naples39

To be honest, I don't really understand why it's so important to see who is 'the best.' If the league has established anything, it's that no one is that much better than anyone else, and many games are decided simply by chance because the players are basically equally skilled. I really couldn't care less whether I am the best NHL 94 player in the world, 4th best, 17th best, or 89,176th best--I play the league because it's fun, not to prove anything.

As the infamous calgary, I may as well poke my head in on this conversation... I feel like I've played very well this season, but anything can happen in the playoffs. I feel just about everyone who has participated in this thread can win the league if they get a few breaks in a best of 7 series. Just a bunch of very good players, so it's not like there is a big obvious difference between players. Speaking personally, a lot of my success comes down to form at the time of the game. For instance, Ken pointed out my lousy record against him and SJ, being 0-4 against them, which is partly matchups, but also because those were the first four games I played of the season and I hadn't played NHL online in months. Since those games, he correctly pointed out I am 26-3. Same thing happened to me last season, as I had best regular season record in the leauge (24-6 I think), yet I was one period away from losing my first round playoff series 4 games to 1 because I hadn't played online in a month or so and was really rusty. Fortunately I righted the ship just in time and dominated the last 3 games of the series. HABS got the better of me in the finals, though obviously I have a much better team in calgary this season than being stuck with st louis last season. Anyway, long story short, nothing is guaranteed here. Too many good players and NHL 94 can be so unpredictable on top of that. Should be fun.... (btw, never played kgman, so can't comment on his skills. given the buzz though, sounds like quite a player)

I agree with Habs about the feel of the rom. The forwards are too low, with not enough guys in the 80s or high 70s. That and the goalies are ludicrously high. Obviously this was a conscious choice of the makers so I presume this won't be changing. I spent a while I going through the rom editing the player ratings, primarily lowering the goalies, lowering dmen shot accuracy (which are all very low in real 94), and raising elite forwards. Still needs some tweaks though.

I've always found it best from the middle too, but it's hard to set up because the low shots are always so easy for dmen to block.

Woah, that is a pretty hot tip there. Never heard of this game, but as a big fan or RC Pro-Am and Offroad, I'm looking forward to playing this one.

This happened to me once too. I don't remember how it happened, but I was using the Flyers and a number 0 appeared and had amazing ratings--many 99s. I was conscience enough to save the line, so whenever I went back using the Flyers I could hit load line and he would be in there. Unfortunately, a few weeks later one of my friends was over and saved his line during a game, and thus 0 disappeared into the night never to be seen again...

Yeah, playing online just takes some getting used to. Whenever it's been a while since I've done league games I always suck it up a bit in the first few games because my timing is so off on dekes and goalie control switches. Even when my timing is better I usually have at least one or two incidents a game where I just don't switch to my goalie soon enough with the online lag....just part of the game and everyone is dealing with...

24

Well we always found it to be a lot more fun with random teams from game to game, which sometimes meant great teams, sometimes meant crappy teams. The point is it breaks up the monotony of everyone using the same 3 teams over and over, and tests your skill to use teams of widely varying caliber from game to game. Every game was very different, forcing you to change your playing strategy game to game, which to me is the most fun and rewarding. As for series, frankly it wouldn't be pretty easy to make the case that a 7 game series in the real NHL isn't anywhere long enough to distinguish who is really the best team. I mean if the point was to objectively establish the "best" players, the most effective way of doing that would be to make a ROM with anonymous players all rated the same and play best of 20 or 30 games series, but that would be a pretty lame format. I guess my point is that it seems you guys are saying that as long as everyone gets access to the best teams, the best player will win, which isn't necessarily true. I mean if you ran a league where everyone used Chicago or Detroit, you would almost certainly have a different winner than a league where everyone used Ottawa or Anaheim. The best test of skill is being able to beat guys with any team, NOT saying "Give me Chicago and I can beat anyone."

For what it's worth me and my old NHL rival used to play all of our games with random teams. To us it just got boring if you always choose good teams with great players, and it was fun to mix it up with crappy teams. It only works well if you are playing a series of games because some games you will be overmatched, but in like best of seven series or something it can be very interesting, as the series is often decided by who can pull of wins in the games when they had the weaker team. Not sure how to implement that into a leauge, but I definitely think it is a better test of gaming skill when you take away the best teams and force people to make plays with so-so players.

I was talking with HABs the other day after our finals series about this, and I like the draft idea for some time in the future too. Eliminates some of the gross team disparity, and gives everyone a squad they like. I like the idea a lot better than an 'even teams' rom anyway. One thing that could be done for this season though is maybe give managers a chance to submit their starting lineups before the season starts, and then the league rom could be edited to save the line editing before every game.

Chicago to me is unfairly good, and when I play with my friends, they are banned from use. Other than that there are a few other excellent good teams like Calgary, Montreal and Detroit, then a bunch of other good teams, like the ones Habs listed.

Evan, I'm just curious, why hold the team draft result until the end of registrion? Worried you'd have to update the site every day with new managers? If you dont mind, could you pm me my team (Marc - captplug@yahoo.com)?

The old forums seem to be gone, so I hope this is the right place to put them. Anyway, games 3-6 below. Game 3: St Louis 4-3 Game 4: Chicago 6-4 Game 5: Chicago 5-4 Game 6: St Louis 3-1 (clincher)

I briefly looked into and posted about what I found here: http://www.nhl94.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=176 It seemed to me to be pretty easy to compute as an aggregate of their ratings, minus a few categories which didn't seem to be taken into consideration for the overall (endurance, roughness, and aggression). Also in that thread wboy said he is including the computation in the next version of NOSE, so I'm sure he has it precisely figured out.

Excellent. Thanks again!

Really? I'm surprised to hear that. I mean I know the ratings fluctuate every game, but there's gotta be some underlying formula there for the game to get the overall rating range from the individual categories. EDIT----- Okay, so I took a few minutes to do some testing, and I think I identified the formula for overall ratings. It does not appear that weight, H/F, endurance, agression, or roughness affect overall ratings. However, if you just add up the remaining categories, it seems you get the average range. Check out these numbers. (Name - Overall Rating in game - Aggregate score of remaining ratings less categories above) Muller - 79 - 36 Lebeau - 74 - 32 Savard - 75 - 33 Carbonneau - 61 - 27 Dionne - 61 - 27 LeClair - 61 - 27 Brunet - 47 - 20 Roberge - 38 - 14 Bellows - 74 - 33 Keane - 62 - 27 Leeman - 60 - 27 If that's not the exact formula the game is using to derive ratings with random fluctuation, it's pretty damn close. If wboy could just insert that computation into the player rating table for quick reference I know I'd refer to it when revising ratings.

hey wboy, I've got a feature request for you. I've been editing some player attributes, and it would be really helpful if you could make a display to show what that player's overall rating is on the same screen. Or is it there and I am missing it?

Fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to complain as I have made MLS patches for Winning Eleven 7 and 8 and understand how time consuming projects like this can be, and there's a reason why I'm not out there releasing updated roms. I also understand how it's your own project and you can make any changes you see fit and that you can't account for every little ratings quibble people may have that use your rom. I just wanted to offer some suggestions as I always appreciated feedback when I was working on roster updates, whether or not I chose to make those changes. Anyway, thanks again for your hard work.

I did make those changes with the NOSE editor for myself. The thing is, they will constantly be updating the rom with trades and whatnot, and I didn't want to have to remake those changes everytime I downloaded a new version of the rom.

Thanks for the rom. It's really great work and I can see it getting a lot of use online with my friends. Anyway, as a die hard Flyers fan, I was wondering if you would take some constructive criticism about a few player ratings on the Flyers. I'm sure you get this crap all the time, and I would make the changes myself, but I know you will be updating the rom throughout the year, and was hoping you might consider these changes to keep permanently in the latest versions. Anyway, with my best attempts to stay fair, here goes; -Primeau and Brashear are pretty slow. I would lower their speeds from 3. -Gagne's speed has to be raised to 5 or 6. He is one of the the 3 or 4 fastest skaters in the league. Forsberg actually just said he was the fastest player he has ever played with. I also would raise his D awareness to at least 3 as he is one of the best 2 way players on the team and gets plenty of PK time. -For Forsberg, IMO he is the best passer in the league, so I would think he would get a 6, but he's already got a 5, so no big deal. His stickhandling though must be raised to a 5, as this guy has unbelievable stick skills. -A few notes on shooting ability--according the coaching staff, Mike Knuble has the hardest shot on the team. His shot power should be raised from 3. Also, Jeff Carter is considered to have the overall best shot on the team, as his shot has drawn comparisons to Joe Sakic. Perhaps he should get a little more love than 3 and 3 in shooting. -On the down side, I've never seen anything to warrant Primeau getting a 4 on shot power or Hatcher getting a 5 there. I would lower them both. I'm torn about whether Forsberg's shot power should be lowered though. -Mike Richards should have a few stats raised. This guy has been the third best forward on the team behind Forsberg and Gagne throughout camp and so far this year, and should have an overall in the mid60s IMO. His shooting skills should definitely be raised from 2 and 2, and personally I think his checking and/or his passing could go up on point to 4. -I've ragged on Primeau, but to counterbalance, I would raise his D-awareness to 4 as he is the team's main PK guy and centers the checking line quite well. -Other changes I would make: Lower Seidenburg's passing to 3 Lower Savage's roughness to 3 Lower Rathje's checking to 4 Lower Radivojevic's O-Awareness to 3 Well there's my 2 cents...hope you consider those.

Let me just voice another thank you wboy. I just used the program to make some personal preference changes to swos's excellent 2006 rom, and this program is phenomenal.

Yeah, I have the version that crashes when trying to edit lines in DOSbox. Could you email the one that works to captplug@yahoo.com? Thanks!

It would be pretty dumb to use fake names is this new mode. I mean you have the rights to put new teams and players in, why not do it? wboy we need your editor more than ever!!

Hartford is a possibility I suppose. The thing is though, the lineup numbers don't match up to HFD in 94, so clearly the rosters have been changed. If you're going to change them, why keep them Hartford with a fake logo instead of just putting in Carolina? I also didn't see the green trim that is on HFD's 94 blue and white uniform. Have to wait and see I guess. EDIT: Gone back to the gamespot preview and noticed some shots of 94 mode.. Fake names now? Maybe they want to keep original roster ratings so they scrambled the names and numbers because rights have expired? Would be dissapointing if that was the case.