Drills are limited to 3 per day.īadges are passive abilities that give you an edge over just general skills. Here you can choose which badge you wish to work on and run drills catered towards improving that skill. This can be done in game, but also by attending the Team Practice facility. Score: 3/10 Thoughts on my NBA 2K18 review? Let me know in The Pit below.If you aren’t trying to raise your skill level caps, you probably want to unlock badges on your character. If you want to play basketball and have fun, maybe take the $60 you would’ve spent on NBA 2K18 and buy an actual basketball (it will be way cheaper). If you enjoy grinding for hours upon hours with little advancement, or opening up your wallet to get that tasty new pair of sneakers, this game is for you. From the standpoint of a consumer, this year’s version of the game is easily the worst I have played. *Serious* As NBA 2K18 has a monopoly on the NBA video game market, they have begun to venture into predatory practices. Regardless of your choice, I look forward to profiting off of your support of my website!
If purchasing points doesn’t intrigue you, there is an option to grind out articles for me at a fixed 0.0001 HTRC per 20 mins. While I thought about creating a complete review on NBA 2K18, I figured it was easier to simply charge $1.99/$2.99/$120.99 for HTRC which can be used to unlock other sections of this review that should be already accessible to readers. 2K has also made it so that items unlock as you level, so things like custom T Shirts (unlocks at 80), won’t even be an option for most players who are just playing the game. Want to buy a pair of Jordan XX8 Lows? That will cost you 4,000 VC (about 5 games, or $1.99). Again this isn’t a bad thing, but the price of most of the items just makes them unappealing to purchase. 2K also realizes this and has made a number of customization items available for that sweet VC. As the NBA is all about shoes, tattoos, and haircuts, you will understandably want to swag out your MyPLAYER. The second VC issue with M圜AREER is that everything costs money and most items aren’t cheap. Only need to play 5 games to afford these shoes! If you do grind it out, the experience becomes slightly better, but this requires hours upon hours of playing. The first 10+ hours in NBA 2K18‘s M圜AREER mode feel specifically designed to push you towards buying VC. This means when you are out on the NBA court, you have to deal with hours of frustratingly boring play that stems from being a bad player. I started M圜AREER as an OVR 60, slashing Point Guard. This sounds fun and could be fun, but the entire VC system completely destroys the process. This character is used for playing both multiplayer and single player modes. Centered around the idea of hitting 99 ovr, the M圜AREER mode tasks you with creating your own NBA character. The first and most egregious has to be the entire M圜AREER system.
To highlight the VC sales funnel in action, I will point out a few of the major instances where the push is especially prevalent. Seeing as they are both owned by Take Two interactive, it seems this is the mega publisher’s new ‘gaming recipe’. While playing 2K18, I got an eerily similar feeling to the monetization approach of GTAO. Now I typically don’t have an issue with microtransactions when done well, but the entire NBA 2K18 product is built solely around funneling you towards purchasing VC. This can be done by either playing the $60+ game you’ve purchased, or (as 2K hopes) by buying the currency with real world money. Like NBA 2K games in the past, NBA 2K18 features a heavy emphasis on acquiring VC (virtual currency).