Depch

Oh yes, ze updates would be nice. Maybe check-in/waiting list too if the plan is to launch things later this year or early next year?

Made last minute changes, but all good now.

A

Swos is around, just not that interested in Blitz anymore after the break I assume. + Still giving in my request to reset my games vs nyr & fla. Please, pretty please please, with a sugar on a top please. If not, I understand.

I've seen many people talking down to Plabax winning GDL11 and I've been thinking about it a bit myself too. Sure, you can make claims about it being Gretzky-Lemieux combo with added another stickhandling 6 guy and bringing in the knowledge of CB to make that heavier team work good on a right time to your advantage. Sure you can say that Frey quit during the season and some A-level coaches were missing. But you know, that's all there is. In the end it is just speculation and making claims and in the end he has his title. If you think otherwise then it's time to prove it wrong in the next season. The same thing applies to many things. Players of the past are often talked highly, but like in real NHL the game changes and also the players within. In the KGman era there was no CB and apparently pass shots were not being used so frequent. CB even came after Carse era and many new players have reached their highs since then. Old players will leave the game and if some return, they might not hit their stride again and the game has taken it to the next level. I took years off from this game and I'm also a different player I was previously. I didn't do rebound goals when I last played active, but I was a better manual goaltender, apples and oranges. The next paragraph is meant as a provocative, so do not get offended. This years classic A is missing some key A level players. But you know what, it doesn't matter. New players will always come in and replace the old ones, giving new ones room to grow more facing better competition more often. Old ones can make any claims they want, but that's just claims. Whoever wins next classic can't be talked down to and the only way to do so is to come and prove it wrong. I hope we get more old A guys in who are not afraid to play with weaker teams. This was a fitting writeup because many have had the tought of some of the coaches from A leaving the game, but you know, it just doesn't matter. New players will flow in too and things will keep rolling, game will evolve as will the players. When old champs return, they might not have anything to back their claims up unless they come in and play. And you know, that's how it's meant to be. Sometimes making a statement is the most fun one can have though, getting in to some good debates. Like Gretzky watered down competition vs Lemieux conversations. But that's all there is. ++ I've also been thinking that we could make this community even larger. I tried to contact chaos via PM as he is apparently the webmaster of this thing. We could make this bigger. Some key updates to the site, some added money to tournaments. I can easily give in 50$ of my own for each Classic gens A winner starting from spring 2015 league, which can tempt a few more players in and some to stick in (I do think some would be warranted in GDL too, maybe even more but with a modified consept vs skill maybe. Also new players don't get to GDL so often so that's why it warrants to aim towards classic gens A win). Baby steps forward, no need to settle down and just wait. Just need the key guys to sit down and talk about it at some point. But that's for the future plans and nothing immediate.

If people take over Bo/Houly teams I wish the games vs them from me would be removed as they only affect me at the moment. Not sure of the league policy on this from previous seasons, but just stating a request.

This is one of the games where the momentum meter was visible and gave extra visual effects. I did not like the reward system how you gain momentum in this, but hated 2001 even more. Gonna write my history of PC Hockey right here. 1994 NHL Hockey, where it all began for me. Hundreds and hundreds of 1on1 games on the same computer with my friends. This is a bit different from Gens'94 as it's based on NHL'93 from Sega (no manual goalie, a bit different pass shots), but gameplay and experience is exactly the same. 1995 Great, but rather 94. 1996 Great game on PC version. A bit slow tempo, but felt realistic and could score multiple ways. 1997 Impossible to D well. You could wobble left-right and never hit with the D on the opponent offence. Best players are guys like Probert who just shrug off opponents and round the goal holding your shot button down, the goalie will stay at short angle and easy wind up to the net). Also it was dial-up only as online. 1998 Great game for multiplayer and multiple variety of goals you could score. Problem was client-server multiplayer that gave the host an advantage. 1999 I liked this a lot, had a large variety goals you could score with. Few annoying abuses though. 2000 Last great hockey game by EA not being nextgen. Simpson-Laus D for Florida was great! 2001 Ruined my momentum imo 2002 Ruined by momentum imo 2003 Hard to remember, propably had problems with multiplayer if I recall right, making for uneven connections 2004 Can only score with a few abuse goals that go in on All-star level, good engine, but game gets boring due this. 2005 Meh 2006 Meh (I think this had a bug you could score from the blueline right from the boards relatively easily) 2007 This was prolly the last PC EA NHL Hockey game there was, after this I had to buy xbox and fell in love with 6on6 hockey and quit playing 1on1 hockey, untill came back for 1on1 hockey for NHL'94 on this site early 2014 (plus some of the random tournaments in Finland for NHL'94 in between). 2001-2006 we played relatively active in Finland with Gens & NHL94 too. After that just random tournaments mostly or small leagues. Never had huge leagues like here, but 8-13 competitors were regular. ^ Summary, to me no other hockey game surpasses NHL'94 as a 1on1 hockey experience. (C64 Hattrick maybe)

There are restrictions to this by physics alone. When we get a ping of 240 it's 0,24sec delay for every key pressed? Reactive gaming at this is pretty hard and you really have to just pull through with the moves with confidence, which was one of the first lessons I had to learn when starting to play with NA guys (still sometimes struggle with this, decide what to do and stick to that, playing reactive will end up in fail often via hesitation). It's noticeable for both of us. Direct connect without Hamachi could potentially give a better connection. Because with Hamachi first you connect Hamachi server, then Hamachi server transfers the data to your opponent, which adds to the ping the latency you get to connect to Hamachi itself. After that the connection goes back to the location your opponent is in. What it might do is add an extra distance in between, but I doubt it's much, 10-20ping at max, it could also work the opposite way around too that Hamachi might give a better connectivity if your ISP routings are going via random nodes. One has to remember that Hamachi most of all is usually used for people hosting problems, other than than direct connect should be preferable, there are many ways to look for your IP even without Hamachi VPN IP:s, like http://www.whatismyip.com/. Playing the East coast guys is a pleasure from here, frame 4 is nice. Buffalo/Montreal area guys are ok too with ~140ping and frame 5. Beyond that it gets tough. In Finland we play with 1-2 frames and with Fitzo I think it's 2-3 and there is no noticeable difference to LAN.

There are a few more of us playing from the old continent too. The ping overseas feels a bit tough at start, but you can get used to it. Also with P2P it is the same for the opponent, even though I do think there is a slight difference sometimes created by gens or kaillera, but it varies and I've become to terms of it more as momentum more than anything else. There are a few things you can do to make it feel more responsive. Also If you have a DSL-connection you could try asking your ISP to turn off interleave to decrease the latency. It does not do much, but by doing so I get around 10-15 off from my ping to NY from Helsinki, Finland. So I can play some guys like Kingraph with 100-110 ping making for 4 frame delay, which is good and responsive. Frame 5+ games tend to start to have more sluggish feel and you might have to simplify your game a bit, but usually it starts to feel more like that after frame 6+ (I think frame 8 is the max I've played guys to west coast, it's already very noticeable, but these games don't come by often, if this happens make sure your opponent is not using smoothing in kaillera to add any extra frames in).

Yes, 0 weight is 140lbs according to Nose.

My team is based on a 2005 league team when we played a 12 people NHL94 Finnish fantasy league. We didn't have unique attributes that you could change yourself, but we had the same team template for everyone to use. If we can change the jerseys and such I'd like my team to be taken from this rom and have those jerseys. Team was Kallion Snatchers. Fantasy.bin

I personally don't like Blitz physics much, but if it has the CB fix (even though I'm beginning to like it as a depth thing in defaults), maybe it would have a different feel to it and for that I could give it a go for this tournament. You can make some wicked players with this. I would be up for it with Vancouver.

Bah, that's only because you took WSH! And it is a bit inflated because of not all top coaches participating. The team draft system vs skill is great but I can see why some might not like it and skipped it due that but that's their loss. =) Let's make spring classic 2015 even bigger. We have 38 coaches participating in Gens classic alone, that's huge!

Also consent this one. It's expected that there would be more losses on the way, not just against Kingraph (possibly even with larger numbers) and if this is verified that it's a pattern, then it's the right move. And I'm also basing this to my first experiences of dcicon when I started in Blitz 8 to play the NA games. First comments _during_ the game via esc were "you score the gayest goals". I would not want that to happen any of the new guys. Older guys and veterans of the game can deal with that but not to the new guys. We can make this community big by making the experience enjoyable for a larger lot. And I'm not saying dcicon is a bad person or anything, just that some people are very competitive and the situation can be too much for some to bear when taking a beating, but learning temper and patience is important for personal development and interacting with people in general. In this case it doesn't look good. This especially in Classic when there are so many new people around, this league needs to represent the sportsmanship of the game as the flagship league (gains more interest outside of the most active guys, is played with defaults we all know of. Skillwise it's propably GDL as we have some coaches who only play with original physics (turning myself to that way too) and a case can be made for Blitz with it's A/B separation making A the most competitive). We've got 2 big leagues full of people and almost everyone has started playing. Large leagues gain more interest. Classic has never been bigger and we don't need to turn new people away from having a bad experience.

I agree. Snake draft might give a better 1-2 punch to higher skilled players. Also trading picks goes 99% advantage to the higher skilled players who know to anticipate the players where they go more. I don't like restricts in general, but normal draft + no trading picks would make for more interesting teams and give better handicap vs skill in GDL. A top tier coach should never be allowed to get a punch of Gretzky-Lemieux for example from the draft. That's just crazy. ++ edit. Few things I have to add on this. Obviously with non-snake draft the new players could not be last. Maybe insert them to a window before "A" players or to the start. One has to wonder would the ADP be any different with no trading and non-snake draft. I would bet on that some players would be taken earlier who can now be traded down to be taken to. This would imply that the ADP list of "A" players is different from ADP list of overall from all guys, making the general ADP list false, but maybe not too much. At least this would be interesting to see out.

I'm a bit of a skeptic myself so I wanted to try the goalie route first round as a test in this season of Blitz A to see the same conclusion out myself or prove it wrong. The conclusion I came to even in pre-season was that it's definately not good to use round 1-2 pick for a goalie. Just rather build the core to your liking with F-F or F-D. If you are not much of a manual goalie then get one of the guys with stick&gloves 3/4+, don't leave picks to Hrudey and peeps. Good manual goalies like Plabax & Frey can just use anyone and make a case for them, but goalies do matter if you're not much of a manual goalie. Just not first or second round much. Have to write about this again when the next GDL draft is upcoming, if everyone just went with this knowledge it could have a nice effect towards the end of first round in picks.

This really blows it up completely. I like it, like it a lot. I'm still very apprentice being succesfull at CB, but it adds a whole new depth to lineups and matchups.

stl it is

Just bumping this thread up, was hilarious to read and look back almost 10 years. This was one of the first times the Finnish community started to mengle with NA one. Remember Tickenest somehow popping up on our IRC channel first. There was no peer to peer internet connection then so people had to play on server-client mode. Who knows, maybe there still are some small active communities who just are not aware that there is a bigger lot playing this game too relatively organised.

Some of the Finnish guys are planning a small cup at the moment, if they are up for it maybe they could welcome a few NA guys there too to try it out, some do resist the idea of playing with high pings though but maybe with those players there could be a work around like server-client. Not sure of the rosters though yet, no discussion about that one. Just an idea, which would need to be discussed and signups are going on, no due date for that yet. We're 5 now and looking for 8-10 maybe. + heard about that league too, was inactive myself then, which I had thought of the whole community as of then too, maybe in the future!

Add in line changes AND offsides and you welcome a slower paced hockey experience. This makes defending easier and as the game is slower paced with less breakaways also less pass shot abuses as they're hard to do when other guys are high in the offensive area too. Many times the game goes to chess of looking for openings for onetimers or just slapshots. That's how we played in Finland for years. That's the default in NHL Hockey (PC version of NHL94) vs Sega Genesis/SNES more arcade stylish default rules which we enforce here naturally as we play on a gens emulator. You could try it with some guys and see if you like that, I could be in for such a league with default physics.

I'll say again what's been said before. If Blitz was intended to have heavier players have the advantage on checking and resistance, then C/B should be removed from Blitz as it evens the field with light/heavy players, the whole general idea of the league is at stake. C/B should not be removed from Classic or GDL, I would strongly oppose that. I'm fine with whatever people come up with for rules though, but this would seem the most logical decision backing up league histories. ++ 2-3 months from the draft now, can hardly remember my team anymore. But summer is over and fall is here thus real hockey has started also and camps at NHL too. I'm fairly sure people will become more active as the nights get colder and people stay home more again. Let's get it going on or if it takes another month or so just re-draft.

In B estimating that we have Donnybrook & Fitzo in finals. Two 5/5 speeders win it in finals but Rusty-Sandstrom combo makes it go to 7 games!

I don't think Plabax, Swos or Kingraph would have drafted any differently even if this didn't exist. Plabax likes his mobility, maybe influenced on some of the d-men picks. Kingraph has fatties on his backline so c/b won't affect there. Swos was aiming these guys pretty much from the start regardless. Thus I think it's just yada yada bringing up the possible draft option here. The real question is where will Blitz go from this. Will you allow Kovalenko "C-check" McSorley with C/B. Someone will bring up B-check here and my statement is that B-Check is no glitch, I review it more as tripping as it's meant for poking and pass interceptions too aka defending with the stick. Very often the penalty on that is also called tripping but it occasionally does a checking animation there too, especially close to boards. Also that resistance to B-checks is stickhandling validates that idea even more where as to C-checks well, it was fairly intentended that it's the weight as checking resistance and c/b throws that to the trashbin.

My vote: GDL: no fix for c/b check Classic: no fix for c/b check Blitz: It does seem like a no brainer to fix it here if the core idea of this league was to have the checking advantage on heavier guys