NHL 16 Precision Skating, Seamless Puck Pickups and Overhead Gameplay Tomorrow

[Steve_OS]

The NHL 16 team plans to release details on precision skating and seamless puck pickups tomorrow, along with overhead gameplay. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

[Don Jon]

I want gameplay, unedited, not put together glimpses of gameplay. I hope we can find out if we can finally poke check while making line changes, this was a major annoyance for me.

[nddurst]

I don't want to hear about anything.

I want to SEE some overhead gameplay that shows off better defensive AI and neutral zone pressure.

[bigwill33]

It says "Precision Skating, Seamless Puck Pickups and Overhead Gameplay tomorrow!"

[nddurst]

I'm hoping it's more than just 10-second clips to show certain elements of the skating and puck pickups. But I'm not holding my breath.

It would be nice if, at the end of the dev diary piece, they just said "...and here's a full 10-minute period against the CPU on all star/hardcore settings..."

[believeinnow]

Quote: Originally Posted by nddurst

I'm hoping it's more than just 10-second clips to show certain elements of the skating and puck pickups. But I'm not holding my breath. It would be nice if, at the end of the dev diary piece, they just said "...and here's a full 10-minute period against the CPU on all star/hardcore settings..."

Regarding your last part. That won't happen. YouTube Analytics have proven that people don't watch 10 minutes not stop of gameplay, especially if nothing happens. People watch snippets. Even with Twitch streaming, unless there is action happening all the time, our short attention spans results in fewer people actually watching the entire video/stream.

We should be happy that in July we're getting even just a little bit of gameplay. For the sports genre, that is a rarity. Beggars can't be choosers.

[Simple Mathematics]

I am most intrigued by the "overhead gameplay". I hope this portion is long enough to get a general feel for the game so we can see some improvements we have been clamoring for.

[AdamJones113]

For those interested...

This is the first non-trailer we saw last year, on July 9. NHL 15 Gameplay Series: Next-Gen Hockey Player




Then we got another dev diary vid on July 16 (True Hockey Physics) and a third on July 23 (Superstar Skill Stick).

Finally, we got our first look at "Overhead Gameplay" on August 15 with this trailer:




It's interesting that EA decided to come out with that Gameplay trailer now. I expected a pattern similar to last year; now I expect that we'll have either more dev diaries spaced out, or a large gap after tomorrow before the release of several more.