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    NHL 19 Tuner 1.0.2 is out - Are we overreacting about the changes?

    NHL19_tuner102.jpg

     

    Hey NHLGamers,

    A new NHL 19 Tuner carrying the version number 1.0.2 has been released. Before we jump into the tuner notes, let's have a little talk. If you are active on social media and the NHL community, you know that there has been a lot of harsh feedback about NHL 19 and there's been claims such as:

    • They ruined the game - it was already perfect during the beta!
    • The patch/tuner turned the game back into NHL 18!
    • The skating was perfect, but now I feel like a tank again!

    Let's take a moment to think about this. Could some of this backlash also be a community overreaction? I mean, we're having the same discussions annually. People that are familiar with marketing surely know that word of mouth works in a snowball effect, maybe that's a part of what's happening here? Understandably everyone can't like the changes but have they actually been as dramatic as the community has made it seem?

    I myself usually love playing the game in the first weeks it comes out - sure, it feels the same in many ways, but it's still fresh and people don't know how to play exactly and how to score in the most efficient ways. Fast-forward a few weeks: The game isn't as easy as it was on the week of the release. Your competition has also got in some game hours and has learned a trick or two. The bliss of having a new, amazing product has faded and you've become familiarized with the grind it takes to stay at a competitive level in the game.

    So a new patch or tuner comes out and someone tells you "this and that is completely ruined". You start focusing on it more. You notice new things that perhaps aren't actually new things, just things you didn't pay attention to before. But surely it's real - everybody is talking about it!

    Do I think the game is perfect? Far from it. I have spent countless hours giving constructive feedback about it this year alone. But constructive is the key word. If you want something to be actually improved, you can't expect it to improve if your feedback is at the level of "This is trash! Fix your game!". I know there are many members in our community that actually put in the time and effort to provide valuable and well constructed feedback. I believe we could all benefit from taking a look at our approach to feedback, whether it is at a Burger King or a web forum.

    Honestly, I have been too busy with working on the website and broadcasts to get in as many game hours as I would like to and because of that, I know that many of you are better qualified to actually discuss the pokechecks, stick lifts and skating. So please do discuss it in the comments, using words, videos and graphs or whatever you need. Let's just drill into the specifics of the issues and look at why things work or don't work the way we expect them to. It's also worth keeping in mind that if you release a patch that aims to fix everything in one go, it's could to be really hard to say what change caused an unexpected change to the game balance.

     

    NHL 19 Tuner 1.0.2 - Change log

    Quote

    October 11th @ 2am PDT - Tuner 1.02

    • Improved consistency of penalty calls from errant stick lifts
    • Increased deking success rate in keeping the puck. Player attributes still provide a big range in ability but all players will be improved from where they were with the change.
    • Improved consistency of blocking incidental stick contact if the stick collided with body geo first
    • Improved pickup solve consistency
    • Players will no longer drop their sticks
    • Improvements to AI goalie decision making when playing the puck out of their net. Mostly impacts goalies that were too aggressive
    • AI goalie puck tracking improvements
    • Reduced the chance ai skaters will put the puck over the glass for delay of game penalties in World of Chel

    Source: EA Forums

     

    Ok, so on to the important stuff of what's new in this tuner. The tuner is now available, but I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. There are several parts that at least on paper sound like they issue many of my main complaints so far:

    • You should not be able to smash that stick lift irresponsibly without getting called for penatlies. 
    • It should be easier to pull off some dekes with any player type now (I've felt it's too hard to get successful dekes even when the player isn't pressured) 
    • It's felt like it's been a bit too easy to knock the puck lose just by the opponent trying to hit you, but in the process their stick has touched the puck, often through your body. This should be improved now.
    • I've often been confused with whether or not I've been able to pick up the puck or not and I don't know if I should leave the situation or not. Hopefully now the outcome will be more obvious and make reading the game a bit easier.
    • Earlier broken sticks were removed (from competitive play) and now the dropped sticks. While I liked it as a thing that happens in real hockey, let's face it - it was very random and thus unfair.
    • I've actually been quite happy with the goalies this year, but I imagine these tweaks are to hinder some glitch.

     

    What do you think about the new tuner? What is your main gripe with NHL 19? Let us know in the comments.




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    I feel like the same thing happens every single year. People think the game was at its best out of the box, and the tuner updates are claimed to take the game closer to the previous one. Sometimes people blame the tuner on things the tuner didn't even touch.

    Play the game and form your own, unbiased opinion.

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    I have tried a couple of online HUT games with the new tuner. I did see a couple of slashing penalties that probably wouldn't had happened pre-tuner. Though, you can still spam it as long as you don't have horrible positioning.

    Overall, the game is still boring to play (HUT). I had more fun playing HUT in NHL 18.

     

    Edited by Floor17
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    Of course I've already gotten used to it but I'd still want skating to be reverted back to the state it was in before the patch. Afaik EA heavily used RPM in marketing, but afer the patch skating has felt pretty identical to NHL 18... (if skating straight is taken out of consideration)

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    Tonight we played the rcl3 match. after the game did not show the statistics of players of the match, only the stars and statistics of throws, deletions. after that I looked at the information about the game, it was written that the version of the game is 1.2. Before launching the game, the update did not come, an alert was issued that the latest version of the game was installed. By the way, yes, they removed the aggressive skating and the players began to move around the ice, like chess pieces. Returning back to nhl18. Are we being held for fools? What did they do all year?

     

     

    Edited by cyberg
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    Apparently the latest feature is to turn off people's vibration and pass assist entirely even though they didn't even leave the dressing room in between games. Why is this not mentioned in the changelog?

    Also, players being spawned as Joe NHL and countless resets throughout games.

    It's not just the fact that the gameplay has changed for the worse, they also break countless other things along the way. And it's starting to get annoying to a point that I actively question myself if I wanna turn on the console at all.

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    Problems on matchmaking in clubgame 6's. We were trying to play for 3hrs. Managed to play 2 matches. 

    We found match like 5-6times within the 3hours period(fin time 2200-0100), which of 2 worked. With the same opponent. Other 3-4 matches ended due to opponents player was dropped out during the matchmaking process. And also player numbers was changed, attributes of matchmaking was changed. I did not even check the pass-assistance percentage. 

    Game was laggish, even though everyone in our team is playing with copper or fibre connection, hardwired connection. Personally, playing with NAT1, can't say if everyone else is playing with same NAT in our team. Before patch, last night, matchmaking was succes every time. 

    Play has been slower overall, skating is worse compared to release version. I saw the difference already after 1st or 2nd patch ( don't remember how many updates has come already). 

    The two games we managed to play were unconsistent, much of bouncing pucks, don't receive passes etc. First time after 19 release version my player started to do weard animations when turning your players direction from forward to back, without using L2. Doing something extra without the puck. 

     

    I might be bad player, lite-noob, but in my current team rest of the guys are more experienced ELITE and PRO-players. They felt it too. 

    What ever EA did, again, they should take it back. Except maybe for the increased sticklift spamming penalties. 

    And my ps4 did not give me any files to download from server to patch, just gave me exact the same info as it gave to Cyborg. 

    I tested one random eashl game last saturday, skater was super smooth and fast. When I went to clubmode, it was something else for sure. 

     

    My answer to the original question "do we overreact". In my opinion, NO. 

    I spent 99€ for a game what was giving much of promises in the beta phase. Now, feels partly already like a nhl18.

     

    Unofficially...

    How the fuck they managed to do this, again??

    I'm really frustrated, again.

    Edited by Oicteppotulppu
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    We are absolutely shocked what they do this year with game. NHL19 comes with a lot buggs this year and every Tuner Update it will be more and more bad. They kidding us all...we pay every year a lot of money for that and we get more and more shit!!! I play NHL since 1994 and never saw this big and wrong work ever. The last years they make some new things in the game but twice as much wrong !!!

    How can we start the ECL 7 on Monday when the game is so broken?!?

    best regards Rising Phantoms HC 

    Edited by CzE Toni
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    There is a lot of talking about game being broken, skating not the same and no tools to defend. I'm sorry for being mr. positive here but I haven't noticed anything being broken. Poking and stick lifting are very logical in my eyes. Every single penalty I've got have been from my personal error and I've known it every time. Skating is fluent and sharp in my hands, loving that I can be very precise with my movement.

    What I've seen though is following. Seems like that people are with larger players than in beta. I'll give you simple physics lesson: more mass means more momentum to overcome in changing direction. I use pretty small builds and I feel what I should feel. Crisp agility but physically behind. I just have to adjust my playstyle for it. This doesn't mean that I can't defend with my body, I simply time and position my tackles more accurately. Other that is changed a lot from beta, is peoples skill level. I see that players have gotten better in this game so there is smaller room for error and the tempo is faster.

    I can talk only my point of view, but I always first look at things I do before crying out that game is broken. I can't teach you how to stick check properly, but I can tell that for me everything is in line. Best NHL so far and miles ahead compared to 18.

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    Haveto agree with MovaaN, atleast on the stick lifts - Sat more often in the sin-bin yesterday, than before the updates. But It was always my own fault, as I did not adjust my game from the earlier (x) spamming mentality.

    Still managed to do some "game saving" poke chekcks with out penalties, so it is more or less usable, not spammaple in my opinion. Still would like pokes just to miss with out opponents to fall so often.

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    I 100% agree with MovaaN. Skating forces people to use smaller builds. Pokechecks, sticklifts and bodychecking are all good tools to defend but you can get around defender if you are skilled enough. It is also a skill to not be in the penalty box all the time.

    One thing that I'm conserned about is loops. They somehow seem to be back after this tuner.

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    Don't get me wrong.

    I'm not that guy who loves to spam pokes and so on. I have less than 25min in penalties, which of 1 is 5min boarding, from over 60 clubgames. And every single penalty I've had was my own fault. I don't blame the game for my own mistakes. And I don't use big figures when building my skater. 

    I love the fact you cannot spam the poke, after patch you cannot spam the sticklift atleast that much either. Which I see as a positive progression. I see playing in defence more fun than previous years games, you have to be in the right place, doing right things. 

    I like when skilled (not me) players are able to be skilled, it should be the thing. I loved the release version and beta, when in my opinion, overall play was even faster. 

     

    I don't know was it because of the patch or was it just purely bad luck, but as I wrote, last night we managed to get 2 games within 3hrs. And problems in the dressing room. Game was bit laggy. That sucks. Big time. At the time i was writing my previous post, I had paskahalvaus in Finnish, because of the two games in 3hrs. 

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    vor 5 Stunden schrieb MovaaN:

    There is a lot of talking about game being broken, skating not the same and no tools to defend. I'm sorry for being mr. positive here but I haven't noticed anything being broken. Poking and stick lifting are very logical in my eyes. Every single penalty I've got have been from my personal error and I've known it every time. Skating is fluent and sharp in my hands, loving that I can be very precise with my movement.

    What I've seen though is following. Seems like that people are with larger players than in beta. I'll give you simple physics lesson: more mass means more momentum to overcome in changing direction. I use pretty small builds and I feel what I should feel. Crisp agility but physically behind. I just have to adjust my playstyle for it. This doesn't mean that I can't defend with my body, I simply time and position my tackles more accurately. Other that is changed a lot from beta, is peoples skill level. I see that players have gotten better in this game so there is smaller room for error and the tempo is faster.

    I can talk only my point of view, but I always first look at things I do before crying out that game is broken. I can't teach you how to stick check properly, but I can tell that for me everything is in line. Best NHL so far and miles ahead compared to 18.

    helo, you should be in a lot of things wright...we don't talk about the skating and ect. that was great, but look what the Bots doing including the goalie now...every glitch is in...dressing room works very bad...is that a real game?!?😉

    Edited by CzE Toni

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    I haven't played the game post patch. If the match making works now(?) it would be easier to play a few games and see how it feels. The biggest nuisance I've felt is the same in 18 as in 19. The engines incapability of rewarding players who read the play. The puck seems to pass through flesh and bones sometimes and I have to admit that frustrates me quite a bit.  

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    vor 16 Minuten schrieb FreddeSwede:

    I haven't played the game post patch. If the match making works now(?) it would be easier to play a few games and see how it feels. The biggest nuisance I've felt is the same in 18 as in 19. The engines incapability of rewarding players who read the play. The puck seems to pass through flesh and bones sometimes and I have to admit that frustrates me quite a bit.  

    you are absolutely wright...our club play each every day and we read the game...so we can see what EA misstake... 

    Edited by CzE Toni

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    Are we overreacting?

    Personally it isn't a question to have a clear answer for it. IMO it's a no for that the game is unplayable or completely unjoyable. Do we have a less more effective poke check? Yes. Therefore we had a spamming stick lift festival which seemed to be a little bit fixed yesterday but still there are some situations where you could basically watch two guys smashing the x button for quite a while without any penalty. There are still out of nowhere pokes and stick lifts where you are wondering how you could loose the puck. Was this better in beta? At least the poke check was way better as you had to realy think if you use it instead of "let's poke, good things will happen". I don't get it why you change it if nearly most of your gamechangers and therefore visible "advertisement" are very excited and satisfied and you release a "how to poke video" before bring the good old times back a day later. Make it variable for the different divisions as a softer tuner for lower divisions and harder tuner for higher tiers.
    Personally the skating feels a little bit weaker than at launch but way better than in nhl 18. But there are definitely a few pick up scenes where you only can scratch your head off. A little example? If you do a saucer pass along the boards the receiving player will do a little cut inside and looses his speed and position. Very frustrating if you do exactly the right play but the game and not an opposing player "defends" your actions.

    For me it's the little things which realy leaving me sometimes with total disbelief. Every player on the ice get displayed as a center in the cut scenes - basically what the fuck? It should be the same code as for years now. It occurred during the beta and is still not fixed two months after that? I know this has nothing to do with gameplay and the realy important things to adjust but that's how you make people motivate to screw your game.
    Or the fact that your player takes a seat during the penalty kill on two different places - sometimes on the players bench, sometimes inside the penalty box. And this kind of bug realy effects gameplay and tactics. Let this scenario come inside your head: ecl playoffs, matchup for the title/promotion/relegation, overtime. Your team has a powerplay and don't score, produces a turnover and There are 2 seconds left on the penalty. You are in total stress and make the move to the side of the penalty box to prevent a breakaway chance - and the player spawns exact on the other side of the ice, gives a middlefinger to your positioning, scores a goal and you are done. That would also be a nice way to sell some new tv's, monitors, controllers..

    And don't forget the major point of all critics - the dressing room error. One of our backup guys can play every other game with a very low ping with a nice internet connection, but he can't play nhl because of reasons. Basically he spent 70 euros to try it sometimes and have fun for 20 minutes in our party chat and than rages and go to another game because he can't play any single game with us. That's not acceptable.
    In the rest of our team we don't realy have that much problems with error codes or get kicked out of the sessions, but you spend nearly half an hour or more in the dressing room everyday because some guy drops out of the game and you have to restart it. And you don't go back to the dressing room, no, this would be the easy solution so no way to do it like that. Go to the main menu and click through 5 different menus to get back to the dressing room. Brilliant!

    Otherwise the game physics are kind of random sometimes - on that play your player is totally in the wrong position and still takes the puck, sometimes you stand perfect in the passing lane and he is more interested in the young girl from shawinigan in the stands as picking up the puck. You do a great saucer pass to score a cross crease goal? Don't trust it, because the defender could do a random stick lift to stop it and sometimes your pass gets through 3 players. It's basically inconsistent for a lot of games.

    I guess that most people don't want to complain the whole game, but currently these little flaws are way to present and pisses everyone that off that they will see way more negative things than positive. It's human to rage and hate the game if you spend 2 hours in the dressing room without finding a matchup that works without any drops and than receive a cheesy goal.

    So far I'm satisfied with the general settings and it feels that you need more skill to win games. But I can totally understand people who hates the game already because off all these flaws and maybe the only big change in the game physics (skating) got cut and it seems that frostbite or other new game mechanics are far away to get included.

    Ps: please note that I'm nearly only playing eashl and not versus or HUT.

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    vor 3 Stunden schrieb Mannheimer1938:

    Are we overreacting?

    Personally it isn't a question to have a clear answer for it. IMO it's a no for that the game is unplayable or completely unjoyable. Do we have a less more effective poke check? Yes. Therefore we had a spamming stick lift festival which seemed to be a little bit fixed yesterday but still there are some situations where you could basically watch two guys smashing the x button for quite a while without any penalty. There are still out of nowhere pokes and stick lifts where you are wondering how you could loose the puck. Was this better in beta? At least the poke check was way better as you had to realy think if you use it instead of "let's poke, good things will happen". I don't get it why you change it if nearly most of your gamechangers and therefore visible "advertisement" are very excited and satisfied and you release a "how to poke video" before bring the good old times back a day later. Make it variable for the different divisions as a softer tuner for lower divisions and harder tuner for higher tiers.
    Personally the skating feels a little bit weaker than at launch but way better than in nhl 18. But there are definitely a few pick up scenes where you only can scratch your head off. A little example? If you do a saucer pass along the boards the receiving player will do a little cut inside and looses his speed and position. Very frustrating if you do exactly the right play but the game and not an opposing player "defends" your actions.

    For me it's the little things which realy leaving me sometimes with total disbelief. Every player on the ice get displayed as a center in the cut scenes - basically what the fuck? It should be the same code as for years now. It occurred during the beta and is still not fixed two months after that? I know this has nothing to do with gameplay and the realy important things to adjust but that's how you make people motivate to screw your game.
    Or the fact that your player takes a seat during the penalty kill on two different places - sometimes on the players bench, sometimes inside the penalty box. And this kind of bug realy effects gameplay and tactics. Let this scenario come inside your head: ecl playoffs, matchup for the title/promotion/relegation, overtime. Your team has a powerplay and don't score, produces a turnover and There are 2 seconds left on the penalty. You are in total stress and make the move to the side of the penalty box to prevent a breakaway chance - and the player spawns exact on the other side of the ice, gives a middlefinger to your positioning, scores a goal and you are done. That would also be a nice way to sell some new tv's, monitors, controllers..

    And don't forget the major point of all critics - the dressing room error. One of our backup guys can play every other game with a very low ping with a nice internet connection, but he can't play nhl because of reasons. Basically he spent 70 euros to try it sometimes and have fun for 20 minutes in our party chat and than rages and go to another game because he can't play any single game with us. That's not acceptable.
    In the rest of our team we don't realy have that much problems with error codes or get kicked out of the sessions, but you spend nearly half an hour or more in the dressing room everyday because some guy drops out of the game and you have to restart it. And you don't go back to the dressing room, no, this would be the easy solution so no way to do it like that. Go to the main menu and click through 5 different menus to get back to the dressing room. Brilliant!

    Otherwise the game physics are kind of random sometimes - on that play your player is totally in the wrong position and still takes the puck, sometimes you stand perfect in the passing lane and he is more interested in the young girl from shawinigan in the stands as picking up the puck. You do a great saucer pass to score a cross crease goal? Don't trust it, because the defender could do a random stick lift to stop it and sometimes your pass gets through 3 players. It's basically inconsistent for a lot of games.

    I guess that most people don't want to complain the whole game, but currently these little flaws are way to present and pisses everyone that off that they will see way more negative things than positive. It's human to rage and hate the game if you spend 2 hours in the dressing room without finding a matchup that works without any drops and than receive a cheesy goal.

    So far I'm satisfied with the general settings and it feels that you need more skill to win games. But I can totally understand people who hates the game already because off all these flaws and maybe the only big change in the game physics (skating) got cut and it seems that frostbite or other new game mechanics are far away to get included.

    Ps: please note that I'm nearly only playing eashl and not versus or HUT.

    wright...we play too only Eashl...😉💪🏼

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    7 hours ago, Mannheimer1938 said:

    But there are definitely a few pick up scenes where you only can scratch your head off. A little example? If you do a saucer pass along the boards the receiving player will do a little cut inside and looses his speed and position. Very frustrating if you do exactly the right play but the game and not an opposing player "defends" your actions.

    Very good post and I find it easy to agree on most points. I just wanted to comment on this part as I feel like there's a certain fundamental mechanic that is overlooked by most. If anyone feels like I'm wrong please correct me, but I have always thought the passing attribute of the player who makes the pass affects how well the target player picks up or shoots the puck (in combination with the target's hand-eye). The game mentions things like passing accuracy and passing power, and passing accuracy is what I refer to. I don't see much of a difference in "accuracy" otherwise; all player builds feel similar when aiming the pass and seeing where it goes, and this is true no matter what pass assist % is in use.

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    Got to make correction. Today game felt much better than yesterday evening,  Some pass of course through the player and that kind of "normal" behaviour. But other than that, game was good again. 

    Don't know what happened yesterday, but that was weard. Maybe they had updating on going concerning the patch.

     

     

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