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How do you rate players?


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Stats? Reputation? Career? Best Season?

Realistic? Arcade?

Example:

I like how '92 makes Cam Neely speedy even though he was not.

Since speed is one of the most important attributes should all the best players be speedy (92 kinda does this) or is realism better.

Marty Pavelich was one of the fastest skaters in the 50's/60's and Gordie Howe was average at best.

Do you want a rom where Marty Pavelich is better or on the same level as Gordie Howe? or do you want a rom where Gordie is the best?

I need help rating the players for my Original 6 roms I am working on.

Give me some input.

Edited by CoachMac
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Stats? Reputation? Career? Best Season?

Realistic? Arcade?

Example:

I like how '92 makes Cam Neely speedy even though he was not.

Since speed is one of the most important attributes should all the best players be speedy (92 kinda does this) or is realism better.

Marty Pavelich was one of the fastest skaters in the 50's/60's and Gordie Howe was average at best.

Do you want a rom where Marty Pavelich is better or on the same level as Gordie Howe? or do you want a rom where Gordie is the best?

I need help rating the players for my Original 6 roms I am working on.

Give me some input.

I like a balance between accurate ratings and the best players having the best attributes. Any of the top goal scorers should have above average shooting and skating, even if they weren't actually above average in that area back in the day. Because you can't simulate things like hockey sense, I think some of the other stuff should be exaggerated to compensate for that. For example, Gretzky should have been given better shot attributes in '94. However, the players who are famous for being the best skater, or having the hardest shot, should still have higher shooting or skating attributes. I still think that MacInnis should have a harder shot than Gretzky.

That being said, you can always pretend that this is some alternate universe where guys like Roenick were better than Gretzky and Lemieux.

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When it comes to speed, I think elite speed should be reserved for those who were at that top speed for their time.

Same for the elite shot power.

Now, there are plenty of other settings within the game to try to offset a great player not having one or the other.

Gretzky's shot power in '94 is so light you need to B shot to effectively score with him. I think 100% accuracy and upping shot power to 3 would make him a weaker shot, but still an elite enough to use w/ top speed/agility/stick control/passing/offensive awareness (assuming you have weight bug fixed, otherwise even with a sh&t shot, Gretzky is an elite player in '94 w/out a real shot.

I go back to NBA Jam, where they would make the little guards able to jump up and block the big boys and dunk all of them just to even out a team having a little guard for their second player. It always was a "fun" game but made the game definitely cheesy, and I think it would have been better to just make those guys faster like they were in real life, and able to shoot better than make them something they weren't.

If you go back to using Smoz's blitz rom, then you get to add checking into the weight factor and it's an extra skill to be used to make the better players better w/out changing their look/feel.

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I think Gretzky is an example of a perfectly rated player, while still having flaws just like everyone else. You don't need pass shots to score with him, you just need to get real close. Thing is, that's very easy to do given his 6 agility, he is so so fun to deke with. Crease cuts / slap dekes work well with him too, combined with normal deke goals and he can score as good as most. His 6 stickhandling and 6 passing + bad shot make him super fun and unique, and also allow him to be very true to his real life self.

Brutus has a good point about making shot power and speed realistic, while tinkering with the rest to make the superstars super. I think personally I'd rather just try to make everything as realistic as possible though. Problem is, that's really tough. These are my thoughts :wacko: :

Weight - Easy - Probably not hard to find their approximate playing weight, then it's easy to convert to 94 number system

Agility - Very Hard - Pretty much gotta go by reputation for this I'd think. Were they known to be shifty or good dekers / skaters? Tough

Speed - Hard - Slightly easier than agility, but similar process. Definitely reputation.

Shot Power - Medium - Reputation + stats + bias. You need to kinda fudge this to make scoring work well. If they have a reputation for having a good shot then give them one. Otherwise, basically gotta go off stats.

Shot Accuracy - Medium - Stats mostly. If they scored a lot of goals for their era, then they probably had an accurate shot.

Stickhandling - Hard - All you can go off of is reputation here. If they were known to deke or skate with the puck well, give em good stickhandling

Passing - Hard - Reputation + stats. If they're known for their passing then bless them with a good attribute. If not, base it on their assist stats.

I'm not a big believer in any of the other attributes, other than I guess checking if you're using smoz's weight fix + checking system. Then I guess for that all you really have is reputation, if they were known to be physical or not.

Edited by TomKabs93
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Shot Accuracy - Medium - Stats mostly. If they scored a lot of goals for their era, then they probably had an accurate shot.

I agree that stats should determine this, but please don't use shooting percentage like they did in '94! The guy who hits the net gets punished, while it doesn't hurt the guy who misses it entirely at all.

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Awesome Feedback. Thanks.

http://www.legendsofhockey.net/LegendsOfHockey/jsp/SearchPlayersNameMenu.jsp

Amazing site. It has a write up (2 or 3 paragraphs) on every player that has ever played in the NHL plus their stats.

For guys in Hall of Fame it has amazing detail.

Talks whether a guy was a good or fast skater, agile, passer, 2 way player, checker, blazing shot etc....

So here is what I have been doing.

I am just making 10 players per team as beyond that are guys nobody would ever use.

I then do accurate weight, number, and handedness.

After that.

Everybody starts with a 3 in every attribute to start or a 60 overall.

Defensemen get 2 in Off Aw and 4 in Def Aw.

I give no 0's or 6's.

Then I tie skating and agility together for most as it is in the regular game. I do make a few exceptions for variety.

Great or Fast skaters get 5's. Star players get 4's. Most keep a 3, and a few drop to 2 if they were known poor skaters.

Shot Power most keep a 3. Stars get a 4 and rep can get you a 5.

Shot Acc is based on Goal Scoring. (The most Lame rating EA used was shooting % for this)

Stickhandling and Passing gets a boost on known rep of being a playmaker, passer, good moves etc...

Again most stay at 3 stars get 4 and a few get 5.

Endurance everybody gets a 6 as it has no effect with Line Changes OFF.

Checking is actually pretty easy and detailed on the site if I guy was good.

3's for most, 4 or 5 for big hitting aggressive guys and 1's or 2's for soft or Byng guys.

By the way there were not many of these in the Original 6 era.

The brutality of the game was mind boggling.

I also basically give the rating for Aggression.

My 2 biggest struggles are Awareness and Shooting bias because I am not sure how much they matter.

Right now I have shooting bias as 2 for everybody to make it easy. Thoughts?

Awareness is a surprising big part of the overall rating.

How much does it matter?

I may post what I've done soon and see if anybody test is willing to test and give me feedback on how it plays.

How do guys like Skip and whoever else does the modern roms do the ratings?

It is a huge job with just 6 teams of 10 players can't imagine doing 30 team full rosters.

My goal is variety but somewhat even teams overall.

I also want it to play similar or true to the Original Rom.

I am using the wt bug fix and plan to use the c/b check fix.

Thanks again, I'll post rom later if anybody has time to test.

Keep the ideas coming.

Edited by CoachMac
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I think this is the perfect way of doing it. I've been playing around with a rom to test the different attributes, where basically I'm picking one attribute to tweak at a time, then simulating games where the teams have opposite values. I've only played around with aggression so far far, but I test anything else that we aren't sure about. There seems to be some disagreement on this site about whether or not certain attributes do anything.

One other idea would be to limit certain attributes, so that the game feels more like old time hockey. You mentioned limiting the range from 1-5, but it might be worth considering limiting it even more. I don't think the players could fire a puck that hard back in the 60s, at least before Hull came up with the banana blade. Those old tube skates probably made it harder to stop on a dime as well, so agility might be worth reducing also.

I'm not sure if I'd like that idea, as I like more variety in the players, but that's just another thing to consider.

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I go for realism as much as possible. I get fan feedback for every team for player speed and shot power. I use awarenesses to balance out the overall ratings. I now create "overall" ratings like this: start with relative plus/minus per 60 minutes played, add/subtract some quality of linemates/opponents differential points, tweak it again to get some zone loss/advancement factors in and then give those that play 21 minutes per game a bonus of 1, +2 for 22, +3 for 23, etc. now I just need to do the fucking work and get this account back to 1994 posts. I'm not sure it's getting done this season.

Edited by trudatman
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I agree with trudatman on the realism as well. When I was working on my version of the 2015 ROM I used Skip's as a base. I then started with the concept of only one player in the game should get a 6 for each category. I tried to stay as close to that as possible but it wasn't fair for example to give Charra the 6 for shot power and give Shea Weber a 5. Also some unique players require another 6 to make it close what they contribute on the ice, such as Jagr.

Moving forward with that principle I started with my Blackhawks and used the eye test for their ratings. In the end I settled on 84 for Toews, 83 for Kane, and 80 for Keith. I used that as a barometer for all other teams and individuals. From there I used the eye test for teams again that I have seen a lot of, especially the Wild, Blues, Kings, Avalanche, Jets, former Hawks players. I then tried to go by stats and get a picture for what a player who has a certain statline would be like. The problem is that if you decide you want to go for realism then I felt I was really half-assing it. I then googled scouting reports and found that The Hockey News has a scouting report for each player. Go here to the team index, then choose roster, and finally select each player to get their report. One of the difficulties I encountered here was how to handle the 'inconsistent' knock on players. Usually I dinged them in awareness but as has been mentioned who knows what real impact that has on the AI. You also have to consider if you use the game without the hot/cold fix there will be fluctuation in their ratings and this can help account for someone who is inconsistent.

After doing a complete rerank last year of the NHL 95 rom from 2007 to 2014 and again this year on 94 I think I have a feel for a good sim type system. If you are going for a more classic feel with more fun and not bogged down as much by realism I would follow what Skip uses since his ROM really is fun and in line with the spirit of NHL 94.

Hope this helps.

Edited by wallywojo
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If you are going for a more classic feel with more fun and not bogged down as much by realism I would follow what Skip uses since his ROM really is fun and in line with the spirit of NHL 94.

I want to preserve the feel of the classic rom with as much realism as possible.

Currently working on a 1952 rom featuring Gordie Howe.

I used the worst teams in the game for the bottom 4 teams to make the game play slower like the 1950's.

I then used 2 poor teams Philly and New Jersey for Detroit and Montreal.

I added proper handedness and weight plus some other minor tweaks to players I knew about.

For Detroit I used Philadelphia and Eric Lindros as my base for Gordie Howe.

Montreal I used New Jersey with Richer as Rocket Richard.

Edited by CoachMac
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