NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

[TopSide83]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

Three days into my purchase of the game and so far I’m not really having much fun with it. The game plays pretty chaotic at times with the CPU almost looking possessed out there.

[speels]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

You can certainly talk for yourself, but what makes you think that you can decide that it's a loss for someone else if that someone is not willing to play the game for whatever reason it is that makes the game unplayable? If I talk about myself, I like the gameplay improvements a lot. However, when a junior team and a Stanley Cup champion are competing evenly, that really kills all the fun for me. If the teams mentioned above are playing evenly, the little differences between NHL teams aren't certainly making ant difference and the game results are completely a roll of dice. So for anyone, like me, looking for a realistic game in all aspects, there is not nearly enough to justify the 60€.

While I agree with you, I think the problem stems from the lack of player separation when it comes to attributes. There is not one attribute is the best indicator of how good players are.

For example, I watched Chris Philips play as a junior. He would have easily been rated a 95 in the WHL, and maybe even a 72 in the NHL. However his skating agility and speed were NHL caliber even in junior and he had a hard shot. What he lacked was experience and an understanding of the game at the NHL level. So, with today's ratings of players how do you separate that? He should be as fast as an NHL skater, but his awareness needs to be way below average as a new player in the league. Actually he was pretty smart so maybe his should be average.

I mean games today have Offensive and Defensive Awareness but it is way under utilized. Also, those are too broad. Games will become more realistic when they have your physical attributes, speed, agility, shot power, etc but the main decider of player separation will be all of the awareness attributes. Example, On Puck awareness, off-puck awareness, goalie position awareness, rebound control awareness, etc. Once companies understand that you can differentiate players strictly based on their different awareness, the games will be better.

Unfortunately there is no way we can recreate that with the way the game is designed.

[TopSide83]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

While I agree with you, I think the problem stems from the lack of player separation when it comes to attributes. There is not one attribute is the best indicator of how good players are.

For example, I watched Chris Philips play as a junior. He would have easily been rated a 95 in the WHL, and maybe even a 72 in the NHL. However his skating agility and speed were NHL caliber even in junior and he had a hard shot. What he lacked was experience and an understanding of the game at the NHL level. So, with today's ratings of players how do you separate that? He should be as fast as an NHL skater, but his awareness needs to be way below average as a new player in the league. Actually he was pretty smart so maybe his should be average.

I mean games today have Offensive and Defensive Awareness but it is way under utilized. Also, those are too broad. Games will become more realistic when they have your physical attributes, speed, agility, shot power, etc but the main decider of player separation will be all of the awareness attributes. Example, On Puck awareness, off-puck awareness, goalie position awareness, rebound control awareness, etc. Once companies understand that you can differentiate players strictly based on their different awareness, the games will be better.

Unfortunately there is no way we can recreate that with the way the game is designed.

Personally I think it’s a little crazy that basically my whole team is rated 80 and above. There’s almost zero player separation when it comes to the ratings. My 4th liners shouldn’t all be in the 80s unless my team is stacked

[Qb]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

Three days into my purchase of the game and so far I’m not really having much fun with it. The game plays pretty chaotic at times with the CPU almost looking possessed out there.

I only played some of the trial so I can't offer specific settings, but based on previous experience lowering two settings can really help with this:

Gamespeed (I prefer zero but YMMV)

Aggression (AI players scramble/chase less in zone, less "chaos")

[MizzouRah]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I was just messing around last night with the game playing a bunch of play now games and I remembered someone complaining that playing an NHL team vs a WHL team was kind of a joke because the game were maybe 5-2 or such when in reality it shouldn't even be close. This got me thinking so I tried something new and it was amazing!!

Now, just to make you all aware, I usually play the game on All-Star but sometimes will drop to pro for a little more fun and a little less frustration. Anyway, I played on All-Star default sliders as the Leafs against the Lethbridge Hurricanes, GO CANES GO!!! The game was pretty tight but I felt like I was able to control it for the most part. I won 5-2 with an ENG.
Like I said, it felt okay. Anyway, I then decided that I would play the same game, but on Rookie with default sliders. OMG!!! I was absolutely dominant, exactly how I feel a game would play out IRL between the 2 teams. It was amazing.

So I tried a couple different games and play NHL vs AHL. This is where Pro default felt the best. It was like the sliders actually created the differentiation between player that there should be with ratings. It was a lot of fun.

I've always played on AS as well, but I just played a game on Pro and it was actually a blast. I lost in OT, 5-4 but it felt more loose than AS does.

[MDgolf]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

All star is way too hard


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[handheldpictures]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

Just curious. Does anyone here play eashl 6vs6 online or just offline modes? The reason I'm asking is that online the game is beyond dictated by all mighty EA. It doesn't matter how well you play, the outcome is totally dictated by EA's non existent DDA/momentum/ice tilt/boost every single game. How else do you explain 4-3, 6-5, 7-6, 3-2 outcomes when one team is completely dominating the other?

It's such a farce that EA continues to totally deny that their game is scripted when thousands of videos have been posted online over the years proving the opposite. It's an absolute disgrace that a company gets away with this crap year after year but in the end what choice as consumers do we have for those of us that love the game of hockey?

This game is an absolute brutal mess in trying to please arcade/simulation fans and will probably go down as the most frustrating sports game in history to play. Congratulations EA Sports, you've received another reward right along with being voted worst company year after year as well.

[babaracus88]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

While I agree with you, I think the problem stems from the lack of player separation when it comes to attributes. There is not one attribute is the best indicator of how good players are.

For example, I watched Chris Philips play as a junior. He would have easily been rated a 95 in the WHL, and maybe even a 72 in the NHL. However his skating agility and speed were NHL caliber even in junior and he had a hard shot. What he lacked was experience and an understanding of the game at the NHL level. So, with today's ratings of players how do you separate that? He should be as fast as an NHL skater, but his awareness needs to be way below average as a new player in the league. Actually he was pretty smart so maybe his should be average.

I mean games today have Offensive and Defensive Awareness but it is way under utilized. Also, those are too broad. Games will become more realistic when they have your physical attributes, speed, agility, shot power, etc but the main decider of player separation will be all of the awareness attributes. Example, On Puck awareness, off-puck awareness, goalie position awareness, rebound control awareness, etc. Once companies understand that you can differentiate players strictly based on their different awareness, the games will be better.

Unfortunately there is no way we can recreate that with the way the game is designed.

They can re-create this they would just have to first off allow roster sharing so that rosters could be created with the differential that is needed between the players. Second they would need to build in some kind of a decreasing effect for the different levels of hockey but based on a per player basis.

Ex. you could have a Lafreniere who is rated 95 in the CHL but if you move him up to the NHL his skill stats like accuracy and passing deking etc. would be reduced automatically based on the Decreasing effect which could be a setting from 1-10 that you can adjust to reflect how those skills would be affected from moving up to the NHL and reflecting his lack of experience playing against more skilled players. So this could result in him being a 95 overall in the CHL but only an 80 overall in the NHL and maybe only an 85 in the AHL.

This way a player could totally dominate the chl but then still be good (for his age) in the NHL but that being a rookie and having less time to react in the NHL would be reflected in his ratings. you could then tie the decreasing effect rating to experience in any given league. Basically the ratings need to be set up in a way that depending on the league the player is in, if he dominates that league he should be in the 90's for rating overall but when he moves up to a higher level his overall rating drops to reflect his lack of experience or even lack of ability to adapt to the next level of hockey. this would only have to affect skills that are affected by playing higher levels of hockey. Speed and agility and acceleration would not be affected by this necessarily because if your fast in juniors you will still be the same speed in the NHL just that there are alot of faster skaters in the NHL compared to the CHL.

This would also allow there to be players that come from the juniors and have a good rookie season in the NHL by having a lower rated decreasing affect for example Elias Petterssons's decreasing effect rating would be set low but someone like jack hughes or kappo kakko decreasing effect rating would of been set higher as they dominated juniors but struggled in the NHL. and then every season the decreasing effect rating would lower to reflect years of experience in the league.

this would make it so players in juniors aren't rated in the 50's

This is my idea how to fix the rating system between the different leagues

[oosterbe]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I will recreate rosters (again) and use more wide scale for attributes so I can separate players on the ice and at the same time it's possible to give fast (but not so good) players fast skating attributes for example.

I created the simple system for that. I divided all attributes and all players to five classes based on real life NHL stats and if a player had a certain amount of passes or bodychecks or blocked shots and so on, he gets the rating (or class) which correlates his real life abilities. I check the players scouting reports too, to get more information about their style to play IRL. By using this simple method I get overall ratings vary between 56-96. Of course it takes a lot of time and it could be nice to have a roster sharing for projects like that.

To get balanced gameplay and to see the differences between players on the ice I have made a ton of testing to create scales and numbers I use to differentiate skill levels.

For example for body checking I use only ratings 59,69,79,89,99, passing 51,63,75,87,99, offensive awareness 79,84,89,94,99, puck control 69,76,83,91,99 and so on.

Now I can see some huge hits without making a game hitfest, I can see how Superstars pop up, I can use speed as a weapon a few times per game, snipes and huge slappers stands out better and there's a lot of variety in passing too.

[oosterbe]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

when a junior team and a Stanley Cup champion are competing evenly, that really kills all the fun for me. If the teams mentioned above are playing evenly, the little differences between NHL teams aren't certainly making ant difference and the game results are completely a roll of dice.

I agree with you, that there's not enough differences between teams and players with the original rosters but at the same time I have to say that winning the game of hockey is not 100% sure even there's two teams with huge skill gap competing each other. In 1994-1995 Wayne Gretzky himself marched his dream team to Europe with eleven players to be inducted later to Hall of Fame. What happened? His dream team lost two games to huge underdogs
Malmö IF and Tampere Ilves. Last WC played in 2019. Team Finland (Finnish national league's elite players) won gold medals under the noses of team Canada (Mark Stone, Couturier, Marchessault etc). Have you ever heard the Miracle on Ice... Yeah, it's maybe 8 or 7 times of 10, when better team will win a game. Sometimes miracle happens and in my opinion it's just a salt of the ice-hockey

[The EVHL]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I've always played on AS as well, but I just played a game on Pro and it was actually a blast. I lost in OT, 5-4 but it felt more loose than AS does.

I think Pro is the way to go this year. Could I play and win on Superstar? Yep, but the goalie play is not dynamic and there's zero goal variety. You basically have to play sweaty and exploit the CPU to win rather than just focusing on playing a solid game of hockey to have success. The Pro level has offered me some great snipes, screens, tips, rebounds, and excellent saves that both AS and SS haven't been able to produce. Making Pro harder and sloppier is much more enjoyable than AS/SS in my experience.

[tcnumba10]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I think Pro is the way to go this year. Could I play and win on Superstar? Yep, but the goalie play is not dynamic and there's zero goal variety. You basically have to play sweaty and exploit the CPU to win rather than just focusing on playing a solid game of hockey to have success. The Pro level has offered me some great snipes, screens, tips, rebounds, and excellent saves that both AS and SS haven't been able to produce. Making Pro harder and sloppier is much more enjoyable than AS/SS in my experience.

I’ve been playing Pro and loving the scoring variety for myself but it seems that it is too easy to defend against the CPU on the other end. I’m consistently out shooting the CPU and I’m starting to win more lopsided constantly now on Pro. I tried All-Star and the CPU seems to utilize their deking skills more which is great but I am having trouble scoring.

Wish there was a way to play so that I can play on Pro on offence and have the CPU play on All-Star when they are attacking...

[The EVHL]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I’ve been playing Pro and loving the scoring variety for myself but it seems that it is too easy to defend against the CPU on the other end. I’m consistently out shooting the CPU and I’m starting to win more lopsided constantly now on Pro. I tried All-Star and the CPU seems to utilize their deking skills more which is great but I am having trouble scoring.

Wish there was a way to play so that I can play on Pro on offence and have the CPU play on All-Star when they are attacking...

That would be cool to see. I always play my games as 1/2 the game for each team, so this doesn't affect me, but I get why it's annoying from a single-player experience.

[tcnumba10]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

That would be cool to see. I always play my games as 1/2 the game for each team, so this doesn't affect me, but I get why it's annoying from a single-player experience.

I’ll probably go ahead and start playing on All-Star and tweak sliders so that it’s easier for me to score. I just love how the CPU opponent use creative ways to attack/score on All-Star since on Pro it seems that they don’t utilize their skill sets to put the puck into my net.

[The EVHL]

Re: NHL 21 Has Been Released - Share Your Impressions with the Community

I’ll probably go ahead and start playing on All-Star and tweak sliders so that it’s easier for me to score. I just love how the CPU opponent use creative ways to attack/score on All-Star since on Pro it seems that they don’t utilize their skill sets to put the puck into my net.

Yeah that makes sense. I've found it really hard to balance goalies giving up nice shots but not being to soft on AS/SS. Good luck to you! I'd definitely suggest cranking up screen effect/persistence and lowering reaction time to at least 30 from my limited testing on that skill level.