EHM 2007 First Impressions

Post by **Minstrel** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:24 pm

The Fantasy Draft bug will be history later on today I do believe

By that I mean I know it's fixed I just haven't heard a firm timeframe on when the patch is being released though it is supposed to be today

Post by **E5150_ca** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:18 pm

Minstrel wrote:The Fantasy Draft bug will be history later on today I do believe By that I mean I know it's fixed I just haven't heard a firm timeframe on when the patch is being released though it is supposed to be today

How'd you guys miss that one in testing anyway?

hockeymike2006 · Post by **hockeymike2006** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:23 pm

Playing the game for the past 2 years I was very very impressed.

At first the setup screen with front office looked confusing, but i got used to it very quick. In fact I think its the best addition.

The fighting tool to encourage or allow is very nice, except the suspensions are way to long, in real life instigating happens all the time, I can see if its a common trend and a player does it 2 games in a row then suspend him for 5 games but not for 9 for 1 game misconduct.

There seems to be alot of players that are signed by teams but are just FA, being a ducks fan I can name several, Ryan Carter, Peterri WIrtanen, Bjorn Melin, Drew Miller, Ken Scuderi, and David Mckee.

BUt im sure those will all be solved soon.

I LOVE IT!

flea · Post by **flea** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:54 pm

Just was checking out the SIGA forums and it seems that they are fixing already a lot of things (Oiler bug and canadian minor league among others)....I think Iam gonna wait a bit to restart my game...

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:43 pm

Minstrel wrote:The Fantasy Draft bug will be history later on today I do believe By that I mean I know it's fixed I just haven't heard a firm timeframe on when the patch is being released though it is supposed to be today

The patch is out now!

I just downloaded and installed it. The download was sloooooooooow! To get the patch, just click "Check For Updates" from your EHM main startup screen. From there you just have to follow the links.

Cork55 · Post by **Cork55** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:10 pm

bruins72 wrote:
Minstrel wrote:The Fantasy Draft bug will be history later on today I do believe By that I mean I know it's fixed I just haven't heard a firm timeframe on when the patch is being released though it is supposed to be today
The patch is out now!

I just downloaded and installed it. The download was sloooooooooow! To get the patch, just click "Check For Updates" from your EHM main startup screen. From there you just have

to follow the links.

Does anyone know if the patch will work with the trial version?

-Cork55

Post by **inSTAALed** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:17 pm

Yes, the patch will work with the trial version.

Everything will work with the trial version because it's the same game with a 6 month lock on it.

Cork55 · Post by **Cork55** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:24 pm

inSTAALed wrote:Yes, the patch will work with the trial version.

Everything will work with the trial version because it's the same game with a 6 month lock on it.

Excellent! This is great news as it will make evaluating the game much easier. I was planning on purchasing the game right away, but after getting burned a bit with OOTP2006, I figure that it might be better to wait and see how things develop patchwise.

-Cork55

Post by **inSTAALed** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:45 pm

This next question is more directed at the admins:

Will you be hosting the patch on your servers?

SI's servers are awful. A 14.1 MB file shouldn't take 15 minutes to download..

It usually takes 45 seconds for something that size.

Cork55 · Post by **Cork55** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 10:00 pm

Here are some of my impressions after playing around with the game over the weekend.

1. The GM main screen is growing on me. I initially was indifferent to it and wanted some sort of main NHL page like the main league page in OOTP2006.

2. The 2d games have too many instances of icing. What bothers me more than that are the long 8-10 second breaks before play resumes. The music clips should play while the players are setting up for the faceoff and not right before the faceoff. This adds needless time when watching the games.

3. Goalies are way too passive with the puck. They need to dump it out when there are no opposing players nearby.

4. The 2d game needs to have some sort of scoring notification using either a "pop up" screen or the PbP. If the PbP is used, it should stop long enough so that it can be read. The same also applies to penalties as well.

5. The team line names should always be located under the goal the team is defending. This will make it easier to follow who is out on the ice. I have been an NHL fan for over 25 years, but I do not make it a habit to memorize every players number, hence the need to look over and see who is on the ice.

6. I wish the game box score better resembled those that are used in news papers or online. The current format only shows the scoring and not the goalie stats.

7. The whole news item area is in need of more detail. I would love to see a nightly story centered around the days top performer. OOTP2006 is a great example of how to do this.

8. There is a bit too much "ticky tacky" passing between players outside of powerplays. Players seldom have time to dish the puck back and forth this much in real life.

9. Passes seem a bit too accurate. I know NHL players are the cream of the crop, but it looks like they must all have magnets on their sticks at times. I need to continue to monitor this since my game sample size is still very small.

10. I would like the ability to view conference standings in a division format where all the divisions are on the screen at the same time.

11. The new 2d game engine is very nice and the players move and pass realistically for the most part. Goals are more often than not scored as a result of good plays rather than some random occurance.

12. Game penalties seem to be a bit off in that many times one team will have way more than the other. the same seems to be true of shots as well. I have seen only a few short handed goals as well. Powerplays seem to be pretty good if not a tad too high. More game sampling will help verify this.

13. I have seem some weird line combos when allowing the coach to select them. I am running the LA Kings for my current game and Crawford seems to think that Visnovski is a right wing. I have removed line set up from his duties after seeing that.

14. I have not seen a goalie being pulled in game yet despite seeing several 1 and 2 goal games. This might occur, I just have not seen it yet.

15. If one is not "required" to make training camp cuts, then the game should either not let the player proceed until such cuts are made or remove the cuts notice. I was confused a bit as to how many players to cut down to. More information would be good here.

Well this post is long enough for now. I will post more thoughts later.

-Cork55

Leafs_fever · Post by **Leafs_fever** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:08 am

Cork55 wrote:14. I have not seen a goalie being pulled in game yet despite seeing several 1 and 2 goal games. This might occur, I just have not seen it yet.

I have seen several golies pulled

Including Raycroft after allowing 2 goals on 3 shots

Post by **Minstrel** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 4:02 am

E5150_ca wrote:
Minstrel wrote:The Fantasy Draft bug will be history later on today I do believe By that I mean I know it's fixed I just haven't heard a firm timeframe on when the patch is being released though it is supposed to be today

How'd you guys miss that one in testing anyway?

Actually I ran those darn drafts every couple of days for months I assure you and I squashed the heeeel out of a bunch of bugs as well as got additional features/refinements added. The sorting of players by reputation at the beginning of a draft instead of alphabetical for example and the 'tool tip' that shows you a players age in years on the 'Other' screen as well as a lot of tweaks so teams build better teams and the like.

The real problems stem from what I call the spiderweb nature of game code.... each time you remove something or add something it can affect/weaken other unrelated portions of the code. The things added for this early patch were all issues that came about in the last day/morning before release when they made final adjustments for liscensing and added the full legal database. Then they squashed three crashes before the release version which is what delayed the final release, so...

just wasn't any time in the end. That last build got delayed due to legal issues and other changes that were causing other crashes.

So the time frame between diagnosing and fixing remains about the same with the Friday release and a Monday patch as we had builds every three days or so, it just took a few extra days. Wasn't really that we 'missed' any of the things in the 3.0.1 patch it was more like we never saw them to miss them because they came up as results of thigns that weren't added in the version we had to test. darn that whole not being able to stop time thing

Cork55 · Post by **Cork55** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 4:59 am

Leafs_fever wrote:
Cork55 wrote:14. I have not seen a goalie being pulled in game yet despite seeing several 1 and 2 goal games. This might occur, I just have not seen it yet.
I have seen several golies pulled

Including Raycroft after allowing 2 goals on 3 shots

I meant pulling a goalie for an extra attacker late in a game.

-Cork55

Post by **E5150_ca** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:39 am

Minstrel wrote: Actually I ran those darn drafts every couple of days for months I assure you and I squashed the heeeel out of a bunch of bugs as well as got additional features/refinements added. The sorting of players by reputation at the beginning of a ..... bla bla bla

I'll take your word for it. This time. Maybe next year you guys should get a real pro

mark_htfc · Post by **mark_htfc** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:27 pm

I got the demo last night. So I am going to give it a shot sometime soon and see what i think.

mark_htfc · Post by **mark_htfc** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 1:17 pm

Well my first impressions on the Main screen and the home menu is wow. I really like this new skin and the layout. It looks really cool. I like the way they have put the little icons underneath the Search bar.

Will update more on my views as I get further into the game.

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:13 pm

Got the demo now.

Impressed with the new layout-I like that they copied the FM 'home' screen setup, with snapshots of various info on one screen. The 2D match engine is a nice addition, but doesn't yet play with the fluidity I would like. Generally looks cleaner than the older one and probably more in-depth.

I would definitely rather wait for FM 2007 though over buying this as of yet.

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:19 pm

btw-can I update graphics in the demo version? And will they still be there if I choose to buy the full version eventually?

Cork55 · Post by **Cork55** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:25 pm

BlackCats101 wrote:btw-can I update graphics in the demo version? And will they still be there if I choose to buy the full version eventually?

The demo version of the game is the same as the full version of the game. I am still evaluating the demo and have used several of the graphics mods. thay have all worked fine for me.

-Cork55

Post by **Minstrel** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 11:20 pm

As Cork said you've got the 100% real deal game when youhave th demo the only difference is time limit.

As for the 2d I suggest putting the speed up to 'fast' for best viewing. The impressive thing though about the 2d engine people I don't think have caught onto is that this insn't just a new way to display what was being displayed before, this a completely rewritten physics based engine. It's not a new 'view' of the old system its an entirely new game engine.

That is the puck actually bounces off players, off the boards, off the goalies, off the net (even gets stuck on the top and sides of the net!) and 'knows' when it is off the ice and responds accordingly. Players that get hit go down and can't make a playif the puck comes back to them because they are still getting up. You may see a player get hit with the puck and leave the game with an ankle injury. You might even see as we did in testing pucks deflect off defensemen, hit the glass behind the goalie, hit the goalie in the back and go in the net.

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:27 pm

I did notice that in a pre-season game, when a shot came back off the glass and a Wild player tucked in the rebound.