Apparently "ice tilt" is real? Documents showing dynamic difficulty is a thing

x Tame Impala

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Superior players are not going to keep playing the game if they're dominating their opponents every game

Not even a little true. I've been top 100 in HUT for NHL 13-15 and highly ranked in Halo and COD (super cool, I know). Once you're elite at something you want to either stay there or get better. There's no "well I'm already good at this so I'll just stop".
 

Kestrel

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Jan 30, 2005
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Not even a little true. I've been top 100 in HUT for NHL 13-15 and highly ranked in Halo and COD (super cool, I know). Once you're elite at something you want to either stay there or get better. There's no "well I'm already good at this so I'll just stop".
I think the obvious answer is that if you've been top 100, it's entirely true, that if the top players stuck around, you'd never get a sniff of the top 100 ;) And no, I'm just giving you a hard time, but I would think the truth actually lies somewhere in the middle... sure, a number of elite players will just keep on playing - but to say that none of the elite players quit when they feel unchallenged is likely untrue too.
 

JaegerDice

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Dec 26, 2014
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I'm neither shocked nor offended that this feature exists.

Ideally, if there's a ranked matchmaking mode for NHL (I honestly barely play, and only locally with friends), then this feature should be disabled for it. But for unranked matchmaking where they want every match to be close and fun, I have no problem with it. Playing a lop-sided game of hockey is roughly as fun as watching one... which is to say, it's boring as hell.

Not even a little true. I've been top 100 in HUT for NHL 13-15 and highly ranked in Halo and COD (super cool, I know). Once you're elite at something you want to either stay there or get better. There's no "well I'm already good at this so I'll just stop".

I'm highly ranked in Halo (3, Reach and 5... skipped 4 cause it's poo) and both TitanFall games and I definitely just stopped playing after the challenge broke down. The incidence rate of matching up with similarly or higher skilled players just became too infrequent, and ultimately I looked to other games for that satisfying feeling of improving (not even necessarily pvp games, Destiny and Division PVE sucked a lot of time too). Obviously you still jump in with friends when they shoot you an invite, but the hours upon hours of trying to improve gave way to kind of half-paying-attention stompings, and it just wasnt satisfying anymore. Maybe if I were a pro twitch streamer I'd keep it up cause there would be revenue attached, but when you've only got so many hours in the day to play games, just beating up on people in lop-sided victories isn't fun.
 
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Rodgerwilco

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Not even a little true. I've been top 100 in HUT for NHL 13-15 and highly ranked in Halo and COD (super cool, I know). Once you're elite at something you want to either stay there or get better. There's no "well I'm already good at this so I'll just stop".
Do you think that maybe there might be people who are not wired the same as you or that this is just a general statement? Also, this doesn't necessarily apply to HUT, which requires people to invest into building your team...

Did you even read the article or are you just nit-picking me? lol

Edit: Also, not everyone enjoys playing games online, if you're talking about a game like NHL off-line, once you get so good even Superstar mode is boringly easy. Manually adjust sliders in-game (annoying) or Dynamic Difficulty are the only ways to create a challenge, albeit artificially. Any seasoned NHL player can tell almost immediately when Dynamic Difficulty has made a change.
 
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Rodgerwilco

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That's what the gameplay sliders are for, no? Tweak it to your heart's content and, if there's no ice tilt to bugger it up, bingo. Balance.
Except there's no way to do this live in-game to even up the "difficulty" of the game, particularly during online play.
 

x Tame Impala

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Do you think that maybe there might be people who are not wired the same as you or that this is just a general statement? Also, this doesn't necessarily apply to HUT, which requires people to invest into building your team...

Did you even read the article or are you just nit-picking me? lol

Edit: Also, not everyone enjoys playing games online, if you're talking about a game like NHL off-line, once you get so good even Superstar mode is boringly easy. Manually adjust sliders in-game (annoying) or Dynamic Difficulty are the only ways to create a challenge, albeit artificially. Any seasoned NHL player can tell almost immediately when Dynamic Difficulty has made a change.

You said...

"Superior players are not going to keep playing the game if they're dominating their opponents every game"

...I'm not nitpicking. I exclusively play offline now but from my online experience the last 8 years (4 with HUT) MOST players will try to get into the top 100...then top 50...then top 20...then top 10...so on and so forth. The motivation in continuing to play comes from climbing the ranks
 

Rodgerwilco

Entertainment boards w/ some Hockey mixed in.
Feb 6, 2014
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You said...

"Superior players are not going to keep playing the game if they're dominating their opponents every game"

...I'm not nitpicking. I exclusively play offline now but from my online experience the last 8 years (4 with HUT) MOST players will try to get into the top 100...then top 50...then top 20...then top 10...so on and so forth. The motivation in continuing to play comes from climbing the ranks
I didn't say I agreed with this. However, this is the reasoning that THEY are using for the dynamic difficulty. They are attempting to maximize engagement by keeping superior players from getting bored by artificially making it more difficult and to keep inferior players from getting frustrated/discouraged. I'm not sure how you can assert that MOST players aspire to get into the top 100, that is definitely not the goal of most players, ESPECIALLY casuals. The people within the top 100 are not indicative of the player base.

It's not that someone will stop playing the game altogether with the conscious thought of "well, I'm too good so I won't play this anymore" it's that they won't play as much as they would otherwise. You also have to consider that every NHL game that we've played since Dynamic Difficulty was introduced has had this feature, so it's impossible to say what kind of level of engagement players would have without it.

Again, did you even read the article? lol
 

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