Be a Pro Mode

[tacogeoff]

I should probably turn the difficulty up to the hardest but I started my be a pro career (nhl17) a few months ago and on the setting just below the hardest.

Center 6'2 219 pound sniper. Played on the Wheatkings and was top scorer in the Memorial cup tourney. drafted 1st overall by the Leafs. Had a great pre season and made the 2nd line. finished the season with 44pts (simed 3/4 of season), on the 3rd line and won the calder and ended at 78 overall.

during the season and off season I primarily worked on Wrist shot, passing, skating, stickhandling and offensive awareness.

2nd season I finished with 96 pts on the first line and we lost the Stanley cup finals (won Hart, Lindsay and Art Ross). ended up after the offseason as 81 overall. (simmed about half the season)

Not sure if I am going to do a third season or just restart on the highest difficulaty.

 

[Saitama]

I used to play HUT and I would spend some money now and then on special packs but I refuse to play it or pay a cent until they do something with BaP. If you're going to neglect the non-microtransaction portions of your game, I'm not going to spend my money.

 

[MikeyDee]

What’s with coach’s obsession with one skill during training? Seriously, two years in juniors and first preseason in the NHL, and they’ve focused on slapshot training every week.

I'm assuming that you don't bump up your slapshot skill during training yourself and/or you don't take many slapshots to increase the skill level or you really suck at slapshots in games and either miss, shot block, bad aim, etc.

 

[Nickmo82]

This game mode is pretty pathetic, especially when compared to other sports games on the market.

Things I've encountered to back it up:

Started a goalie career to try a different angle. Won memorial cup and got drafted by St Louis. Okay so far.

I got "offered" my ELC. Great... except there was nothing but an onscreen text message about it. Fun! So immersive!

I was pretty lousy during pre-season (sv% of .850, GAA around 2.95...), but they kept me on the roster... hm? I get to be a back up and play maybe 30 games. Yay! Great for my development no doubt. I'd have preferred to go back to the minors/juniors... and probably should have done given my numbers.

Sat out first two games and made my debut against the Islanders. Announcers make zero reference to it being my NHL debut. More immersion! Isles scored on me early but it was ruled goalie interference, but the Isles fans still did the whole "Yes! Yes! Yes!" chant at 0-0 - good job EA!

Having to sit and watch your team's AI play is soooo bad. They get stuck in a passing loop 4 or 5 times again, where they just pass it around the zone for a good minute with no purpose. Tarasenko skated right through the slot WITH the puck, completely open, and didn't shoot.

The opposing AI does the same thing every time they get the puck. Pass to a winger. Enter zone unmolested. Curl back and pass to a teammate. Try and shoot. Every time.

So what is there to keep the mode fresh and interesting? I'm already in the NHL as of D+1. There is nothing to do but game by game grind.

"Training" is chosing numbers on a screen. There's no team/agent/coach/GM interaction at all, outside of the little updates your agent gives you.

It's pretty f***ing dull.

How hard would it be to have ANY features in this mode? Anything!?

 

[Nickmo82]

Also: my goal support from my team through 2 starts - 0 GF.

You can get absolutely torched by a team, and only get pulled with 5 minutes left in the third...

Game is f***ing awful.

 

[plaaplaa72]

How does the game calculate giveaways? I'm getting a shit ton of giveaways with my forward.

An opposing player intercepting a pass counts as a giveaway, i would guess? But does dumping the puck in count? Clearing the puck on a PK? Someone checking you off the puck and taking it?

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

How do you complete the "cover the point" defensive task and get the game to actually register that you've done it??

I'm playing as a LW sniper.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

How do you complete the "cover the point" defensive task and get the game to actually register that you've done it??

I'm playing as a LW sniper.

Finally did it but it took a lot longer to register than that task did in nhl 16

 

[VLU5]

Also: my goal support from my team through 2 starts - 0 GF.

You can get absolutely torched by a team, and only get pulled with 5 minutes left in the third...

Game is ****ing awful.

I started a goalie career for the first time in my life even though I've been playing BAP for at least five years now. I turns out I like playing as a goalie and watching the AI play is better now than it has been before. My team also scored 3-5 goals per game so I had no problems with that. Everything else though..I was absolutely horrible in pre-season. Got pulled in 4 out of 7 games with just awful stats. I still made the team and got absolutely killed in every game I played and the coach just bumped up my starts saying I was good even though I had made my team a lottery team. Finally just got frustrated and started simming games hoping I would be sent down. Must have simmed 50 games until I finally was sent down and there were only three games left of the AHL season when I got there.

I get it that kids want an easier game but I seriously think it should be at least a configurable setting how demanding my coach is. That goes also for playing as a skater. Many times I've just wanted to develop my guy in AHL or juniors but I'm forced to play in the NHL

 

[King Weber]

playing NHL 14's live the life as a goalie and my coach expects me to play in 124 games this season.

problem of course being that there's only 68 games in the season since I'm in the QMJHL.

 

[teravaineSAROS]

This game mode is pretty pathetic, especially when compared to other sports games on the market.

Things I've encountered to back it up:

Started a goalie career to try a different angle. Won memorial cup and got drafted by St Louis. Okay so far.

I got "offered" my ELC. Great... except there was nothing but an onscreen text message about it. Fun! So immersive!

I was pretty lousy during pre-season (sv% of .850, GAA around 2.95...), but they kept me on the roster... hm? I get to be a back up and play maybe 30 games. Yay! Great for my development no doubt. I'd have preferred to go back to the minors/juniors... and probably should have done given my numbers.

Sat out first two games and made my debut against the Islanders. Announcers make zero reference to it being my NHL debut. More immersion! Isles scored on me early but it was ruled goalie interference, but the Isles fans still did the whole "Yes! Yes! Yes!" chant at 0-0 - good job EA!

Having to sit and watch your team's AI play is soooo bad. They get stuck in a passing loop 4 or 5 times again, where they just pass it around the zone for a good minute with no purpose. Tarasenko skated right through the slot WITH the puck, completely open, and didn't shoot.

The opposing AI does the same thing every time they get the puck. Pass to a winger. Enter zone unmolested. Curl back and pass to a teammate. Try and shoot. Every time.

So what is there to keep the mode fresh and interesting? I'm already in the NHL as of D+1. There is nothing to do but game by game grind.

"Training" is chosing numbers on a screen. There's no team/agent/coach/GM interaction at all, outside of the little updates your agent gives you.

It's pretty ****ing dull.

How hard would it be to have ANY features in this mode? Anything!?

I appreciate the honesty in your post. Most people would blame the game for giving them .850

 

[Nickmo82]

playing NHL 14's live the life as a goalie and my coach expects me to play in 124 games this season.

problem of course being that there's only 68 games in the season since I'm in the QMJHL.

Quit bitching and get it done!

 

[JBose7]

I hate you can't pick a attribute that you excell in to start. Like why can't you be a great skater but limited with skill? Or physically gifted with strength but no skill? Or lots of skill with bad skating? Why is every prospect you make limited in the same things as if no Conner McDavid or Sidney Crosby or John Taveres didn't have a special talent. Even if you make it so we have to play to earn points at least use eashl to give us more skill points to apply to be a pro like nba 2k does....sheez.... im just tired of starting with a 73 speed smh

 

[Lyons71]

Warning: rant

The mode is major babysitting no matter what position you choose. In the dzone as a dman, your forwards refuse to cover the point. They sit in no mans land forcing me to cover everything, and I just end up sitting in the slot hoping to get the puck eventually. Also, when on 2-on-1s, the other player will full-stop at the faceoff circle instead of charging the far post like they’re supposed to.

At least this year they fixed the glitch where a player would abandon play to change and then you jump on the ice right when a goal against is scored. That was annoying.

The mode needs an overhaul. I don’t feel any difference between be a pro and regular game modes, other than teammates being more frustrating because I can’t control them. I want to play in the world juniors, World Cup, world championship and all star games. I want the player’s perspective. It seems so relatively easy to insert these things.

If they won’t fix the gameplay a terrible Least fix the broken training and off-ice things. My player takes 6 seasons to get his discipline up to 80. Ridiculous. I hate that I get +4 for a dzone recovery and a -10 for a offensive zone giveaway.

The mode has so much possibility.

 

[WhyteAveJesus]

Starting up a goalie BaP, hopefully get a good chunk of career done before NHL 19. Can't wait to deal with how bad it is currently

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

How do you complete the "cover the point" defensive task and get the game to actually register that you've done it??

I'm playing as a LW power forward and still haven't managed to get one checkmark for this task despite being halfway through my second season.

WTF....

 

[Panthaz89]

Warning: rant

The mode is major babysitting no matter what position you choose. In the dzone as a dman, your forwards refuse to cover the point. They sit in no mans land forcing me to cover everything, and I just end up sitting in the slot hoping to get the puck eventually. Also, when on 2-on-1s, the other player will full-stop at the faceoff circle instead of charging the far post like they’re supposed to.

At least this year they fixed the glitch where a player would abandon play to change and then you jump on the ice right when a goal against is scored. That was annoying.

The mode needs an overhaul. I don’t feel any difference between be a pro and regular game modes, other than teammates being more frustrating because I can’t control them. I want to play in the world juniors, World Cup, world championship and all star games. I want the player’s perspective. It seems so relatively easy to insert these things.

If they won’t fix the gameplay a terrible Least fix the broken training and off-ice things. My player takes 6 seasons to get his discipline up to 80. Ridiculous. I hate that I get +4 for a dzone recovery and a -10 for a offensive zone giveaway.

The mode has so much possibility.

On pro the AIs are actually even but then its too easy while they made all pro in NHL 18 which was what I used to play on in 17 too frustrating to play. Its fine if the AIs play more aggressive but the puck gets stolen or magically deflected anytime you are near a player while the AIs on your team are stupid and fling the puck around the boards and give it away like idiots. Superstar you might as well just forget about it when the AI are throwing around 100 mph passes and receive them all the time while you are having a hard time getting your guy to grab a loose puck. Also the AIs on the other team get up in less than half a second while guys on your team take 3 seconds to recover. The game seriously needs more ways to individualize player skills why couldn't they make things like the 3v3 circuit where players could have medals like "great hands" bronze,silver,gold,plat version so now overalls aren't the only thing that matters and now you could use your contract pay to upgrade your character so you have possible other incentive other than to just request a trade to your favorite or ideal team if a team wants to pay you more. I'll probably pop up the difficulty back to all pro since my guy is ridiculous from putting up gretzsky numbers in the juniors and I ended up being picked 1st by the Canes who are absolutely stacked except at center which was where I filled in at and Darling is somehow an 89 overall.

 

[danielpalfredsson]

I get the impression that EA doesn't even play test their modes to see if they are fun.

I haven't played much of Be A Pro throughout the years, so I am playing it now. I finished the Memorial Cup and was drafted (By the Maple Leafs, FML), so I am simming to the NHL season. I've had to choose my training about a dozen times so far. Basically, stop what I am doing, spend 30 seconds clicking 4 or 5 buttons. It becomes tedious. Why can't they have a feature that lets someone distribute their training time in one big chunk prior to the start of the season? IE 10 percent of training time on Power Skating, 15 percent on this, etc. That way, the game could just sim it to the players liking. It seems like they either don't care, or don't play these modes to test them, because this is the first thing that pops out to me. I could auto-assign the training so that it sims, but why play then? If I do that, I'm leaving it up to the computer to choose what I train.

There's other criticisms, like how lame the draft is. It completely fails to capture any drama related to being a prospect in the NHL draft, but that is a different type of criticism. That would require time, effort, and vision to fix. My criticism above about allowing people to auto-set their training before each season is simple UI.

It's similar with scouting in Franchise/Be A GM mode. Have they not played the mode and seen how annoying it is to have a popup every six weeks? I don't even think they understand that a big part of the user base sim through entire seasons at a time, or huge chunks of seasons at a time. All these years since NHL 13, why couldn't I have just set my scouting at the start of the season, IE I want 10 percent of the time spent on WHL Goalies, 20 percent on WHL Forwards, 15 on OHL forwards, etc. They've now upgraded scouting (for the first time in five years) so this suggestion may not be applicable anymore since it may not work with their new system.

I'm convinced EA doesn't play these modes, or at least, doesn't play them enough to test them. There are so many issues that come up in GM mode 5-10 years down the line such as almost every team mismanaging their cap and allowing superstars to leak to UFA that almost no other team can sign due to also mismanaging their cap. Prospects growing limitlessly in skating+shot which completely ruins any realistic playability of the game since speed and shooting are such important stats in playing regardless of whether everything else on a prospect is mediocre. (It's why Grabner is a beastly 30-40 goal scorer to play with if you start a year 1 franchise mode despite having fairly pedestrian attributes other than skating).

 

[Finnhockeyfann]

I think this mode need completely overhaul. Its way too stagnant. Without injuries team roster and lines are same whole season.. Coach should mix lines if team plays badly. Get someone form farm etc. Its just get so boring fast.

 

[Chimpradamus]

Do NOT play this mode. It's useless, garbage and generally pathetic in basically every way and every "improvement" they've done has turned it worse for about 5 years in a row. It's about 2 decades behind actual career modes as a single player.

Believe me. Just stop trying. You would get more satisfaction writing a badly written fan fiction story by yourself about a fictional career instead - and you would save the money from buying this piece of crap.

I will never buy another EA NHL game ever again until they actually put some resemblance of an effort fixing this broken shit mode. According to my calculations and evaluations of EA, that will never happen.

If I would list all the problems with trying to enjoy - or even play - Be a pro, the blatant flaws and errors would cover an entire forum page. It's one thing your teammates behave like it's the first time they ever try skating in their lives, every game, it's a whole other all the aspects of the f***ing mode are so ridiculously bad, it baffles your mind.

Three decades of developing hockey games and this is what they've got? Then you certainly know the corporate profit is a whole lot more important than the actual quality and development of the product. EA is abysmal and a detriment to all games they touch. They're the Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan of the gaming industry, utter mafia assholes.

 

[VLU5]

I'm 10 games in in my BAP career and here's some of my first impressions:
- Not too much has changed except for the new trait system in the game mode itself.
- The new trait system seems decent enough. This mode needs depth desperately and at least this is a step forward
- The new skating enables you and your teammates to cycle the puck better and so far I've been enjoying playing
- This might be due to only having played 10 games but to me it seems that they might have increased scoring in CHL. As I said there's 10 games played on the season and 20+ players over point per game. To me it has always been frustrating that even 80OVR players have struggled scoring at point per game pace in CHL.
- I hate the new animations in the menus. They are slow and unnecessary. I hate to think that they've wasted their time in such nonsense. Especially the screen where you have to confirm each player training session is frustratingly slow as you have to wait until the animation finishes before you can confirm your training selection.

 

[Beauner]

It's actually embarassing that EA puts this out as their be a pro when you have games like 2K and The Show out there with quality options. NHL's version of this mode is a joke

 

[Chimpradamus]

It's actually embarassing that EA puts this out as their be a pro when you have games like 2K and The Show out there with quality options. NHL's version of this mode is a joke

It's essentially like running an operating system in safe mode to find out what went wrong. Bare bone everything, no features, less information, no decision making, no communication with anyone, just nothing to do except playing the next shift. And they've regressed this mode, not improved it over the years. The training system is broken, but they insist on using it. No, I should stop now, otherwise I'll be here all day.

I don't know why they keep having this "play mode", when it just makes you angry that it's even there. A big joke indeed.

 

[Matt UK]

hmm, was gonna give this a go but having read this, I'll give it a miss!

 

[Gardner McKay]

It's actually embarassing that EA puts this out as their be a pro when you have games like 2K and The Show out there with quality options. NHL's version of this mode is a joke

Here is the thing, they don't need a ton of production value or a big budget to make BAP that much better.