not as bad as some people say

[rickster1]

Re: not as bad as some people say

All i am saying is yes i know the bugs ect but people compare to fifa and have spent alot of hours on fifa 18 recently there a alot of bugs in that game despite the money fifa makes so its down to EA as a company. Also I remember 2k had its problems more than nhl at the time.

[geisterhome]

Re: not as bad as some people say

the game isnt as bad as it seems by just reading the forums. i mean maybe it is but then madden nba2k the show fifa... all suck cos all have their flaws.

SM-G955F

[Northernwolf]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Not a fan of comparing it to other sports games, but I guess it is hard not to nowadays with only one hockey game coming out.

I think NHL 18 is a game that is far worse than the impression I got from OS. I think OS'ers are fairly positive towards the game, and actually give only fair critique on what is obvious.
some OS'ers got responses for being too negative or harsh when the game came out. To be honest, I think that is extremely unfair towards the OS'ers who gave their fair opinion. Most here on the NHL forum pointed out clear issues they had with NHL 18 and left it at that. No one has gone out of their way to slander the game - merely pointing out the technical and general issues that they saw. I respect that.

In my experience I felt the game fell flat much faster than NHL 17. Maybe this has to do with my own expectations? That is possible.
I still feel NHL 18 is just 17 resold with some minor changes. Nothing that I felt was very impressive.
The game for me has been completely broken for a long time.
I have decided to move on to other games that deserve my time. I love hockey, but Im not gonna play a game that does not deliver an experience I feel is satisfactory.

[jake19ny]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Have you ever played NBA 2k or Madden on current gen? Animation heavy games that are thus ruined. Ryan Moody on youtube talks about this in madden all the time. There is a reason why Madden on PS2 felt more rewarding to play, it was bc it was less animation heavy.

You say add animations, okay, but do not go overboard bc it could backfire just like the Madden PS2 to next-gen disaster....

Yeh, the CPU leaving the slot open is a problem, I avoid it by just holding the RT and playing last man back defending covering the slot myself.

If an animation heavy game is flawed that’s on the dev team. MLB the Show, while not without bugs is an example of great work all around. It’s extreneky animation heavy and truly captures a real MLB broadcast along with giving a great feeling of being at the game. The gameplay sliders work so well you can have an arcade like slugfest or a solid sim experience. The Diamond Dynasty, similar to Hut is light years ahead of EA and the customization options in this game are 10x more detailed and in depth. Baseball is not my favorite sport but this is the only playable sports game on the market. Granted MLB way more popular than the NHL but I still say they’ve can deliver better experience with fixed AI.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: not as bad as some people say

...to me.
As in "not as bad as some people say"... to me. We need to start getting used to qualifying opinions as opinions. You can't just say flat out something is or isn't better. It's gotta be how it feels to you. Also, it depends what you've played before.

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[actionhank]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Not a fan of comparing it to other sports games, but I guess it is hard not to nowadays with only one hockey game coming out.

I think NHL 18 is a game that is far worse than the impression I got from OS. I think OS'ers are fairly positive towards the game, and actually give only fair critique on what is obvious.
some OS'ers got responses for being too negative or harsh when the game came out. To be honest, I think that is extremely unfair towards the OS'ers who gave their fair opinion. Most here on the NHL forum pointed out clear issues they had with NHL 18 and left it at that. No one has gone out of their way to slander the game - merely pointing out the technical and general issues that they saw. I respect that.

In my experience I felt the game fell flat much faster than NHL 17. Maybe this has to do with my own expectations? That is possible.
I still feel NHL 18 is just 17 resold with some minor changes. Nothing that I felt was very impressive.
The game for me has been completely broken for a long time.
I have decided to move on to other games that deserve my time. I love hockey, but Im not gonna play a game that does not deliver an experience I feel is satisfactory.

I've been one of those people harping on the game for the same stuff over the past few years. Sadly, the gameplay just has stayed too stale with the same reoccurring problems for me to get any enjoyment out of it, especially with a $60+ price tag.

Do I fault anyone for enjoying it? Most definitely I don't. I agree with your assessment, that there wasn't enough changed in the game for the asking price. The same AI tendencies all still appear to be here from videos I've watched, with the same bad goalie reads and defensive AI gaffes.

If others enjoy it, that's fine. I just had to move away from the sport. It's possible that playing hockey in real life, and watching hockey constantly cause me to be too critical of the game, but that's just the way I am. I've tried for the past 3 years to work past it and just enjoy the game for what it is, but unfortunately the game isn't what I want it to be. Hopefully someday, it returns to what I want, or maybe absence will make the glaring issues less noticeable.

For now, my only solution has been to not buy it for the release this year, and regret buying last year's release after about 3 months just the same was I regretted the game before that one. That's just too much money dropped on something I can't even enjoy for a full 6 months in a two year span.

If an animation heavy game is flawed that’s on the dev team. MLB the Show, while not without bugs is an example of great work all around. It’s extreneky animation heavy and truly captures a real MLB broadcast along with giving a great feeling of being at the game. The gameplay sliders work so well you can have an arcade like slugfest or a solid sim experience. The Diamond Dynasty, similar to Hut is light years ahead of EA and the customization options in this game are 10x more detailed and in depth. Baseball is not my favorite sport but this is the only playable sports game on the market. Granted MLB way more popular than the NHL but I still say they’ve can deliver better experience with fixed AI.

I think there's a place for both. I like the fluid physics based movements for hits, but I think it could also be better if there was some more hybrid-type animations. When you watch hockey, there aren't a ton of big hits. But in the EA NHL series hits seem to either come in an attempted hit that doesn't register, meaning nothing changes, or a big hit that drops one or both players.

I think it would be nice if there were animations that ragdolled parts of the model, or transitioned. A big thing in EA's NHL is that once someone is hit and the hit registers...they just go limp for the most part. In real life, guys reach out, they put hands down to stop a fall, they catch themselves. There isn't much body contact in EA's NHL, since it seems to be an all-or-nothing thing. It would be nice to see more animation where guys are shrugging each other off, where a player skates in to play a puck on the boards, passes it, and then braces up against the glass for the following hit.

I think they made a good move getting away from animated hits, but I think expecting physics to take care of everything leaves the game like it does now, where everything just looks very stale. It's the same 10 guys moving up and down the ice, all moving the same, all standing the same...just looking a little different because of gear, jersey number, and a pretty generic player model that's stretched up and out to change height and weight. It would be really cool to see the different in a guy like Ovechkin skating vs Kane. Even just watching the Blues play, I know when it's Sobotka on the puck because he seems to have a very heads up skating stance. Little details and animations during, away from, and after the play can really do a lot to make the game feel alive like in The Show.

[Josam27o7]

Re: not as bad as some people say

If an animation heavy game is flawed that’s on the dev team. MLB the Show, while not without bugs is an example of great work all around. It’s extreneky animation heavy and truly captures a real MLB broadcast along with giving a great feeling of being at the game. The gameplay sliders work so well you can have an arcade like slugfest or a solid sim experience. The Diamond Dynasty, similar to Hut is light years ahead of EA and the customization options in this game are 10x more detailed and in depth. Baseball is not my favorite sport but this is the only playable sports game on the market. Granted MLB way more popular than the NHL but I still say they’ve can deliver better experience with fixed AI.

Interesting. I haven't played a baseball game since MVP baseball 2005 on Xbox. It was good, but baseball games aren't comparable to the rest of the sports market bc the sports are completely different.

Baseball is more like golf than the other sports games.

[tinpanalley]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Sadly, the gameplay just has stayed too stale with the same reoccurring problems for me to get any enjoyment out of it, especially with a $60+ price tag.
...I think expecting physics to take care of everything leaves the game like it does now, where everything just looks very stale.

I'd give you an applause reaction rather than a like to your post if I could get one. Here...

Everything you're saying I can empathise with. The only minor thing I disagree with is with The Show. Because outside of batting stances, every single player on the field does the exact same moves no matter who they are. In the video promoting The Show 18, right at the beginning, the pitcher gets ready and it's the same canned animation from the firs PS4 game taking off the hat, wiping the brow, stretching out the left arm... anyway, that's another conversation.

What I don't get is that even before Frostbite, EA had the checking figured out with FIFA. Clearly they just don't wanna spend the development time. I have a friend who works in the gaming industry as an artist for Ubisoft. He knows NOTHING about sports games and one day I had him look at NHL to ask him why certain graphical and physics things happened. He watched for about 2 minutes and said,

"...the problem is, these animators have random events to think about. With our games, we know where a character is going to go, what he can do, what he can't do, where he can do it, the angle we want people to see from and the limit to which players can do things. These guys don't. Their generic set of movements need to work in the millions of variations every single person could possibly do. The only way to ensure every hit is realistic and true would be to actually animate every single possible variable of collision for every single character model and the game would be immense and impossible to load. So they go with rough estimates that are imperceptible to most people. The problem with that is that it's worse than canned animations from the past, because canned animations were familiar but looked accurate. In what I'm watching, this isn't how people fall, how they react when they're hit, what momentum does to their body..."
So you're right in saying there is something off in the physics and AI. Well, at least by a professional in the field who works all day long with animators to make his artwork fluid and lifelike.

[tinpanalley]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Interesting. I haven't played a baseball game since MVP baseball 2005 on Xbox. It was good, but baseball games aren't comparable to the rest of the sports market bc the sports are completely different.
Baseball is more like golf than the other sports games.

Nothing, other than MVP 07 NCAA has come close to the physics and logic of MVP 2005. The Show is great at first, but when you've played it for 10 years, even through three consoles, you realise how much they rerelease the same product every year. I'm not saying they have to reinvent the wheel. It's 2018, how much more can we possibly do to some sports games? But it would be less irresponsable of them if they just released roster updates with artwork tweaks for half the money.

[babaracus88]

Re: not as bad as some people say

the problem with this game is that they need to focus less on what the game looks like and focus more on how the game plays. as far as i'm concerned a hit is a hit i don't care so much what the hit looks like as far as the animation goes i care more that if a 230 pound guy hits a 175 pound guy smaller guy gets knocked down bigger guy slows down and staggers a bit. if a guy is against the boards and braces himself he doesn't necessarily fall down no matter what size he is.

They need to make the players individual ratings differentiate the players from each other. Hitters should be hitters , snipers shoot most of the time, passers look to pass before shooting and defensive guys are hanging back more.

Right now most of the players all have very similar stats, if you look at the current roster most the NHL players are rated in the 70's and 80's, that's not enough separation between 1st and the 4th line. Franchise players should be the only ones over 90 elite should be 85-90 these are your first line players on a stacked team. Then you have your 2nd line players these are your 75 - 85 ratings higher end for good teams lower end for ****ty teams 3rd and fourth lines 65-75 with the players around 65 are your bubble players could be on the 4th line or could be in the minors.

Then I would have the offence and defense awareness be a variable that effects a players overall, for example you could have a player in the minors who is rated say 75 because he is a top prospect like Alexander Nylander but if he's on for a lot of goals against or spends lots of time in his zone when he's on then his defensive awareness goes down and lowers his overall rating down to say 65 so now he doesn't crack the nhl line up and same with offensive awareness the more he scores or is on for goals for the higher his overall goes up and that gives him some time on the top lines this could act sort of like a players confidence this would also create hot and cold streaks for players.

back when this game was on the pc and you could use NHL view to edit every player on a teams passing and offensive awareness for example i would raise the passing and offensive awareness for detroit players by 10 so that when i played detroit they were hard to play against cause they all passed good and had good awareness this of course was back in the late 90's early 2000's when detroit really played that style it made the game more realistic. EA could probably do that too, allow you to give teams an identity like if you make your team a tough team then all the players on that team are better hitters and more aggressive so when you play them they play like anaheim for example but then the flip side would be that they take more penalties. then you could have teams that are more offensive like Edmonton was or more defensive like NJ used to be and for realism you could only give a couple teams identities this way you could give a bit of an advantage to the teams that are good in the real NHL so you don't have a team like arizona kicking *** in your season and a team like the Tampa bay not doing good.

You could probably do most of this with roster sharing. The rating could be done but it would take way too long to do it yourself. Unfortunately i think this would solve a lot of the actual game play problems with this game. You can share rosters with the 360 version and in my opinion the game play in NHL 360 Legacy is 100 times better than XBOX one xbox one just looks way better.

[actionhank]

Re: not as bad as some people say

the problem with this game is that they need to focus less on what the game looks like and focus more on how the game plays. as far as i'm concerned a hit is a hit i don't care so much what the hit looks like as far as the animation goes i care more that if a 230 pound guy hits a 175 pound guy smaller guy gets knocked down bigger guy slows down and staggers a bit. if a guy is against the boards and braces himself he doesn't necessarily fall down no matter what size he is.

They need to make the players individual ratings differentiate the players from each other. Hitters should be hitters , snipers shoot most of the time, passers look to pass before shooting and defensive guys are hanging back more.

Right now most of the players all have very similar stats, if you look at the current roster most the NHL players are rated in the 70's and 80's, that's not enough separation between 1st and the 4th line. Franchise players should be the only ones over 90 elite should be 85-90 these are your first line players on a stacked team. Then you have your 2nd line players these are your 75 - 85 ratings higher end for good teams lower end for ****ty teams 3rd and fourth lines 65-75 with the players around 65 are your bubble players could be on the 4th line or could be in the minors.

Then I would have the offence and defense awareness be a variable that effects a players overall, for example you could have a player in the minors who is rated say 75 because he is a top prospect like Alexander Nylander but if he's on for a lot of goals against or spends lots of time in his zone when he's on then his defensive awareness goes down and lowers his overall rating down to say 65 so now he doesn't crack the nhl line up and same with offensive awareness the more he scores or is on for goals for the higher his overall goes up and that gives him some time on the top lines this could act sort of like a players confidence this would also create hot and cold streaks for players.

back when this game was on the pc and you could use NHL view to edit every player on a teams passing and offensive awareness for example i would raise the passing and offensive awareness for detroit players by 10 so that when i played detroit they were hard to play against cause they all passed good and had good awareness this of course was back in the late 90's early 2000's when detroit really played that style it made the game more realistic. EA could probably do that too, allow you to give teams an identity like if you make your team a tough team then all the players on that team are better hitters and more aggressive so when you play them they play like anaheim for example but then the flip side would be that they take more penalties. then you could have teams that are more offensive like Edmonton was or more defensive like NJ used to be and for realism you could only give a couple teams identities this way you could give a bit of an advantage to the teams that are good in the real NHL so you don't have a team like arizona kicking *** in your season and a team like the Tampa bay not doing good.

You could probably do most of this with roster sharing. The rating could be done but it would take way too long to do it yourself. Unfortunately i think this would solve a lot of the actual game play problems with this game. You can share rosters with the 360 version and in my opinion the game play in NHL 360 Legacy is 100 times better than XBOX one xbox one just looks way better.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Player differences go way beyond the animations. I've griped about player ratings more years than I can remember now.

It's another issue that I think could easily be solved with EA giving us the ability to share and edit rosters easily (another thing I've bitched about 'til I'm blue in the face). One of the best times I had with the title was the original Revamped Roster that was sadly done in spite of the limitations of EA's game. It was just a workaround way to save another roster and make your console thing it was a previous save of your own.

I'd be 100% fine with keeping the current graphical and animation systems if it meant getting a complete teardown and buildup of the AI and attribute systems, and the sliders that go with them. While the graphics and animations are important, I put the core gameplay as the thing that drives me away the most.

[Stanley Accrington]

Re: not as bad as some people say

I have been using TNK's sliders for the past two years and the game plays a really good game of hockey. You really need to play defense with his sliders and not just mash the poke check button or you will get penalty after penalty. Game is not perfect like you say but its pretty close for me and also enjoyable so I guess that's all that matters. Cycle and dump the puck and get it to the open man, clear the puck when your under pressure and freeze the puck with the goalie pretty much all of the time and you will be surprised at how well the game plays. Basically play real hockey and no cheesing.

Defense is a big problem for me. Stick pokes/lifts gets me penalties ( considering turning them off on slider.....but it wouldn't be authentic hockey then) and I can't body check. My basic defense strategy is by keeping defenders between AI player and goal in effort to block shots. Wait for my goalie to save and freeze the puck and then hope that I win possession on the subsequent faceoff. Could you tell me what TNK's defense sliders are set to please? Or maybe point me in the right direction to find them online. Thanks.

[Stanley Accrington]

Re: not as bad as some people say

I've just realised that there is an NHL sliders subforum. I'll peruse this subforum for defense slider suggestions. Most forums have at least one stupid Limey.....and it looks like I'm the one on here!!

[BigBadAss33]

Re: not as bad as some people say

I've just realised that there is an NHL sliders subforum. I'll peruse this subforum for defense slider suggestions. Most forums have at least one stupid Limey.....and it looks like I'm the one on here!!

Quick question

Are you a position Lock player?

I ask because I dont care what anyone says if you play position lock and play your position correctly the CPU controlled teammates do exactly the same thing..They play their position(crappy but they do it)

I position lock in 2 positions.. I swap between LW and RD.

IMO, I have noticed that when you play without being locked into a position there is a very slight lag in changing to the correct controlled player. With position lock that very slight delay does not take place and the CPU controlled players do their job.. Not saying that they wont get beat from time to time, it makes the game play that much better.. I will also suggest that if you go position lock you have to know what zones you are responsible, DO NOT under any circumstance chase the puck or you will get slaughtered!!

Test it out for yourself... it works...

[Stanley Accrington]

Re: not as bad as some people say

Quick question

Are you a position Lock player?

I ask because I dont care what anyone says if you play position lock and play your position correctly the CPU controlled teammates do exactly the same thing..They play their position(crappy but they do it)

I position lock in 2 positions.. I swap between LW and RD.

IMO, I have noticed that when you play without being locked into a position there is a very slight lag in changing to the correct controlled player. With position lock that very slight delay does not take place and the CPU controlled players do their job.. Not saying that they wont get beat from time to time, it makes the game play that much better.. I will also suggest that if you go position lock you have to know what zones you are responsible, DO NOT under any circumstance chase the puck or you will get slaughtered!!

Test it out for yourself... it works...

I've had the game (NHL16) for a week and have been playing 'play now' games against the comp. I dont play online or do the HUT thing. Dunno if I can player lock on this mode of gameplay......I suspect that I can't as what info I have found on internet search suggests position lock is for online players only.