NHL 11 Ultimate Team: THIS IS MY NIGHTMARE! - ChaseB's Blog

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NHL 11 Ultimate Team: THIS IS MY NIGHTMARE! Stuck

Posted on November 12, 2010 at 01:56 PM.

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Juha wrote a nice little article yesterday about NHL 11 Ultimate Team. Ultimately, he does not quite get the appeal of the mode or feel a connection with his squad.

Be that as it may, I have to disagree with my Finnish friend. Ultimate Team is consuming my limited idle hours, and it's doing so at a time when there are a hundred other games I want/need/have to play during this ridiculous release season. Ultimate Team truly is my nightmare.

I understand where you're coming from now Sydney Fife.

In fact, it's my worst nightmare because it also disproves my belief that I can't be sucked in by fantasy rosters in sports games. To qualify that statement, what I mean is if I play as Republicans or Democrats in NBA Jam and get into it -- by the way, watch this video and try not to laugh when Tim Kitzrow yells, "He's part of the T Party, the thunder dunk party!" -- that does not mean I'm enjoying a fantasy team in an NBA game. NBA Jam is an arcade game, so the same rules don't apply.

However, I despise fantasy drafts in simulation sports titles. I can be a real condescending meanie when people try to trade half their roster in a franchise mode of any sort. And I'm the kind of certifiable psychopath that plays The Show day by day in a season and updates the rosters each morning to make sure they're accurate for that day.

But with Ultimate Team, I chuck my ideology out the window. I embrace the fantasy, and I allow it to engulf me.

This obsession with UT is especially strange to me because I have not had the same connection with the versions of UT in other EA Sports games. But NHL 11 Ultimate Team is different somehow. It's just that right amount of micro-management mixed with the perfect amount of available players in the pool.

However, I don't want to give the developers too much credit on this particular front. A reason NHL 11 UT works so well is simply because of how the sport itself is designed. There are just the right amount of players on the ice, and there are just the right amount of licensed leagues in the game. The Madden and FIFA developers do the best with what is at their disposal, but I just don't think they have the same natural advantages the NHL developers have.

With that in mind, it's fun coming up with different ways to build your team. I have built a team of veterans; I have had a youth movement; I have built four AHL lines; I have built four NHL lines; and right now I have four lines that all have 90-plus chemistry (even though I've never really noticed chemistry having a major impact on the ice).

During each of those team-building stops I have felt a bond with my squad. Juha makes a good point that it's too easy to acquire things you want for your team, but it does not negate the connection I have had with my own squad. When a role player surprises me by scoring a ton of goals, or when my top line is not producing, I certainly feel the proper emotions. For this reason I now have a love affair with first-round disappointment Kenndal McArdle and have banished Marc Savard to the depths of my collection.

But team building and playing against others are secondary to me in this mode. Much of the time, I play games simply to earn more "EA Pucks" and buy more packs of cards.

My loins may or may not be excited by the sight of this picture.

And I really just buy cards so I can continue to live in the auction house. And when I say I live in the auction house, I mean it. I actually have Excel sheets dedicated to what I have received for each item sold. If I see a card being sold for what I think is below-market value, I get all giddy thinking about buying the card so I can flip it like a piece of real estate.

I am an auction-house guru. I am Jim Cramer.

For those unaware, the auction house in NHL 11 would probably make Adam Smith blush. It is the wild west, but there are certainly trends that you learn to understand. If I get a Montreal player in a pack of cards, I know I can fleece someone. If I get an 80 game contract card, I know I'm getting a minimum of 20,000 pucks. I know +7 SHT cards and other player-building cards can go for a ton of pucks, so I actually don't build any of my players up. I have decided there is more value in trading those training cards than using them. I feel especially strong about this because untouched, unused player cards go for much more than 99 overall players that have been used in games -- depreciating value is very much a part of NHL 11 Ultimate Team.

At this point, I have acquired over 1,100 players, 130 jerseys, close to 100 logos and I'm sure all those numbers would be much higher if I did not have an obsession with trading and finding the best deals at all costs.

So in conclusion, I hate you Ultimate Team. Look what you've turned me into.

Comments

# 1 milesizdead @ Nov 13

Good points Chase, and without EASHL to steal my time I think I might be more into the game mode than I am now. If HUT came out in 08 I�d be in rehab already...

# 2 OutcastNeedhelp37 @ Nov 16

This mode is the hardest to win and need tips or advice.