Is EA NHL Trying to Become the FIFA of Hockey?

[DrunkKaner]

Quote: Originally Posted by Money99

I'm just getting into soccer and soccer games so I doubt I'm a great authority on the subject. However, I DL'd the FIFA and PES 2015 demo's and thus far I much prefer PES to FIFA. And from what I've read, PES does an excellent job of representing the different player styles, types as well as team personalities. The only thing FIFA has over it are exclusive licenses. So PES will have some generic teams, buildings, kits, etc. But PES has the Champion's League and I've read the Managers Mode is out of this world. I'll be picking up PES for my sports fix this Fall.

I played around a little bit with PES last year and I agree with what you said about the styles. At least for the bigger known teams , they all play fairly close to how they do in real life. It's pretty impressive actually. The detail with the different tactics is pretty nice too. I wish NHL could do that. But instead, every single team and player plays the same.

[cmutat17]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheCloser

Honestly, I wish that we had a dislike button on this forum for occasions like this when an opinion couldn't be more wrong. Fifa has the best gameplay on the market? You clearly don't know what you're talking about. As someone who has played every single soccer games since 98, this statement is offensive to my eyes. A perfect case of the grass being greener on the other side. Fifa has poor gameplay that is significantly worse than all other sports games on the market. It doesn't even adequately represent the sport it's trying to emulate. You can make an argument for the game having the best tech of any of the major sports games but gameplay it does not have. No sane soccer fan will testify that fifa 15 is a good game. It's been getting progressively worse and 15 is the worst yet. Of course this is what happens when you don't improve the ai or fix legacy issues and instead spend all your time developing new tech that does not make the gameplay any better.

I'm sorry I offended you.....


It was just an opinion, you don't have to freak out about it. I'm not a hard core gamer and I don't pay too much attention to a lot of the gameplay, but I just prefer the FIFA gameplay. What's wrong with that?

[Gotmilkman24]

Well EA Fifa and EA Nhl are in the same building? They share devs from my understanding. So I would imagine that the games would have some features that are the same. You also get into what those features are and well.. Those features are a must have in the game..

[therizing02]

I downloaded NHL 15 when it was free through EA Access. As someone who has played both games regularly I can tell you that there are a ton of similarities.

Most have been said in this thread, but the most common thing that I see between the games is for the most part the engine dictates the game and not the ratings or strategy. It's seems as if both dev teams sat around a conference table and decided how most hockey and soccer games play out and regardless of the way the game is going the engine will dictate the play on the pitch or the ice.

FIFA is a good game and a decent representation of the sport, but because most in the US are casual soccer fans they fail to see or understand the glaring shortcomings of the game. The physics, graphics, and presentation are great, the gameplay is good with significant slider adjustments, but like NHL, there is minimal separation between individual players and teams, and the engine spits out times when chances are better for you or the CPU to score.

Both games try way too hard to grab the highlight reel goal at the end of the game. There is an obscene amount of late goals in FIFA and last minute of the period goals in NHL. It's beyond stupid. It's scripted gameplay and it needs to be removed. Yes it can be stopped but I want to play against an opponent and not a devs interpretation of how a game "usually goes".

Another thing that both games have are the moments throughout when the CPU goes into berserker mode. In FIFA even the lowest rated team will possess the ball until they get a shot off. It doesn't matter what defense you use. If you tackle the ball away it goes straight to the CPU. Same as NHL when they all skate faster (regardless of speed), get to every puck before you do, and eventually get a good look. I've played way too many games of both not to notice. This is stuff that a developer will NEVER admit exists in their game.

The funny thing is that when the CPU scores, the "advantage" goes to the USER. Rarely does anyone talk about that in these forums. There are a few games they play out really well and "feel" right in both NHL and FIFA, but most of the time, I feel like I'm playing against an engine and not the CPU opponent.

[TheCloser]

Quote: Originally Posted by therizing02

I downloaded NHL 15 when it was free through EA Access. As someone who has played both games regularly I can tell you that there are a ton of similarities. Most have been said in this thread, but the most common thing that I see between the games is for the most part the engine dictates the game and not the ratings or strategy. It's seems as if both dev teams sat around a conference table and decided how most hockey and soccer games play out and regardless of the way the game is going the engine will dictate the play on the pitch or the ice. FIFA is a good game and a decent representation of the sport, but because most in the US are casual soccer fans they fail to see or understand the glaring shortcomings of the game. The physics, graphics, and presentation are great, the gameplay is good with significant slider adjustments, but like NHL, there is minimal separation between individual players and teams, and the engine spits out times when chances are better for you or the CPU to score. Both games try way too hard to grab the highlight reel goal at the end of the game. There is an obscene amount of late goals in FIFA and last minute of the period goals in NHL. It's beyond stupid. It's scripted gameplay and it needs to be removed. Yes it can be stopped but I want to play against an opponent and not a devs interpretation of how a game "usually goes". Another thing that both games have are the moments throughout when the CPU goes into berserker mode. In FIFA even the lowest rated team will possess the ball until they get a shot off. It doesn't matter what defense you use. If you tackle the ball away it goes straight to the CPU. Same as NHL when they all skate faster (regardless of speed), get to every puck before you do, and eventually get a good look. I've played way too many games of both not to notice. This is stuff that a developer will NEVER admit exists in their game. The funny thing is that when the CPU scores, the "advantage" goes to the USER. Rarely does anyone talk about that in these forums. There are a few games they play out really well and "feel" right in both NHL and FIFA, but most of the time, I feel like I'm playing against an engine and not the CPU opponent.

1) Yep

2) Apart from having a ball, 2 nets, 22 players and a referee, nope.

3) Sliders don't improve EA sports games. It's highly superficial and all the talk of sliders improving the game is extremely suspect. The ai in both nhl and FIFA are incredibly stupid and sliders do not make them play better or smarter. It only allows you to reduce the frequency of engine annoyances in the game. For example, in fifa reducing the pass accuracy of the cpu does not prevent them for making the 180 no look perfect passes that would destroy every ligament in your knee in real life. The game just does what it wants and sliders do not make the ai better or more realistic. In nhl, making slider adjustments does not prevent the ai from scoring 5 goals on 5 shots when being outshot 40 to 5 in a game. It doesn't make them take more shots, it doesn't make them possess the puck more, it doesn't make them make smart plays. The sliders don't prevent the players from moving in a stepwise fashion like they are navigating up a ladder on a coordinate system. All in all, sliders are not a remedy for bad ai which has been neglected since the ps2 days. It has barely evolved and in some cases is significantly worse than games 2 generations ago.

4) Yep.

5) Capturing wow moments are all ea cares about. You only need to nhl 11 to see this. NHL 11 is the perfect example of this. Instead of creating an environment where these wow moments occur organically, they attempt to make every game a wow moment. It's forced and it loses its ability to wow very quickly. The byproduct of this is that attention to the little details is lost.

6) Berserk mode in EA games are a feature. Regardless of how you tune the sliders, it stays the same. In nhl, it's the rocket passing. In fifa its the 180 no look passes. Things like this always aggravate the user and makes the experience not enjoyable.

[Bills Mafia 716]

Well considering EA NHL is the only major hockey game on the market, it kind of already is the FIFA of hockey games.

[Yeats]

Posts #12 and #13... speaking the truth guys, loved reading that.