So ya, 2K Sports was on a roll, with them pulling out of MLB and leaving that as a Sony exclusive property after 2K13, all they had was basketball until the WWE license was acquired in 2014. Every year they were putting out better and better basketball games with improved mechanics and better graphics. I can't remember or pinpoint which game it was but my mind goes back to 2K12 or 13 as what I consider the "decline" of the franchise but not in the quality of gameplay. No gameplay was not what changed NBA 2K, microtransactions were.
While microtransactions were becoming all the rage with all publishers after the "online pass" way to nickel and dime you was over, the thing was NBA took things to a whole other level. While companies like EA were trying to get you to buy extra guns or DLC add-ons, 2K set up this:
The layout of VC screams that it is a same layout of buying some sort of "pay to add gems or whatever" thing that mobile games do to let you play faster. A free to play model in a full priced retail game. As Jim Sterling says is a "fee to pay game". That's what 2K had become. Okay, so Virtual Currency doesn't sound so bad right ?? It just effects you and your player, right ?? Well technically yes and technically no. The game starts your MyPlayer/MyCareer characters at 60 overall and to even be competitive in the offline modes you need to be at least a 70 and that could take forever to grind your way up there because you need minutes in game to earn VC well you can't get many minutes as a bench player with a 60 overall. So to max your player out to an 85 you have to spend around another $70 and that's as far as you can go without badges. Which you have to earn online and let me tell you, the NBA 2K community online is ruthless, you step onto MyPark to play games with an 85 overall and people know you bought your way to that rank and if you step into the Park with less than 85 forget anyone playing with you.
The game has set it up so that in order to get free VC to level up your character in offline solo play, you need to get minutes, at 60 to 70 overall you get enough minutes to maybe get around 200 VC and it takes thousands to upgrade. Basically bare minimum they want you to buy enough to get a better than 70 overall player, hopefully more. Then online it's even worse. Way worse. Virtual Currency has turned the NBA 2K games into a depressing pay to win mold.
Now that's not all folks, oh no, similar to their sports game brothers at EA, NBA 2K also has MyTeam where you open card packs to get players that you can come up with a team for. Which are loot boxes, which have now become against the law and gambling in certain countries like Belgium. As you see below this was a message from 2K to their "fans" urging them to write representatives to let them nickel and dime you for gambling card packs in their basketball game.
Occasionally but I only get it when it goes on sale, I never pay full price for it, and I know avoid MyCareer or MyPark because it's not fun even trying to level up. Stick with franchise and GM modes; you can still enjoy those.....for now anyway. The NBA 2K franchise is ruining itself with microtransactions but with whales paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars to level up every year and every game, sometimes as more than one character per game; it will continue on one of the worst downward spirals imaginable.
The microtransactions have ruined the franchise. But when your parent company is Take Two Interactive and your CEO is Strauss Zelnick, that's what you have to expect, just ask Rockstar Games with GTA Online and now Red Dead Redemption 2 Online.
All about the bottom line.