NHL 14 News: Dynamic Ratings, NHL Moments Live and More - Wiggy's Blog

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NHL 14 News: Dynamic Ratings, NHL Moments Live and More Stuck

Posted on October 25, 2013 at 03:00 PM.

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It's been an interesting NHL season so far, with the usual beasts like Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago looking quite strong, but then there's the emergence of Colorado, Toronto and San Jose as forces to be reckoned with. San Jose is actually the least surprising, since their youth, size and skill are now finally paying dividends, and their former stars (read: Joe Thornton) can quietly sink back into a secondary role that, ultimately, makes them better players, too.

I figured teams like Toronto would benefit from the division realignment, but I still think they'll eventually come down to earth once players like Mason Raymond tend to slow down (which he's already started to do). I feel kind of bad for players like Cody Hodgson, who is relatively skilled but stuck on a horrible team. The same goes for Edmonton. How much pain will that franchise have to endure?

Also, if you didn't see, check out Mike Smith scoring a goal on Detroit with 0.1 seconds left. Everyone always loves a goalie goal.

Dynamic Ratings

What is everybody thinking of the dynamic ratings that have been instituted in NHL 14? Personally, I think they spice things up a bit, allowing the dev team to react to real-world changes and hot streaks. I hope the updates are issued frequently, but it's hard to know with EA.

People can vote for the next players to receive a bump on Facebook, which is probably a good way to handle it. I doubt there will be any allegations of "vote tampering" with something as innocuous as this, since EA is really just trying to bring some of the current season into "Play Now" and online versus play.

NHL Moments Live

There's a new "NHL Moments Live" this week, with Jean-Sebastien Giguere trying to maintain a shutout in his showdown with Crosby and the Penguins from last Monday's game.

Check out the details here.

Plays of the Week

EA has released their plays of the week video for this week. There's some good stuff in there, including an unintentional flip to a teammate who gloves the puck down and tucks it in. Pretty slick.

How Many CPU Penalties Do You Want?

Over on the EA Forums, their is a thread about the lack of CPU penalties in NHL 14. It's actually been a problem for a few years now, as the CPU will take some charging and interference calls (as well as fights), but they just don't take enough trips or incidental calls.

Some users have some ideas in terms of adjusting sliders for various modes and scenarios, but no one seems to have consensus on what the solution really is.

How about you, OS? Are there too few penalties? Should EA change the AI behaviour so that it acts irrationally from time to time? What needs to be adjusted?

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Comments

# 1 Cletus @ Oct 25

To fix penalties they need to do two things: Make the game call penalties against the cpu and make the cpu use it's sticks more defensively. My team gets interfered with quite a bit and it never gets called.

# 2 13whitebread @ Oct 26

I want as much as other teams at the end of my offline season. But I am always at the bottom of power plays for but always at the top for penalties. It has never been fixed for as long as I can remember I just want balence.