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Originally Posted by JayhawkerStL |
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I played Madden 06, and it was crap. Yet Madden fans keep holding it and 12 up as examples of when Madden was great.
It always feels like all of this is born way more out of EA hate than a rational memory of 2K5 and 2K8, games I loved. But 2K is the game I started playing when a real sim football game, Front Page Sports FBPro, released FBPro 99, a game so bad it had to be recalled, and ended up killing the franchise.
2K is what I settled for. It wasn’t sim. It designed for kids, had terrible sim results, and ridiculously bad DB play. But it was fun H2H and I loved how 2K5 allowed you to download profiles of the teams you were going to play based on the plays your opponent used in past games, which made prepping for live games fun.
I am pretty excited to play whatever 2K releases. But some of these takes are cringe worthy. They come from the same types of folks that are responsible for there now just being one game per sport among basketball, hockey, and baseball.
The “winning” games were considered great, until their competitors were canceled. Suddenly, it became clear that sports gamers can only consider a game great if they have another to compare it to. The hate for NHL popped up quick, because EA. But now, the hate for 2K basketball and The Show is building. Without another game to rag on, they turn on the only game left, picking at its flaws, blowing small things out of proportion.
Sports gamers, by and large, seem incapable of just not playing a game they don’t like. They have to actually mock people that play and enjoy the game. It’s pathetic, to be honest.
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Ummm no, EA hockey has always been considered to be an "arcade" offering and the 2k game had a good following of "hardcore" or "sim" players from 2k3-death. I won't talk about the other sports as I'm no expert in those, but I'll address the hockey part here because your post seems completely fueled by your own assumptions rather than your actual understanding of the history of hockey gaming and the two completely different demographics both games had following them. If your take on why the NHL series receives more and more hate is this far off, I feel like I should add this piece as I can only assume you aren't being very honest about some of these other sports titles and why people only hate EA "because EA."
Casual hockey fans loved EA's offering due to the skill stick and EASHL. They never once stated they loved the game because it resembled hockey flawlessly, or that the AI played a great game of hockey, or that teams played true to their identities. They loved an online game with friends that gave them ability to pull off fun dekes and win as a team. These people are the ones who continue to throw away money at HUT because the streamer-bros they follow rip packs 3 times a week in their face and shove the MTX's down their throats. They care about dekes and scoring 6-7 goals a game, even if it's the same move every time. They couldn't breakdown a breakout, a zone entry, a PP, or anything about the sport. These are the fans the tune-in for playoff hockey with the bros, yet know nothing about the sport. They don't care about sliders or anything the "sim" community would.
The hardcore community has always been biased towards 2k due to their in-depth slider offerings giving user's the ability to create their own meta (prior to NHL 16, the sliders available were severely lacking) run more advanced strategies, and 2k has always just been able to get the "feel" and "little things" of hockey right compared to EA. Sure, it wasn't smooth and definitely was the objectively worse video game, but that didn't stop the hardcore community form buying it, nor was it even considered to be less of a "sim" hockey game compared to EA. All you have to do it play 2k8-10 and watch how realistic the goalies play. They actually catch their edges, they get fooled be a deke once or twice but no more than that. They give up first shot goals that actually make sense and feel very "random" in a sense where getting to a certain spot isn't an almost guaranteed goal like the EA series has always been. As a real-life goalie, I can't begin to explain how amazingly cool that "randomness" was to experience, nor can I overstate just how incredible the work was on those goalies. 2k8 had the best goalies any hockey game has ever seen, and probably ever will see, because you can tell there was a deep understanding of the position and the sport that went into them.
Why you're now seeing the increase in "EA hate" when it comes to the NHL series is two-fold. First, the hardcore community is forced to either not play virtual hockey, or play EA's virtual hockey and see just how little they've progressed from an AI perspective. If one actually understands hockey and didn't care about online gaming, they would've never purchased an EA game till 2k died. EA had mundane, unimaginative offline experience due to their limited sliders and horrible AI. To start, their line strategies are the same 3 strategies they've had since like NHL 99. The worst part is, the AI still struggles to run these strategies in a realistic way, yet they haven't been changed in a literal 20 years. Their AI is not dynamic, meaning they won't screen the goalie if the puck goes high..heck, they won't even come dig the puck out of a pin if they're on the user's team. I'll just stop here cause I could write 50,000+ words on why offline NHL is nothing short of frustrating from a "sim" perspective.
The second part is the causal fans who enjoyed 09-15 (well, really only 09-12, then maybe 14) due to the skill stick and EASHL being a fun experience, are now seeing just how poor the online experience has been in this generation compared to last. The skill stick was nerfed, touch passing hasn't been the same since this new gen, more and more over-reaching animations have taken control away from the user, and more and more competitive 6s games have been decided by bad bounces than ever seen on the previous gen. Not to mention the new "World of CHEL" drop-in lobby that's totally killed the drop-in community as well as the "lobby" feature never returning from last-gen, and you're seeing a demographic once filled with EA lovers now turning on the game as well as this generation has been completely dedicated to tweaking the game for a select few streamers, pushing HUT down our throats, and a generally less fun online experience as a whole.
So no, the hate you see from the NHL community isn't limited to disgruntled hardcore fans. There's many casual fans who have also seen their online experiences never live up to their last-gen counterparts who have also started to attack EA every chance they get. This sudden attack on EA hockey that has just "happened because EA" as you say, couldn't be farther from the truth. I was a competitive 6s player from 09-18, and I can tell you that this generation of EASHL has been nothing short of a disaster. To start, NHL 15 omitted EASHL and they tried to cover this fact up till launch, no easy way for outside leagues to host games, captain delay plaguing 1.5 years of EASHL, cookie-cutter builds that all hover around 78 overall which has resulted in only 2-3 of the 12 classes ever being played, inconsistent servers that sometimes lead to goals not counting, terrible meta changes for the worse, and now the sudden addition of clown gear in online NHL has left a considerable amount to be desired in the online world.
The game just isn't as fun as it used to be online, and the game has only marginally improved it's offline experience from an AI perspective this entire generation (if it's even improved, it might be worse than NHL Legacy tbh). That's all they have to show in six whole years (including skipping porting 14 to "make sure 15 was solid") of development? Oh, and let's also not fail to mention the legends in 19 advertising scandal where they also tried to cover up the limitations of legends to launch. The NHL series has had two MASSIVE blunders where they tried deceiving their offline and online customers (once each respectively), and have failed to make the game more fun, immersive, or realistic in this entire generation. That's why there's a rapid increase of "EA hate" when it comes to the NHL series. People aren't just hating on the series to hate lol, that's just simply untrue.