Pro: 2K has been dropping TONS of content recently.
Con: The content has been kind of uninspired, in my opinion.
Is it just a quality vs. quantity situation? Like spitting out too much content makes each drop suffer in quality? Or maybe since 2K21 is less than two months away, the MyTeam team is just so busy that it’s easier to recycle cards or plug random players into Flash or Buzzer Beater sets rather than come up with a solid theme set?
The NEXT promo from a few weeks ago was fun and unexpected (plus some of the cards are still elite even by current standards), but that’s been a tough act to follow it seems.
All-Time Spotlight Sims
Full disclosure, as a Rockets fan I’m pre-disposed to dislike Steph Curry.
But if I force myself to be a somewhat objective basketball historian, I can’t endorse a G.O.A.T. Curry card quite yet. He probably will end up as the greatest shooter of all-time, but a GOAT candidate right now? So I was pretty surprised/disappointed to see him as the (presumably) very last offline reward for 2K20 MyTeam when there are so many superior options.
Bill Russell. Jerry West. Tim Duncan. Oscar Robertson. Shaq. The list goes on…
Obviously, 2K can’t put a G.O.A.T. LeBron or Giannis out as a free reward card because of the ludicrous amounts of money they will ultimately make off those cards in packs. I totally get that. But how can you go from G.O.A.T. Kobe to Larry Bird to Curry? You can’t, it just doesn’t compute. And I’m not saying that people would be psyched to grind for Jerry West either, they probably wouldn’t (sorry Jerry), but if you absolutely needed a short point guard as the final reward, I’d have voted for the only player to ever have won Finals MVP on the losing team instead.
He’s The Logo, so that would at least make more sense.
Also, I love Patrick Beverley more than just about anyone (and will definitely be getting his galaxy opal), but surely there are better options than him and the other cards that 2K sprinkled along the path to unlock Curry. A couple of weeks ago I brainstormed about potential All-Time Spotlight Sim rewards, and mentioned some other players that could be fun. I won’t rehash the whole thing here, but the point is, the current choices we got are a bit boring for an offline “last hurrah,” and I don’t see myself completing most of those challenges — not worth the grind.
(Though I’m still a huge fan of these challenges overall, and hope they continue in 2K21.)
The only positive I can take away from this though, is that if Curry can get a G.O.A.T. card then others could as well. Hopefully, by the end of the year I’ll be able to get my hands on a G.O.A.T. P.J. Tucker or Kenny Smith in the token market. Because it’s not like I ever had a chance of getting the galaxy opal Kenny Smith from that Players Club locker code, am I right?
Or any of those opals, actually. Anyone else’s collection look like this? That brings me to…
Locker Codes
In addition to the thus far disappointing Players Club, here is the most recent locker code 2K dropped:
Obviously, I was going for the tokens with this one. I did not get them, and yes, codes with free packs are indeed better than nothing, but only on the surface.
I don’t know about you guys, but in ALL of the packs I’ve gotten from codes, and there were a lot this year, I’ve never pulled a player of consequence. They seemingly have the same pack odds as the Players Club packs, which is to say, terrible. Arguably, they’re not even worth the time to input the codes at this point in the year, except to replenish some contracts I guess.
Mostly the locker codes just get my hopes up, only to let me down.
These images for codes have been circulating on Twitter recently as a reminder of some of the free (and guaranteed) cards we got in locker codes this time least year (or earlier, in the case of the Raptors cards that came after the NBA Finals ended). And here we are getting a diamond Larry Hughes in a July 2020 locker code when he’s already selling for essentially discard value.
Again, I don’t want to be one of those people complaining about free stuff, but it’s more about the quality of the freebies for this particular time of year. There are so many other evolution cards that could have been included in that code besides Larry Hughes. I just don’t understand the logic there, except to irritate people and get rude comments on Twitter.
So speaking of wasting time (and money), let’s move now to…
Super Packs
The most recent Super Pack drop was more evolution packs. Now I will say that I still think evolution cards are a great idea, they just needed to initially have their requirements tweaked to be worthwhile. And to 2K’s credit, they did ease up with some of those, which is great.
But some evolution cards are ridiculous for different reasons. For example, what were they thinking with this new one for Anthony Edwards?
I guess they just wanted an excuse to put players like him and Out of Position Kevin Durant into these packs to get people to spend money? But would it have hurt anything to actually make the evolutions worthwhile?
No, it wouldn’t have.
Come on 2K, why not give Edwards at least a couple of badge upgrades? Maybe gold to HOF Lob City Passer or Tear Dropper? And KD (like the LeBron Out of Position card earlier in the year or Glitched T-Mac) could use more than just silly upgrades to their post games, especially to justify the price they’re all currently going for in the auction house. Because an interesting thing about Super Packs this year is that for the high-tier cards, the prices have barely been affected. This means either people aren’t opening enough of these packs, or that the odds of getting a good opal are slim to none.
I remember the first time they dropped these packs, and we were all hit with the realization that older cards could be given evolutions after the fact. At the time, it seemed like a game changer, and with some cards (like Grant Hill, Brandon Roy and other reward cards) it’s pretty cool. Plus, there was that amethyst Eric Paschall who could jump to a pink diamond, which was unexpected and delightful. But this batch of evos is mostly disappointing.
Kobe is a notable exception.
The free Kobe pink diamond to galaxy opal upgrade is a nice idea (and a huge upgrade to the card), but it’s also a slap in the face to those of us that have earned the other G.O.A.T. galaxy opal Kobe. It seems like the fair thing to do would be to also give that card an evo to make him a true G.O.A.T. with 99 ratings across the board. There’s still time. Please, 2K? And upgrade some other old reward and token market cards while you’re at it too. Pretty please?
So as I’ve mentioned numerous times before, these (and most) VC-only Super Packs just aren’t worth it. How do I know?
I bought some.
I’ll start with the Best of MyTeam Super Packs from a couple of weeks ago. I opened a 10-pack box (the only box option), and on one hand you could say that my box was juiced.
I got two galaxy opals and four pink diamonds.
On the other hand, you could say my box was rigged. Both galaxy opals were Allen Iverson, two of the pink diamonds were Al Harrington and the last two pink diamonds were New Year’s Resolution Gilbert Arenas.
I hate to complain about galaxy opals and pink diamonds, but, yuck.
And you’re telling me that with all of the cards that were available, I not only pulled arguably the least valuable cards, but I got duplicates of those cards? In one box? What are the odds of that I wonder? It definitely supports the theory that 2K limits the chances of actually pulling the good cards, and loads packs/boxes up with the stuff that no one really cares about or that can be purchased for relatively small amounts of MT on the auction house.
Then for the Evo Super Packs, I opened a 20-pack box and a 10-pack box. So 30 packs total. Out of that I got zero galaxy opals and a few worthless pink diamonds that aren’t even worth mentioning here.
So again, just not worth it.
Premium Packs
I voiced my displeasure with Prime packs last week, but for some reason (I’m a glutton for punishment) I decided to open Flash Pack 8 packs last Friday.
At least for these I didn’t buy VC and just used MT. As with the Prime packs the previous week, I’ve been saving MT for what I thought was going to be amazing end-game content (like the NEXT promo I mentioned earlier), but I haven’t been excited by anything recently. So I just started blowing more MT on packs to try and see that sweet galaxy opal glow again.
300,000 MT to be exact. And my first pack was promising as I got one!
But it was Shawn Marion.
Still, that made me think the packs were possibly juiced!
They weren’t.
Shawn was my best pull out of all of that MT I spent. I couldn’t even get the pink diamond James Wiseman from packs, just the Darrell Griffith and Bill Laimbeer five-ish (I stopped counting) times each.
I did end up buying the rest of the cards though, plus the Glitched Hakeem to try him out.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m a Rockets fan, but even I don’t need another galaxy opal Hakeem who can’t even play his best position. And after trying him, I wasn’t all that impressed. I would rather they made a new galaxy opal Dream with upgraded badges who could play C/SF if they needed to “glitch” him in order to sell packs.
Or, again, just please add an evo to the Hakeem I already have. That would be awesome.
Token Market Sadness
To echo everyone on social media, where’s the token packs and players!?
A potential update is why I bought all of those Flash Pack 8 cards (200 tokens), plus I also completed some other sets that have tokens as the reward while the Super Packs were out and prices were down.
Now I haven’t locked in any of these sets yet, and won’t until they drop that token market update AND (more importantly) it has players I really want. If not, I’ll just sell these cards all back and go on an end-game auction house shopping spree.
But I’m really hopeful (probably not smart on my part) that there will be something extremely juicy coming soon. A token update is long overdue (last year we got a final, huge token update on June 28), so hopefully that means there will be G.O.A.T. cards galore.
I just hope they don’t solely recycle current G.O.A.T. cards like Magic and Michael like they did last year.
My fingers are crossed that 2K can come up with something unique and valuable. I mean I wouldn’t mind getting an MJ for (presumably) 1,500 tokens or whatever the price ends up being, but when all is said and done I probably will only be able to afford one of those kind of cards, so I’d like it to be something outside the box.
Like maybe a G.O.A.T. version of our MyCareer player somehow?
Either way, 2KÂ just surprise us. Give us something we didn’t even know we wanted, like the NEXT promo or evo updates to older cards. Be bold and daring and reward those of us who have been playing MyTeam all year instead of just trying to suck the new players dry who downloaded 2K last week for free via PS Plus.
If you’re looking for other ideas, I’d still like to see galaxy opals for younger players ready to take the next step in the league. Jaylen Brown, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Mo freakin’ Bamba come to mind as potentially fun token market cards.
Just some food for thought. I mean, it is July, right?
