just some generic win loss record.
*You might ask why i'm doing this, well the answer is simple because I care about my gaming and I believe that microsoft is one of the few companies who actually care about their games especially customer feedback.(Especially since microsoft will be launchin xbox 2 soon and this time hopes to get a bigger piece of the pie or shall I say installed customer base in the U.S. bigger then sony hehe yes I do keep up with news and I do realize this is a fisrt party title and i'm roooting for you but I will always be rooting for my games)
Email:DataChyme@hotmail.com
Hey, I just wanted to stop by and give you guys some ideas for the next version of Inside Drive. A while back I heard that y'all would be skipping this year's release so that y'all could make the game better so I was thinking i'd better give y'all a few ideas before it is to late.
First let me start by sayin I haven't played the inside drive 2004 and sosome of the things I say may not apply to it but in general most of this stuff goes on in just about any basketball game. I'll just give you a few points as to what I really look for in a basketball videogame to start out.
*Defense-
(A) I absolutely love playing defense. But I feel like no videogame has yet to really let me be a defenesive stopper. I want to be able to choose from all of the zones. 2-3,3-2,1-3-1,halfcourt-trap,full-court press etc. Now some basketball games have all of these features but often times the only useful one is the 2-3 zone. Basically make sure all the defensive sets have a specific use don't just make them lineup to look pretty make sure they work.
(B) I can't tell you how many times I have stood in front of a player while on defense and the person i'm playing throws it directly at me and their man magically gets the ball. Make sure the steal button works but if my body is in the way the ball should bounce off me not teleport in the offensive players hand.
(C) I think one of the greatest additions to basketball games was the double-team. Not only does it help lockdown a offensive player but it also helps to push the tempo along. I just have only one complaint please make sure that when double teaming occurs that the defense dosen't have an invisible vacum cleaner and sucks the offensive player into a trap. If the offensive player is running away from the double team and the defense happens to get close the offensive player shouldn't just stop and allow itself to be double teamed.
(D) Make the game come alive! When the shot goes up I want to see players boxing out getting ready for the rebound and guards running in trying to steal it away before the defense can get it. Or when a ball bounces off a player I want to see players hustling to get it by diving on the floor or perhaps leaning in to one another trying to gain some leverage.
*Offense-
(A)One thing that I particularly liked about inside drive was the post game I really enjoyed throwing it down to shaq or even posting up with kobe and tearing up the defense. It would be nice if the post game was expanded upon and just made to look alot more authentic.
(B) Ok here i'm gonna suggest something that i've never even really heard of before but why not go the football route and let us create our own basketball plays. It won't be too big for casual gamers but for us hardcore gamers the ones that enjoy playing the dynasty mode etc. A create a play feature would go a long ways in keeping us interested. We would really feel like we're actually contributing to the game. Just think about it when phil jackson came to the lakers everybody knew that he would be bringing the complex triangle offense with him. So when us dynasty players come in with our newly created coach(which i'm sure you will allow us to do in the next version of inside drive)we want to feel like we are bringing in our new system. Or when we play our friends we want to whoop them with our new play.
(C) Another thing about inside drive that I liked was that I noticed that when I passed the ball around and then shot a jumper open or not I was alot more likely to make it then if I just created my own shot. Now i'm not sure if I shot the ball better or if y'all actually put this into the game but either way I would like this to be fine tuned as it really gave me a feel for an nba game and actually made me want to move the ball around. Besides the nba live mentality of find one star score every single time with them or anybody that shoots threes.
(D) And like before I need to feel the offensive game. I want it to feel like i'm there, i'm not saying I want a new camera angle, I'm saying I want the players on the court to act realistically and for the action to look authentic. When my point guard crosses the half court line and I start passing the ball around on the wing I want it to feel like the nba. And in the NBA the low post is for the big men down there wrestling. So II should see bodies colliding and post men fighting for position. I want to see the occasional flopping, and the flying elbows etc. And when I reverse the ball back out to my point guard and wait for my shooter to coming off the screen I want to seethe defender bumping him and pulling on his jersey doing all he can to bother my shooter.
*Dynasty Mode-
Now to the really good stuff. First let me start off by saying it needs content nowadays the simple you can trade,re-negotiate contracts, win a championship etc. Is just not enough. Why you ask? Because we have beem dooing that for the last 7 years. And nowadays everybody has it. So you really ned to spice up this mode. I could literally write a close to a 50 page essay on how you could go about setting all this up so if you want me to elaborate on anything drop me a email and let me know.
(A)Ok, you could start off by designing a simple setup for doing things in dynasty mode. I know all those fancy words and fancy graphics look good but sometimes especially when you are new to the game it can be a pain when your trying to figure out how to do everything. I remember it took me forever just to figure out how to resign players in espn football. All i'm saying is presentation is great but simplicity and ease of use is better so find some kind of middle ground and you'll be set.
(B) I know we are playing a sports game but that dosen't mean you can't take elments from other genres and put them into the game. One particular thing that I liked about ESPN Basketball was they tried that in incorparating the experiment called 24/7 Mode now I call it a experiment because in my eyes it is something that was an absolute great idea but failed because it has absolutely no point whatsoever. You train your character by going to the gym and doing various excersies to improve your skills. Very much like you would do in a RPG this part is extremely addictive and it is what I liked alot! However from there you are forced to do continuous challenges like one one match ups and two on two games etc. Just to increase your rank enough to qualify to beat the next boss. So after I beat the first boss I just quit as I saw no point in continuing.
(A.1) The thing I would suggest is devloping an all new mode or perhaps a mode to tie in with the dynasty mode. You could call it NBA Life or something to that effect. First you would create your player and then you would come into the NBA as a rookie in the draft. And before I really get started let me tell you there are almost limitless possiblities that are avaliable with this you just have to sit down and be creative. Anyways once you enter yourself in the draft you are playing as that character you don't control the franchise the comp does or it could be optional. Either way you are in control of the player so whats your first order of buisness? Well you should be taken to a screen that looks much like it does for a General Manager except you view it from a players point of view. Instead of scouting rookies you will scedule times to meet with NBA scouts. Instead of viewing rookie stats after the inital rookie traing sessions(In which your stats will grow depending on how you do and you'll play a few games against other rookies possibly gaining some respect from your peers and scouts) you will be there going through the drills. After you have met with all interested parties and completed the rookie combine, next comes drafting day. You get drafted and negotiate a contract. Now it's up to you to show the rest of the NBA and the world if your all hype or the next big thing. From here you go through off-season training lifting weights getting ready to get into nba shape.(You could use your imgination to come up with some things to do here)
(A.2) Then season starts and is where the real fun begins.You'll be challenged on a nightly basis perhaps your know as a defensive specialist or your higher stats favor defense. Perhaps the daily newspaper will read Kobe vs "insert name" can he put the stop on kobe ? And it will be kinda like your special boss challenges where you can gain alot of fame or respect. I believe that both of them should be tracked. Fame being how well known you are and how talked about you are by just about everybody especially the sportscasters who do the post game show.(Something I hoped gets added)They should have some interesting things to say about the game and should always mentio something about you. And as the season goes on it should feel like a living breathing season where they talk about certain events happening and like removal of the three point line and having an age limit. And you go on having your different challenges etc. Again there is a lot of room for some really good creativity going on here but this is getting rather long so i'll try to tie it up.
(B) Another thing the legacy mode like they have on ESPN 2k5 college hoops seems pretty interesting where after you reach a certain milestone you get a point to improve one letter grade in like5 categories or something ranging from offense, defense, scouting teaching etc. This would be a very nice feature to add to the create a coach in dynasty mode along with the create a play would make for a truly powerful gaming experience. I mean can you imgine people playing their friends head to head and others online and they load their created coach who has their created plays loaded on them. That would truly add a unique dynamic to player games. This is one example of a feature going beyond dynasty mode maybe it should be a option in game. The coach would be like your profile and he would gain experience the more you played him and perhaps their are certain abilities only unlockable by doing certain things in dynasty or reaching certain milestones with your coach. Like winning a championship with the chicago bulls might unlock the triangle offense so it can be used and edited by players. Or ten straight wins on the highest difficulty against players, gives your coach the temporary momentum bonus which lasts as long as you keep winning.
PlayerModels and created players-
(A)First off one very annoying thing about Espn 2k5 is the crazy amount of glitchesit has with a created players. Please take the time to get the graphical glitches out so I want have to worry about my created players hair coming out right if in fact htey don't make me bald. Or my leg or arm bands come out differet colors.
(B) Another thing about player models that I think will make things very interesting. Is not just the height of players but there actuall body lenghts and body proportions. Is it possible to make some players have longer arms then others? The reason why I ask because it is such a huge factor in real nba games. Look at last years NBA finals Detroit vs LA. Tashuyun Prince gave Kobe trouble because of his extrmely lon wingspan. I remeber for the longest time thats all they were talking about was how he was only about 6"9 but the lenghts of his arms gave him the wingspan of someone 7"2. I think proportions would add a interesting dynamic in nba game not a neccesity but just something to think about.
*Just a pointer or two-
When making a sports game it is imperative to a lot of hardcore sports fans not neccesarily hardcore gamers but fans that there are a huge variety of stats. Just be creative. I mean don't go counting how many time the ball was bounced in one game bt give me some juicy stuff as well as comparisons between players. And do it often even during the game. And tell me when players break or are on the verge of breaking a NBA record. And don't just limit it to the players tell me when me the user is about to break a record in game. When my point guard is taking the ball up court let me know that if I score 10 more points it will be the 6th game in a row coach(whatever his name is) team has scored 100 or more points on the pacers or whoever.
Last thing whenI load up the game and wanna check my user profiles(or what I hope will be called coach profiles) I want easy navigation to check those records and see what I have accomplised, check my stats and see what i'm about to accomplish. Don't make it a pain finding out stuff like that . And when we view make it worth our wild not just some generic win loss record.
*You might ask why i'm doing this, well the answer is simple because I care about my gaming and I believe that microsoft is one of the few companies who actually care about their games especially customer feedback.(Especially since microsoft will be launchin xbox 2 soon and this time hopes to get a bigger piece of the pie or shall I say installed customer base in the U.S. bigger then sony hehe yes I do keep up with news and I do realize this is a fisrt party title and i'm roooting for you but I will always be rooting for my games)