This is Sparta! Boost Method (Tested for PS4)

[Andrea9281]

I am hard at work on the NBA 2k22 trophy guide for PS4 but thought I would share a boost method that I just used to help me become the first person on the site to earn this trophy for PS4! Note that I did the entire boost on PS4, I am not sure how different this would be for PS5. I am also unsure about if the trophies will auto-pop when you move to a different generation. It looks like your season win/loss progress does save, so there is a chance it will. I will test this at some point to confirm.

 

What you will need:

 

2 consoles (or 1 console and a helpful friend)

A couple alt accounts, just in case

Ability to be online late at night/early in the morning

 

This trophy requires you to give up 75 points or fewer across a total of 10 games. This gives you some margin for error while boosting this trophy - you can connect with the wrong player 3 times, lose the game (adding 21 points to your total,) and still pop the trophy!

 

The Method:

1.) Both accounts use gold coach + 3 low overall (71 or 72) gold players. For my main, I used Eduardo Najera, Ben McLemore, and Ryan Hollins. The alt I used for most of the games had Nate Robinson, Kurt Rambis, and Darko Milicic.

 

2.) Wake up or stay up until a very low activity time in your local time zone. I woke up at around 4:45am and finished at 6:15. It's even better if you can do it on a weekday as opposed to the weekend or a holiday. This is vital so that you avoid most other human players who will try to spoil your run.

 

3.) Get your accounts ready to search. Always have your alt account search first! You should have the alt search, then about 1 second later start searching with your main. When I started doing this method, my main NEVER matched with a random since my alt would always pick up the first random. If you see your alt find a match, quickly press circle with your main in order to cancel its matchmaking.

 

4.) When your accounts have matched up, play out the entire match. This should be easy and quick since you are controlling both players. You don't want to just quit out with the alt, because quitting can cause the game to register as a loss for your main, adding 21 points against your total. Every couple of games, I did allow the alt team to score a single basket. This probably had no effect, but the rationale was that it might help with matchmaking and wouldn't harm my run in any meaningful way - it added so few points that I still had 3 losses as my margin for error.

 

5.) When the game is over, re-queue and repeat. You need to successfully connect 7 times in the 10 games, but you can connect extra times if you would like to earn some of the better rewards on the board. I matched the alt for an 8th game and won the diamond Gus Gerard!

 

Additional Notes:

About halfway through the run, I started having trouble connecting to the alt account. The alt would constantly pick up a random. When this happened, I swapped to a different alt account and that seemed to mostly solve the issue. Therefore, it is worth starting a MyTeam account with 1 or 2 additional alts just in case you need to use them during this boost.

 

If you find a friend who can actually boost at such a weird time of the day, you can try the method if you do not have 2 consoles. However if your time zones are dramatically different it may not work. It also may not work if you are too far apart within the same timezone.

 

Having your alt as a PSN friend does not seem to impact the ability to matchmake. Both alts I used were friends of my main.

 

I made sure to win the final game of the 10 even though I didn't need to. Theoretically you could get away with losing the last game as long as you still had more than 46 points left to concede, but I wouldn't risk it. If you are comfortable with taking the risk, absolutely make sure to play the game out without quitting or dashboarding. The trophy popped for me right as the game ended. If you quit before that happens, it could cause it to glitch out.

 

When my alt did run into randoms, I let it stay in the game for a minute to assess who I was playing. About 75% of the time, it was a bot running 3 centres and using a macro to move up and down the court. Bots are easy to distinguish because they run lineups like this, always do the same thing on offense, and play no defense with their user-controlled players. They also typically have the auto-generated PSN usernames consisting of two random words separated by a hyphen, with a number at the end of the name. If your main does run into one of these accounts it could be worth playing out the match. You can probably win conceding fewer than 10 points, which will keep your margin for error intact at 3 games.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Andrea9281

[wassup-Pao]

This is a great strategy.

I think the key is doing this in the early hours of the day when not many are on.

 

I'm from Australia so not sure what the timing is for me, (i.e. is matchmaking region-based?)

[MrSeggyHollywood]

9 hours ago, wassup-Pao said:

This is a great strategy.

I think the key is doing this in the early hours of the day when not many are on.

 

I'm from Australia so not sure what the timing is for me, (i.e. is matchmaking region-based?)

This wont work now or at least it will take some time.

 

2K added a rule in which if u quit too many online games they will suspend you from online play.

[JacksBestMate]

On 26/09/2021 at 5:58 AM, SegIsHollywood said:

This wont work now or at least it will take some time.

 

2K added a rule in which if u quit too many online games they will suspend you from online play.

i think i saw one mikes twitter that theyve temperarily suspended this because of false bans, also aslong as you close your app you should be fine

 

[Andrea9281]

On 9/25/2021 at 3:58 PM, SegIsHollywood said:

This wont work now or at least it will take some time.

 

2K added a rule in which if u quit too many online games they will suspend you from online play.

 

My guide already works around this; I suggest playing out the games and just scoring 21 points while letting your alt score 0. However, an alternative, and preferred strategy for boosting the Play Now Online and Draft trophies, is to just have the alt use all of their pauses once the game starts. When they use all their pauses, the main should take the option to end the game and take the free win. This is much faster than playing out the 25-30 minutes required for these 5 v 5 games, and does not seem to lead to a ban. I tested it this weekend with triple threat online, limited, and draft game modes and my alt did not experience any temporary suspensions as a result.

 

On 9/25/2021 at 6:10 AM, wassup-Pao said:

This is a great strategy.

I think the key is doing this in the early hours of the day when not many are on.

 

I'm from Australia so not sure what the timing is for me, (i.e. is matchmaking region-based?)

Matchmaking is region-based, and additionally seems to favour proximity within a region (meaning alts tend to be very successful at matching with mains connecting from the same location). You can safely plan your ideal boosting time around your local time-zones, without needing to convert to US or EU timezones.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Andrea9281

[Sm1le4TheCam-]

I tried the pausing method on triple threat online and it would still give me 21 points  so you gotta actually finish the games 

[x_MrYAYA_x]

Great strategy I'm from Texas is this trophy region based? Also, what time of day is best and what level players gives the best chance for success?