NHL 09 360 Patch #2 Online -- Impressions

[jyoung]

Simple rule to follow:

if the guy doesn't have the puck, or he's not standing directly in front of your goalies, don't hit him.

[Redshirt_EA]

Another tip is to use Vision control (Left Trigger) to avoid accidentally throwing a hit when trying to shoot a loose puck.

The patch does change it to interpret the right stick as a shot rather than a hit if you are in front of the net trying to fire a loose puck, but when the puck is away from the slot this helps.

[mkharsh33]

played a bunch of games tonight (offline - regular play)...

- had a goalie interference penalty called on me...beautiful!! goalie was sliding across the crease and i had no where to go except to drill him. i was toast...

- on THAT very penalty, one of my d-men got hit by a puck and got hurt...he didn't go down, but slowly skated off the ice, all the while i gave up a freakin' power play goal because he just left the ice on me. weak side was left wide open.

- same game, i shot the puck it got deflected a couple times in front of the goalie...while in the air, my player behind the net was poking it in (watched the replay and he did it twice) stuffing it in for a game tying goal with a minute to play!

i'm using Qb's latest sliders and am loving this game post patch...

at one point i was starting to get pissed because of penalties being called, but then started to laugh because we all remember the day when they NEVER called any at all...

[LanteriX]

Quote: Originally Posted by clivo1050

the first game i played online post-patch had a combined 50 penalty minutes!!! (22 by me). i'm all for sim play, but this is a little ridiculous.

No offense, but if you commit 11 penalties in one game, then you don't have a clue what sim play is. It's really not hard to, you know, not hit people that don't have the puck.

I don't get what makes that so difficult of a concept for some people.

[bad_philanthropy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Redshirt_EA

The fix was for left and right aiming when going down screen (and in Broadcast camera). Unfortunately there's no way to make a code fix in the roster update.

Thanks for the explanation, it's really my only gripe about the patch. I love all the gameplay tuning you guys did.

[Bahnzo]

Redshirt, you and the guys (and gals?) at EA really deserve a "well done" on the patch. OTP is back to being the best online sports experience I've ever played. 4 or 5 games with my team tonight and awesome describes it to a tee. Team play is rewarded, the penalty changes are done well while not taking away the ability to check intelligently..etc. Great Job! I'll be first in line for NHL10.

[Redshirt_EA]

Glad the OS consensus is positive. There's a lot more debate about the changes on the EA forums. Anyone mind if I hide out here for a bit?

[Smiley79]

For me, I was able to play 5 OTP games with randoms last night, and it was like night and day. I couldn't believe how much of a mentality change it was for the entire game. For people stuck in that pre-patch mode, they sat in the penalty box the entire game. For the rest of us, it was nothing but great fun. Passing was much better than I've ever seen before. I was actually being passed to (as a defender) much more frequently, and had my best stats night than I've had in a long time. It seems like, now, people are starting to realize that it does help to spread the puck around. It was also very comforting knowing that those "99s" weren't floating around and that many of those glitch goals weren't around.

It was just a completely different game altogether. Hits were penalized very strictly, but they were deserved. I had to be smart with my poke check and stick lift (as I was penalized were I tried them to frequently in the beginning). Playing defense, as a whole, was different but a better overall experience now than it was before. The best thing about it was seeing those idiots that still just couldn't understand that you can't hit someone without the puck. I don't know how many times I heard people screaming because of "bad calls". The one thing that I saw that was a little weird were some very wide deflections that went from weird locations. A couple of times, I saw people shooting from around the blue line at a direction that went completely wide of the net towards a teammate who deflected it in (I wish I could've saved the replays). The angle that the puck was deflected in was just so strange, but you could see it clearly hitting the stick and going in. I don't know if deflection accuracy has been turned up or what, but it was different than I've seen before. In the end, I'll take the longer games (because of all of the penalties) if it means it cleans up the garbage that I was seeing before this patch.