NBA 2K20: Gameplay Blog
34 MINUTES AGO · PUBLIC
Hey there, 2K basketball fans! It’s that time of year where I finally get to pause for a minute and talk about some of the amazing work that the gameplay team has put into this year’s installment. NBA 2K20 is a huge leap forward for on-court play and there’s plenty to reveal so let’s get into it.
Motion Engine Upgrade
Proper footwork is a core foundation of basketball, and replicating that properly is vital to balancing the interplay between offense and defense. Without realistic movement, everything else falls apart.
In NBA 2K18 we introduced a new motion engine that moved away from the “animation-driven” systems of earlier 2K games. The improvements to feel and responsiveness were immediately apparent when we made the switch, but the new tech surfaced some challenges that caused us to lose some of the control that we had over animation selection, sacrificing some of the authenticity of the motion. In short, some aspects of movement looked and felt way better, some took a step back.
Our motion team spent the past couple of years developing an upgraded motion engine with the aim of finding a happy medium. And thanks to their hard work, movement in this year’s game has taken a huge leap forward. Some of the advances that you’ll immediately see and feel when you pick up NBA 2K20 are better foot planting, momentum modeling, and motion style variation. Players have a much better sense of weight and plant their feet properly when cutting or exploding from a stand. And thanks to the addition of motion styles, you’ll quickly feel the difference between a lumbering big vs. a quick, explosive guard. The motion team spent a lot of time researching and analyzing sprint speeds and acceleration times of real NBA players. This helped us tune our player speeds to more accurately depict the speed of the NBA game, especially in the open court. This research also led us to re-design how sprinting works. We really wanted sprinting to be a valuable resource and not something that everybody automatically does everywhere they go. This year, you’ll notice a flashing yellow effect around the Stamina bar when your energy level drops below a certain threshold. Once hit, you’ll quickly ramp down to a run speed and get tired much faster. So it’s important this year to pick and choose when you want to explode with your first step and not abuse the Sprint trigger all game long.
Handles and Sauce
Ball handlers now have contextual awareness of specific situations on the court that they didn’t have before. Pick and Roll wraps/splits, situational cuts, and backcourt vs. frontcourt movement are a few examples of where we made the ball handler aware of his surroundings. Signature Dribble Styles were another key focus for the motion system upgrade, allowing us to accurately portray the myriad of movement styles across the league. We added new concepts such as stop variation – dead leg/punches, hesi lifts, inverts, etc. Cuts and first steps also vary greatly from one style to the next, allowing us to differentiate speedsters (De'Aaron Fox, John Wall) from players like DeMar DeRozan who move with more “wiggle.” Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, and legends such as Kobe Bryant and Tim Hardaway have signature dribble idle stands. Magic Johnson and John Stockton set up their offenses with their unique movement bringing the ball up court, while open floor players like Russell Westbrook and Giannis Antetokounmpo get different sprint acceleration animations in transition. There are 27 different styles that you’ll see across the league that you’ll also have access to in MyCAREER to create the type of ball handler you want.
Here’s the list of styles: Base, Big, Power, Fundamental, Quick, Slasher, Shifty, James Harden, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Dennis Johnson, John Stockton, Allen Iverson, Tim Hardaway, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Isiah Thomas, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, Stephen Curry, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard
Being a successful ball handler is so much about rhythm and change of pace. The new system gives you many tools to do that, just by using the left stick. But if you want to make your defender look bad in the process, you’re going to need some “sauce.”
This year, we’re introducing a new size-up mechanic that allows you to chain standing dribble moves together in a cleaner and more realistic way. Every move is performed one to one by flicking the Pro Stick and there are no pre-scripted sequences this year. Players have full control over whether they want to lull defenders to sleep with a slow rocking crossover or pound the ball hard with quick machine gun style crosses. James Harden has his patented between legs setup moves, Kyrie Irving has an array of streetball handles, Allen Iverson has his big hesi cross, and the list goes on. The new size-ups really give you the freedom to create your own unique rhythm. When mastered, you’ll be able to break off even the best on-ball defenders. But when over-dribbling or trying to perform the wrong moves at the wrong time, you’ll see players fumbling the ball or easily getting ripped by their defenders.
We’re also giving players access to new advanced moves including behind back wrap escapes, Luka Doncic’s fake stepback, stutter chop steps, new shammgods, and the fake sham hesi that Will Bynum pulled out at the Big Three. And even before you put the ball down, triple threat offense has been expanded as well, with a plethora of new moves including: directional jabs, mid-stepovers, shimmies, and new first steps. I’m excited to see how creative the community gets with all the new ball handling tools at their disposal. Ankles beware.
Read & React
But don’t worry, we didn’t neglect the defensive end of the floor. On-ball defenders will be happy to hear that we’re providing more tools to help them lockdown their checks as well. Internally, we’ve been calling this Read & React Defense. When guarding the ball, defensive players will see a small arrow under the ball handler, indicating where they’re leaning or attempting to go. The arrow shows up at different times based on the defender’s abilities, modeling the different reaction times between a poor defender and a great one. Anticipating the ball handler’s movement properly and cutting off their attack will yield much more predictable outcomes such as stonewalling the dribbler, forcing a pickup, or causing a fumble. Thanks to the motion engine upgrade and its improved defensive footwork, as well as a greatly improved body-up ride system, 1-on-1 battles now resolve in a much more predictable way, showcasing the differences between attacking a flat-footed defender vs. highly skilled Lockdown.
Under the ball handler, you’ll also notice the indicator ring change from a solid circle to broken up lines as the ball handler moves around the court or performs moves. The more broken up the circle, the more vulnerable the ball handler is to losing the ball. To further emphasize this, we re-tuned on-ball steals to be much more predictable. So for NBA 2K20, it’s more important to read what the ball handler’s doing and reaching at the right times rather than running around randomly spamming the Steal button.
Shot Solutions & Paint D
Attacking and defending the rim was another area of focus for the gameplay team. I talked about the concept of Shot Solutions a few years back. The basic idea in real life is that good slashers can find unique solutions to get through the defense when attacking the rim. For NBA 2K20, we’ve completely re-architected layups and dunks to be a fully branch-able mechanic. Last year we introduced the ability to branch from certain layup gathers to dunk finishes… but for layups, once you hit the button you mostly just watched a sequence play out from ground to air. The new gather feature allows you to kick off an advanced gather on the floor, read the defense, and select how you want to finish that gather by re-deflecting the Pro Stick as you takeoff. Say, for example, if you started a euro gather but saw the defense close in, you could re-deflect the Pro Stick down to branch to a floater finish to avoid contact. This also allowed us to introduce the concept of gather resolutions. Forcing a gather into heavy traffic or directly into a defender will lead to jam ups, but choosing the correct gathers in open spaces will let you knife right through traffic. In addition to the euro-step, cradle, hop step, and spin gathers you had access to before, you can now also perform half-spin and cross-spin gathers to get past your defender.
Just like the floor game, playing above the rim is also accompanied by a beefed up defensive counterpart. This year, we captured hundreds of new in-air collisions, hard fouls, grab blocks, and swats to let the rim protectors have their presence felt. Paint defenders who have good timing and decision making will be a force to reckon with and you’ll definitely have to think twice when going head to head against them inside. Zion Williamson, welcome to Team 2K!
Post scorers can also look forward to a refreshed post game with new fakes, backdowns, and moves… while post defenders will have access to an expanded post body-up system that will help them lock down spins, drives, dropsteps, and hopsteps on the other end.
34 MINUTES AGO · PUBLIC
Hey there, 2K basketball fans! It’s that time of year where I finally get to pause for a minute and talk about some of the amazing work that the gameplay team has put into this year’s installment. NBA 2K20 is a huge leap forward for on-court play and there’s plenty to reveal so let’s get into it.
Motion Engine Upgrade
Proper footwork is a core foundation of basketball, and replicating that properly is vital to balancing the interplay between offense and defense. Without realistic movement, everything else falls apart.
In NBA 2K18 we introduced a new motion engine that moved away from the “animation-driven” systems of earlier 2K games. The improvements to feel and responsiveness were immediately apparent when we made the switch, but the new tech surfaced some challenges that caused us to lose some of the control that we had over animation selection, sacrificing some of the authenticity of the motion. In short, some aspects of movement looked and felt way better, some took a step back.
Our motion team spent the past couple of years developing an upgraded motion engine with the aim of finding a happy medium. And thanks to their hard work, movement in this year’s game has taken a huge leap forward. Some of the advances that you’ll immediately see and feel when you pick up NBA 2K20 are better foot planting, momentum modeling, and motion style variation. Players have a much better sense of weight and plant their feet properly when cutting or exploding from a stand. And thanks to the addition of motion styles, you’ll quickly feel the difference between a lumbering big vs. a quick, explosive guard. The motion team spent a lot of time researching and analyzing sprint speeds and acceleration times of real NBA players. This helped us tune our player speeds to more accurately depict the speed of the NBA game, especially in the open court. This research also led us to re-design how sprinting works. We really wanted sprinting to be a valuable resource and not something that everybody automatically does everywhere they go. This year, you’ll notice a flashing yellow effect around the Stamina bar when your energy level drops below a certain threshold. Once hit, you’ll quickly ramp down to a run speed and get tired much faster. So it’s important this year to pick and choose when you want to explode with your first step and not abuse the Sprint trigger all game long.
Handles and Sauce
Ball handlers now have contextual awareness of specific situations on the court that they didn’t have before. Pick and Roll wraps/splits, situational cuts, and backcourt vs. frontcourt movement are a few examples of where we made the ball handler aware of his surroundings. Signature Dribble Styles were another key focus for the motion system upgrade, allowing us to accurately portray the myriad of movement styles across the league. We added new concepts such as stop variation – dead leg/punches, hesi lifts, inverts, etc. Cuts and first steps also vary greatly from one style to the next, allowing us to differentiate speedsters (De'Aaron Fox, John Wall) from players like DeMar DeRozan who move with more “wiggle.” Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, and legends such as Kobe Bryant and Tim Hardaway have signature dribble idle stands. Magic Johnson and John Stockton set up their offenses with their unique movement bringing the ball up court, while open floor players like Russell Westbrook and Giannis Antetokounmpo get different sprint acceleration animations in transition. There are 27 different styles that you’ll see across the league that you’ll also have access to in MyCAREER to create the type of ball handler you want.
Here’s the list of styles: Base, Big, Power, Fundamental, Quick, Slasher, Shifty, James Harden, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Dennis Johnson, John Stockton, Allen Iverson, Tim Hardaway, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Isiah Thomas, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, Stephen Curry, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard
Being a successful ball handler is so much about rhythm and change of pace. The new system gives you many tools to do that, just by using the left stick. But if you want to make your defender look bad in the process, you’re going to need some “sauce.”
This year, we’re introducing a new size-up mechanic that allows you to chain standing dribble moves together in a cleaner and more realistic way. Every move is performed one to one by flicking the Pro Stick and there are no pre-scripted sequences this year. Players have full control over whether they want to lull defenders to sleep with a slow rocking crossover or pound the ball hard with quick machine gun style crosses. James Harden has his patented between legs setup moves, Kyrie Irving has an array of streetball handles, Allen Iverson has his big hesi cross, and the list goes on. The new size-ups really give you the freedom to create your own unique rhythm. When mastered, you’ll be able to break off even the best on-ball defenders. But when over-dribbling or trying to perform the wrong moves at the wrong time, you’ll see players fumbling the ball or easily getting ripped by their defenders.
We’re also giving players access to new advanced moves including behind back wrap escapes, Luka Doncic’s fake stepback, stutter chop steps, new shammgods, and the fake sham hesi that Will Bynum pulled out at the Big Three. And even before you put the ball down, triple threat offense has been expanded as well, with a plethora of new moves including: directional jabs, mid-stepovers, shimmies, and new first steps. I’m excited to see how creative the community gets with all the new ball handling tools at their disposal. Ankles beware.
Read & React
But don’t worry, we didn’t neglect the defensive end of the floor. On-ball defenders will be happy to hear that we’re providing more tools to help them lockdown their checks as well. Internally, we’ve been calling this Read & React Defense. When guarding the ball, defensive players will see a small arrow under the ball handler, indicating where they’re leaning or attempting to go. The arrow shows up at different times based on the defender’s abilities, modeling the different reaction times between a poor defender and a great one. Anticipating the ball handler’s movement properly and cutting off their attack will yield much more predictable outcomes such as stonewalling the dribbler, forcing a pickup, or causing a fumble. Thanks to the motion engine upgrade and its improved defensive footwork, as well as a greatly improved body-up ride system, 1-on-1 battles now resolve in a much more predictable way, showcasing the differences between attacking a flat-footed defender vs. highly skilled Lockdown.
Under the ball handler, you’ll also notice the indicator ring change from a solid circle to broken up lines as the ball handler moves around the court or performs moves. The more broken up the circle, the more vulnerable the ball handler is to losing the ball. To further emphasize this, we re-tuned on-ball steals to be much more predictable. So for NBA 2K20, it’s more important to read what the ball handler’s doing and reaching at the right times rather than running around randomly spamming the Steal button.
Shot Solutions & Paint D
Attacking and defending the rim was another area of focus for the gameplay team. I talked about the concept of Shot Solutions a few years back. The basic idea in real life is that good slashers can find unique solutions to get through the defense when attacking the rim. For NBA 2K20, we’ve completely re-architected layups and dunks to be a fully branch-able mechanic. Last year we introduced the ability to branch from certain layup gathers to dunk finishes… but for layups, once you hit the button you mostly just watched a sequence play out from ground to air. The new gather feature allows you to kick off an advanced gather on the floor, read the defense, and select how you want to finish that gather by re-deflecting the Pro Stick as you takeoff. Say, for example, if you started a euro gather but saw the defense close in, you could re-deflect the Pro Stick down to branch to a floater finish to avoid contact. This also allowed us to introduce the concept of gather resolutions. Forcing a gather into heavy traffic or directly into a defender will lead to jam ups, but choosing the correct gathers in open spaces will let you knife right through traffic. In addition to the euro-step, cradle, hop step, and spin gathers you had access to before, you can now also perform half-spin and cross-spin gathers to get past your defender.
Just like the floor game, playing above the rim is also accompanied by a beefed up defensive counterpart. This year, we captured hundreds of new in-air collisions, hard fouls, grab blocks, and swats to let the rim protectors have their presence felt. Paint defenders who have good timing and decision making will be a force to reckon with and you’ll definitely have to think twice when going head to head against them inside. Zion Williamson, welcome to Team 2K!
Post scorers can also look forward to a refreshed post game with new fakes, backdowns, and moves… while post defenders will have access to an expanded post body-up system that will help them lock down spins, drives, dropsteps, and hopsteps on the other end.
"Hot Start" badge sounds like it's going to be the most broken badge this year. So a slasher can quickly get momentum off easy buckets, then he gets hot and starts knocking down 3's at will.
