What do we have to do to get a good game?

[Oilers Apologist]

I know that the NFL completely destroys the NHL in terms of fans, revenue, etc, but I don't understand why the developers can't make a game half as good as Madden. We're a quarter way through the NHL season yet the CHL rosters have been the same since January of last year. Year after year the GM modes are the same crap from the year before (other than the enhanced trade block). In Be a pro 82 point seasons are a low point in your career. In Madden you can set the prices for freakin potato chips.

What can we do to get EA to give us a game that's just as good as Madden?

Click to read more...

 

[ThePsychicSaw]

Hire new team leads/product managers/ producers

Eliminate auto hits
Eliminate auto fight
Eliminate auto spins
Eliminate auto skate
Eliminate auto saves
Eliminate auto dekes
Eliminate auto saucers
Eliminate auto face-offs
Eliminate auto backskate
Eliminate auto shot blocks
Eliminate auto puck-control
Eliminate auto vision-control
Eliminate auto line-changes
Eliminate auto wrap-arounds
Eliminate auto stick-handling
Eliminate auto player selection
Eliminate auto aim on stick lifts
Eliminate auto aim on poke checks
Eliminate auto aim on shot attempts
Eliminate auto spinning when corralling a puck
Eliminate server lag
Eliminate faceoff loop
Eliminate net bubbles
Eliminate player bubbles
Eliminate goalie bubbles
Eliminate concrete skating
Eliminate useless attributes
Eliminate glide invulnerability
Eliminate decade present bugs
Eliminate decade present glitches
Eliminate halfbaked game modes
Eliminate net tie-up animation freezes
Eliminate puck-chop animation freezes
Eliminate board-play animation freezes
Eliminate player warping (unrealistic bursts of speed)
Eliminate button lag/lack of registry (If I press stick lift my player should stick lift period)
Eliminate unrealistic puck grabs (behind the back one handed 10 feet stretches through bodies)
Fix slap pass
Fix deke system
Fix game freezes
Fix menu efficiency
Fix match-up system
Fix attribute system
Fix pass interception
Fix puck physics (dead post, soccer puck)
Fix one-time system (make it manual and actually work fluidly and require skill)
Stop controlling when I want to skate
Stop controlling when I want to stick lift
Stop controlling when I want to shot block
Stop controlling when I want to deke
Stop controlling when I want to pass
Stop controlling when I want to make a save
Stop controlling when I want to intercept a puck
Stop controlling what type of shot block I want to do
Stop controlling me when I want to dump the puck
A.I. should engage like their player types
A.I. should take less penalties
A.I. should almost never go offsides
A.I. should manage offensive blue lines much better
A.I. should actually engage defensively instead of imitating backskating pylons
A.I. should not have different rules (no pass charge when users do/unrealistic speedboosts)
A.I. should not be line changing on odd-man breaks
A.I. should always change lines and not glitch out
A.I. goalies should adapt to repetitive shots
A.I. defenders should adapt to repetitive plays
Goalies should cover posts much better
Goalies need to be much less awkward with the puck
Goalies need to be much less awkward with skating
Goalies need to be much less awkward with passing
Goalies, that belong in the NHL, should almost never get beat on an unscreened flop shot attempt

Player differentiation
Bring back Vision control
Still skate while stickhandling
Player animations show when tired
Player attributes decrease when tired
Players tire when playing big minute games
Players need longer recovery when playing long shifts
Shots from the outside should require higher accuracy to hit
Your player should focus on the puck while stickhandling/dekeing with lower related stats
When focusing on the puck while stickhandling/dekeing the more susceptible you are to injuries
Should be able to absorb hits
Grinding out puck dump ins shouldn't be so awkward
Endurance should matter in fighting skating dekeing and shooting
It shouldn’t be Easier to get a SH than a PP goal, something code wise is broken
All dekes should be effective if done at the proper time in the proper way with the proper attributes
All dekes should be ineffective if done at the improper time in an improper way with improper stats
Give auto, cycle, and manual (RT + RS aim towards the player you wish to select ) options for player selection
Modified attributes relative to the injury in-game and out
Play through Injuries (more susceptible to becoming more severely injured)
Needs to police forums to allow for addressing product concerns
Encourage sportsmanship
Punish unsportsmanlike play
The “reward system” in this game does nothing but encourage bad play/sportsmanship while simultaneously discouraging good play/sportsmanship.
option to choose to shoot 1st or not in the shootout, as the home team

 

[x Tame Impala]

Psychic Saw, i legitimately don't like you, at all, but I agree with nearly everything you said and I don't think I've seen the bad things about EA NHL laid out so simply before. Fantastic post.


...still hate your guts though

 

[blueliner18]

Hire new team leads/product managers/ producers

Eliminate auto hits
Eliminate auto fight
Eliminate auto spins
Eliminate auto skate
Eliminate auto saves
Eliminate auto dekes
Eliminate auto saucers
Eliminate auto face-offs
Eliminate auto backskate
Eliminate auto shot blocks
Eliminate auto puck-control
Eliminate auto vision-control
Eliminate auto line-changes
Eliminate auto wrap-arounds
Eliminate auto stick-handling
Eliminate auto player selection
Eliminate auto aim on stick lifts
Eliminate auto aim on poke checks
Eliminate auto aim on shot attempts
Eliminate auto spinning when corralling a puck
Eliminate server lag
Eliminate faceoff loop
Eliminate net bubbles
Eliminate player bubbles
Eliminate goalie bubbles
Eliminate concrete skating
Eliminate useless attributes
Eliminate glide invulnerability
Eliminate decade present bugs
Eliminate decade present glitches
Eliminate halfbaked game modes
Eliminate net tie-up animation freezes
Eliminate puck-chop animation freezes
Eliminate board-play animation freezes
Eliminate player warping (unrealistic bursts of speed)
Eliminate button lag/lack of registry (If I press stick lift my player should stick lift period)
Eliminate unrealistic puck grabs (behind the back one handed 10 feet stretches through bodies)
Fix slap pass
Fix deke system
Fix game freezes
Fix menu efficiency
Fix match-up system
Fix attribute system
Fix pass interception
Fix puck physics (dead post, soccer puck)
Fix one-time system (make it manual and actually work fluidly and require skill)
Stop controlling when I want to skate
Stop controlling when I want to stick lift
Stop controlling when I want to shot block
Stop controlling when I want to deke
Stop controlling when I want to pass
Stop controlling when I want to make a save
Stop controlling when I want to intercept a puck
Stop controlling what type of shot block I want to do
Stop controlling me when I want to dump the puck
A.I. should engage like their player types
A.I. should take less penalties
A.I. should almost never go offsides
A.I. should manage offensive blue lines much better
A.I. should actually engage defensively instead of imitating backskating pylons
A.I. should not have different rules (no pass charge when users do/unrealistic speedboosts)
A.I. should not be line changing on odd-man breaks
A.I. should always change lines and not glitch out
A.I. goalies should adapt to repetitive shots
A.I. defenders should adapt to repetitive plays
Goalies should cover posts much better
Goalies need to be much less awkward with the puck
Goalies need to be much less awkward with skating
Goalies need to be much less awkward with passing
Goalies, that belong in the NHL, should almost never get beat on an unscreened flop shot attempt

Player differentiation
Bring back Vision control
Still skate while stickhandling
Player animations show when tired
Player attributes decrease when tired
Players tire when playing big minute games
Players need longer recovery when playing long shifts
Shots from the outside should require higher accuracy to hit
Your player should focus on the puck while stickhandling/dekeing with lower related stats
When focusing on the puck while stickhandling/dekeing the more susceptible you are to injuries
Should be able to absorb hits
Grinding out puck dump ins shouldn't be so awkward
Endurance should matter in fighting skating dekeing and shooting
It shouldn’t be Easier to get a SH than a PP goal, something code wise is broken
All dekes should be effective if done at the proper time in the proper way with the proper attributes
All dekes should be ineffective if done at the improper time in an improper way with improper stats
Give auto, cycle, and manual (RT + RS aim towards the player you wish to select ) options for player selection
Modified attributes relative to the injury in-game and out
Play through Injuries (more susceptible to becoming more severely injured)
Needs to police forums to allow for addressing product concerns
Encourage sportsmanship
Punish unsportsmanlike play
The “reward system†in this game does nothing but encourage bad play/sportsmanship while simultaneously discouraging good play/sportsmanship.
option to choose to shoot 1st or not in the shootout, as the home team

...all of this, totally agree! Cause that is what happens when you don't fix what has been broken over a 6 year period!!! The only thing I add... for goodness sakes please get Thorne and Clement out of the broadcast booth!!!! I guess that just goes along with making no improvements since 06'-07'. If you are going to overhype the "fixed physics engine" year after year... FIX IT!!! Player, stick, and (most of all) puck animations aren't even close to life like. Every poke check, magically to another opponents stick in the slot. Goalies kicking soft dumps right between the dots, inexcusable! AI players dumber than a sack of wet hammers. CPU walking invincibly out of the corners never losing control of the puck, almost constantly.

 

[blueliner18]

...by the way

PsychicSaw... awesome post!!! If someone would only give EA competition, perhaps we wouldn't have to deal with the same regurgitated throw up... year after year!!

 

[radapex]

Eliminate auto hits
Eliminate auto fight

These are the bane(s?) of my NHL14 existence!

I'd still LOVE to see them add persistent (multi game) injuries to EASHL. It'd make build creation much more critical since durability would suddenly become a useful attribute.

 

[blueliner18]

One last thing...

Sorry things keep popping in my brain... Please keep in mind I do not know a thing about coding... Why in the hell is it so difficult to get defensemen to act like defensemen on the offensive blueline (referencing AI)???? They never pinch, never hold the zone. Most of the time they are standing on the redline as soon as the opposing team gets possession in the corner. AI is a game wide problem though, this is just an instance that has bothered me for years. Also I cannot ever recall an AI player actually backchecking the opposing team. They kind of just coast around in there little AI worlds. Kinda like the kid on your PeeWee team who was always messing around in the corner when it was his turn to participate in a flow drill.

 

[DonskoiDonscored]

Can we have a live the life like nba 2k14 and in be a gm mode perhaps show the drafting in cinematics? Stop with this hitting crap, martin st louis can bulldoze chara for christs sake. The ai is always offside because the game expects you to dump and chase, so remove that please

 

[NeedleInTheHay]

Get 2K sports to make it

 

[blueliner18]

Stop with silly modes and fix gameplay and AI

If I wanted to play NHL94 I'd blow the ten inches of dust off of my Sega Genesis in the attic. Why would I want a current generation of hardware to play a game that is 20 years old?? Fix the core game!!! Passing is horrible. Puck physics, horrible. CPU controlled AI, horrible. For goodness sake trash the "ice tilt" coding. If you want to make the game challenging you can start by coding the AI defenders to be a little more, well...defensive, and a little less like orange pylons. This game boasts to be sim, but it is truely very very far from it. The only thing that EA has done right with the current gen of NHL games, the "skill stick". Goalies are still way to "canned" and do not adapt to different situations, and as a result wristers from the red line go in, the backdoor onetimer is a for sure miraculous save. EA has to figure out how to make better boards play offensively and defensively. Most offense in the NHL originates from the corners, yes goals are scored on the rush, but not EVERY GOAL. On the defensive side it is near impossible to stop a forward going to the net when he walks out of the corner, if you line up the perfect hit, they simply shrug it off or lose possession for a second and the puck magnitizes right back to their stick. I am just really hoping for a completely different game from the foundation up for the first next gen offering of NHL15. EA lost me during the second generation of consoles (2k was night and day better), but since their is no other NHL game on the market I've been stuck with EA since 2009. Play Now, Season, Online, and GM those are the only modes we need. I hate "Be a Pro" or "Live the Life" or whatever they call it now, why?, because it has felt broken ever since it was introduced. Just like every other mode EA introduces, they never refine them!!! They always introduce some other gimmick and leave previous mode half broken and unplayable. Sorry for the long rant, but as a die hard fan and player of the game I expect a good experience when I pay $60 to play NHL every year. I just don't want roster updates and the same old broken AI garbage that has plagued previous games.

 

[jace29]

every year its just the same thing. it doesnt feel at all like playing hockey. Nothing looks very realistic. why did they spend this last year making hits way bigger instead of way realistic-er? for example, the shooting animation has been the same forever, and its terrible. look at it on replay, it doesnt roll off the stick at all it just lifts up while the stick moves forward. or a player will get a pass behind their back, and shoot from that position, it looks so unrealistic. the ai is awful, there is no such thing as a breakout in this game, nor organized forechecks. gm mode ai is awful also, trading is terrible, as is player progression, and drafting. basically it feels like EA is very lazy, and hopefully by the time i buy an nhl game in like 3 years they will make a decent game.

 

[Sic Snake]

The auto-fights have got to go. At the very least, significantly reduce their occurrence.

 

[Jets]

when dump ins were made to bounce like a tennis ball I thought that it was a major flaw with the update they made and that a patch would be released the next day or two to fix it as it isn't even remotely close to hockey... I can no longer remember the update that added the puck "bounce" and it is still present in the game.