How EA Can Bring Fans Back to NHL's Franchise Mode

[DJ]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vikes1

I agree with Money99. Imo too, NHL is what it is....take it or leave it. I'm guessing this is pretty much the way of things for possibly the next several years. On-line play seems to carry the greatness attention. Sadly, at the expense of off-line.

Great article and I'm in agreement with many of the long-time posters (Money, Jake) here. And yes, Vikes, unfortunately with the NHL series, you have to choose to either accept the game for what it is or save yourself the frustration and not play it.

It's a sad truth for hockey fans and offline gamers, but we've been making these suggestions for years now and nothing changes.

[JG1986]

Yeah, I decided that was it for me. I'm not going to bother with the series anymore. It just is not worth the frustration; watching your skaters wander aimlessly, laggy menu screens, no customization, and awful AI. Traded it in for a used copy of MLB The Show and voila, haven't even thought about NHL since. I don't want to have this attitude about the game, but I have no choice. The entire game/staff needs to be overhauled.

[ericromain]

I really want to play a franchise or season mode, but I want the rosters to always match real life. I hate how today you start a season and within a week the rosters are out of date, and 3 months in they're completely off.

Great article. They mode needs an online component. I hate playing AI offline, and i hate the team shallow team management of HUT. If only they could combine human opponents with the immersion of BaGM.
I agree on the menus, they are infuriatingly annoying.

I wish the stats were more detailed. I don't think they've expanded on them in a decade.

[Therion7]

Not displaying the Season total when your player scores a goal is horrible.

The season totals gets displayed at other times during the game if the player is highlighted so why not at the most important and interesting time? It boggles the mind. It's the bare minimum! It's Season Mode! Not 82 successive exhibition mode which is what it feels like.

Online is all about progression so why not pay a bit of attention to make offline feel like you're progressing through a real NHL season with real NHL stats being peppered into the actual game rather than lost in a sterile, clunky off-ice menu interface?

If the player who has notched a point on a play is in the top ten of points in the league, the game should be displaying a small window showing these league leaders and where that player is in it. Minimum stuff really. Wouldn't it be great to also have the records listed if you approach them? If you're not allowed to display certain player names, fine. Just show us the record stats. We'll know who achieved it!

I'm a progammer myself and all of that is so, so simple and cheap to do. It is beyond frustrating. Yes, the NHL team might be a small team but I don't think that is a valid reason to not add little touches like this that actually add so much to the game. We're talking a bit of polish here - it's a week of work for two people maximum and the biggest chunk would be where to place the thing on screen. Replace the NBC logo for a few seconds, goddamn! They don't have scores around the league, so they only have to worry about the two teams on-ice when doing a simple integer sort after a goal. Easy! Hey, I quite like the mascots but I'd have immersive stats over them any day of the week!

It's poor in 2015 to not have something like this in a league's flagship game. It's their only console game, so the NHL should be getting a bit more involved because it seems EA aren't doing too much to enhance the league's reputation by delivering a stellar title. If I didn't feel intimidated by the huge amount of controls listed for NBA 2K16 I'd give that a try because it looks so immersive. And you know what? I'm not a basketball fan right now, but I like sports games and have played basketball games in the distant past and enjoyed them. Who's to say that getting to grips with NBA2K16 wouldn't give me more of an interest in following the actual league itself? Video games can have that kind of power. It's a cruel irony that hockey delivers a pedestrian console experience.

Stat rant over.

I'm also increasingly annoyed at how you can see the ice completely and instantly clear of players for a few frames just after the final buzzer before the end of game cutscene starts. Total immersion killer. Why the game was allowed to ship with that sort of nonsense is a mystery.

QA must have picked it up and someone must have said "No, that's fine like that". It's not though. It looks absolutely amateur. Shift the camera to point at the scoreboard or something if you need to disguise what's going on. That wouldn't be too hard as the game does have a a dynamic camera system.

I love hockey, and I've loved and loathed certain years of this franchise. This year? I only like it. It could and *should* have been so much better. It should not have shipped with framerate stuttering, it should have had penalty sliders that work as expected out the box and it should have had a whole raft of offline improvements.

I get some enjoyment from playing 16 but a lack of competition is slowly killing this series. The last title I really had a great time with for months was NHL 11. Expectations were lower but I loved the custom music, had some good goal variety and the goal celebrations were better. I could forgive the samey AI and other foibles. Scoring was rewarding, player separation was easy to fix and I could freshen it up with new tunes now and again. 5 years later? Is the offline game on a new powerful console any better at all? Is it more immersive? More involving? More customisable? More rewarding?

It's none of those things. Strip the shinier graphics away and you find that the game has all of the same old problems in the AI department; foibles now magnified because as the visuals approach realism, identical behaviour becomes much easier to recognise and less forgiveable. All of this exacerbated by areas where the game really is a downgrade. That makes me a little bit sad.

[Money99]

Quote: Originally Posted by Therion7

If I didn't feel intimidated by the huge amount of controls listed for NBA 2K16 I'd give that a try because it looks so immersive. And you know what? I'm not a basketball fan right now, but I like sports games and have played basketball games in the distant past and enjoyed them. Who's to say that getting to grips with NBA2K16 wouldn't give me more of an interest in following the actual league itself? Video games can have that kind of power.

I can attest to this.
Like you, I'm not a huge basketball fan.
But after purchasing NBA2K12 and 13, I started watching more games, paying attention to the league and even listening to the NBA channel on XM during my commutes.

The game was so good, it made a fan out of me.
Baseball and hockey are still my main loves, but I would say I'm at least a casual NBA fan now.

Some things I'd love to see in Franchise Mode:
- wrap-up show
- out of town highlights
- Expansion/relocation
- arena modifications
- uniform alterations - even create a 3rd jersey
- BaGM includes running European teams and CHL teams.
- Getting FIRED as a coach and having to interview for a new job - which may also include having to work in Europe, AHL or CHL.
- Full stats and stat overlays showing season and career stats for players.
- 5-man celebrations
- AMPED playoff atmosphere.

[Therion7]

All great ideas, Money.

It's eye opening just how little has changed when you look at clips of NHL 11.

The "real" True Performance skating that came in with NHL 13 was eroded to the point that what you see in PS4 NHL 16 looks damn similar to what you see in the 11 video linked below.

So little of what you see and do in the course of on-ice gameplay has changed. The anims look a little less refined but very, very similar, the goals scored are scored the same way, the AI isn't the best... The most jarring thing is the five-man goal celebration!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXGbne96uGY

[Sheba2011]

I can honestly say none of the above would really make me want to play franchise any more than I do now. Especially things like retired legends, if they did that I would hope you could turn it off. Nothing would ruin a franchise mode more than having too many 99 rated legends filling up free agency. Gretzky was a once in a lifetime player, meaning we should never see him again.

[MizzouRah]

Quote: Originally Posted by Money99

Some things I'd love to see in Franchise Mode: - wrap-up show - out of town highlights - Expansion/relocation - arena modifications - uniform alterations - even create a 3rd jersey - BaGM includes running European teams and CHL teams. - Getting FIRED as a coach and having to interview for a new job - which may also include having to work in Europe, AHL or CHL. - Full stats and stat overlays showing season and career stats for players. - 5-man celebrations - AMPED playoff atmosphere.

- wrap-up show
- out of town highlights
- uniform alterations - even create a 3rd jersey
- Getting FIRED as a coach and having to interview for a new job
- Full stats and stat overlays showing season and career stats for players.
- 5-man celebrations
- AMPED playoff atmosphere

LOVE all of those above! I still cannot believe 2k football had the weekly show and we have none of that in 2015 on these consoles we play on now.

It's our own BeaGM universe.. IMMERSE us into it EA! In between periods there should be a scoreboard from around the league with goal scorer stats listed.

Introduce the starting lineup for the home team, bring back the 3 stars coming back on to the ice.