Much Needed Online Association Improvements Coming in NBA 2K13

The debut of Online Association with NBA 2K12 was highly anticipated but turned out to be easily the biggest disappointment about the product. The mode was not in any way ready to be released. Promises about commissioner control were unfulfilled (they had absolutely none), advancement was automated, and the entire structure was so confusing that not even 2K Sports employees could decipher or explain how the mode actually worked. 

In an article today from Game Informer going over game modes for NBA 2K13 a few improvements to Online Association have been noted.

•Admins in online Association leagues can reset games, and even change the outcome of games. This includes setting the final score and who scored what if for some reason a game froze toward the end of the fourth quarter and the players didn’t want to replay the entire game.

•For the first time in online Association, you can manipulate sliders to fit your league’s preferred style of play.

These are two critical additions that will contributed to making the mode viable. However it’s concerning that other necessary changes haven’t been mentioned. They include making advancement user-friendly, allowing people who are kicked from a league for whatever reason the ability to re-enter (many lost their spot last year due to server issues and then were locked out), an auto-pilot feature for those who can’t make a head-to-head games, the ability to scrimmage with your team, and having alerts to events like the trade deadline. Those were obvious areas that needed to be addressed going into this year and there are certainly more details on the mode to come so hopefully they’ll be touched upon at a later date.