Whats up people? I'm back with awesome brand new information about NBA LIVE 16 that will further you excitement and validate this years game as a game that can actually be enjoyed just as much as 2K. This information comes from an interview held by The Stream Team in which they interview Sean O'Brian and Erika Esola-Imburgio. We all know Sean is the lead producer for NBA LIVE 16  but, Erika has been in the shadows a bit. She is the actual guru on ratings and updates throughout the NBA season. In one of my earlier post, I told you guys not to worry too much about custom rosters because somebody has a job at EA that will do that for you. Well, Erika is the person and she seems to be seriously devoted to getting the job done for us this season and keeping live up to date. She did say that there will be weekly updates all the time but, if anything major happens it will be a daily thing. For example, all of a sudden James Harden decided he wants to cut off his beard. Being that this is a cosmetic change and needs work it will be part of a weekly update. On the other hand, lets say the Rockets trade James Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers for 8 future 1st round picks.(LOL) best believe the next day that change will be in effect. I don't see them allowing you to go the whole week with James Harden on another team. Keeping on topic, She also spilled the beans on other things involved with ratings.

Ratings

     

In LIVE 16 ratings play a much bigger role that last years game. Its no secret that LIVE 15 was horrible in reflecting how good or bad a player was. 2k does such an exceptional job of making you feel like your playing with a Superstar(Lebron) a star(John Wall) and good player(Nick Young) and all the way down to role players(Mario Chalmers). Well this year it seems like NBA LIVE 16 is going to that level to create the best possible immersion on the court. Players in LIVE will now act accordingly to who they are in the real world. Players with a high motor will dive for loose balls when they have to. In clutch moments in the 4th quarter, Lebron's ratings will calculate into how he plays and what shots he can makes or if he even can draw a foul or not. To dive further into ratings, I'm going to talk to you guys about special player in the league and also player reaction.

       In NBA LIVE 16 your not going to find a whole bunch of guys in the 90's rating plateau. This year they have done away with guys being similar. The best players in the league are the only ones in the 90's. To explain what that means is easy and hard the same time. let us take a look at it below

The top 10 players in the league right now(MY LIST!!) and what rating they have(official) and what I think as well(guess)

1. Lebron James Cle (97)    (official)
2. Kevin Durant OKC (95) (guess)
3. James Harden  Hou  (95) (guess)
4. Russel Westbrook OKC (95) (guess)
5. Anthony Davis NO (94) (guess)
6. Stephen Curry GS  (94) (official)
7. Demarcus Cousins Sac (92) (guess)
8. Blake Griffin LAC     (91) (guess)
9. Klay Thompson GS   (91) (official)
10. Chris Paul LAC        (90) (guess)

Everybody you see above should be in the 90's. EA would do any of the guys on this list a wrong if they are not. There are also some legend players in the game they talked about laying the foundation to something that I brought up before with Summer Circuit. It would be so damn cool if legendary players are part of the 5 games on each court. Imagine playing a game at Rucker park and your final game is against a starting 5 of Iverson and Kobe in the back court and Durant, Dr, Jay and Kareem in the front court? Holy shit that would amazing and scary at the same time. EA if you read this post, please something like this happen in Summer Circuit. I can imagine those guys ratings would be in the high 90's. Kobe is up there with around 97 or 98 in his prime Iverson around 95. Dr Jay around 94 or 95. Kareem in his prime just might be a 99. I'm just saying he was sick on the court.  These legends and how they are used is not official. I just wish this can happen.

 The Paint

      The next topic can(and will) break LIVE 16. I am not going to mince words when I say this game will die if the low post and animations around the basket are not up to par. Now we have not seen any true gameplay in the paint since E3. They said during that time that the post game and animations have not been added yet. That was back in June so they have had time to add stuff. With that being said, I can happily report that during the interview with Stream Team, the first question from the them was about the post game and the response from Sean was what we all wanted to hear. So far Sean O'Brian has been up front with everything. If there is something he hates about his own game he says it and if it is something that is great he says that too. He hasn't said anything that should make any of us feel like we can't trust what he says. When asked the question he said the post game has gone through the ringer as well. They are going with a ratings based system that will govern what you can do in there. Every player will react accordingly to what he should be doing. Erika goes on to say that rating points in the Foot Work and Box out ratings will determine how players rebound the ball. A guy like Tristan Thompson should have a very high foot work and Box out rating because of his uncanny ability to position himself for the offensive rebounds. He gets his body in the right place all the time. Not everybody can go in the paint and do what they want. Dribble ratings determine how your trip into paint is going to go for you. James Harden or Tony Parker in the paint is money. Joakim Noah(pictured above) has no business driving to the paint because he has a high chance to lose the ball, pick up his dribble and flat out put up a bad shot. Defensive guarding ability has improved to go along with the Live Motion engine. The physicality of the players in this years game allows you to play defense the true way by getting in front of the player you are guarding. Its not like LIVE 15 where players just ricochet of you like your some brick wall. There is ball denial and dunks can be blocked. They have added signature layups and dunks plus many animations have been re-done or added. A small detail that should not be forgotten in all this is foot planting. 2k has great foot planting which makes everything just animate and flow better. LIVE 16 is moving away from gliding and sliding. Foot planting is going make the paint play better just by being included in the game this year. We don't have exact comments on what kind of specific animations we will be seeing though. But Sean did say that next week there will be some new gameplay videos on social networks showcasing the gameplay before the September 15th launch of the demo. I also forgot to mention that Erika stated the release of screenshots soon showing player ratings. It will be a Top 5 kind of thing in each position in the game. Lets just hope that LIVE 16 in the paint is what it should be.


Passing

       Another part of live that isn't that bad but could be more authentic is the passing. People have asked that they add the ability to choose what kind pass you want to throw like a button for bounce pass and a button for direct passing. They didn't add separate passing but they did say that they are moving in the direction of contextual passing. If you don't know what that means let me explain it to you in detail and give you an example of how that should work in LIVE 16. Contextual passing is relative to what situation you are in. Things are done in context to what is happening. If the position of player 1 and player 2 is restricted the pass will be thrown and received in a certain way. Now, that is the explanation but, will the developers implement this the correct way? That remains to be seen. It seems like a difficult thing to do and to make look authentic. In the past basketball games have had hit or miss passing but people just overlook it. 2k15 doesn't have great passing at all. The ball goes through defenders heads. The pass trajectory is usually horrible. Live 15 was bad too. So there is going to be people who need to see this in action for us to believe in it. If it turns out to be a ground breaking system then it will be the best passing system in a basketball game ever made. So, lets look at some examples of how contextual passing could be incredible. We will use Chris Paul(in the pic above) for this one. Chris Paul comes down the court and calls a pick and roll with D. Jordan. He slips to paint with a full passing lane to receive the ball. The pass that Paul throws should be a quick pass hitting Jordan in stride. Now replay that again and this time when Jordan slips to the basket the defense helps to break up the passing lane so Chris Paul should then have to throw the pass to the back shoulder of Jordan so he bring it in. Rewind that again but this time the pick and roll has Chris himself getting doubled off the screen. In that situation Chris Paul has to throw a bounce pass to Jordan because throwing a straight forward pass is not possible with bodies in front of you. This is how it should work in the game if done right. They went back and revamped outlet passes to create fast breaks better and that plays right into LIVE 16 having a much faster pace to gameplay and transition which according to Sean O'Brian has been fixed to create much better offense. Things already announced include the touch passing mechanic where you tap the pass button twice to keep the ball moving and the dribble hand off. Defending the dribble hand off is totally dependent on how good of a defender you are. It is VERY possible to stop the dribble hand off by playing the gap instead of the player. Sean mentioned that body on body collisions can happen if you don't allow the player to get in position to receive the hand off.


Other Things of Interest

Cameras

To close out my post entry for today I'm going to talk about some other tidbits from the interview. Pictured above is what I believe is the new camera angle that I have heard people talking about. Sean described the new camera as a hybrid between Base Line and Broadcast that follows the action as it happens and turns to angle to what is going on. Sean didn't really answer the question about zooming in but I hope that is added. The game has 6 cameras in total which doesn't sound like a whole lot but if they are 6 solid cameras then I'm for it. I'm excited about the people from Madden coming over to help LIVE 16 have better cut scenes and capturing replays. This should help tremendously with immersion. If you have played Madden 16 then you know what I'm talking about.

Commentary

Live 16 looks to also improve on the commentary this year. The question was asked about this and he gave an honest answer. He feels like they dropped the ball with LIVE 14 and 15. He said they have tons of audio from Mike Breem and Jeff Van Gundy but the team didn't know how to implement it the right way to fit into the gameplay. He claims that in LIVE 16 a strong effort has been made to include stories an banter in between plays and the one thing he said that made me happy was interrupting. 2k does this very well when something happens. Looks like Live will have more intelligent  commentary this year


HD Face Scanning

So they revealed that the face scan takes a total of 5 to 6 minutes to complete. The actual scan takes about 20 seconds and then it goes though the cloud system into you game from the cloud. From there you can edit it to your liking. A question was asked about beards and if that would be a problem. I have a beard so that is a great question. He basically said with the choice to add a beard to your guy anyway it is possible to just cover up the part of your chin that is scanned in with the many beard choices in the game. It has been tested at EA studios and it works well.





        Well folks that is it for this long and informative post. I have taken it upon  myself to deliver all news I find out about LIVE 16 so I can do my part to spread the word that LIVE is back this year to compete with the 2K. As always leave comments and start a convo with me about anything. I will do my best to respond to everybody. See you next time.

best regards