NBA 2K12 Patch Introduces New Headaches

The patch that hit for the 360 yesterday was supposed to fix some of the connection issues plaguing NBA 2K12 since its release. The entirety of online play has been a disaster of course – but clearing up some of the disconnects would have represented a decent step towards necessary larger scale improvement. Unfortunately the patch has in some ways made the online experience even worse. 

Quick Match now will sit on “searching for opponent” for several minutes and sometimes considerably longer. In my tests Thursday evening the wait averaged four minutes and on Friday morning it was six. The longest wait extended past 20 minutes (at which point I gave up and cancelled out) and others have reported instances that dragged on even longer. This was a problem on the PS3 pre-patch but really hadn’t been troubling the 360 side much if at all.

Perhaps even worse is that game invites don’t seem to be working properly. Inviting a friend into the “Locker Room” results in a message that the lobby “doesn’t exist” or “has expired”. It’s difficult to tell how widespread this is but there are numerous reports from users establishing invites as being problematic post-patch.

Online Association has been adversely affected as well. There are now problems with inviting and/or connecting with users for head-to-head games. In cases where connections have been established they’ve been dropped immediately resulting in the CPU simming the games (which is irreversible). Team-Up mode has its share of issues too – expected given the general server, lag, and matchmaking problems.

The positives out of the patch seem to be that now adjustments can be made on the pre-game screen without resulting in a near immediate disconnect. There are also some indications that the actual performance and responsiveness has been improved in Quick Games – but the sample size is far too small to establish that for certain. Disconnects altogether though have not been eliminated – the load screen was never the sole culprit of them to begin with.

So this is now the current state of online play in NBA 2K12. A minor patch that was to improve connection times and stability – online has a lot more wrong than just that – has only resulted in more troubles that will need to be addressed. Online performance will continue to be monitored over the coming days for any signs of hope.