NHL 11 - Catch-All

So I spent some time with my UHL team tonight, and I'm just about sold. I think it is eventually going to cost me some cash on packs. But I was even willing to pay for this mode when it was Madden's, except that the using cash destroyed the strategic element of the game. But EA Canada has done an amazing job of not only creating a much deeper strategic game than the Madden version, but has introduced a salary cap that is going to keep some balance no matter how much one guy might spend vs. another.

I'm still going to have to see how the numbers bear out, but I don't think it is going to cost more than a couple of bucks to build up my team. But the strategy is all there.

I have Brad Boyes as my elite NHL guy that was gifted as part of playing the demo. Very cool that it is a Blue. He is an 83 rated guy that get can get up to 89, and I can use up to three training cards on him. He is under contract for 8 games before I have to use a contract card on him. His lifespan will be 75 games. He's no Sydney Crosby, but I can build around him, and hope I pick up another star or two.

Most of my players are minor leaguers from various leagues around the world. The younger they are the more games they can play. Some are rated in the 60's, but can be upgraded to the upper 70's, or even low 80's. These guys have sometimes as many as 10 training cards that can be used on them. The lower they are rated, the lower their salary. Boyes costs almost 1200, while some are as low as 600. My team is right around 16,000 right now, and the cap is 25,000.

Throw in the the ability to mix guys and boost chemistry by having guys from the same league (or even more chemistry of they are from the same team), as well as keeping lines mixed with a variety of player types, and it gets really intersting. Using the same player types on one line decreases chemistry.

But it gets even deeper. I can get coach cards that improve specific traits on my team, to make them better skaters, hitters, scorers, and other stuff. I can choose a wide international rink for a fast skill based team, or the smaller NHL rink if I build a bigger, more physical team. But the fun part is experimenting and seeing what you come up with.

You also get cards that give you different uniforms and logos. My team name is the Phog, in honor of the late great Kansas basketball coach Phog Allen. So I will find some Crimson and Blue uniforms and logo to go with it.

There is enough here that I will probably never touch the GM mode. But I will still learn about up and coming prospects as well as players from around the league. It's just loaded to the gills with fun. If only i could set-up private matches with my team against people on my friends list, it would be perfect. I know that in Madden that folks had luck with linking up with someone hand hitting the button to find a game at the same time. So maybe it will still be possible.

Okay, I won a HUT offline game. It was fun :). I admit, I'm a shmoe with chemistry and contracts so I will likely lose a lot and end up with no players... but it could be a fun diversion.

Here's a goal I dig. I could see my forward moving with a purpose so I figured I'd go for a homerun pass off the end boards like Stillman used to connect with Cole. Whatdya know, it worked!

I saw this posted over at OS. Talk about, "If it's in the game..."

Just had funny moment happen to me and some buds during some EASHL games tonight. Some guy on the other team was hitting people like crazy. Well, he absolutely hammered this guy into the boards and got called for hitting from behind. The funny thing was, he got a game misconduct and literally got kicked out of the game.

God I love this game :)

Seriously, EA Canada have taken the mantle as best sport game developers, ever.

Jayhawker wrote:

I saw this posted over at OS. Talk about, "If it's in the game..."

Just had funny moment happen to me and some buds during some EASHL games tonight. Some guy on the other team was hitting people like crazy. Well, he absolutely hammered this guy into the boards and got called for hitting from behind. The funny thing was, he got a game misconduct and literally got kicked out of the game.

God I love this game :)

Seriously, EA Canada have taken the mantle as best sport game developers, ever.

HAH! That's classic.

For Psycho, here's Semin's "fight" I referenced during our game.

Jayhawker wrote:

I saw this posted over at OS. Talk about, "If it's in the game..."

Just had funny moment happen to me and some buds during some EASHL games tonight. Some guy on the other team was hitting people like crazy. Well, he absolutely hammered this guy into the boards and got called for hitting from behind. The funny thing was, he got a game misconduct and literally got kicked out of the game.

God I love this game :)

Seriously, EA Canada have taken the mantle as best sport game developers, ever.

That. Is Awesome. Still having a blast with the game. Only stupid work interrupting me from playing it. Still outshooting the CPU by a lot though. I might up the difficulty level one more notch to see if that changes things. Awaiting Bill Harris slider set...

magnus wrote:

Still outshooting the CPU by a lot though.

Odd, I'm not, and I'm on Pro. I'm not throwing a whole lot of rubber at the net. Maybe I'm trying to get too cute. The CPU is quite good at shot blocking me, though. I know I outshot the CPU last year.

Then again, maybe I'm just old and slow. That's likely.

ColdForged wrote:

Donkey Konga fight

Haha! He's doing it wrong!

ColdForged wrote:

Then again, maybe I'm just old and slow. That's likely.

We may need to test that theory online. I'm taking a football break tonight, but will be playing most of the afternoon / evening tomorrow and then be on the couch the rest of the weekend thanks to a perfectly scheduled minor surgery.

I just had an "uh-oh" while playing HUT. First, I started up an online game that crashed out before the drop of the puck. But no player contacts were reduced. No harm, no foul.

So instead of going back online, I decided to play an offline game instead, and kicked it up to All-Star to see how many extra pucks i could manage. But when I got to the opening face off, my guy was lined up agains t one of my own players, facing backwards. Then, after the puck dropped, players started disappearing until there were just two guys left for each team, and no one would go after the puck, and I couldn't control any players. It also got progressively laggier and laggier. I let re-drop the puck over and over for the first period, in order to avoid a early quit penalty.

The second period started the same way, except it didn't lag out, and players didn't disappear. I still faced off against one of my my players facing the wrong way, and morphed into the opponent. But someone did disappear. I was wrong. And it was my goalie. I had to quit the game after the CPU fired in his third empty net goal.

So now I have lost a game on each player's contract. I had just bought a 2500 puck pack and picked up another 80 rated winger, added Boyes to my line-up and was ready to go with a decent team.

So it really annoys me that the game's hiccup can cost me. That is a lot of games it just ate up, if you run the numbers on hoe many cards wit would take to replenish that number of games. If it is a one time thing, it's no big deal. But it just decreased the odds I will plunk any of my cash into playing.

But my team is getting better, and I'm looking forward to continuing. I'm really hoping it was just a fluke. I've seen zero reports of anything like this.

I didn't get to play last night.

TheCounselor wrote:

I didn't get to play last night. :-(

Ditto. I'm jonesing!

Well, the HUT issue I had yesterday seem to be a full blown problem. I've seen several reports of it on the EA forums. I posted it to the OS Bug thread, and soneone had seen it there.

So far, it seems to be an issue with adding players from purchased packs. I've seen that I could get rid of the offending goalie, and it will correct. Since every time I try to see if something works I lose games on player contracts, I'm done until EA fixes this. I'm really, really bummed.

But I made up for it with a nice 2-1 win over the Stars this morning. Boyes had two goals, Brewer two assists. I should have had an empty net goal to finish it off but got cute and tried to pass it around to cherry pick the guy I wanted to pick up the easy goal. Dallas took the puck and darn near scored a tying goal with a bout three shots at the end. I so would have deserved to lose in OT for that.

HUT bugs and all, this game owns my soul.

Jayhawker wrote:

this game owns my soul.

Yep. Online and off. Played my first two online games vs. Jayhawker just now.

magnus wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

this game owns my soul.

Yep. Online and off. Played my first two online games vs. Jayhawker just now. :)

Two good games. In the first, I held my own and beat his Maple Leafs with my Blues by the slight score of 1-0. But one goal was a beauty. We were pretty even in shots, which were pretty low.

In the second, Mag selected Detroit, and it was not so close. I gave up a goal on a penalty shot, playing as the goalie. Then I punched a goal into my own net to go down 2-0. then it was on. He scored a variety of goals on his way to a 5-0 (or was it six?) win. He outshot me by about 50-2. Good, good games, though.

I apologize if I'm being a filthy skimmer, but I have a question to ask that's pertinent to me buying this game soon, possibly. Did EA fracture the "Be a Pro" again with paid progression? I remember hearing people complain about that and I was wondering if DLC broke that mode again this year.

Well, you can still buy boosts and such. The upside is they no longer make you wear silly looking equipment to improve your player. But I have no even touched the mode, so I don't know if they continued making the progression so long that it sucks the fun out. I know a ton love Be a Pro and the EASHL in 09 that pretty much gave up on it in 10. so maybe the improved it.

But I will say that their Ultimate Team mode is fantastic, and something I can see you liking. Yes, it also has DLC available to improve your team like in Madden, but they have added many features that make the game fun even if you never spend a dime. But what I like about it is the same thing that made me like APFB so much. I have a team that truly feels like it is mine.

There is a reasonable salary cap, so you are not facing insane all-star teams like in Madden Ultimate Team. But what is really fun is arranging your players, training the ones you want to keep up, and a very reasonable contract and lifespan system.

Each player has a potential and anywhere from one to ten slots that you can use cards on to train, with younger players having more than vets. Each training card will boost a particular rating from one to ten points. Older players may have lifespans of 55 games, while younger players have as many as 160 games, so affects who you want to invest in.

Further, not only do you improve team and line chemistry by arranging lines with player in proper positions, but you can boost it more by using guys from the same league, or for a bigger boost, the same team on the same line. And you are selecting players from all of the leagues that were in the game before, and the new CHL. you will start with a team of mostly minor league and european players, and build up to more NHL players.

But when you play online, there is not the same discrepancy in teams. You really can't spend your way up to an elite team because the salary cap forces you to still make decisions on who to keep. My team had a cap hit of about 15K, while the cap is just 25K. Right now, I'm sitting on a few NHL guys that I will roll out together after earning more pucks to buy the better packs.

You can get the cheapest pack, which is six cards of players, coaches, and consumables for 600 pucks, which can be had in one game, and easily two games. you can't use cash for these packs. The larger packs are 2500 and 7500 pucks, or $1 and $2. Not only do you get more cards, you have a higher number of "rare" cards guaranteed, and a chance for extras. The rare cards are basically NHL stars, longterm contract, and the biggest training cards. there are also cards for head coaches, logos, and jerseys that you can use to customize your team.

So far, online play has been pretty reasonable. I've been in very game but one. of course this highlights the absolute best thing about NHL 11, and that is the absolutely improved gameplay. The twitch kids and glitchers are not happy with the online play at all. While some people claim that glitch goals are in, it appears that they really aren't. I had one kid doing all kinds of tricks and spins trying to glitch goals in, to no avail. You can't spam the poke check. Passing and moving the puck is very deliberate.

it's a game, so someone will figure out what the vulnerabilities are. But online play has been a blast so far. And there are plenty of Goodjers online playing now, as I've had pick up games with a few already. And the offline play is just as much fun.

I've thought about training my Pro up and seeing if we could get some team games going, but HUT is pretty much taking up 90% of my time with this game. This is what I had hoped MUT would have been. I've said before, Ian Cummings ought to be embarrassed with what his team came up with in its second year of Ultimate compared to what EA Canada rolled out in year one. It's like night and day.

Wow. I'm intrigued.

DSGamer wrote:

Wow. I'm intrigued.

And Kansas just went up 14-7 on Georgia Tech! I'm a genius! Webb has two TD's passes, and Kansas rushed for nearly 50 yards in the first quarter.

Thread tagged.

I'm ready for another year of NHL addiction and have just talked myself into buying NHL 11 (360) instead of Civ5. I'm ready for Columbus to go absolutely nowhere in the standings. I skipped 10, so hopefully my NHL skills remain.

So here's the question, then. I'm seeing complaints on the NHL message boards about Be a Pro being broken. Honestly, that will be the difference between me buying NHL 11 or buying NHL 09 for dirt cheap. Basically I don't want to play a broken mode where it requires far far too many games to get called up. I remember it being very organic in 09. You would play good enough to eventually get called up and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm hearing that in 11 it's like huge milestones like playing 40 games in X league and 40 games in Y league and on and on. I don't think I'd have fun with that.

The other mode sounds interesting, though, but for me personally I loved playing those low level games in Be a Pro. So it has to be at least similar enough to 09 to be worth me buying the game.

I haven't played a single minute of BaP yet. Having way too much fun with Ultimate Team.

DSGamer wrote:

So here's the question, then. I'm seeing complaints on the NHL message boards about Be a Pro being broken. Honestly, that will be the difference between me buying NHL 11 or buying NHL 09 for dirt cheap. Basically I don't want to play a broken mode where it requires far far too many games to get called up. I remember it being very organic in 09. You would play good enough to eventually get called up and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm hearing that in 11 it's like huge milestones like playing 40 games in X league and 40 games in Y league and on and on. I don't think I'd have fun with that.

The other mode sounds interesting, though, but for me personally I loved playing those low level games in Be a Pro. So it has to be at least similar enough to 09 to be worth me buying the game.

My take is that BaP is better in NHL 09. But I will say that they have made it easier and easier to actually get called up. It's just that they have made it harder and harder to improve your player much.

I played BaP in NHL 09 a lot. I got bored with it in NHL 10 really quickly. I have not even opened it up in NHL 11. So far BaP, I think you safe to stick with 09.

I really, really, really want to learn manual shot aim. I feel like I should, and I want to.

But two games, 89 shots and one measly goal later, I am giving up.

Pred, don't give up. The payoff is there. Hit me up for a game sometime and I'll show you some tricks. There are no easy goals yet this year that I've been able to find, but there are higher percentage shots available.

My thumb hurts.

I'm still struggling to score goals with auto-aim. I thought I was coming to gether, but aqpparently EA decided to make me work a little harder. It has been specualted that the latest tuning update on 9/9 increased goalie effectiveness. But Redshirt (a dev on NHL 11 that posts over at OS) claims it wasn't touched.

there is a thread that he updates to let us know what they are doing when we see those tuning updates. This is where it stands now:

1) Game hangs after the first period of OTP/EASHL games.
-Make sure that the controller being used is in slot 1.

2) Auto-backskate off does not work for online and HUT.
-The option had a severe bug in it and it had to be disabled. This will be fixed in a patch.

Sept 9 (reducing exploits)
-Reduce effectiveness of sharp angle goalline shots
-Reduce effectiveness of slap shots in close
-Reduce effectiveness of push puck (V1.00 negates this change for offline play).

Sept 7 (launch tuning)
-Goalie tuning to improve his chances on certain dekes.
-Reduce the speed of right stick deking.
-Small reduction to shot accuracy.
-Remove the prevention of pickups on goalie passes for Normal and Hardcore (so this affects online which uses Normal).
-Made it easier to trigger push puck.
-Decrease the ease with which defenders can cleanly intercept passes around the net.

Many people at OS have claimed that going back to 1.00 has improved their scoring. Does this imply that they were taking poor shots? I don't know.

But my goal is to get this manual aim down do I can enjoy HUT. And for that, you have to play on the current settings. right now, it is perfect, except I can't score anymore. Last night I played four straight games and only scored one goal. I even went balls out and upped my team by adding the NHL guys I was sandbagging, and training them up. Even with two forwards with 90+ shooting, I still can't bury the puck. And I'm playing on Pro.

I identified one issue, though. I tend to point my RS at the goal to shoot. So when off to the side, I am not pushing straight up, which I think is affecting my accuracy. But I have had wide open shots when i am trying to pop in a rebound from the left of the net, but the guy never shoots, because I am firing the RS almost directly to the right instead of up.

I think I am going to take a few days off of HUT and just concentrate on scoring, and performing dekes. I don't need to do anything fancy, but when I play quality guys online, I am just getting hammered because i can't avoid their hits, while they are avoiding mine. I will be patient, and try to get his down. But once the NHL season cranks up, and we have some up-to-date rosters, if I can't score, it is back to auto-aim and playing offline season mode.

magnus wrote:

Pred, don't give up. The payoff is there. Hit me up for a game sometime and I'll show you some tricks. There are no easy goals yet this year that I've been able to find, but there are higher percentage shots available.

My thumb hurts.

The difference when I jumped up to auto-aim was immediate, but in a few games, it seems the real skill players really are dangerous, finally. Being a blueshirts fan, much like in real life, Marian Gaborik is the only Ranger anyone should feel scared of with the puck on his stick.

Give me until the end of the week, I think i'm going to have to buy this from GameFly.

So what does this mean, then? If you're not a huge hockey fan (me) and are frustrated by the inability to score is it kosher (both in terms of getting good enough at HUT to enjoy it and as a gamer) to play with auto-aim? Because I have to tell you that my experience bordered on maddening. I wasn't awesome in 09, but I could score. And those goals were exhilarating in their infrequency. However, to play 3 or 4 games and not even come close to scoring is not quite as exhilarating.

Kosher or not, EA does not seem to really support auto-aim in their hockey games. It is buried in the pre-game menu, and you can't just turn it on and save it to your profile. Because HUT and online play requires an even playing field, they don't allow it in those modes.

Redshirt told me last year they would look at getting it in to the online mode, but obviously that didn't happen. They have to have some reason for not wanting it in the game, but I'm not privy to it. It is what it is.

Like Pred, when I play with Auto-aim on, it is a better experience for me. But it is also a solo experience because of its lack of support in online play.

That last tuning update came out on Friday, and it really seemed to bork the ability to score. I really expect a new tuning update soon, but so far there is no word. I'm sure they will go over all of their feed back from this weekend and make some decisions based on that.

Tonight I played some 5 on 0 in practice mode, and it was ridiculous how hard it was to score. I switched auto-aim on and boom, the puck starts going in the net.

My hope that part of this inability to score using manual aim will be fixed this week. It is a hot topic at OS and on the EA forums. Until this past Friday, I was starting to believe that I was figuring out the manual aim. Now I am on hold.

Well, I'll just watch the forums here and walk away for now. Pity.

I too am interested in people's thoughts on BaP mode. I loved it in 09 but thought it took too long to really beef-up your player. I got called up pretty quick, but I wasn't too happy with how long it took to get attribute points. I played the demo like crazy and liked HUT, but online co-op with friends and BaP are the big draws for me.

Note: After only playing the demo, I was able to score a few times with a 72 rank player (manual aim). The hard part was getting near the goalie because the AI is always watching those passing lanes.