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[CopeSnuff]

So I figured I would chime in how I feel about NHL 16

A little about me, I sim about 95% of my games, play maybe a game or two a year, maybe some in playoffs. I love to be a GM, resign guys, draft, trade, asset management etc etc

So with NHL 16 I was somewhat excited to hear about player moral and player meetings and team meetings and all that fun stuff. I was hoping it wouldn't be too much work.

I fired up a franchise with the Canucks and was excited to see preseason was back in! Awesome! I love seeing how my young guys do and perform. I sim on All-star - Simulation (I play around with the player fatigue so I feel all 4 lines are used throughout sim games)

So I got through preseason, put up who I felt should be on the trade block, and noticed moral going down with players when I put them on the block, nice added touch. So soon enough we begin 1-5-2 and I get some flashes on my screen that some players wanted to meet with me. I did just that (I must say the menu system works really well this year, not as slow and treacherous as last years, which I dreaded.) So yeah players were saying oh we are off to a bad start and questioning the front office, you get 4 answers to choose from and it differs from player to player how you answer, it can add to their moral or make them lose moral, or not effect them at all. That was a nice added touch I felt. Soon enough it was about midseason and some teams wanted Ryan Miller and I traded him away, and sure as soup I got flashes on my screen, "Dan Hamhuis has lost moral because you traded Ryan Miller away" I felt that was a nice added touch. Soon enough was the trade deadline, and this is so far my only gripe with NHL 16, I liked the old phone system. It gave you that sense of urgency and if you got rejected in a trade you lost that phone, I miss that. This is you just sim up to and past it. Boring. But then came the end of the season, we finished in the bottom 5 of the league. I must add you get many player meetings throughout the year, you can ignore them if you want. I feel its a nice touch and something more for me to do while I Be a GM. Breaks up the whole JUST SIM! approach. The draft is much like last year, which is completely awesome. Very well done there. We won the lottery and I took some D-man Chychron or something like that. Now was the time to resign players. I though lets see how this goes. Offered some contracts then simmed a day. So as usual the players come back with answers on your offers, and much to my surprise, a player rejected my offer and said "I don't think this team is winning anytime soon." That is AWESOME! So I promptly went back into contracts and cut him loose! Pretty awesome, I tried to sign some free agents as well and the same thing happened, so they recognize when you're trying to rebuild, which is pretty awesome.

Sorry for the great wall of text so far..

So year 2 hit and September came around and I see my rookies are progressing nicely, Virtanen was low 80's so that was nice. Throughout the second season I noticed my rookies gained overall points as they got more ice team. Virtanen started around 82 and ended up at the end of the year @ 86ish. Chychron started around 80 and at the end of the year he was an 87. Love the new progression system.

So when I do play a game, I play on Pro. I feel with NHL 15 when I played all-star or higher I wanted to break things. You could feel when the CPU was going to score, their goalie was God when he needed to be. They constantly cheated all the time. I hated it. So I play on Pro with a bunch of slider changes. Gameplay well I have played around 10 games. I feel a lot of the new improvements. When you have the cpu in their end you can feel momentum shift, they turn it over, make bad passes and you can keep the pressure on. It feels GREAT. But it can also happen to you. It does not always end in a goal, but maybe a goalie freeze or puck out of play after a save. Overall I dig the new features and added touches. I feel more immersion then ever, you can see the mascots ( I play on Dynamic High) I thought it would be cheesy but it actually helps bring me into that arena. I love what they have done with arena details. Playing at the United Center and scoring on the hawks, the faceoff after the crowd will scream LETS GO HAWKS! It creates such a fun atmosphere. I Agree with a lot of the penalty complaints. I usually get 1 PP a game. A nice added touch is the slider to make 4 on 4 play last a full 2 minutes.

so basically I love this years NHL game, I feel with some tweaks and adjustments which EA should make it will be a fun game.

TL;DR

Positives:
-Player Moral system is awesome
-Players reject contracts if they are in Win Now mode and you are not.
-Player progression system is awesome

Cons:
-more penalties
-$80 for a game!

So yeah those are my feelings right now. Sucks its going to cost me $80 CAD this year (which is complete bullcrap but I will save that for another day)

[Gbpackerowner]

Quote: Originally Posted by jyoung

The lack of stick physics isn't a bug, it's just a design decision. EA's designers have mentioned several times that they've tried turning on stick physics in their own internal tests, but none of their testers found it to be any fun.

Well how about they give us the ability to turn on the stick physics? I'm not interested in whether or not their testers thought it was "fun" I just want it to be realistic. I'll decide what's fun. Obviously the testers are not into providing a realistic offline hockey experience. And they are in Canada? Eh!

[gopher_guy]

Well, I didn't get NHL 15, so I am going to get 16. Just can't go two years without a hockey game.

What are penalties like? Does the CPU actually take penalties? I seem to remember from 13 and 14 that the CPU didn't provide many opportunities to go on the PP.

[MizzouRah]

Quote: Originally Posted by bad_philanthropy

Anyone still have access time played with the new tuner that supposedly increased penalties? If so, any impressions on how often penalties are occurring now? http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/10356002.page We have overwritten the default tuner with the latest so you won't see multiple versions at this point. These are the most recent changes: - Reduce shot accuracy a bit on pro difficulty - Increase AI reaction times and interception chances on rookie to make them a bit better - Coaching feedback tuning to make it easier to clear some tasks that were too difficult before. - Reduce the max speed that players can pickup shots/slap passes. This was feedback from the Beta that wasn't fully tuned before. - Increase chance of AI penalties in Offline modes. - Tuning around offside awareness for AI players - Enable line change HUD in pregame situations (intro NIS and faceoff) so that you can change strategies before puck drop

Played two games.. total of 2 penalties in each game.

[acelang123]

Heres some basic facts on where this franchise stands

The Dev team believes the gameplay experience is "good". They think they have improved commentary. They think they have added value by including more algorithms for things like emotion, performance, etc.

When NHL 07 was released for PS3, it was graphically better but the gameplay lacked. When NHL 08 released, it was a slightly improved version with gameplay issues. When NHL 09 released, there was a significant difference in gameplay and the feature set was improving. NHL 10 was the NEXUS of the franchise. Why? Great Gameplay, Great Feature Set, OK online play, Custom Sounds, and Improved Graphics. It was 4 years in the making. NHL 11 thru 14 were slight improvements year to year, which was fine, but it was time for a new generation of hockey.

One would have expected that the greatness of NHL 10 for PS3, which will live in hockey gaming lore with NHL 94 for SNES, NHL 00 for PS1, and NHL 06 for PS2, would have carried over into NHL 15 for PS4....but a wise gamer must realize, that history proves that the best iterations of the games (within console generations) come in year 4.

So NHL 18 is the future. NHL 16 and 17 will lack for what we expect, but it is NHL 18 that we can hope and pray will be as great as those previous 4th installments.

[BL8001]

Oh dear...

2 game test, so it's still early but...

I start the game as the team I do not want to be. Play 1 period. Switch sides to the team I want to be and all my cpu controlled players play smarter.

The first time I tested it I said no way, no way at all...

Second game where it worked again...

Edit: it is actually a 2 game and one period test. It started when I was home as the flyers vs the bruins, I went up 1-0 on a real nice goal, then I herded cats on D for the rest of period 1 and 2, giving up 4 straight goals. So 3rd period I thought hmm what happens If I switch teams? Well, I didn't have to herd cats using the Bruins because my D held shape and didnt skate away from threats (that is my biggest gripe with this game, your cpu controlled defenders will constantly wander away from threatening situations).
After being somewhat surprised I tested it two more times, experiencing the improved D and player behavior.

I guess in some way you are tricking the cpu into not handicapping you doing this.

[Therion7]

Quote: Originally Posted by bad_philanthropy

Anyone still have access time played with the new tuner that supposedly increased penalties? If so, any impressions on how often penalties are occurring now? http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/10356002.page We have overwritten the default tuner with the latest so you won't see multiple versions at this point. These are the most recent changes: - - Increase chance of AI penalties in Offline modes.

Was bracing myself for this issue to not be resolved but even the wording of that update from the devs is somewhat infuriating. There really should be no "chance" of AI penalties in a game. If the main Penalty slider's at zero, there's none. If the slider's at max... it's a goonfest! It needs to work like it used to - an actual controllable element of the game.


The game I was at last night was purely decided on PPs. 5 on 5, the teams were evenly matched. It's such a big thing for the NHL series to get consistently wrong.

Braehead Clan	3 / 9	8 min / 4 inf	3 G + 6 A = 9 Pts
Edinburgh Capitals	0 / 3	40 min / 12 inf	0 G + 0 A = 0 Pts

[Money99]

Quote: Originally Posted by BL8001

Oh dear... 2 game test, so it's still early but... I start the game as the team I do not want to be. Play 1 period. Switch sides to the team I want to be and all my cpu controlled players play smarter. The first time I tested it I said no way, no way at all... Second game where it worked again... Edit: it is actually a 2 game and one period test. It started when I was home as the flyers vs the bruins, I went up 1-0 on a real nice goal, then I herded cats on D for the rest of period 1 and 2, giving up 4 straight goals. So 3rd period I thought hmm what happens If I switch teams? Well, I didn't have to herd cats using the Bruins because my D held shape and didnt skate away from threats (that is my biggest gripe with this game, your cpu controlled defenders will constantly wander away from threatening situations). After being somewhat surprised I tested it two more times, experiencing the improved D and player behavior. I guess in some way you are tricking the cpu into not handicapping you doing this.

Hmmm, that's very strange. Were the scores similar every time you made the switch? Were you always losing at that point?

The defensive acumen of your CPU teammates has always been pathetic and I believe the AI is purposely programmed that way.
BAP was the mode that really shone a light on this. I wondered why every time I controlled the puck I’d get mugged and harassed, but when passing off to a teammate, they could skate unmolested into the slot and get off great scoring chances.
Just like when I’m in my defensive zone, I notice that my teammates won’t as much as cough on the man they’re covering.

I noticed the exact same things when I’d play with position lock. When I had the puck, the CPU went at me like I took their mother out for a nice seafood dinner and never called her again.
But, when one of my CPU controlled teammates had the puck, the defenders basically let them do whatever they wanted.

The only conclusion I came to was that this was programmed into the game purposely to make the offline CPU more competitive.
Imagine if your teammates attacked the CPU as much as they did the user? Its scoring chances would plummet.
The same thing would happen if the CPU was beholden to the same physics engine the user is. And now consider taking away boosts from the CPU and you basically don’t have an offline experience.
The AI is so poor, that there’s no way on earth the CPU would be able to generate any offense, or defense, without cheats and boosts.

Considering how small the team is, and the directive of the suits to focus mainly on offline, I’m not sure this will ever be addressed.

I know I’ve stated this several times in the past, but NHL07 wasn’t this way. There were distinctive player types and you noticed the varying skills from player to player.
Not only that, but this auto perfect pass, one-timer we see now (from both sides) didn’t exist either.
If the pass was off, the receiver didn’t get off a perfect, pin-point one-timer. An animation kicked in where the receiver had to make an extra effort to coral the puck, then move it to a favourable position in order to get a decent shot off.
Usually, it resulted in a weak back-hand or missed the net entirely.
This forced the user (AND CPU) to make sure a good playmaker had the puck so that a one-timer pass was more likely to be completed.
And as you moved up in difficulty, the CPU got smarter and didn’t receive boosts.
I distinctly remember Littman and Richards boasting about this time and time again. And it worked.

But then it all disappeared in NHL08. And I remember the producers saying they had to remove code because they had already ran out of room/resources with the 360/PS3 after adding new modes and features.
And that’s why they gave the CPU boosts in order to make it more competitive.

It’s a shame really. I think the team in charge for NHL07 had things going in a great direction, but obviously interference came from above and that’s when decisions were made to focus on micro-transaction modes and online.

I hate bashing on the game. Some really enjoy it and I’m genuinely happy for those people. Have at her and don’t let negative nelly’s like me ruin the experience.
I think I just need a break from the series. I’m probably going to get an alternate sports game this year to cleanse the pallet and come back for NHL17.