What's your biggest beef with this game?

[OrangeAndBlack]

What do you find is the biggest problem with this game...me personally...it's that the human goaltenders are too good! I'm talking about my own goalie...it's crazy, he hardly ever gets' scored on, I really don't think my defense is all that good! I don't play online so I'm stuck playing the computer....I just wish they'd put a few more goals past me...at least make it interesting. I just blow poeple away...this game is quickly getting boring.

[Neech]

I dont' have that problem. What level are you playing on? I like to think i play D pretty well, but it's really hard with the analog joystick. I wish there was a way to play with the D-pad. Being formerly an EA player the D-pad gives you a lot more responsiveness.

My biggest beef is with the injury menuing freezing up if i get too many injuries and some of the lapses in the commentating.

[nickels]

:evil: PS2 ONLINE LAG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :evil:

[slickdtc]

My biggest beef is not being able to switch the difficulty in the middle of a franchise. Or at the end......DAMN IT!! :(

[bobak]

Too many to name them all. But the biggest are as follows:

Unnamed players on the classic teams. I know they don't play anymore, at least get their numbers right.

Injury menu crash. Obviously a rushed game.

Way too many injuries. Need an injury slider. When I hit someone they should be out for 4 months, not me.

Cpu needs to make more big trades in franchise mode.

Bench cannot possibly always be on the right. Plain stupid.

Points scored by players during season should correlate with raising or lowering overall rating in next season.

I have millions more, but this is still the best hockey game ever.

[Neech]

I guess i can deal with the injury menu freeze. i was told to get the injuries down to move the aggression sliders down and hit power down.

my big pet peeve is trying to clear the puck. I can't seem to pass the puck from goalie to another player without it getting intercepted. At least not very often. The goalie just doesn't get any velocity on the puck. I think the solution i found a solution for this if anyone at Sega is interested in fixing it.
When the goalie passes the puck the cursor immediatley switches to the player i'm supposedly passing to. So if i'm passing left to a player the cursor will jump to this player and cause him to start moving left as well usually away fromt the puck. Made next year they can make so control isn't transferred to teh player being passed to until the puck gets to him.

[Viperswon99]

Here's my list...
1) Too many injuries
2) Having to reset the foghorn every time I boot-up
3) Not being able to remove the helmets and masks off the classic players, there heads ARE rendered...why not?
4) Weak cut-scenes. A goalie would NEVER put his stick in his glove hand to wave to the crowd after being named "Star of the Game" and that stupid "I'm gonna flip the puck on my stick and wack it itno the seats not only doesn't work...no puck, but the NHL would deficate a brick if a player did this.
5)three words...MORE GOALIE MASKS!!!

[Kubicule]

Just play hall of famer and if you tell me that the computer didnt score than you're just a liar.............................................. ....

[Newell13]

The ungodly difficulty gameplay. Try playing hall of famer and not using cheese.

[OrangeAndBlack]

Hey Kubicle...like I said...I'm going to that level...I can't wait...just killin' the season I got on Pro right now...I really hope it's that much more challenging!!!

[OrangeAndBlack]

lol...ooops...i said that in a different topic...my bad...but yeah...I'm going to HOF...looking forward to it!!!

[bobak]

Hall of Famer is the ONLY way to play. I say this because the cpu won't score in any other difficulty.

But just having the difficulty set to Hall of Famer won't do it alone. You have to take your goalie skill down and defense down, then put the cpu offense all the way up - then they might score 1 goal once every 3 games. Sometimes I've had games when the cpu goes on a rampage and scores 4 quick (glitchy & suspicious) goals putting me in a position of battling back which no other hockey game has done yet.

Hall of Famer mode makes this game a lot funner.

[Newell13]

Want the CPU to score more goals? Let the CPU control the human defense and theyll light up the score, just take your center and play position. And stop Sing/one-timing to beef up the score.

[UM_Hockey]

I dunno what the problem is, but this game on the freaking PRO level is ridiculously difficult. Rookie is basically too easy, but the instant I bump up the difficulty to pro I get f*cking raped. The only chance I have is to play a top 5 team against a bottom 5 team, and then it's a close game every freaking time.

I've tried adjusting every damn slider there is and it doesn't make a bit of difference. And this is far from the first hockey game I've ever played; my first was NHL 93 for the Genesis and I have pretty much every EA game to this year.

I'm to the point were the game is going to get shelved permanently or sold on Ebay.

[Layre]

>>I'm to the point were the game is going to get shelved permanently or >>sold on Ebay.

You sound like me - playing from the first/early days of EA sports game.

However when I started playing on the PRO level, I started with lowering the CPU goalie, defence, offense down two notches and gradually brought them back up (over time). Now I think I'm ready for the ALL Star level.

However, coming from EA sports I've noticed you MUST re-think most of your strategies. Since the early days of EA sports they have not (for the most part) employed such a hefty system that allows a human player to execute so many various strategies.

I've noticed that in several instances, I've had to re-think my game. In the early days, you could do silly things like race from one end of the rink to the other end, score the goal with your created player, perform crazy wrap around goals etc... However, in this game you must pass, you must carefully line out your players and watch the lines.

Avoid heavy injuries by not checking all the time (and lowering the human hitting power and aggression).

Several of the strategies in this game work really well but they are touchy. In such a way that I believe the system will not "pick up" (or understand) what you are trying to do if you do not properlly initiate the strategy.

If all you do is attempt one-timer goals and/or wrap arounds then the game WILL be hard. Often I find that after a while, one timer passes will soon(to always be) intercepted - but sometimes they will work if you can outskate the defence.

Anyway - this game is great, even with all it's blemishes - don't give up. Eventually (like me) you will start to find that the PRO level will be as easy as the Rookie level.[/quote]

[slickdtc]

>>I'm to the point were the game is going to get shelved permanently or >>sold on Ebay.

You sound like me - playing from the first/early days of EA sports game.

However when I started playing on the PRO level, I started with lowering the CPU goalie, defence, offense down two notches and gradually brought them back up (over time). Now I think I'm ready for the ALL Star level.

However, coming from EA sports I've noticed you MUST re-think most of your strategies. Since the early days of EA sports they have not (for the most part) employed such a hefty system that allows a human player to execute so many various strategies.

I've noticed that in several instances, I've had to re-think my game. In the early days, you could do silly things like race from one end of the rink to the other end, score the goal with your created player, perform crazy wrap around goals etc... However, in this game you must pass, you must carefully line out your players and watch the lines.

Avoid heavy injuries by not checking all the time (and lowering the human hitting power and aggression).

Several of the strategies in this game work really well but they are touchy. In such a way that I believe the system will not "pick up" (or understand) what you are trying to do if you do not properlly initiate the strategy.

If all you do is attempt one-timer goals and/or wrap arounds then the game WILL be hard. Often I find that after a while, one timer passes will soon(to always be) intercepted - but sometimes they will work if you can outskate the defence.

Anyway - this game is great, even with all it's blemishes - don't give up. Eventually (like me) you will start to find that the PRO level will be as easy as the Rookie level.

You and me are going to be good friends.

I play on Pro and it's a challenge. I could play on Hall of Famer last year(on NHL2k3). I can't even play on All Star in this game. But being difficult is what this game is about.

Also, who plays on 1 or lower speed. I think it's the only way to play. Everything else is way too fast to me. What do yall think?

[OrangeAndBlack]

I think my speed is at 3 or 4....I find there's more goals witht he speed up.

[weeman]

I put the speed at 1 or 2. I find this makes the game more REAL and not arcadish.
Not that there is anything wrong with the arcade feel, but that is why I got NHL HITZ PRO

[Prowler24x]

i dont lag at all with xbox, so lag isnt a "beef", the only thing i dnt like is that there is no injury slider except the on/off when u start a franchise, **** turning hit power down, thats *** as ****, i just turn injuries off, but the game is sweet other then that, best hockey game ive ever played

btw my speed is at 7, anything slower is boring as hell and slower isnt more realistic, you dont see guys going 1mph down the ice

[Prowler24x]

I dunno what the problem is, but this game on the freaking PRO level is ridiculously difficult. Rookie is basically too easy, but the instant I bump up the difficulty to pro I get f*cking raped. The only chance I have is to play a top 5 team against a bottom 5 team, and then it's a close game every freaking time.

I've tried adjusting every [***]
slider there is and it doesn't make a bit of difference. And this is far from the first hockey game I've ever played; my first was NHL 93 for the Genesis and I have pretty much every EA game to this year.

I'm to the point were the game is going to get shelved permanently or sold on Ebay.

...if you say the sliders didnt do anything you must have put the slider for fighting down then, cause when you do the sliders the game gets EXTREMELY easier by just going down 1 slide

[UM_Hockey]

Anyway - this game is great, even with all it's blemishes - don't give up. Eventually (like me) you will start to find that the PRO level will be as easy as the Rookie level.

Wow... I followed your suggestion about turning down the CPU skills a couple of notches and wound up unlocking 4 challenges during the game :D

You're right about the difference between this and the EA games, I'm finding that my strategies that've always seemed to work aren't cutting it anymore. Hopefully the bump down in CPU skills will let me get more accustomed to the gameplay.

[Layre]

Glad I could help :)

I have found that my overral play has increased intelligently. Meaning that I'm no longer trying to ram-jam my players to the net, or pull any cheap moves just to get a goal.

I have also found that by using the "Advanced" control method is by far the best. No doubt you must have found that the other team is quickly stealing your puck during passes - by using the flip pass (saucer pass) in the Advanced controller abilities, you can get out of many hot spots and execute more fined tuned, precision moves.

[Newell13]

What other strategy is there besides 'skate down the ice, cross ice 1 timer?'. Following the ingame strategies is trivial unless you have an indepth knowledge of hockey where your actually perform the back checks/movements. And it seems like the offense players have no clue where to go. Way to difficult.

As for game speed, it's impossible to play at the regular speed (on Pro+). The computer reacts WAY TOO FAST compared to human reactions. And the CPU makes passes to players off the screen not visible from the camera angle which really ****es me off. How am I supposed to make those passes?

If you turn down the computer AI, all you're really doing is turning the game back to rookie.

I HATE the fact that you can't sit and watch the CPU play the CPU from the 3/4's view to try and understand what it's doing. Instead you get these absolutely horendous replay angles that show absolutely nothing, and don't look pretty at all.

[Kubicule]

i always play on pro with maximum speed, and for me, when im playing on pro level its the only way to play a fair game. ON all star im playing 3 of speed.

[Newell13]

Are you serious the game FLIES at max speed on pro.

[Prowler24x]

question: does speed 3 mean that its 3 from the left or its 3 from the middle?

[OrangeAndBlack]

I personally, meant 3 from the bottom....

[Neech]

Does anyone know if there is a another way to turn down the aggression sliders without going into choose sides, changing sides, then adjusting your oppenents aggresion? When i do this it says i can't complete challenges for challenge mode.

[Prowler24x]

god 3 from the bottom thats like slow motion

[Newell13]

God 3 from the bottom, that's like, real hockey.

[Prowler24x]

god real hockey isnt like 1mph

[ohmygod]

The greatest beef of thos game is difficult level.

On pro, I win almost of games and in that game CPU never score first. Depending on how many goals I get, CPU gets goal. But those never overcome my scores.

On allstar, I can win only VS easy team and its score is 3-2. If I played pretty well VS good team, I could tie. Tht's score is 2-2. Rest of them, I lose. That's rule.

[slickdtc]

Goalie Edits may help you guys who can't score. I've got a nice pair of sliders for pro difficulty level, they are here on this forum.

[Newell13]

Turn the CPU goalie down 1 notch and I can put up 3+ goals per period. Turn the CPU defense down 1 notch and the game plays like rookie.

[ohmygod]

Ye, I know you're meaning.
On pro mode it's not difficult to score but it's boring cause I am never beaten, as I said. They score depending on my score.
On all-star mode, it's really difficult to score for me & CPU both. The most score is 2-2.
:(

[OrangeAndBlack]

So my beef was that I wasn't getting scored on enough. I went up to All-Start level and that was fine. But I like the gameplay on pro better so I did a few things to make it harder for me and they worked.

First thing I did was create a Franchise on Pro and I put the Franchise difficulty to the very top. Injuries off...just too many of them for my liking.

Then I boosted the computer's Offense, Defense and Goaltending, while lowering all mine to nothing.

I also turned up the puck retention a notch, I find the teams then controls the play a little better and the puck isn't bouncing all over.

Obviously I tweaked the Fatigue settings to ensure that all four lines have the opportunity to play.

My speed is set to 3
Penalties are set to 5, Fighting 3, Hitting 0.

I lowered the puck friction so it moves at a quicker pace. But I turned up the ice friction to simulate more realistic player skating.

I kinda gave up on trying to tweak the sliders with the intent to get an average of 30 SOGs per game...I'd much rather more shots with a more realistic scoring outcome.

The last thing I did...wait...that I DO...is I use my goalie every opportunity I have. When a man is on a breakaway...I'm the goalie...when it's a 2 on one...I'm the goalie. I have yet to get a shutout while using my goalie the whole game, but I've come close once. I'm 10 games into the season and I don't think I can get much more realistic than I already have it...I think I'm like 6-3-1 with a Bonk and Alfredsson chasing the league lead in scoring.

These settings have truely brought back my interest to this game....for a while there I was getting hooked on TW2004.

Anyway...if you'd like to know my sliders more in depth, or anything else...please feel free to message me.

[SunzOfRangers]

sounds like you hooked it up nicely, one thing i hate is when the puck is loose in the corner and your defense is going back to get it for like an icing they'll almost always overskate the puck it's annoying.

[OrangeAndBlack]

Yeah man...I hear ya...I thought Puck Control or Puck Retention might correct this but it didn't appear to have any effect. One thing I do is to bring my player to a complete stop as he gets to the puck...this has eliminated me overskating (sometimes you won't actuallly go far enough to pick up the puck....you just gotta get the timing down), It does get annoying when you're on the powerplay and you go back to get the puck...then you kill 30 seconds trying to get possesion of the thing.

Does the overskating occur when you play All Star(I never really noticed) or Hall of fame levels??? Anyone???