Dynasty @ Association

[ryne candy]

Specific info ....no but they (NBA 2K10) have said how the commentary in Assoc will talk about how you are doing in your Assoc. For example if you have a winning streak, if you need a game to win your division, or the playoff race. I don't think there will be much different from last year....the core will probably be the same. Just remembered that you can offer 10 day contracts and on the 3rd 10 day contract, that player is signed for the rest of the season.

[Onez]

GI: Many tout the Association mode as the best of its kind across the sports genre. What tweaks are you making to the successful franchise mode this year?

Boenisch: Let me give you my high-level philosophy for it. In the last three years we added some industry leading features like player morale, player ambitions, player roles, the way we integrated team chemistry into it, NBA.com—those types of events. I think our franchise is full featured, and fully authentic in almost every way. So, at the beginning of this year I was scratching my head thinking, well, what could we add this year that we don’t already have? The approach I came up with was “the year of the fan.” I went through all the feedback we get from our fans on the fan sites and the forums, just looking for things that people have been asking for that we just haven’t been able to get to because we’ve been trying to put in core features. So this year was really all about polishing the mode and adding those little bells and whistles that really make the experience for some people.

The first thing is obviously that NBA Today integration we talked about earlier. After that we have the NBA Development League fully integrated into the Association mode, so you can play any game on the D-league schedule, including your affiliated team. That includes calling up or sending down players, so if you draft that first-round rookie and he’s not getting any run on your team, send him down to the D-league. One benefit you get from doing that is the all-new player progression system. The way it has worked in years’ past is you would draft a player in the first round and you could sit him on your bench and he would automatically develop into the player he was going to be—he had preset potential, he was on a preset curve. This year the new progression system is balanced between stat-based performance and actual playing time. So if you draft that hotshot rookie and you just don’t play him, he’s not going to get any better because he’s not getting on the court, he’s not learning from his mistakes. This is where the beauty of the D-league comes into play. If you’re the Boston Celtics and you drafted J.R. Giddens he’s not going to get any run on your team because you have three hall-of-famers and Rondo and Perkins. You can send him down to the D-league and get his playing time there and he’ll develop into a player that way so it really gives you a different facet to building your team and developing your players and we thought that was really important to fans. Plus, the cool part is every time you play the mode it’s different. Some players develop into stars, and in the next franchise they won’t just because they got traded, they got injured, they didn’t have a role on the team. It really makes it a lot more dynamic in that aspect.

GI: Is there an expiration date for the players to reach their potential or could you trade for a guy who’s been buried on a roster for a couple of years and start tapping his potential even though he’s been dormant?

Boenisch: There are two ways to answer that. Players do have a potential rating. One of my philosophies in franchise is complete customization, so you can go into edit player and you can change his potential. Internally players have a peak age, which says they develop to a certain age. For some guys in the league like a LeBron, he’s going to peak a lot sooner rather than some guy who comes into the league as a 22-year old college senior. He might peak a lot later because he doesn’t have as much NBA experience. Depending on how many miles are on the legs, they are going to reach the end of their peak sooner in their career, kind of like a T-Mac, who is 30 years old but is looking like he’s 40 years old. We modeled that into it to. It’s not nearly as cut and dry as it was last year; it’s a lot more dynamic.

Moving on from that, we have 30 player-controlled teams this year, up from eight last year. This means that users can control every team in the league. This is cool for our fans who like to have their franchise follow the real NBA season. If a trade happens, you can go in there and force the trade to happen between the two teams. It’s just a no holds barred, do whatever the heck you want to do with your franchise feature for our real diehards.

Another fan requested feature is real-time practice. Last year we had a practice menu in the game where you could go set up a little scrimmage, but it was kind of simulated and your players would get kind of a stat boost based on that. This year with real-time practice you can actually go into a practice gym with your team and practice plays or go do a scrimmage or practice a signature shot with one of your guys. This is really cool for learning the signature shots of your players, learning to run plays in an environment that doesn’t count negatively against you. In years’ past people would have to learn plays in game situations, and that’s not really fun or fair because they are doing everything they can to win the game. This is another of those little icing on the cake features.

Moving on from there, one of last bits of authenticity we can add to the mode that we didn’t already have is the concept of restricted free agency. That’s any player coming off his four-year rookie contract, his drafting team has rights to him. We saw this with Josh Smith last year. If he goes out and signs with another team then he owning team has 10 days to sign him or let him go. This makes free agency a bit more interesting—is your strategy to go for that young kid where the other team might match for him or do you focus on the unrestricted free agents who you have a better shot at landing? It adds a little drama to the free agency period, which wasn’t there before.

Believe it or not, I’m not done yet. The next one is my favorite one. It’s an extension of our 2K Share feature, which we had in the game last year. This is the ability to create and import draft classes into your franchise mode. We actually have a feature outside of the mode where you can create them. This is just simply the ability to go in there and edit the 75 rookies that we generate to your liking. Legally I’m not supposed to tell you what you can and can’t do with this feature for legal issues of importing characters that we don’t have rights to, but if you let your imagination run wild I think some of our fans are going to create some really cool draft classes. It’s all done through 2K Share and before a season a little dialog box will pop up that asks you if you want to load one or just auto generate a random class. For our fans, this is a great way to keep franchise mode fresh.

The last thing I added that I think is pretty cool is a page on NBA.com called NBA History, which archives the league history and builds it up as you go forward. You can just jump into this menu and see who led the league in rebounds in 1974 or who one the title in 1996. Moving forward this history builds with your franchise so you can look back and see how your franchise has changed the course of the NBA. It sounds like a bit feature, but for people who really take their mode seriously it’s a really cool thing to have.

Source: http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/2...734.htm?Page=3

[SuperNova854]

:jizz: