I used to pray for the licensee to go back to 2k, but if you’ve seen how they’ve been handling basketball lately you understand why I no longer hold out that hope. Only dual licensing creating actual competition stands any chance of meaningfully changing things for the better at this point. As long as whales keep filling the coffers in thr gambling modes, the game will continue to get shoveled out with mostly superficial non impactful changes year over year, while the laundry list of fundamental gameplay issues remains untouched. Even the gimmicks that get added in are almost always actually just restoring previous function (glass cracking), and/or adding stuff that the last iteration of 2K did what, over a decade ago now?
their games weren’t perfect either, but they were CARED FOR AND ABOUT. It was polished, payed attention to details, and had fun non broken gameplay and physics…these feel like pretty basic needs but…
it’s not even about being negative but just recognizing the practical reality, the game won’t meaningfully improve until and unless something forces behavior, attitude and direction from the top, and that doesn’t happen with no competition and the hut piggy bank. Many fine people at ea care and I imagine frustrated by many things as well; but management cares about shoveling out minimum viable product that will still keep the whales spending, period.
