NHL 12 Media and Information

[Jason]

Played some more tonight and really like the slower speed of the game. The graphics received a nice upgrade too.

[Ted]

Demo is very impressive.  A lot of the stuff that bothered me and Jake from the two previous years is gone or toned down.  Looking forward to release very much.

[Jason]

Glad to see you're liking it. I've always valued your opinion on hockey games and was curious what you thought of it.

[Jason]

Game Informer Review

Though the Be A GM mode needs a major overhaul and the new Legends feature falls flat, NHL 12 is still strongest where it counts â€" on the ice. Just like a well-rounded power forward who can dominate in all three zones, you can’t deny the benefit this brings to the club.

[Jason]

Game Trailers has just posted their video review of NHL 12

[Jason]

Loving the goal variety with this year's game.

[Ted]

We put our same sliders from 11 over into 12 and are happy with the result.  We're just going to drop puck control for both user and CPU and I think we've got our 8 minute period sliders.

Just have to start building our song lists now for our arena.  We plan to kick off our season the weekend of Oct 8.

[Jason]

What type of slider adjustments do you make and what skill level do you play on? I've made only minor changes (injuries and fighting) and play on Pro. I'm going to move up to the next level because I'm finally getting dominant on that skill level, although, I did blow a 4-1 lead in the 3rd period against the Blackhawks the other night.

[Ted]

In NHL 11 we play Superstar with 8 minute periods.  Penalties at max for CPU and CPU teammates (because we lock into postions, Jake on the left and me on the right wing).  Fatigue effect max for both, fatigue recovery 2 from bottom for both.  We bottom out the cpu pass accuracy and leave the human at default.  Even with that the CPU is still too tape to tape, but it does help.  I think we have fighting right in the middle.  I'm pretty sure that is all we change.  In NHL 12 we are keeping it the same, but are looking at dropping puck control significantly and we MAY lower the hitting power a notch we haven't decided.  It also may be something we adjust mid season.  Last year we played the first 20 games on All Star and it was just too easy with the Capitals so we moved to Superstar for the first time.  Now we were traded to Winnipeg so if we don't win any games for the first 20 we might have to drop it back, but I think we'll tough it out and just make ourselves get better.

I know we don't touch goalies and we don't touch shooting.  With the penalty sliders we see about 5 powerplays a game per side.  Sometimes there are only a couple a side and sometimes it's a friggin' penalty fest so there is a good variety.  The clock slows down during powerplays so 8 minute periods is all we need to generate realistic shots and goals per game.

[Ted]

Oh and last year we maxxed injuries and it was outrageous.  Default injuries is really a joke because you see a few injuries, but you never see any on the other teams and I was trying to alleviate that.  It kinda pissed Jake off, but when we thought about it later it made the season REALLY interesting because we always had a good guy or two out and at one point we had six starters out hurt.  It made us really play different and utilize our minor leagues.  I think the part that upset us the most is that our personal guys got hurt and missed significant time last season, both of them only played about 60 games. 

I asked Jake if he wanted it back to default and he said no it makes the season even more tactical so I think we are leaving it maxxed unless we see something really stupid.

[Jason]

Do you adjust the puck size and shadow? I just changed both to "Small" and find that it looks much better. I tried "Authentic", but the puck was very hard to see with that setting.

[Ted]

No we've never touched those.

[Jason]

New Tuner Released Today:

We released a tuner to fix the loose helmet crash  in otp when parental controls are on. A proper fix will be made in a  patch to come later

Another tuner update is scheduled for next week that will address the following:

We are releasing another tuner next week that will address hip checks. We didn't release it together as one tuner because
1. Fixing the crash was 1 change and high priority
2. We have other changes and want some time to test them
3. We wanted the helmet change to overwrite v1.00 where the next tuner would likely be v1.01

[Jason]

We will be doing a server restart at 1am Pacific/4am Eastern to release a new tuner update - V1.01

V1.01 (effects all modes, except offline with V1.00)
-Small adjustment to goalie hug post to reduce vulnerability to far side goals coming around the net
-Small adjustment to guard the near post on shots
-Increase skating friction while doing protect puck (pretty small amount)
-Reduce stick lift penalties (hitting the hands is not a penalty now)


OTP Specific Changes:
-Disable hip checks (only in OTP/EASHL for now, but want input on this before we change it for Versus as well) The change makes hip check ineffective, but a proper fix will come in our 2nd patch

-Call interference on medium hits more strictly (0.4 to 1.0 â€" NOTE: not necessarily 100% because other factors are involved)
-Make poke check radius bigger (scale from 1.0 to 1.1)


Please play a few games and get a feel for the changes. The most noticeable being the poke check and the disabled hip checks in OTP.

Source: EA Forum

[Jason]

Looks like patch #2 is available for PS3, but there's no official word or release notes on it yet.