NHL 11 Blog: Ultimate Hockey League Q&A

[Steve_OS]

Q&A with Andy Agostini.

Q: What happens if a user quits on me in an EAUHL game?

A: The user that quit gets a loss, receives zero EA Pucks and all Dressed Roster players lose a game on their contract and career.

The user that got quit on gets a win, receives all EA pucks they have earned to that point of the game (including the completion bonus) and all players lose a game on their contract and career. The reason the player loses games on their contract and career is because they have received EA Pucks for having participated in the game.

Q: What’s special about these rare cards? What about them makes them rare?

A: Rare cards are a subset of cards that can be found in HUT. There is only one of every card, so it is either a rare card or not (so there will not be a rare and common version of Sidney Crosby for example, only rare). What makes them rare is the likelihood of you getting them in a pack. Packs contain fewer rare cards than they do common ones. Every pack has a certain amount of rare cards in them. The odds of getting a certain rare card go down due to the limited amount of rare cards in the packs. A rare isn’t necessarily only a player there are rare coaches, jerseys (Such as the Hartford Whalers jersey), logos, training cards (+5 to all attributes being the best) and contract cards (Getting a +80 game contract is a great way of locking a player’s salary in at a cheap price while you train him to make him a superstar).

Q: If one of your players retires does he go back into a pool of players for card packs, or does he cease to exist?

A: Once a player has reached zero games left in their career they are retired. You get to keep the card and can place it in your collection. If you obtain another version of the same card you can then swap the new one for the one currently in your collection or team or replace the retired version of the card in your collection and use that player again. When the player is swapped out he will have his new career and contract number for you to use. There is no set amount of any one card being out in the EAUHL at any one time. So having a chance at any one player or card in a pack is the same for everybody at all times.

Q: Does a player that goes up for auction get a replenished contract and career?

A: A player’s contract/career number will always remain the same if you bid/buy it off of the auction house. So if a player has 42 games left in his career and has 3 games left on his contract while on the auction house that is how he would start off when you purchase him off the marketplace. We show these numbers clearly listed on the auction house screen so you will know what you are buying. Offline play and Online play are the exact same when it comes to how contract and career numbers work. If the player plays, then their contract/career goes down.

Q: How does training and potential work exactly?

A: Players can have anywhere from 1 training card slot all the way up to 12. This number relates to what that players projected potential overall could be if trained. This is why you will see young players from the CHL and Europe have anywhere between 9-12 training slots. This potential number is fixed for each player and does not update. If you were to use several lower training cards on a player then they might not get to their potential number. Using higher and rare training cards gives you a better chance to reach their potential or even exceed it! The potential number is there to help you see how good a player can be. Training slots start out saying for example 0/4 this means you can put 4 training cards on a player. When you put a training card on a player the training number will change to 1/4 and so on. Once the card says 4/4 he has been fully trained and no more training cards can be used on him.

If you auction off a player who has been trained he will keep all the training on him when he goes to auction. So look for some good deals where someone else has done all the training on a player but expect to pay more.

The young players in the CHL are important because you have the opportunity to build them into superstars due to how many training slots they have. It’s a great way to improve your team and keep your salary low when you place a long term contract on the player.

Q: Why are there only 5 ratings on the player cards?

A: Due to space on the cards we used 5 ratings for each player and goalie. Each rating shown on the card is made up of 3-5 ratings that the game uses. For the most part they are common sense. Skating include speed and acceleration while Hands include Passing and Deking. This has only been done with the EAUHL. The rest of the game will have all the ratings you have come to know and love in past years. When you place a training card on one specific EAUHL attribute it will improve all attributes in that area.

Q: Does my team from the Demo carry over to the Full version of NHL 11.

A: The team you are playing in the demo is a taste of the players you can potentially play with in the EAUHL. When you start NHL 11 you will be given an expansion team in the EAUHL. Like real life an expansion team won’t have any superstars. With the free packs that you can earn by playing the demo and pre-ordering the game you can get some great players right away to help your team. Also evaluate your expansion team as you can find some nice surprises in terms of training and potential on a couple of your players and those will be the guys you want to train up to be your superstars for your team. Also make sure you focus on chemistry as that can really help out your expansion team.

Once in the EAUHL you will want to play games and win tournaments to earn pucks to get more packs of cards.

You will need to be connected online to play the mode but you can play single player tournament and games against the CPU. You will also have the ability to change the difficulty level offline and there are modifiers on how many pucks you receive based on the difficulty level you are playing at. Also all online games will be part of the EAUHL and you can earn your way to one of the playoff brackets (Amateur, Pro, Elite).

Source - NHL 11 In the Crease Blog

[CS10029]

I know this doesn't go here, but... wasn't there supposed to be a live chat today? About Be a GM and such...

EDIT- That was a good read too, learned a thing or two. Looks like we can't just trade a card straight up for another. Oh well, I guess selling a card for pucks, then using those pucks to get someone you want, is just as good.

[vampire212]

duno i heard that rumor also about it. bah i find the selling pucks for cards that retire to fast is not as fun as i was expecting it to be specialy salary cap on top of it