Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five ideas that were abruptly abandoned.

As with other genres of video games, basketball titles have come a long way since their early predecessors, thanks to a combination of technological advancements and inspired innovations. Of course, not all ideas are good ones. In the best case scenario, an unsuccessful idea can be retooled into something that achieves the intended result. If there’s no salvaging an idea, then it’s better to simply scrap it, never to return. The willingness to pivot or outright abandon a concept that just isn’t working has been to the benefit of developing better basketball video games.

Of course, an idea isn’t necessarily a failure just because it was abruptly abandoned. Indeed, there have been several features, modes, and mechanics that were quickly nixed, despite their merit and popularity. It isn’t always clear why a seemingly good idea was abruptly abandoned, but it can usually be chalked up to technical challenges, or the adoption of a supposedly superior solution. Mind you, even if there is a sensible explanation – or we can make an educated guess – it isn’t any less frustrating when we lose something that we like. As we prepare to dive into NBA 2K25 and check out its new features, here are some memorable ideas from past games that didn’t stick.

1. NBA Live 2004’s Dynasty Cutscenes

When Franchise mode debuted in the PC version of NBA Live 2000, it was a dream come true for sim heads desiring an in-depth multi-season experience. By NBA Live 2003 however, the mode had unquestionably stagnated. There had been a couple of additions and improvements here and there, but on the whole, Franchise wasn’t much deeper than it had been four years ago. Thankfully, EA Sports did have their finger on the pulse at that point, and Franchise was revamped into Dynasty in NBA Live 2004. This improved franchise experience featured trading of draft picks, training sessions, GM evaluation, and immersive presentation in the form of a variety of cutscenes.

These “Dynasty Cutscenes” – as we came to know them – were a fantastic addition. They livened up the experience with short scenes such as a newly-acquired player entering the locker room and greeting his new teammates, a retired player being farewelled, draftees going up on stage to shake hands with David Stern, and running drills in training to name just a few. They weren’t too elaborate, but it was far more interesting than just seeing names and numbers in the frontend. It was the first and only time we had Dynasty Cutscenes as NBA Live abruptly abandoned them, though MyGM in NBA 2K has featured similar scenes and even stories in its RPG approach.

2. NBA 2K17’s Shooting Mechanics

Considering the overall positive response to NBA 2K17, the goal of a “skill gap” in the online competitive scene, and Mike Wang’s enthusiasm for shot aiming, it’s surprising that the game’s shooting mechanics were abruptly abandoned. In case it’s been a while since you’ve played NBA 2K17, shooting with the button was purely timing-based, but if you used the Pro Stick, you could also aim the shot. A Green Release meant a bucket regardless of aim, but if your timing was slightly off, then a well-aimed attempt from a good shooter still stood a good chance of going in. If an aimed attempt missed, it would do so according to the trajectory that you sent it on.

Besides adding a realistic outcome to a badly botched attempt, it allowed us to aim intentional misses so that a teammate had a better chance of grabbing the board. It’s a handy ability to have in late game free throw scenarios, and one of the reasons that I remain a fan of the T-Meter in old NBA Live games. Unfortunately, this mechanic was immediately dropped, and shooting in NBA 2K18 was vastly inferior thanks to the 5% chance of success on near-perfect releases. NBA 2K21’s take on shot aiming was far less successful, and was likewise abruptly abandoned. That was a welcome course correction though, rather than being a disappointing change and downgrade.

3. NBA Live 09’s Be a Pro

One of the recurring themes that led to NBA Live’s downfall was the introduction of good ideas, a failure to expand or truly capitalise on them, and NBA 2K subsequently doing the concept much better. This led to so many What Ifs for NBA Live, and Be a Pro is a prime example. We can debate which basketball game had the first true career mode, but Be a Pro was undoubtedly one of earliest prototypes for the concept in its modern form. On Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, it was essentially an offline practice mode for Online Team Play, locking control to one player and grading performance. On PlayStation 2, it was a single season career mode with goals, XP, and upgrades.

Basketball gamers had been dreaming of a single player career mode for years, and even emulated the concept with player lock in franchise modes. It appeared that NBA Live was on the verge of introducing such a mode with Be a Pro in NBA Live 09. And then, it was nowhere to be found in NBA Live 10, removed along with the NBA All-Star Weekend. NBA Elite 11 was set to introduce a full career mode in Become Legendary, but the disastrous attempt to revamp the gameplay made it a moot point. Meanwhile, NBA 2K10 brought us My Player, NBA 2K11 didn’t try to implement mechanics from a hockey game for absolutely no good reason, and the rest is history.

4. NBA 2K21’s Rookieville

So, it isn’t always disappointing when ideas in basketball video games are abruptly abandoned! Case in point: Rookieville in NBA 2K21 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, once you played through the story in MyCAREER – whichever path you chose – you arrived at the Rookieville docks. Here you had to play online games to build up your rep and get noticed by one of the Park affiliations, at which point you were granted access to The City (PC and prior gen just placed you straight in The Neighborhood as in previous games). It was some of the most literal gatekeeping that we’ve ever encountered in the NBA 2K series to date.

Shills and apologists liked to point out that it wasn’t difficult to get out of Rookieville. Of course, that spoke to how pointless it was! The real problem was that it relied on getting an online game, which became tougher once most people had graduated from Rookieville to The City. Eventually, a CPU opponent was patched into the 1v1 court so that you didn’t have to rely on other gamers. It was a terrible idea with an obvious drawback that somehow nobody thought of. I get not wanting to throw the previous game under the bus – though developer blogs actually do that all the time – but I must respectfully disagree with Erick Boenisch that Rookieville was a “good experiment“.

5. NBA Live 16’s Shooting Mechanics

The shooting mechanics in NBA Live 16 followed a familiar blueprint: properly time the release of the shoot button for the optimal chance of making the shot. However, now there was a meter, with a circle at the top indicating the ideal release point. In addition to providing post-shot feedback about release timing and the quality of the attempt, NBA Live 16 also displayed a percentage representing the chance the shot had of going in. This figure, which typically reflected real life shooting percentage ranges, took into account timing, ratings, defensive proximity, and location. As such, considering all of those factors, a figure of 40-60% generally meant a good attempt.

Granted, these factors in shot success were not unique to NBA Live 16, but the level of transparency was new. It also stands as proof that EA Sports were definitely trying to make a sim game with NBA Live! When the series returned with NBA Live 18 following a one-year hiatus though, this approach was gone, replaced by a Green Release mechanic akin to NBA 2K’s. On one hand, it was unfortunate, but it was also understandable. The meaning of the percentages could be confusing for anyone who didn’t pay attention to the onboarding, and 2K had also conditioned gamers to expect guaranteed buckets with perfect timing, so I don’t blame Live for following their lead.

It’ll be interesting to see which of the new modes, mechanics, and features in NBA 2K25 will be retained in future years. In the meantime, what’s your take on these ideas that were abruptly abandoned? What are some other concepts that disappeared almost as soon as they were introduced? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Ideas That Were Abruptly Abandoned appeared first on NLSC.