EASHL Pro Leveling Help

[dstokes31]

Myself and several friends bought NHL 12 about a week ago primarily for the purpose of playing Pro Clubs, like we have before with FIFA, etc.

As was expected, in our first few games we immediately noticed the vast difference in the attributes of our players (high 60's, low 70's overall ratings) and the attributes of nearly all of our competition (guys who had played 400+ games and all had Gretzky-like attributes). This unfortunately makes it extremely difficult for our team to win games, which is one of the primary elements in leveling your pro. We realize that we did buy the game months behind the average player, and would not expect to have great ratings to start off, but it just seems like it's an extreme uphill climb in order to level our guys, and by doing so, the playing field as well.

One of the seemingly obvious answers to our problems was to try playing drop-in games and get wins there. However, in those games (as I'm sure you guys know), (A) you're at the mercy of a bunch of seemingly ******** puck hogs, or defensemen who play more like Ovechkin and (B) you're at the mercy of the EA servers holding up throughout the game. No telling how many games so far I've been up 3-0 in the 3rd only for some clown to quit the game, resulting in a "sync error" or something with the new host migration. Ridiculous.

Anyways, teamplay and positioning are never typically problematic grades for me, as I consistently have B+ or higher Teamplay and usually always A or better positioning. Winning with these clowns is a whole different thing, though, as typically the other defender will go flying up into the attack repeatedly (or call for the puck after our keeper saves) resulting in me being forced to defend 2v1s and 3v1s with my slow as Christmas, terribly rated player. This usually results in losses to the tune of 4-1 or so, resulting in terrible stat ratings as a defender. Needless to say, it's not an ideal situation.

So my question to you guys is what advice do you have for a player and/or team of players in our situation? We're literally months behind everybody else in games played and attributes. I realize that you can do offline be a pro and unlock several booster packs which will help with ratings, and perhaps that's our only option at this point. If so, what advice do any of you have for quickly achieving any of those required achievements for unlocks?

I guess to us the biggest issue is that it feels like EA dropped the ball (or puck, rather ) on the leveling system by not making it more like say, FIFA, where you can level your pro offline before even playing online play. This seems extremely logical to me, as you wouldn't want to play competitive play with a crappy rated dude, and would first want to get your ratings up. For players like us that have interest only in playing online together, it just makes things extremely difficult.

Again, I realize that offline be a pro has achievements that will unlock certain attribute boost packs for your pro, but there's really no direct correlation to offline and EASHL pro other than that. It almost feels like "hey, I just played 3 seasons offline in be a pro, got my guy great, but now I have to use this crap player online and having nothing to show for my effort other than a +5 slap shot rating and a couple of other random boosts."

Sorry for the ranting. Any advice you guys can offer on how to level our players ASAP would be absolutely fantastic. Cheers.

[jyoung]

There aren't any easy solutions.

Either you grind out games in offline Be A Pro mode (not very fun).

Or you just keep playing online games with your friends, and eventually you will unlock stuff just by playing online (much more fun).

[plaidchuck]

Yep you're pretty much screwed like me for buying the game late. Most of the boosts and slots seem to be unlockable by playing 40 games for 2 seasons of offlie BAP with all of the sliders changed in your favor.

However, the kicker is how many you games you have to play for legend 3 (350) AND on top of that you need to win games, so this year you have to have a good club to get it it seems. With random OTP you could probably go 10+ games without a win with the way some people play.

350 games, if each eashl game is on average 15 minutes, that's more than 3 days worth of playing. Don't know any adult that has time for that. Maybe next year we can buy our cards.

[jyoung]

Yeah I've been playing in a club since the game came out in September, and we all just started getting our legend 3 cards within the last month or so.

Honestly, a lack of boosts will put you at more of a disadvantage than a lack of a legend 3 card. You really don't get that many extra points for getting to legend 3.