NBA Live Mobile 18 — Honest review and rant
For the last year or so, I enjoyed playing mobile sports games. Because I’m a sucker for NBA, in november 2016, I installed on my phone the latest release of NBA Live Mobile 17. Started as a noob at the time of the harvest promo.
I truly enjoyed playing the game, which gave me a sense of lots of current basketball players and former one (aka Legends) and for the most part, I grinded my way to a 96 overall franchise, without spending any money, by the time this iteration of the has gone it’s course. I had something to do, in the spare time I went to work, come back home from work, or when I was going into the city centre for a meeting. It has really driven me to get most of the master cards, and have some fantasy lineups with the players that I wanted.
It was really fun and the grind gave me a purpose. Somewhere down the line, the producer/developer, EA Sports, announced that the game will reset, and bring in another iteration of it, for the upcoming 2017–2018 season.
I really had the idea that a cool update version of a game I like would make it’s way sooner. It was later. The new game was supposed to launch at the time of NBA pre-season, but it was pushed with a few weeks.
That made the launch date of the current version be November 1st 2017. But, actually for myself, an Android user, the update to this game came early on November 2nd, because Google Play does their store content update every 6 hours (rather than every 30 minutes — for iOS).
After I finally installed the update and got into the game, I went through the process of redeeming my season score ticket packs (earn by playing the game last season) and instantly open a veteran pack. After that, I was taken into a match with one of my new lineups, (a tutorial per se) where I played a blacktop game (at the Venice Beach court). Won the game and was rewarded with a 70 overall T-Mac rookie card. Nothing wrong until here.
As a mobile experience, and coming from a designer point of view (yeah, yours truly works as a graphic designer & front-end developer), the graphical aspect of this game looks a bit bland, with an uninspiring color scheme and really dull card art.
I’m sorry to say it, but as a designer, the abundance of color featured inside the above screenshot is so mid 2000’s and looks like a kid made it. U have a combination of dark orange and black for the frame of the layout, “vanilla” red and default green for the lines that show what player is getting a chemistry link from their coach and who’s not, dark red and pale yellow for skill/reward boost options, default bronze, silver, gold and red for the card art, no alignment whatsoever inside the card art, way too big player ratings and names, players positions are not centered correctly inside their frame and team logos are barely visible no matter what card tier you check.
That for me is a killer to the eye and the color scheme really looks poor and unprofessional.
The only thing I appreciate at this game from a graphical standpoint is the homepage UI, that is simple, intuitive and built from blocks.
Everything is mapped out and simple as possible. There is the store tab (which prompts you to spend money in the game), a tab containing your 2 lineups (NBA & Classic), the live events tab map (where you can compete and level up), your daily objectives tab (located at the bottom of the screen), the sets tab (a place where you complete certain task so you can get better rewards), and 3 other tabs: Head To Head (play with a random opponent online), Leagues (join a league and play against other guys in a ranked tournament) and a Seasons mode (where you play with your lineup against every NBA team in a simulation of an NBA season).
Things that you can do in the game
Play live events. Get the feel of the game. See how you’re doing. The Live events that you can play at the start of season 2 are:
Training Camp — standard training drill live event
Rep Rush — another standard training drill event that rewards you with a REP boost (a new currency you can use in NBA Live Mobile).
XP Accelerator — Complete an ingame task with your lineup (score a 3pointer, get 2 assists) for an XP added reward.
Road to Riches — Earn a quick sell pack worth up to 500000 coins by winning the event with your NBA lineup.
Wheel of Players — Get a bronze + player for each win
Make it Rain — Earn 10 NBA cash by completing simple tasks with your NBA or Classic lineup
Ball is Life — Earn team tokens (current and classic) which you can redeem in sets for a chance at a gold/elite player.
Legendary — Weekly event in which you earn tokens that can be redeemed in Legendary sets (the event runs for the entire day)
Clipboard Commanders Plus — Earn tokens for redeeming coaches for your NBA and Classic Lineups
Clipboard Commanders — Earn one token for redeeming coaches for your NBA and Classic Lineups
Road to Legacy Dirk (only available for returning players) — Another all day event that uses your Season 1 lineups to get a token that you can use to upgrade your “41” overall Dirk Nowitzki until a 94 overall elite.
Stamina Boost — An all day event that when completed gets you an extra 50 stamina to play live events.
Crossroads — The first promo in this new season. Made up of 30 gauntlet events in which you can earn Crossroads token (to redeem one of the 6 crossroads elite players) and another 6 daily blitz events from which you can earn the necessary tokens to train your crossroads Elite player or get another elite player.
Swag — a weekly event in which you can earn tokens to upgrade James Harden or Walt Frazier from a 78 to an 88 overall (the event runs for the entire day)
Play head 2 head games. Take charge of your NBA Lineup and compete online to earn fame, rep points and become an NBA Legend. Or enjoy your standard beating the crap of the AI in season games (to earn certain rewards). Or, take your league mates and play in League Vs League matches.
Play the Auction house game. To get into the auction house, you need to reach level 11 and have a 75 franchise in game.
How do I level up?
Well, you play live events that give you XP points so you can level up.
Gameplay
Well, it really depends on what are you doing in the game. If you’re going for building a solid coin stack, so you can buy those needed players from the auction house, I’d suggest you go and play the Crossroads program and keep building your lineups. Play seasons. Don’t do League vs League tournaments and Head 2 head matches right now (because the gameplay on the online games is really bad and older Android or iOS phone are lagging).
Regarding Head 2 Head, for the next week or to, please keep away. AI teams are overpowered and make fadeway jumpshots like it’s a piece of cake, all their shots go in (contested or not), bronze centers shoot 3 pointers like real 3 point masters, your 7 foot center can’t rebound even if his life would depend on it, allowing every loose ball to be an offensive rebound and almost all Perfect (20–22%) 3 point shots don’t go in (it doesn’t matter if you have an open shot).
So until the next game update, take a pass on league tournaments and H2H games as much as possible.
What else?
Legendary and Swag weekly live events are a total cash grab (unless you are certain that you want to spend money on an unpolished experience, I won’t recommend doing these sets for the higher overalls until EA adds more options to make certain tokens needed for the set attainable by playing the game, not by splashing cash). And, yes, I get the fact that Electronic Arts is a business (i know how the game industry work) but if you place a product on an appstore and you expect people to pump money into that product, please make it so that product is almost flawless.
Yes, micro transactions are a thing in 2017, and loads of developers are releasing games that are more or less finished, with the hope of milking cash from consumers for extra content (season passes, loot crates, DLC packs, skins etc.) But as I said, there is nothing enticing about spending money on a flawed game.
Thus, if you want a beta experience of NBA Live Mobile (or soft launch), play the game right now. If you want to enjoy a mobile game that is well built and enjoyable, just wait a few weeks for an update.
The game is available for Android and iOS.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”