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NHL 25 Discussion

I finally bought the game as well.

Franchise Mode is the same as always with some minor improvements like NTC/NMCs.

Scouting, GM (arena, marketing, ...) are still a mess and not usable to me.

Menus are still pretty low and drastically bad UX. Who did that? 🥲

Gameplay got some significant improvements. But there are some weird behaviors and computer checking is strange. Those shoves once you passed a D which make your F passive for 1-2 seconds are taking lots of fun. A backpass is still a pain in the ass ... they go anywhere ...

Also the game is still pretty buggy around changing. Suddenly, players stay on the ice forever or the line up is mixed up.

Fun, evolved, but also a bit frustrating as it s the same - over and over again.
 
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They should make a GM mode that is an extra mode but is more narrative driven. Like a story mode type thing. Think of the movie draft day (lol), but you play through it for a few years.

Online GM mode seems like a pipe dream. It's never going to happen and if it does there will be so many bugs with how complex some of the features are now. Like I said in my previous post, there were already many critical bugs in the old online GM mode, and that was a much more barebones mode.

They should have never taken the classic GM mode out. Even if it has to be sim only, it should have been in there for online as "GM Mode Classic".

There should at least be a basic online league feature. Let me create a league with X number of teams and a custom schedule length, with a fantasy draft. Don't have growth or potential of a salary cap. Just make it really basic so a group of buddies can get together and play. That sounds like something they could do without screwing up.
 
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I've always been an offline only players, and I'm starting to enjoy the Franchise mode custom league.

It took a fair bit of time to figure out the pros and cons of number of teams and playoff structures.

Went to about year 12 of a 40 team league. 8 div X 5 teams each. 1st place in the div gets a bye, 2nd and 3rd play in... it's was like a nightmare version of the real NHL format with just the same opponents every year. I also started with real rosters so the 8 expansion teams were garbage until they bought enough through free agency.

I'm starting to build a 48 team league. Any recommendations on division and playoff structure?
 
frightenedinmatenum2 said:
They should make a GM mode that is an extra mode but is more narrative driven. Like a story mode type thing. Think of the movie draft day (lol), but you play through it for a few years.

Online GM mode seems like a pipe dream. It's never going to happen and if it does there will be so many bugs with how complex some of the features are now. Like I said in my previous post, there were already many critical bugs in the old online GM mode, and that was a much more barebones mode.

They should have never taken the classic GM mode out. Even if it has to be sim only, it should have been in there for online as "GM Mode Classic".

There should at least be a basic online league feature. Let me create a league with X number of teams and a custom schedule length, with a fantasy draft. Don't have growth or potential of a salary cap. Just make it really basic so a group of buddies can get together and play. That sounds like something they could do without screwing up.
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This was a good game which seems like what you are talking about but for NFL.


Flukeshot said:
I've always been an offline only players, and I'm starting to enjoy the Franchise mode custom league.

It took a fair bit of time to figure out the pros and cons of number of teams and playoff structures.

Went to about year 12 of a 40 team league. 8 div X 5 teams each. 1st place in the div gets a bye, 2nd and 3rd play in... it's was like a nightmare version of the real NHL format with just the same opponents every year. I also started with real rosters so the 8 expansion teams were garbage until they bought enough through free agency.

I'm starting to build a 48 team league. Any recommendations on division and playoff structure?
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Four divisions of 12, with 8 of each making playoffs. 32-->16-->8-->4-->Stanley Cup Final.
 
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Late to the party and probably been discussed a hundred times but I'm not reading 23 pages. I found the game for $20. Is it worth buying? All I play is franchise mode and I skipped NHL 24. I usually buy it every other year but I was planning on skipping it again because of the disappointment.

Should I get it for Franchise mode or just wait for 26 to come out and go on sale?
 
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20 bucks is fair value. even if i got disappointed in recent years :)

i play gm only. i wish online CHEL was more stable. But i dont want to spend time matchmaking or playing with morons every third time.
 
The Tourist said:
Late to the party and probably been discussed a hundred times but I'm not reading 23 pages. I found the game for $20. Is it worth buying? All I play is franchise mode and I skipped NHL 23. I usually buy it every other year but I was planning on skipping it again because of the disappointment.

Should I get it for Franchise mode or just wait for 26 to come out and go on sale?
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I am not sure if they’ve fixed this but in my experience, there was incredible menu lag that made franchise mode unplayable for me. It took a couple seconds just to load the stats of a player of their contract details.

Unsure if they’ve fixed that you should look that up before you pull the trigger.

For what it’s worth, the new elements in the franchise mode are a welcome change but become repetitive after some time.
 
I drew a 90 McKenna Team of the Year card in HUT!!!!!
........................ then realized that there are cards this year that have fixed ratings and this is one of them. Like, has this ever been the case before?

Typically TOTY cards upgrade to match the best card rating available for that player. If you get a TOTY player with a good chance of getting a 99 card, you basically dont have to invest/upgrade/trade for that one position in your roster. WTF.
 
amikaro said:
I finally bought the game as well.

Franchise Mode is the same as always with some minor improvements like NTC/NMCs.

Scouting, GM (arena, marketing, ...) are still a mess and not usable to me.

Menus are still pretty low and drastically bad UX. Who did that? 🥲

Gameplay got some significant improvements. But there are some weird behaviors and computer checking is strange. Those shoves once you passed a D which make your F passive for 1-2 seconds are taking lots of fun. A backpass is still a pain in the ass ... they go anywhere ...

Also the game is still pretty buggy around changing. Suddenly, players stay on the ice forever or the line up is mixed up.

Fun, evolved, but also a bit frustrating as it s the same - over and over again.
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Yup. Guess it's an issue that maybe is fixed for NHL26 at this point. annoying to see one first line player refuse to change, or going to line 3 and then a line 2 player jumps out and it's now affecting another lineup.

And when the game is going back and forth with no stoppage all of a sudden you got a top 6 line thats overall stamina is yellow cause the winger is on oxygen.


I don't bother with scouting, but that's cause I play as the Panthers and since it's realistic pick wise, it's not till like 2028 where I have full draft cupboard-if I don't pull a Zito and trade them all away.

The NTC/NMC is a good touch on Franchise mode to limit some wonky trades down the road.
 
Can any 'experienced' GM/Franchise players answer me this: is development truly random or is it actually 'set' by the game?

I got back into playing Franchise Mode again on NHL 24. Out of curiosity, I looked at some of my other game saves from previous games and all noticed the same thing: some of the players that I had drafted in this game (and previous versions) were 'Med Top-6' but their overalls topped out around low 80's. I can tell that some players will have a 'jump' in their overall during the re-sign phase, but the others are stalled in their overall and can sign them for something absurd (8 years, 1.5 million asking price).

Am I botching their development? I do tend to sign my top prospects when they are about to hit UFA so they can develop in the AHL for a bit, but it seems like it's a common thread for me unless a prospect truly is elite.
 
Smirnov2Chistov said:
Can any 'experienced' GM/Franchise players answer me this: is development truly random or is it actually 'set' by the game?

I got back into playing Franchise Mode again on NHL 24. Out of curiosity, I looked at some of my other game saves from previous games and all noticed the same thing: some of the players that I had drafted in this game (and previous versions) were 'Med Top-6' but their overalls topped out around low 80's. I can tell that some players will have a 'jump' in their overall during the re-sign phase, but the others are stalled in their overall and can sign them for something absurd (8 years, 1.5 million asking price).

Am I botching their development? I do tend to sign my top prospects when they are about to hit UFA so they can develop in the AHL for a bit, but it seems like it's a common thread for me unless a prospect truly is elite.
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Neither

It is a factor of their potential and how they are developed. The way to get the best results is to play the player to their role. I.e 1st line forward on the first line, 2nd line forward on the second line, etc and other forward in the AHL (or unsigned to play in their home league).

If the player doesn't get minutes in the AHL they won't develop. So only sign players that will get ice time. Powerplay and penalty kill time can help.

There is a statistical component to development as well. Players with franchise need to perform less well to grow but med top 6 guys generally need to put up stats as well.

Keep in mind most prospects drafted in the real world don't become NHL players. I am able to develop my prospects far more consistently in this game than you would expect out of real life.
 
Historically in EA NHL games development was completely pre-determined, but randomized when you made a new franchise mode.

There were some players in the older games like Cody Ceci who 99/100 times became top pairing D. So I suspect that they must have had some sort of hidden potential meter that determined how much and how quickly each player would grow, and then the likelihood of them busting or booming with each new save.

What the original star ratings did was determine the development path. I think red players had one boom, yellow two, green three. Green players always went up again in overall just before turning 27.

There is such a thing as stat based development, but it's temporary. For example, if you find a 78 OA PLY with 95+ OA and 95+ passing in NHL 15 and staple them to your top line, they will put up 60-80 points and go up to 85 OA the next season, but then they will drop back to their real overall.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that development is still predetermined but the game has bumped up all the temporary overall changes based on morale and performance.

In past versions of the game if you watch YouTube playthroughs, people said things like "he won't grow on that line" not realizing nothing they did had any impact on development. I think that is still the case now, but they increased the likelihood an overall might deviate from the real overall based on things like morale, coach speciality, usage, etc. I could be wrong.
 
Saskatoon said:
Neither

It is a factor of their potential and how they are developed. The way to get the best results is to play the player to their role. I.e 1st line forward on the first line, 2nd line forward on the second line, etc and other forward in the AHL (or unsigned to play in their home league).

If the player doesn't get minutes in the AHL they won't develop. So only sign players that will get ice time. Powerplay and penalty kill time can help.

There is a statistical component to development as well. Players with franchise need to perform less well to grow but med top 6 guys generally need to put up stats as well.

Keep in mind most prospects drafted in the real world don't become NHL players. I am able to develop my prospects far more consistently in this game than you would expect out of real life.
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I'm fairly certain that none of this matters. I'd be shocked if they changed the game that much since franchise is still based on the bones of the system they built in 2013.

What matters most in the game is played personality and morale. This extends to development, not because it helps development but because it stops guys from being disgruntled and taking a temporary hit to their OA.

The biggest thing you can do if you want proper development is when you start a new save file you need to scout every single player in the league and find as many cheap to acquire guys with leadership personalities as possible. 3rd liners, 4th liners, etc. This takes an hour or two, but you might find 6-8 guys you can put in place who are easy to play at their role and re-sign.

After a season or so, you will get a team chemistry that swings between 75-85. Play prospects at their given role to prevent them from being disgruntled, and don't overstock on guys at key positions. Also pay attention to personality when drafting. Development is a lottery because it's all predetermined, but if you have the option to take one of two top 6Fs in the draft, loyalty, meshes in the room, or leader is what you want. It decreases the chance that they will have a morale based drop in stats.

Ultimately, development in this game is unbalanced because as you get a few years in there is an unlimited supply of 79-81 OA type forwards that you can sign for cheap and use in the bottom 6. After about 5-10 years in, if we are taking pure cheese, you need to exclusively draft defenseman because the game doesn't develop enough defenseman and salary demands are anchored to the role, which is anchored to where the OA fits in with all players available. So maybe 5-10 years in, you reach a point where every single low 80s OA defenseman wants 4M+, but it's super easy to get those guys out of the draft and have them cost controlled on ELCa.
 
It’s striking the difference between this game and 24. It plays very similarly, obviously, but the better team actually wins most of the time which is nice. I only play EASHL Clubs, so it’s possible that’s not true in all game modes, but in 24 every game was a battle and even when we dominated the score would only be like 3-1 as the opposing goalie just stood on his head the entire game. We finished with a 600ish-200ish record but more than half of those wins were extremely tight for no reason. This year we’re 261-24 and most of our games are blowout wins. They definitely opened up matchmaking a bit because we never used to face teams who were below .500 and now we do all the time, but even when we played bad teams in years past it was usually down to the wire. I still wish you could match room size though.
 
Takeahnase said:
I enjoy it local co-op but you’ll be wondering if EA has heard of Newton’s laws or why your AI goalie has a sub 70 sv % after outshooting your opponent 45-15.
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This. Even playing the computer, i've had games where my goalie has a 0 percent save average.
 
What is your go-to move when you are one-on-one with the goalie?

I usually go left-right-left, but my timing still seems to be off , I only score about 6 out of 10 breakaways. In NHL 23/24 I usually scored 90% of the time.
 
MartyOwns said:
scrap it, start over
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The game is absolute garbage and the mechanics of the game play gets worse every time. Then there’s the cost of this game. It’s absurd and I don’t care about price when I buy something I want but I also don’t like paying 80% more for something worth 20% of the price they charge for the game.

It’s like they vinyl wrapped an older car and claim it’s brand new. It’s the same shit. Even worse music, awful UI, game physics absolute trash, and you pay for this garbage for $100+

This is what happens when you have zero competition. You can make trash and charge whatever because you’re the only show in town. Also the way that EA functions as a company is just horrid. They’re worse than Adobe and their price gouging subscription bs.

Most gaming companies release their game to subscription services like PlayStation+ or Game Pass a few months after release. The NHL adds it at game 80 when the interest to play it is at the lowest. So now you download the game, the season is over so you maybe do a GM mode and then you give up a few weeks in because it’s boring and the team you like is going to change a lot in the next month or two and you can’t invest the time.

Playability is absolute garbage. This is the issue with annual releases of sports games. It shouldn’t be yearly. It should be spread out more with updates. Like how you would with Halo or something or GTAV.

EA blows. They ruin everything they get their hands on for IP’s.
 
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