How Shooting has Changed in 2K
NBA 2K24 Shooting Mechanics
Shooting in NBA 2K24 is all about finding the right jumpshot for your build and making sure your build has a high enough 3 ball to unlock the pure green window.
You can find details about how to shoot in NBA 2K24 all over this site but this page is going to focus on how shooting mechanics worked in past years compared to now.
NBA 2K18 Shooting with RNG and the Introduction of the Green Window
NBA 2K18 was an incredibly frustrating 2k for shooting as it featured RNG for perfectly timed shots. This meant that around 40% of the time a perfectly timed full white release would result in a Full White Bar without the green animation and the shot was then very unlikely to go in. Full white bars were not an indication necessarily that the shot was going to miss as it still went in around half the time.
During this time you could not see other players shot feedback on either team and you could not see anyone else's greens. During this time the green animation occured as soon as the shot was released.
You would have to trust your teammate to call out green in the party chat to know whether to fight for rebounding position or not which made rebounding in 2k18 much more challenging.
This was the first year we began using the term 'Green Window' and the first year we were able to bring more advanced information like this to our supporters compared to the manual testing we had done in the past that included human error.
If you listen real close to this video you may be able to understand why we added Spillboy to the team. Maybe.
NBA 2K19 Introduces the Pure Green Window
In 2k19 the 2k Dev team introduced what we termed as the Pure Green Window for the first time since our testing began. This Pure Green Window represents a 100% make rate if you time your shot within the window.
This elimination of RNG was a huge step forward for shooting and opened the door for players to shoot ridiculously high 3 point percentages with low ratings.
In order to qualify for this pure green window you needed to target an 86 3 point rating, otherwise you still had to deal with the RNG from past games.
During this time Base 9 was the fastest in the game with a 409 mS earliest green release, lightning quick.
NBA 2K20 Shooting is Slower and Requires Higher Ratings
In 2k20 2k attempted to combat the number of players that could shoot with low 3 point ratings by making your 3 point rating more relevant than ever. They did this in 2 ways.
First, they made low rated 3 point shooters shoot incredibly slow. They slowed the shooting down in general for this game with the fastest shots going from the early 400mS range to the early 500mS range and then made lower rated shooters shoot around 50mS slower on top of the original slow down.
These shot speed changes made getting shots up in tight windows much more difficult. However, the lower rating added additional difficulty as the Pure Green window for each shot grew as the ratings went up.
Base 38 became meta this year as it was the clear cut fastest jumpshot in the game. Additionally, quick draw was a required badge this year due to the shot speed changes.
NBA 2K21 Shooting Gets Harder and Quick Draw Gets Eliminated
2K21 saw 2k continue their process of slowing down shots overall. In 2k20 they introduced the Quick Draw badge which slowly transitioned players to getting used to slower shots and then with 2K21 they simply removed the badge. With this move 2k had successfully slowed shooting down by about 20% across the board without too much push back.
Jumper 38 followed previous years trends of the best jumpshot in the game going from Meta to unusable. The average jumper speed at this time was around 600mS.
QQuick Draw was replaced with a very quick, quick, normal, slow and very slow release speed setting with Quick providing a clear advantage because the make percentage was almost 25% higher.
NBA 2K22 Split Gens and Zens
The pure green window returns in NBA 2K22 and leads to more and more players using devices to cheat online. Shooting in 2k22 was incredibly easy due to the Sniper badge being accessible to most players. Badges in 2k22 increased the edges of the green window to the point that there was a 40-50mS green window that would green more than 70% of the time.
The boost for quick timing over very quick timing was eliminated in this game and Very Quick became the setting to use because the ball got out of your hand quicker.
This was one of the easiest 2ks for shooting with many players shooting higher than 80% for full seasons.
NBA 2K23 Speed Ups and Slow Downs
2K23 introduced one of the more frustrating shooting mechanics in an attempt to battle the Zens. Shot timing would now change if your shot was contested, or if stamina was low, or sometimes just because the game didn't like you.
This variable shot timing prevents cheaters from being able to script their inputs but makes shooting for regular players harder to predict.
Sniper was removed from the game and now everyone was forced to learn to shoot.
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