Team ratings to start the game. They'll change after patches (Regehr was the highest rated defenseman at launch for 11), but some of these are just ridiculous. Washington and Vancouver getting a higher rating than Boston?
Looks like the Sharks are
89 Offense
92 Defense
80 Goalie
No love for Niemi...
EDIT: Looking at it again, it's not so bad considering Detroit has a 79 and LA has an 80, but Washington and Vancouver getting 95 is ridiculous.
Holy crap Sabres are overrated, 90+ in all 3 categories(Goalie is accurate I guess)? Those ratings are so ****ed. Rangers, Sabres, Leafs, Blues have better offence than the Sharks? I dont think so.
There is no possible way those numbers are accurate. The Sharks overall had the 7th best goals allowed last season, and Niemi had the 11th best gaa and 12th in save %. Fleury in Pitt had almost identical numbers to Niemi and somehow Pitt got a 92 for goaltending. Yea, those have to be user created or something because that is just bs.
My local EB is doing a midnight release on Monday if I want to attend.
Sadly for you guys I'm waiting for Tuesday like everyone else. I have other things to do Tuesday morning and I'm not going out on Monday night and then again on Tuesday. Still I should be home with the game by early afternoon at which point I will set up the team. Whether I set the team to take applications and approve people that way or see if the invite system works better this year remains to be seen. Last year it was frustrating at the start because it seemed like you could only invite people to join if they were online at the time.
__________________ "Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent." '13 Shark CI Tracker: 48 gms, 19-23-6 (SJ-Opponent-National/Market feed)19 SJ feeds in HD Sorry, I am not taking signature requests at this time.
There is no possible way those numbers are accurate. The Sharks overall had the 7th best goals allowed last season, and Niemi had the 11th best gaa and 12th in save %. Fleury in Pitt had almost identical numbers to Niemi and somehow Pitt got a 92 for goaltending. Yea, those have to be user created or something because that is just bs.
Pretty sure those are accurate for now, just the way they average it is completely off. People who got the game already said Niemi is an 85 and Niittymaki is an 82, but the Sharks goaltending is an 80. Doesn't make much sense. What makes it worse is that I'm assuming Luongo will be like a 91, Schneider like an 83, yet their team goaltending is a 95.
No rush for me getting the game though. I'll probably pick it up on Thursday on my way back to SF, but I might not be playing too much for the first week or so because of school work. And when I do play, I'll probably be playing BaP offline for boosts/boost slots or BeAGM.
Gameplay runs smooth, good feel to it. AI are definitely smarter.
Stick check is completely nerfed. Puck control is amped up. Fetus might have to switch to a hitting build finally.
Hitting is also better. Players don't go down on every hit, although it is early and no one has 99 checking/99 strength yet. I must say that it felt good to knock down a PWF with my PLY build with 40 checking though.
Speed/acceleration - even at mid 70 values, my guy felt fast. Maybe it was because I was playing against PWFs with base speed though. I did outskate the CPU on several occassions with this level of speed though...
they nerfed poke checking again? *groan* it's already been heavily knocked down in effectiveness since 09.
Hopefully it just ends up being a scaling change and once I get higher cards and a high PC rating I'll be at least reasonably effective with it.
Hopefully. I used to be able to get by with low stick checking, maybe this year I'll have to up it. Playing D will be difficult this year - there are so many options that are harder to execute this year. The only thing is that hip check is explosively devastating, and the hip check zone is huge.
Sharks stats are about halfway into the second video. Notables are Couture at 84 (highest among Calder candidates), Pavelski at 85, Clowe at 84 (so low, especially since Brown is an 87), and Demers at 82.
Stick check is completely nerfed. Puck control is amped up. Fetus might have to switch to a hitting build finally.
Is it the same patch as the demo? In my experience with the demo, poke checks are still just as powerful as ever. Stick lifts are a little less effective though.
Is it the same patch as the demo? In my experience with the demo, poke checks are still just as powerful as ever. Stick lifts are a little less effective though.
Gonna have to change my opinion a little bit now that I've played more games.
Poke checks are much less effective based on what I've seen so far.
Stick lifts are probably more effective in the real game. I've found with a tough guy d-man build with 70 stick check that you can spam "X" without getting a penalty. The only problem is that I know the forwards I'm facing aren't even at 90 puck control yet due to being on early cards, and even spamming X only gets them to temporarily lose control of the puck. It does work though, because it buys time and draws them out of good scoring position. It actually plays like real defense.
I've found with a tough guy d-man build with 70 stick check that you can spam "X" without getting a penalty. The only problem is that I know the forwards I'm facing aren't even at 90 puck control yet due to being on early cards, and even spamming X only gets them to temporarily lose control of the puck.
Yeah that's what I meant from playing the demo. It's not that they don't work, it's just you can't stick lift, get the puck, and turn the other way anymore. It's more to just stall them so the forwards who are back-checking can help out.
Poke checks still seem to work as normal from what I saw though. It might be different from the real game, but I couldn't tell the difference. Maybe it's the new game speed mixed in with the lack of agility since I've only been using Boston/Vancouver's defense.
Well, I think to make stick check work against higher carded forwards, you're going to have it set to at least 90 or higher. I had it set to 85 tonight and everytime I stick checked, the puck carrier maintained possession and skated right through me. It didn't even buy time.
Finally made it to pro card though. Sad to say but PWF/TWF are once again the best builds. And because pass interceptions are more automatic this year, the lack of defensive awareness on the PWF doesn't even matter anymore. You can just pump up checking and aggression and you have basically an unstoppable build.
I'll be getting this game at some point this week. I'm new to the PS3 scene but would love to join the team. My ID is The_IceisRight and my positions are C, LW, RD.
Got my copy of the game. I'll try to pop online and at least create the team this afternoon and see if I can't figure out the invite/join settings. I won't have time to actually play until tonight, but I can probably use the EA Sports World team web page to manage join requests and make sure everyone that wants in can get in. Unless they took away that feature this year.
I'm still trying to figure out the invite system, but for the time being the team is set to accept join requests. So anyone here can just send a join request and I should be able to accept it. When you do send a join request, try to post it here too so that I know to check the web page.
I appear to also be able to send invites via the team web page, so there's that too.
