I'd love an NHL game with the little things: Announcements for milestone goals. Players grabbing pucks for milestone goals. Players occasionally losing gloves on the ice.
I hate people who propose these kinds of changes because apparently the developers listen. Crap like this is absolutely meaningless to the actual game experience. The devs need to make a hockey game that works in a sensible, semi-realistic way before worrying about window dressing like this. The reason we get crap every year, the reason this thread is full of bickering and complaining, is because EA thinks they have to add stupid meaningless crap in order to get people to keep buying the game. Just forget about the bells and whistles and make the game you have better.
Anyway very little about those new features sounds exciting, but at least Doc should provide ample variety...
Honestly if all they did was spend a year tightening the general gameplay and usability (this includes menus), and added zero new features, that would probably produce the greatest NHL game ever made.
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I hate people who propose these kinds of changes because apparently the developers listen. Crap like this is absolutely meaningless to the actual game experience. The devs need to make a hockey game that works in a sensible, semi-realistic way before worrying about window dressing like this. The reason we get crap every year, the reason this thread is full of bickering and complaining, is because EA thinks they have to add stupid meaningless crap in order to get people to keep buying the game. Just forget about the bells and whistles and make the game you have better.
For many, those bells and whistles can make a good game turn into a great game. Don't underestimate the importance of the small things, for they can make a huge difference in how long the playability of the game can be.
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It'll be interesting to see their idea of authentic arenas. I always felt like the lighting was an important part of that atmosphere, sounds like they've captured that.
NBC presentation plus Doc Emrick is just glorious.
hmm, the features listed as far as gameplay improvements are all things we've heard before... better player physics and hitting, better puck physics, better AI. Am excited as i am every year. That clip is sort of meaningless to me though. Until we see gameplay footage, these kind of images/video are like those intro vids to the game, where they actually bear no meaning to the game itself.
The feature list looks great though. I need to understand how the nextgen vs current gen games will differ, as when the NHL game on the newGen blowing old gen out the water will be the time i'm likely willing to invest in the upgrade.
For many, those bells and whistles can make a good game turn into a great game. Don't underestimate the importance of the small things, for they can make a huge difference in how long the playability of the game can be.
It's not a good game until it works. Until it doesn't have significant gameplay flaws. Until I can play a game without a 5 minute menu loading period (a serious problem when it kicks you back to main after every EASHL game).
Certain things go to basic functionality. Fix those, then worry about bells and whistles. Lay the foundation before making it pretty.
You just have to know that they will mess up the player physics at launch such that a hit on one guy is going to make a guy 12 feet away fall down in a "secondary" collision. The puck physics will have the puck jumping over sticks constantly etc etc.
I just really hope they overhaul the Be A GM mode, but I seriously doubt it.
I hate people who propose these kinds of changes because apparently the developers listen. Crap like this is absolutely meaningless to the actual game experience. The devs need to make a hockey game that works in a sensible, semi-realistic way before worrying about window dressing like this. The reason we get crap every year, the reason this thread is full of bickering and complaining, is because EA thinks they have to add stupid meaningless crap in order to get people to keep buying the game. Just forget about the bells and whistles and make the game you have better.
Anyway very little about those new features sounds exciting, but at least Doc should provide ample variety...
Honestly if all they did was spend a year tightening the general gameplay and usability (this includes menus), and added zero new features, that would probably produce the greatest NHL game ever made.
This is the issue though, what matters to you doesn't matter to everybody else. There's something about this game that creates rabid annoyance across the board for very different reasons. Strombad feels that the menus are absolutely no problem, while personally I find the menu structure to be one of the most obnoxious things in the entire series. You want an intense overhaul of the gameplay, while I quite enjoy the gameplay.
I love the little things. I recall in previous years when a player scored a milestone goal there'd be an animation of him standing at the bench looking up at the jumbotron. You find that absolutely meaningless, while I really miss stuff like that. It's those details that let me get a little lost in the game. I'd go through my player stats and look at who was approaching what milestone and it really added to the experience for me.
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I love the little things. I recall in previous years when a player scored a milestone goal there'd be an animation of him standing at the bench looking up at the jumbotron. You find that absolutely meaningless, while I really miss stuff like that. It's those details that let me get a little lost in the game. I'd go through my player stats and look at who was approaching what milestone and it really added to the experience for me.
I loved this stuff - NHL 2003 did a lot of this, when they hit player career milestones, broke records; it was awesome.
NHL 2003 also had the ability to create a player after a season had started, which was an incredible feature - I used to love to be able to tweak my line up. There's really no reason for EA to have removed the feature for an offline franchise.
Hopefully they reduce the time waiting between EASHL games, remove the ability to pause, make it possible to edit player loadouts on the fly and fix the lag. Adding more features seems nice, hopefully they can update their 5 year old interface as well as hockey games are pretty much the only games that interest me. I'd switch to any online kind of game if they made it possible to just play and not have to go through the frustrations. They should put a new guy in charge of the online games that has ambition, drive and passion that will make things intuitive. Listening to Doc call a game that doesn't work in a nice arena < game that works while muted.
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You just have to know that they will mess up the player physics at launch such that a hit on one guy is going to make a guy 12 feet away fall down in a "secondary" collision. The puck physics will have the puck jumping over sticks constantly etc etc.
I just really hope they overhaul the Be A GM mode, but I seriously doubt it.
We'll see if they can make this work alongside the rules of the game this time. I can see it being easy to create a physics system for all of the players, sticks, the net, and the puck to interact with each other. They also have to have a system that can accurately determine what interactions are penalties. In 14 you drop to block a shot and then 2 seconds later the guy skates over you and draws a tripping penalty. If they now go and add 8 man chaos in front of the net I see a lot of weird results. Anyways, once the game comes out...
I.
Will
Buy.
It.
...and then I'll review what I don't like about it, because as a customer I have the right to do so.
Well, deal with it. I wasn't cheering for Canada either way. Nothing worse than arrogant Canadian fans. They'd be lucky to finish 4th. Quote me on that. They have a bad team and that is why I won't be cheering for them.
On paper, did you watch the teaser? If the in-game graphics look like that, it will be as significant a jump as the jump between the PC and Xbox 360 versions of NHL 07. I can't freakin' wait.
__________________
-James
GO FLAMES GO.
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I'll get it just for the drastic visual upgrade. I passed on NHL 14 because it looked to same-y and I wanted to not be burnt out when the next gen of hockey games started.
EDIT: It was also laughably bad that this year's version didn't have the hybrid icing in it. The very first thing that needs to be done before any finicky features or special physics engine is getting the rules of the damn game right.
