Back with another post about NBA Live 16 today and I'm going to talk about customization with you guys. This is the first time Live is allowing you to build an actual character who feels like an extension of you and who you are. When people hear the word customization the first thing that comes to mind is usually clothes and shoes. Lets be real it was only recently that you could put your face in a game so that isn't something that people are all the way used to yet(more on that later) so what your player wears is important. I don't have exact numbers or details on how much content is available with the character builder but I know from what I've seen so far you can do some crazy unique things. Lets get into it.

The Live Spot

        This is where you go to buy your clothes and shoes for your character. I'm sure the hair styles are also in the area of the UI

Animation packages

        In Pro-Am and you will have countless shoes and clothing to choose from but it doesn't stop there. Live is handling animation just like upgrades rather than cosmetic. NBA 2k has done this already but not the way Live 16 is doing it. Lets set up a situation to make this very clear to you guys.

        I have created a player his name is : Boogie Watson(lol) and Boogie is a 6'4 Shooting guard weighing 203 lbs. Now if you know basketball then you can pretty much figure a player at this size can do a lot on the basketball court. He can be a ball handler at the 1 and 2 as well as a good slashing or shooting 2. His height at 6'4 is a bit too short to cover the 3 and his weight might be too light to cover other 2's. This can mean he might be a bad defender just because of his size so what I would do is I would make sure I work on his speed and quickness to level him out to at least stay in front of his man on D.  That is just on defense. On offense I'm going to breed Boogie as a big time scorer. I would make sure to focus his skill set on being able to shoot from the outside and scoring in the paint whit contact. I love Jamal Crawford's dribbling style but I don't like his shot style. Live gives you the ability to pick Jamal Crawford's dribbles ONLY if you can. Have you won enough games to increase your rating? Do you have enough SP points to make the purchase? Your answer could be no to both of those which means you have to WORK to get to that level. Your going to have to use generic or another players dribbles until your skill level reaches a certain point. Now I don't know what Crawford's buy number will be but I'll just say that its pretty sick and effective so I will say a ball handling rating of 92 will give the option to buy Jamal Crawford's dribble animations. At the same time maybe you like a generic shot style that you buy for half the cost but it fits your style then you buy it and you grow with it. You don't have to buy Lebron's shooting style(which I will probably say is around 85 rating)So I think you guys get my point and what I'm trying to say. This game is like an RPG or Destiny for that matter. Gerald Greens Dunk animations is like the Gjallahorn in Destiny. Once you get it you will be able to dunk on fools all night...well that is if you didn't create a rebounding power forward when you started cause you won't ever see that high of a dunk rating I'm sure.

Tattoos

Randy Harris, an accomplished tattoo artist in the NBA community is putting exclusive tats in the game for you to earn just like everything else as well.It is broken down into neck, left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. On the actual UI screen you go into the section called "Tattoo Shop" in there you are met with a room where your character is standing and you choose from a whole bunch of different tattoos. There are about 90 tattoos or arms and 47 for legs and you can see from the screen shot that there are 17 neck tattoos to choose from.
check out Randy's Twitter page  @TattoosByRandy

Scan features

        The next topic is a huge deal for everybody. In case you don't know by now on September 8th which is three weeks before the games release and a week before the demo release, EA will give IOS and Android users the chance to download the EA scan app which you can use to scan a life like resemblance of what you look like in real life. The scan will go into the NBA Live 16 and from that point you will be able to add hair and facial hair to that scan. The whole process is seamless and down right scary accurate. It has also been confirmed that you can scan your own damn shoes into the game. Yes people, you can scan in your own shoes...that is crazy. As a matter of fact that sound so crazy that I won't believe it until I'm actually able to scan my classic DJ 14 Jordans into Live.

No Player and Roster edits but we got sliders!!

       On another topic, you won't be able edit players and rosters this year in Live. To be honest, I look at this from two angles. The first angle is from my personal angle. I don't really care much for that because LIVE 16 will be updated on a daily basis as things change in the real league. They have people who's job is to update live until Live 17 comes out. So that kinda softens the blow a little. On the other hand this is a feature that should never be missing from a sports game. I don't really know why the folks at EA just cant set things up so you have a couple sets of save files. Give the player the choice to use the official downloaded file for the game or use their own custom roster and player file. I don't know why that is so hard but maybe if enough people complain it will be a patch after the game drops. We do have sliders this year and I am super excited about the possible tweaking that we can do.

Other Things in the future

        I really hope to update this blog with more info soon about what exactly is available like how many different shoes there are or clothes and what animation packages you can buy and at  what level. More info on what else you can scan other than your face and shoes would be great. It seems like this years Live is filled with so much intrigue because we all want this game to come back and be relevant and fun to play. Sure, we all love and play 2k now but most of us grew up on Live and deep down inside wish it was still the best basketball game to play. Maybe the time is coming and the rigth steps are being taken by EA. That is all I have for this entry and be sure to follow my blog for new stuff about NBA Live 16. Until my next post...

best regards.