Alright boyz, here we go! (NHL EHM Thoughts!)

[Johnny93g]

http://www.e-melk.com/tbl

A site with a bunch of add-ons....face packs, title bars....some good stuff

[Karim]

bump

Patch two is in the works... I've read some weird complaints over at the SI boards. The only one that really jumped out at me was core guys being signed to ridiculously low contracts (e.g., Forsberg for 100,000) or AI teams poaching active players like St. Louis to become GM even though he was just off a 130 point season. Then they stuck him in the lineup.

Anyone else noticed anything strange?

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by Karim

bump

Patch two is in the works... I've read some weird complaints over at the SI boards. The only one that really jumped out at me was core guys being signed to ridiculously low contracts (e.g., Forsberg for 100,000) or AI teams poaching active players like St. Louis to become GM even though he was just off a 130 point season. Then they stuck him in the lineup.

Anyone else noticed anything strange?

Just grasping at straws here but, could this be because in CM there are a number of players who have a dual role as the manager?

[Johnny93g]

Originally Posted by Karim

bump

Patch two is in the works... I've read some weird complaints over at the SI boards. The only one that really jumped out at me was core guys being signed to ridiculously low contracts (e.g., Forsberg for 100,000) or AI teams poaching active players like St. Louis to become GM even though he was just off a 130 point season. Then they stuck him in the lineup.

Anyone else noticed anything strange?

OMG...there are so many strange occurances in my game...where to starts

Sidney Crosby leading the QMJHL with 40 something points....
Richard Matvichuk...just 31, is now the gm for Rimouski
Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, and Mike Modano, all career 1 team players, left there teams to become assistant coaches with other teams.....
Paul Kariya is the only free agent to actually sign with a team in my game.......thats even worse then the original ehm, where it was a major problem....

Thats just off the top of my head....i kinda regret my purchase right now....

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

OMG...there are so many strange occurances in my game...where to starts

Sidney Crosby leading the QMJHL with 40 something points....
Richard Matvichuk...just 31, is now the gm for Rimouski
Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, and Mike Modano, all career 1 team players, left there teams to become assistant coaches with other teams.....
Paul Kariya is the only free agent to actually sign with a team in my game.......thats even worse then the original ehm, where it was a major problem....

Thats just off the top of my head....i kinda regret my purchase right now....

Glad I haven't hit the "buy" button yet.


Todd

[Marc Vaughan]

We're tracking any oddities reported and will be fixing them as promptly as possible, I'm very happy with the game 'as it stands' for a first version of a product I think its very solid, playable and stable - however (as always) there are things which can be fixed/improved and we'll continue to work upon improving the game until we're 99.9% happy with it as always.

[Coder]

Well I don't regret my purchase, but I must say that the game is on the shelf for now. Main issues are:

1) Free Agents (like Karim mentioned above, signing ridicilously low contracts)
1b) Since it's related, I signed my top ranked prospect, Kiril Koltsov, for $9,000 a year.. yup, that's right.. $9,000 a year. He was unsigned but in my farm team so I'm guessing he was getting a "farm"-salary, but when I promoted him he had the same salary.

2) Olympics.. players are "away for international" games before the season takes a break. Ok... but at the same time they're counting against the roster-limit. AI teams are desperately trying to clear room by waving players.. including top stars like Ilya Kovalchuk.

3) Player duplicates when AI does some weird moves. As Vancouver, I was doing all the Manager-stuff myself but didn't coach the games. All of a sudden I got a news-item saying that Vancouver had demoted Bryan Allen and called up Kiril Koltsov. While I hadn't done this myself, I raised an eyebrow and double checked. All of a sudden I had two Kiril Koltsov, one in the pros and one in the minors; same name but different attributes, different height, but same age.

4) Staff resigning anyone?

5) Not really a bug, but I wish trading had been a little different. First I don't really like the "trade interface".. I'd have preferred a FOF-like tradescreen. Secondly, I've never been able to get anything useful out of the "Inquire" button, all I get is "Trade rejected". Thirdly, when a trade is rejected, I'd like some more feedback.. more like.. "we would need another prospect", or "we'd be taking on too much salary" etc.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Coder

Well I don't regret my purchase, but I must say that the game is on the shelf for now. Main issues are:

These are in our bugs db now and we'll do our best to work our way through them (although ones involving text changes will probably have to await next years version as we can't do translations post-release).

[Coder]

Well, as I said.. I don't REGRET my purchase

[Karim]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

OMG...there are so many strange occurances in my game...where to starts

Sidney Crosby leading the QMJHL with 40 something points....
Richard Matvichuk...just 31, is now the gm for Rimouski
Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, and Mike Modano, all career 1 team players, left there teams to become assistant coaches with other teams.....
Paul Kariya is the only free agent to actually sign with a team in my game.......thats even worse then the original ehm, where it was a major problem....

Thats just off the top of my head....i kinda regret my purchase right now....

Yuck...

[Joe Canadian]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

We're tracking any oddities reported and will be fixing them as promptly as possible, I'm very happy with the game 'as it stands' for a first version of a product I think its very solid, playable and stable - however (as always) there are things which can be fixed/improved and we'll continue to work upon improving the game until we're 99.9% happy with it as always.

From what I've been reading here, in dynastys, and on other boards it kind of scares me that you say you're very happy with the game as is. I realize you're allowing for bugs when saying that, and bugs will always come up in first gen games, but... the amount of ludacris transactions and other things I've heard about, is a pretty BIG thing for me.

I will eventually buy the game, if the game is playable before September I'll buy the import... if not I'm waiting for the on shelf product. I'll stick to the demo for now because I don't see the sence in immersing myself into a career, when Free Agency\Tranasactions\Staff Hirings all seem (from what I've read) not to be working.

But I'd like to thank Marc for answering all concerns and questions. And thanks to the guys that already have the game for letting us know what they think of the game!

[Marc Vaughan]

From what I've been reading here, in dynastys, and on other boards it kind of scares me that you say you're very happy with the game as is. I realize you're allowing for bugs when saying that, and bugs will always come up in first gen games, but... the amount of ludacris transactions and other things I've heard about, is a pretty BIG thing for me.

Don't get me wrong - I'm probably the most critical person in the world when it comes to our games and spend ages fussing around fixing and tweaking things which people might never even notice - BUT I'm also realistic and try to be practical regarding games.

I'm happy with the state of NHL EHM as a first release of a new game engine, I think its stable, playable and pretty realistic in the majority of situations - is it perfect, No .... are there things which we still want to tweak and tune, Yes .... are there things which we want to add in future versions, Definitely ...

As a games developer you do the best you can with games that you make - test them as hard as possible and play them as much as possible yourselves. Once they're in the public domain new issues will always come up.

if you wonder why do the maths - we have 20 testers (on average per product) working for around 4 months 8 hours a day, 5 days a week ... that 12,800 hours of play time - this seems a lot until you consider the first weekend of CM4's release 128,000 people bought the game and probably played for an average of 6 hours each - thats 768,000 hours of play time ... instantly beating the amount of testing time put into the game within a few days of the product hitting real-life.

(most games developers won't admit this side of things, but its reality - no games development house can afford to have enough testers / test time to match the amount of time that end users will spend playing with a product ... simple as that)

What SI do is (as I've stated in the past) test our games as well as possible in-house and via. public beta's - then once they're at retail we listen to user feedback and fix any problems raised as promptly as possible.

Hope this helps,

Marc

[Joe Canadian]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Don't get me wrong - I'm probably the most critical person in the world when it comes to our games and spend ages fussing around fixing and tweaking things which people might never even notice - BUT I'm also realistic and try to be practical regarding games.

I'm happy with the state of NHL EHM as a first release of a new game engine, I think its stable, playable and pretty realistic in the majority of situations - is it perfect, No .... are there things which we still want to tweak and tune, Yes .... are there things which we want to add in future versions, Definitely ...

As a games developer you do the best you can with games that you make - test them as hard as possible and play them as much as possible yourselves. Once they're in the public domain new issues will always come up.

if you wonder why do the maths - we have 20 testers (on average per product) working for around 4 months 8 hours a day, 5 days a week ... that 12,800 hours of play time - this seems a lot until you consider the first weekend of CM4's release 128,000 people bought the game and probably played for an average of 6 hours each - thats 768,000 hours of play time ... instantly beating the amount of testing time put into the game within a few days of the product hitting real-life.

(most games developers won't admit this side of things, but its reality - no games development house can afford to have enough testers / test time to match the amount of time that end users will spend playing with a product ... simple as that)

What SI do is (as I've stated in the past) test our games as well as possible in-house and via. public beta's - then once they're at retail we listen to user feedback and fix any problems raised as promptly as possible.

Hope this helps,

Marc

Don't get me wrong, I understand all that. Working with .400 Studios a while back taught me alot about the testing side of games.

However, when you say that "in the majority of situatuions" the game is realistic it really does scare me. From what I've been reading retirements (into being staff members), and FA is very unrealistic... and they are pretty BIG things. Then there's the apparent rokie development dependency on this thing called "burnout"... something I do think exits... but not as much as people are seeing - I think this may be one of the those FM\football elements being brought into EHM\hockey.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

... ]instantly beating the amount of testing time put into the game within a few days of the product hitting real-life.

Or at least you hope so

Seriously though, you're right at least two counts there:
1) Most developers don't like to admit that
2) Anybody who has done the math figures that out pretty quickly

I think where testing gets ripped hardest is when the consumer sees something obvious in the first 5-10 minutes, or even the first 12-16 hours, that managed to escape notice in that 12,800 hours.

Unfortunately, some of the things being reported strike me as being those kind of things (the wrong hometeam in the playoffs bug mentioned earlier in this thread, the duplicate players mentioned a couple of posts ago, problems with resigning coaches and the seemingly questionable behavior of the AI with regard to signing players in general & players with regard to what contracts they accept).

I think that leaves users caught in a bit of paradox -- on the one hand, in the case of SI at least, we know that there's a dedication to testing. On the other hand, we're left with things that our eyes show us and it becomes rather difficult at times to reconcile things that fall into the "how on earth did they miss that" category.

Ah well, I suppose the joys of new releases are wide & varied for both the consumer & the developer.

[Joe Canadian]

One big thing that EHM really needs is some sort of trade feedback on actual trade offers... I'd like to know what is "fair" value, and why teams turn down offers... right now, there's nothing.

[Johnny93g]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Don't get me wrong - I'm probably the most critical person in the world when it comes to our games and spend ages fussing around fixing and tweaking things which people might never even notice - BUT I'm also realistic and try to be practical regarding games.

I'm happy with the state of NHL EHM as a first release of a new game engine, I think its stable, playable and pretty realistic in the majority of situations - is it perfect, No .... are there things which we still want to tweak and tune, Yes .... are there things which we want to add in future versions, Definitely ...

As a games developer you do the best you can with games that you make - test them as hard as possible and play them as much as possible yourselves. Once they're in the public domain new issues will always come up.

if you wonder why do the maths - we have 20 testers (on average per product) working for around 4 months 8 hours a day, 5 days a week ... that 12,800 hours of play time - this seems a lot until you consider the first weekend of CM4's release 128,000 people bought the game and probably played for an average of 6 hours each - thats 768,000 hours of play time ... instantly beating the amount of testing time put into the game within a few days of the product hitting real-life.

(most games developers won't admit this side of things, but its reality - no games development house can afford to have enough testers / test time to match the amount of time that end users will spend playing with a product ... simple as that)

What SI do is (as I've stated in the past) test our games as well as possible in-house and via. public beta's - then once they're at retail we listen to user feedback and fix any problems raised as promptly as possible.

Hope this helps,

Marc

Yes, the game is playable....I havent had a crash, or any function that doesnt work right in the game....but to say your happy with the state of the game is a huge reach for me....The game is called NHL:EHM....and it is obvious the NHL league in your game does not operate correctly....Im shocked that whoever tested the NHL in beta didnt realized that during the 1st off-season, more players sign on has coaches then playing....1 player signed to play hockey with a team....1....31 year old Richard Matvichuk is the new General Manager of Rimouski....Im 2 months into my 2nd season, and no less then 20 quality hockey players still are available, and thats not counting the ones who are now coaches....Now I admit, I know nothing about testing games.....Im a novice with computers, but I know what I see.....The game is fun...Im immersed.....but not having the NHL right is extremly dissapointing.....I would think this league should be your first priority....It's the #1 league in the world, and the name of your game......Marc, it would make me feel much better about my purchase if you could confirm the NHL will be fixed in an upcoming patch.....

[riz]

If it makes you guys feel any better, I've been working the last two weeks pretty much non-stop (I have had to sleep for about 4 hours each night) on tweaking the player movements, signings etc. So the next patch should address the issues raised here.

[Marc Vaughan]

Marc, it would make me feel much better about my purchase if you could confirm the NHL will be fixed in an upcoming patch.....

Riz has already beaten me to it - but we'll obviously address any issues reported in patches ...

[Fritz]

I thought he was asking to have the real NHL fixed

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Fritz

I thought he was asking to have the real NHL fixed

Some things are even beyond the abilities of SIGames.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by Bee

Some things are even beyond the abilities of SIGames.

Actually, if you enter "VAN HELLEMOND" on the opening screen...

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Fritz

I thought he was asking to have the real NHL fixed

LOL