Hey everyone, Puck here.
WARNING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT FOLLOWS
I have been a bit absent the last week or so, and I’m sure you all are looking forward to an update regarding what the official plan is for NHL Revamped this year. I have spent the last week thinking about the different ideas we have had throughout the past regarding different things we could potentially incorporate in our project moving forward.
There have been things left on the drawing board that any number of us on the team liked and wanted to incorporate that ultimately were either vetoed by the team majority, or never really considered as a whole, just never done because we didn’t have the time, or thought of it too late in the development of the project.
At this time I am a bit tempted to use this as a bit of an experimental year. Basically we do a base update of just the NHL/AHL. It wouldn’t be near as inclusive an update as last year’s release, which to be honest is in all reality what the release this year will be anyways seeing as only about a 4th of the team will actually be working on it .
But after that base update is done, this is where the fun starts (keep in mind I’m just rambling here)-
My thought is we release the base update and then do some experimenting on the different possibilities to employ when it comes to EA Attribute philosophy. For example, as you all know, our focus in Revamped has been to try and incorporate as realistic a skillset for each player as possible, and avoiding the required inflation of specific ratings to make that player fit the expected overall. To demonstrate what I am talking about, think Alexander Ovechkin. To put it bluntly, he is absolutely horrible at Defense. Like absurdly bad. So many controller disconnected jokes… But anyways, in all reality his Defensive attributes such as Defensive Awareness and Shot Blocking by all means deserve a rating in the low sixties. (I mean seriously, his defense is abysmal.) Now in the past there wasn’t really a way around inflating his defensive rating if we wanted him to have that 90+ overall that really shows how much of an offensive dynamo he has the potential to be. If I recall correctly he has hovered around an 70+ for his defensive awareness.
So here are some of the ideas I’m thinking we try and explore this year-
1.Less worry about the Overall ratings than in years past- So if Ovi ends up an 86 due to poor Defense then so be it.
2.We massively drop the average rating of passing to help incorporate a messier game. I’m thinking like an average drop of 20 per passing rating.
3.A drop on average of 10 on shot accuracy attributes. (My thought on this is that it could help make a messier game with more missed shots, potentially increasing play in the corners and behind the net. A side effect could potentially be a drop in the frequency of stupid glitch shots being so easily pulled off, as that top right inside corner might not be as easy to hit.)
4.An average drop of 15-20 in the puck control ratings. (Once again to encourage a sloppier game. Could make it easier to stop the utterly infuriating CPU wraparound glitch goal.)
5.An average drop of 10 on body checking/strength. (To try and reduce the massively overstated amount of “Big Hits”)
6.A potential increase in the average aggression rating of each player. (In my experience I feel this does to some degree influence how close a defending player plays a player with the puck. In all reality I have no evidence to back this up.)
7.Potential increase in Shot blocking ratings (Once again to help promote a sloppier game.)
8.A universal rating of Never for each player in regards to fighting frequency with the exception of the top 30 fighters over the last 2 seasons. (Hopefully to stop the stupid fights you get like Bouwmeester vs. Datsyuk.)
9.An average drop of 30 in discipline ratings. (To incorporate more penalties)
In all reality I know that these are a bit extreme, and while I feel I have always found a slider set that I found that worked for me personally, there were always still things that I felt needed sliders of their own to really make the game better. Things like shot blocking, more influential passing, shooting, and puck control sliders etc. My suggestion here is we bake these desired changes into the roster itself. Now a large chunk of these we have tested as a team in the past, and for any number of reasons either never found their way into the final release, or were not fully incorporated for other reasons. The reason I would like to run by you guys the possibility of revisiting these is that we as a team didn’t have a large amount of time alongside the large number of people needed to fully test things like this to fully determine what the real impact would be.
So my question to you all is this- after we get an update out with the necessary transactions and basic rating adjustments built off of last year’s release, how many of you would be interested in working with me in testing some of these adjustments? Do you think that this is a bad idea? Do you have additional changes you would like to see made? Basically this year as the release isn’t going to be near as in depth as in years passed just due to the logistics of this year’s release, I want this to be a completely open forum/discussion thread where we all work together as a community to really figure out what we can do to truly improve the gameplay of the series.
Yes I understand that the next gen game will be different with different issues/needs, but I think we all can agree that EA isn’t going to suddenly turn around and completely change their whole underlying philosophy on hockey ratings and how they are utilized. And even if they do, the lessons I feel we could learn from playing with these ratings like this will allow us to tackle the next generation of hockey even more prepared to release the most accurate and true to life representation of video game hockey out there.
Anyway- I really am excited to hear all of your thoughts regarding the above outlined.
TLDR- I’m crazy, have crazy ideas, and want to include you all in my crazy schemes.
WARNING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT FOLLOWS
I have been a bit absent the last week or so, and I’m sure you all are looking forward to an update regarding what the official plan is for NHL Revamped this year. I have spent the last week thinking about the different ideas we have had throughout the past regarding different things we could potentially incorporate in our project moving forward.
There have been things left on the drawing board that any number of us on the team liked and wanted to incorporate that ultimately were either vetoed by the team majority, or never really considered as a whole, just never done because we didn’t have the time, or thought of it too late in the development of the project.
At this time I am a bit tempted to use this as a bit of an experimental year. Basically we do a base update of just the NHL/AHL. It wouldn’t be near as inclusive an update as last year’s release, which to be honest is in all reality what the release this year will be anyways seeing as only about a 4th of the team will actually be working on it .
But after that base update is done, this is where the fun starts (keep in mind I’m just rambling here)-
My thought is we release the base update and then do some experimenting on the different possibilities to employ when it comes to EA Attribute philosophy. For example, as you all know, our focus in Revamped has been to try and incorporate as realistic a skillset for each player as possible, and avoiding the required inflation of specific ratings to make that player fit the expected overall. To demonstrate what I am talking about, think Alexander Ovechkin. To put it bluntly, he is absolutely horrible at Defense. Like absurdly bad. So many controller disconnected jokes… But anyways, in all reality his Defensive attributes such as Defensive Awareness and Shot Blocking by all means deserve a rating in the low sixties. (I mean seriously, his defense is abysmal.) Now in the past there wasn’t really a way around inflating his defensive rating if we wanted him to have that 90+ overall that really shows how much of an offensive dynamo he has the potential to be. If I recall correctly he has hovered around an 70+ for his defensive awareness.
So here are some of the ideas I’m thinking we try and explore this year-
1.Less worry about the Overall ratings than in years past- So if Ovi ends up an 86 due to poor Defense then so be it.
2.We massively drop the average rating of passing to help incorporate a messier game. I’m thinking like an average drop of 20 per passing rating.
3.A drop on average of 10 on shot accuracy attributes. (My thought on this is that it could help make a messier game with more missed shots, potentially increasing play in the corners and behind the net. A side effect could potentially be a drop in the frequency of stupid glitch shots being so easily pulled off, as that top right inside corner might not be as easy to hit.)
4.An average drop of 15-20 in the puck control ratings. (Once again to encourage a sloppier game. Could make it easier to stop the utterly infuriating CPU wraparound glitch goal.)
5.An average drop of 10 on body checking/strength. (To try and reduce the massively overstated amount of “Big Hits”)
6.A potential increase in the average aggression rating of each player. (In my experience I feel this does to some degree influence how close a defending player plays a player with the puck. In all reality I have no evidence to back this up.)
7.Potential increase in Shot blocking ratings (Once again to help promote a sloppier game.)
8.A universal rating of Never for each player in regards to fighting frequency with the exception of the top 30 fighters over the last 2 seasons. (Hopefully to stop the stupid fights you get like Bouwmeester vs. Datsyuk.)
9.An average drop of 30 in discipline ratings. (To incorporate more penalties)
In all reality I know that these are a bit extreme, and while I feel I have always found a slider set that I found that worked for me personally, there were always still things that I felt needed sliders of their own to really make the game better. Things like shot blocking, more influential passing, shooting, and puck control sliders etc. My suggestion here is we bake these desired changes into the roster itself. Now a large chunk of these we have tested as a team in the past, and for any number of reasons either never found their way into the final release, or were not fully incorporated for other reasons. The reason I would like to run by you guys the possibility of revisiting these is that we as a team didn’t have a large amount of time alongside the large number of people needed to fully test things like this to fully determine what the real impact would be.
So my question to you all is this- after we get an update out with the necessary transactions and basic rating adjustments built off of last year’s release, how many of you would be interested in working with me in testing some of these adjustments? Do you think that this is a bad idea? Do you have additional changes you would like to see made? Basically this year as the release isn’t going to be near as in depth as in years passed just due to the logistics of this year’s release, I want this to be a completely open forum/discussion thread where we all work together as a community to really figure out what we can do to truly improve the gameplay of the series.
Yes I understand that the next gen game will be different with different issues/needs, but I think we all can agree that EA isn’t going to suddenly turn around and completely change their whole underlying philosophy on hockey ratings and how they are utilized. And even if they do, the lessons I feel we could learn from playing with these ratings like this will allow us to tackle the next generation of hockey even more prepared to release the most accurate and true to life representation of video game hockey out there.
Anyway- I really am excited to hear all of your thoughts regarding the above outlined.
TLDR- I’m crazy, have crazy ideas, and want to include you all in my crazy schemes.
R
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