NHL 25 Early Access and EA Play Trial Available Today - Share Your Impressions

[Therebelyell626]

Quote: Originally Posted by bcruise

I think Slybelle means the setting on the Rules page. There's like 3 layers of penalty sliders in this game - the one on Rules, the CPU and CPU Teammate ones in the Penalties section of the gameplay sliders, and the individual penalty settings for Human and CPU right below those. YMMV on how well all of those work.

Okay got you. Out of curiosity do these penalties work in conjunction with each other, or are they working against each other? For instance say I set penalties to 4 like he suggested, then set CPU penalties to 50. Is there any negative draw backs to changing both, or is it more of a one of the other type of thing?

[SlyBelle]

I set both, increase to 4 in rules and then I max out the cpu and cpu teammates sliders. I might scale back the cpu one a bit as have at times seen too many penalties but will play more before doing that.

[Fiddy]

I know we all have our taste in "feel" for this game etc. But personally I find it wild people think that the game out of the box is still fast?

They dropped from 50/50 acc/speed to 42/36, just by that alone slows the game down tremendously. Going from game speed 4 to 3 would be about all I would do with possibly bumping up the speed to match the acceleration.

[Cycloniac]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cycloniac

Do strategies stick this year? Like if you edit outside of franchise mode, do they remain edited once you start? Haven't been able to check this yet.

To follow up on this, I checked and no, any strategy changes you make outside of franchise don't stick when you start the mode.

I'm also still seeing PP strategy changed from 1-3-1 to umbrella when you start franchise.

[The EVHL]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fiddy

I know we all have our taste in "feel" for this game etc. But personally I find it wild people think that the game out of the box is still fast? They dropped from 50/50 acc/speed to 42/36, just by that alone slows the game down tremendously. Going from game speed 4 to 3 would be about all I would do with possibly bumping up the speed to match the acceleration.

Feels incredibly fast to me. It’s mainly because the animations still feel like they have no weight to them. The skating is just straight up floating around, the shooting is weightless, passing weightless, goalies are robotic as ever despite the insane shooting speeds and weightless releases that would blow past a prime Carey Price with ease.

Robotic, stiff, clunky, lifeless, fast. Idk, just not buying it. I have my sliders at 0 for all skating options and I still find the game weightless compared to my custom 20 build. I know OOTB can’t match my edits in 20, but the base feel of potential is not even close to there for me.

Goalies and game/animation speeds are once again just a non-starter for me. Can’t imitate real hockey if you can’t score organic 1st shot goals.

[Cycloniac]

Here are my early impressions after watching a period of AI vs AI play on default settings:
-The speed of the game is better than last year, but the flow is still too north-south. Needs more offensive zone play and cycling, as well as neutral zone play.

-Hit detection and hitting is kinda crazy right now. Without any slider adjustments, Florida had 32 hits and Edmonton had 21 in ONE period of play.

-Special teams AI needs work. The AI struggled to get setup and cycle to create chances.

-Presentation needs a refresh. I really like the new goal replays when we see them. I think the old, ice level ones need to go, you know the ones where the camera kind of spins around the net. I heard a new organ song that was a cover of a track included in this year's soundtrack, which was cool. But I also heard a song I've probably heard the last five games or so. I like the new EA NHL theme that plays before the game, just need more meat on the bones of the pregame, feels very shallow.

Overall, I feel like this is NHL 24.5 gameplay wise. I ended up tweaking the sliders eventually in 24 to get a good game of hockey, so I do believe this year's game can play well. Out of the box though, not really feeling it. It needs some TLC.

[SlyBelle]

Until I saw recently mentioned in posts, never knew that sliders weren't saving and being used as intended within the game. Now, I see that all the time as I was wondering why my gameplay felt different, looked at settings inside game and although said using my preset, values didn't match. I am using the work around now to set the sliders prior to starting a game, but what a pain to remember. On top of that I noticed that even in the settings menu, when I exit the entire game and come back in and reload my preset, not all the sliders are correct even though I saved them. The Penalty slider under rules never saves what I put. I like it at 4 and save it, but when I come back, it reverts to a 3.

Hoping these stuff does get corrected, but if your wondering why your gameplay might not be what you hoped based on your sliders, very possible simply the game not setting them correctly.

Appreciate others who brought this up as was driving me a little crazy

[Cycloniac]

Quote: Originally Posted by SlyBelle

Until I saw recently mentioned in posts, never knew that sliders weren't saving and being used as intended within the game. Now, I see that all the time as I was wondering why my gameplay felt different, looked at settings inside game and although said using my preset, values didn't match. I am using the work around now to set the sliders prior to starting a game, but what a pain to remember. On top of that I noticed that even in the settings menu, when I exit the entire game and come back in and reload my preset, not all the sliders are correct even though I saved them. The Penalty slider under rules never saves what I put. I like it at 4 and save it, but when I come back, it reverts to a 3. Hoping these stuff does get corrected, but if your wondering why your gameplay might not be what you hoped based on your sliders, very possible simply the game not setting them correctly. Appreciate others who brought this up as was driving me a little crazy

The quickest way that works for me is just changng the preset before the game from my saved sliders to NHL 25 default and back. That usually does the trick.