What NHL 13 has to have to balance the game.

[Gagnon39]

I've been reading a lot about this new Performance Skating system and watching all the videos and let me say, it does indeed look amazing. Its very well done and obviously captures the explosiveness of NHL players. Especially the elite players.

However, as I've said in other posts, this very much so scares me. I have a tremendous fear that this will result in up-and-down, fast-paced games that are almost always high-scoring affairs. If you haven't watched any of the videos, do so, and you'll see just how fast these players are now.

If EA simply created this new skating engine and injected it into the game without changing a few other things, I'm afraid that NHL 13 will not be for me because it will be too "arcady" and unrealistic.

Here's what the game has to do in order to counter-balance this new, fast-paced system.

1) There has to be many, many, many, many, did I say many, more loose pucks. Pucks need to bounce off of players sticks on hard passes and players need to be knocked off the puck (not necessarily down) more often.

2) There needs to be a lot more battles along the boards. Hopefully some more animations and interactions, with more that just two players somehow.

3) Passing accuracy has to be toned WAY down. This is kind of the same thing as number one, in which this would lead to many more loose pucks. If the CPU passes with their pinpoint accuracy AND has this new skating system, sheesh. I can't even imagine what it would be like. It seems like I'd be playing a pinball game rather than a hockey game.

Now, finally, let me just say that I absolutely love the NHL series. By far more than any other sports game. I look forward to it every year and it is the only game (every year) that I player through at least one entire season. I trust the team at EA since they created and turned around the series, starting with NHL 07, but I just have these major concerns that hopefully will get put to rest once the game comes out. There's other factors that could balance the game with added speed but I just left it at these three.

[Fiddy]

well, if they wont add stick to leg collisions and even incidental player contact you will be out of luck thinking you will somehow get more loose pucks.

but as for up and down, i can understand being worried. with that said, hopefully the strategy's will work the way they should and you will be able to limit and even dictate how the other guy needs to play.

problem with passing this year is that the puck reception slider was broke.

i just hope one year we can see a happy medium between loose pucks, sticks colliding with legs, hard passes deflecting off stick blades, and incidental player contact.

then, let us take that happy medium and tweak it to a hardcore/sloppy mode for offline and online use (via custom game invites or GM Connected Dynasty's)...

[Simple Mathematics]

I love the ideas here. They should also make you have to play dump and chase. This, along with better board-play, would tone down the up-and-down game style.

[Yeats]

Great ideas but, man, you're talking about an EA Sports game here. All their games suffer from the issues you're describing. Both their NHL and FIFA series have major issues with too many CPU pinpoint passes, and players with velcro on their sticks/feet.

FIFA was better this year, it had a pass error slider. But even that was implemented poorly to the point of laughable. Their "fix" to ensure passes weren't accurate included making the ball bounce like a superball, and players having brain farts and booting the ball OB without a teammate within 10 yards.

As always, the "NHL 13!" hype is going to cover over the fact that very little effort is ever put into this game in the way of programming it properly, in an effort to fix aspects of the gameplay that have been broken for years now. In fact, I'm at the point where I believe they really have no intention whatsoever in altering the offline User-CPU gameplay so that it resembles something one could actually call NHL-realistic. I don't believe that's of any real interest to them. Like Madden, they seem to want to keep the game over-the-top arcadey. It's their EA Sports "brand" really.

[Vikes1]

Excellent post, Gagnon.

Pretty much covered my thoughts completely. I'd love to have had your post instead be a press release from EAC.

[Gagnon39]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vikes1

Excellent post, Gagnon. Pretty much covered my thoughts completely. I'd love to have had your post instead be a press release from EAC.

Thanks. I know I'm not the only one that's concerned about what we've seen so far. Hopefully those fears are put to rest soon. Its just that in the footage that I've seen so far, the game looks exceptionally fast.

[Chad0034]

I just hope they can do what you talked about as well. Isn't there a "gameplay speed" slider?

I felt like the players were all just moving way too fast in general.

But if theres a ton of loose pucks and hard to get control (which it probably wont be) then we could be looking at a very realistic game.