Confidence in NHL '94

[Premium]

What is with the atittude of the players here? Saying things like "o man I will never be an A player" is just the nastiest way to approach the game of NHL '94. Where is the confidence?

Let's take a look. NHL '94 is a simple game. You move your players and press two (sometimes three) buttons. It's not hard. Now I could understand finding a game like Street Fighter to be tough, where one must memorize hundreds of button combinations and precise timings to be a good player. But for a game so dumbed down like NHL '94, how could someone say they will never be good?

It all has to do with confidence. You need to have some faith in your play. Nobody is unbreakable, anyone can be beaten. If you really think you are inferior to your opponent, you are going to lose every time. I promise great improvement to any player who does not carry around the shitty attitude of "I will never beat kingraph, plabax, Freydey, etc.". It's not only about wanting to win, it's also about knowing you can win and playing against those who are better than you. Even if you find yourself on the wrong end of blowouts, do not get discouraged.

Losing big is a blessing. When you lose big/often, there is something in your game that is being exploited. The key is to find out what it is and use it to grow. This is what separates the good players from the bad ones. A good player will make the same mistakes on defense 20x, realize it and say "I'm going to be so much better once I can comfortably defend against my main weakness; I know I can compete". A bad player will keep making the same mistakes and say "There is nothing I can do. My opponent is way too good for me".

For the record, I played in FOUR different B/C leagues before I actually became a standard-A player. I never played with those who were better than me until Raph's Survivor league. I was in complete shock at the amount of talent some of the guys had. I am not going to lie, I really thought I wasn't good enough once I got blown out for the first time. However, I stayed confident and I kid you not I made my transition from scrub to an A player in the span of seven weeks. I ended up taking out the Blitz B champion in five games and played a thrilling seven-game series against Raph in which five of the seven games were decided by one goal. And let me tell you something, I SUCKED at the start of that season. You can find the standings from the forums for proof.

Bottom line... don't think of yourself as inferior! Oh yeah, and never get comfortable!

[Darko99]

Good thread Plab! That's exactly what i try to have in my mind to improve my game!!! It's the perfecy summary of my thoughts!!!

[wallywojo]

One thing you have to consider plabax is that some people are not that competitive and approach the game as leisure time to relax from the demands of work and family. So if I say I will never beat you it could be due to not being naturally as good as you and not wanting to put in the hours to get that much better. Who am I crappin. Gotta go. I have to spend the next hour working on my pass shots before work.

[dcicon5148]

One thing you have to consider plabax is that some people are not that competitive and approach the game as leisure time to relax from the demands of work and family. So if I say I will never beat you it could be due to not being naturally as good as you and not wanting to put in the hours to get that much better. Who am I crappin. Gotta go. I have to spend the next hour working on my pass shots before work.

I believe there are some people that really want to improve their game and spend extra time to practice and work on things. There are also others (I am in this one) that just play it when they have a couple minutes here or there and just do it for fun as a way to unwind and relax. I think that your track record speaks for itself that spending time improving your game has great rewards as you are very successful in every league you aren't kicked out of now. I think you need to understand that some people just enjoy playing the game the same way they did when it first came out and aren't interested in learning all the nuances of the pass shot, CB check, making a goalie dive so you can shoot in an empty net rebound and so on.

I will say that when I was online more and played in all the leagues and 2on2 and exibs I was at the top of my game and played against anyone. I would say that getting swept in GDL playoffs by frey was almost as enjoyable as winning the B leagues due to how intense the games were and how exciting the skill level was. That was years ago and I haven't played an online game in probably a year. As life changes I am not looking to be practicing and doing exhibs as I just don't have the time to do that. Sign on maybe 60 min a week, play some games and repeat the next week in a league.

All in all I think there is some legitness to your post plabax, but I think you shouldn't be telling people how they should be enjoying their time playing an online video game in either A or B leagues or how to run leagues that you are on the brink of being removed from even though you are probably the best player in it. I would just enjoy your time on the top of the mountain and let the lesser players enjoy their own experience in their own way and not have to worry about having to hear from you if they aren't doing things exactly how you think they should be doing things.

[LABS_66]

I am a little bit of both. Probably leaning more to improving. I always want to improve and learn new things however life issues like work and family come first so I play when I can. Trust me I want to beat all you elites and win a damn championship on e of these days!!!

[smozoma]

"I only play league games"

-- me, 1000 times on AIM

got thangs ta do, being all growed up sucks

Not everyone on here is trying to be the best or even their own best

That's the motivation behind A/B leagues and drafts that pump up the less-skilled coaches' teams. To just keep things competitive for whatever your skill level is. (when I made Blitz, anyway)

[XCing1030]

I completely agree with this thread. You have to learn from your mistakes, especially when you get smoked. I feel I can hang better with A players than I could a month ago because of adjustments I had to make. They are pretty talented, and watching how they play really helps as well.

[IceStorm70]

Dcicon nailed it imo. Couldn't say it any better.

[Premium]

"I only play league games"

-- me, 1000 times on AIM

got thangs ta do, being all growed up sucks

Not everyone on here is trying to be the best or even their own best

That's the motivation behind A/B leagues and drafts that pump up the less-skilled coaches' teams. To just keep things competitive for whatever your skill level is. (when I made Blitz, anyway)

You can play for fun and still improve.. it's not an excuse. You can't just sit back and accept that you will never be "good enough" because you aren't trying to be the best.

You can say "I don't want to be the best, but I CAN be the best"

You can't say "I don't want to be the best so I will NEVER be the best".

There is a big difference between the two. The latter is discouraging.

No matter who you are, family or not, even if you play 25 minutes a week - If you think you CAN improve and you know what it takes.. you'll improve. If you think you will never improve, play all you want and it will never happen.

You don't need to play x amount of exis, in fact, you don't even have to play exis at all. It's not some extreme committment. It's a simple sports game that requires no practice outside of league games. Learn from your mistakes and become better, that's it.

[Brutus]

I started online here with this attitude though. I USED to play this game 20 years ago, and I played MY way, and beat everyone for about 5-6 years that the game was played. After that, I didn't really cross too many people playing it but once or twice in the next 5 years. Then, for ~10 years, I was dormant, as most of us were. When I found NHL94 online, I was CRAZY HAPPY! But, I quickly found I was losing to the higher level players.

Pass shots & heavy B checking were something completely new to me. I was determined to NOT change my "old" game, and see over time if I could knock the rust off and eventually beat the elite players. And, over time, I found I could not.

So, I'm always reluctant to change how I played because whether winning or losing, that's the way I ENJOY the game more. C checking is not as good, but hell if it's not more fun.

NOW, I used to play video games when I was Plabax's age. I usually was elite at every game I played. I had no distractions, and no family, no job, nothing to clutter my mind up. Having been there and now here, I can DEFINITELY state this fact: IT IS 1000% different.

On any given day, I've spent 12 plus hours at work on a day that started w/ getting wife/kids up & about (things I enjoy), came home, grabbed dinner, got kids into bed and then had a beer or glass of wine to relax. I then fire up my PC to see if any late night owls are around to mash some buttons w/ me against in NHL94. The last thing on my mind is "improving my game", becoming elite, or anything like that. In fact, the LONGER my day was, the heavier my use of the C Check is.

I've had two playoff series where I played Depch & Fitz at 7 am, and the results were bad for me. I played Dicicon in Blitz 2 years ago w/ my daughter running around the room screaming "Daddy, Daddy, look at me". But, given my schedule, those were the only times I could get those series in. And in the future, I'd be surprised if that changes much. (I'm not saying the final result would have been different in those series, but I know if I played poorly. We often rate guys on how they did in the playoffs, but can't see all the variables that went into it.)

So, in response to "getting" better, I feel my play is better than it was when I signed up. But, IF I don't play often, and then load up some exi's w/ Raph, I get just crushed by like 10 goals. Most of the elites play all the time, or have played for many years at a very high rate, and now have cooled off.

It's more than the attitude of "I'm going to win" that is the cause. I do believe if I spent 3 weeks straight w/ Plabax exi'ing a lot and exclusively "studying" my game, I could possibly get closer to "elite", so some of what he says could be true. But, the problem is, most of us who aren't there don't have that desire to be there, and just want to face that and play in a league where talent is even and relax once or twice a week.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Brutus

[Brutus]

FYI, plabs, your first post is a great post. Well done.

And Dicicon, your counter post is also great.

Coming from two guys not always known for the most rationale thought patterns, it was a very good start of the morning type reading material, and should lead to a very interesting post topic.

[TomKabs93]

I guess just like in real life, in nhl 94 you can't choose your sexual orientation. Some people get aroused by C checks only, others by B checks only, and others enjoy it both ways. This isn't including the transgender CB lovers. I wish the whole world could get off on the juiciness of a solid B check, but who am I to tell you what's hot and what's not.

Confidence is massive in 94. I do agree that believing in yourself is very important. I think that the compliments of other players really helped me get started quick in this community. Blind confidence is actually a desirable mindset. I'm not gonna name any names here, but think of all the top 94 players over the years, they are ALL cocky ass mofos!

I had confidence problems in my return to 94, but people telling me to stop worrying about losing helped wonders. Every time im down a goal or lose a game in a series all I could think about was 'my reputation is gonna be shot, people are gonna think I suck, wow I am terrible, omg what if I get swept??, I don't deserve this, I'm so one dimensional, blah blah blah.' Once those thoughts begin to brew then I just tell myself now 'stfu, stop thinking about outside the game matters and just play in the moment right now.' If I lose a series now it's not as big a deal. My ego is in check, but I do gotta remember to keep my confidence high.

If anyone's too lazy to try to improve but wants some results, post your krecs in my analyzing game videos thread so people can help find your weaknesses for you. My internet is so bad now that I can't really watch vids, but krecs are easy.

[Depch]

I was like 14 when we got this game on PC platform, it wasn't quite the NHL94, because NHL Hockey did not have manual goalie and some of the player ratings were different, but still, the engine is the same with a bit worse frame rate. There were like 3 guys of us who used to play this and a few other games every day after school for like 3-4 hours usually. We did leagues like where you picked a team and you always played against a manual player (me vancouver, friends toronto & pittsburgh usually), so if a cpu anaheim was to play toronto then we'd change that to manual control for that game and you'd never have to play AI. I think we had 10min or 20min periods and did multiple multiple seasons in between NHL Hockey onwards to newer games. Pass shots and b-checks are not a thing of online game only, they existed then already. At that time I was very very competitive and always found an extra gear to my game.

Ever since NHL'98 came we started to play online leagues and I noticed all this experience usually made me play very well, while not maybe being the best, always being one of the better ones ever up untill the newer NHL games even making our teams go high in 6on6 hockey with x360 in NHL'08 & '09. I always go with the attitude to win a game and it has stuck up. We got back to NHL'94 in 2001 with emulator technology in Finland and played multiple seasons over the span of 4-5 years, I usually was mostly focused on newer NHL:s but at the same time I played NHL'94 because it was fun, but competitively. Making a comeback to NHL games in 2013 christmas with NHL'94 after not playing the games for 3-4 years I still had that attitude, but I noticed I had lost my edge for that extra gear and focus, which could be the same thing. It's most likely a thing of age/what's going on in life, are you working and so on, it can exhaust you in a sense indeed. It requires a great deal from me to get in to that zen-mode now where you really feel the game. This could be due to lack of physical condition as well and you could get it back, at least that's what I'm aiming for, not because of NHL'94 though, but if it helps, then it will be a good thing there as well.

I have noticed that good players usually in any game, tend to pick up the pace fairly fast in other games and areas of life as well. It is also about personality and your general traits of that have been provided to you, adaptibility, being critical against yourself, give some deeper thinking to the game.

Here online after ~21 years of playing hockey games, the only 2 guys I really have problems playing against are Plabax & Freydey who just beat me on a consistent basis, they really seem to be at the top of their games. I will still try to become better, but it just might require a lot more than what it would've taken from me 10 years ago. I'll still keep that attitude though, but some games your mind is just not in playing the game. : p

++ and this does not mean shitloads of exis, improving other areas of life can have an impact as well. Someone like Swos does not play exis much at all.

+++ I'm really shaky with GC at times, that for me is a confidence issue mixed with the focus, something to definately improve in attitude as well, like what the heck, the good guys will score anyways, might as well try whatever.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Depch

[Brutus]

It terms of focus, a specific example would be this:

When I was younger, and played a lot, I would load up the game, and whatever team I took and against whatever team I played, I KNEW which players could check which players, instantly, w/out thinking about it. Things were crisper to me. Hell, half of my days when I was younger were spent thinking about the next time I'd be playing.

I used to see Grand Turismo race track designs on my carpet at work when I was in my 20's, as we'd play from 9-10 pm till 4-5 am, grab an hour or two, and go off to work.

So, when I mention that I'm online playing the game and my entire attitude is different, it's just not as focused. It's not necessarily an age thing for everyone, as I know I can feel Raph's intensity burning through my monitor, but for more of us than not, it is. The reason being we have "lost" that edge, as put nicely by Depch, That edge does comes w/ a price, and many of us just don't take the position that because we care not to get it back we shouldn't still be able to fire up NHL94 and play against equal level guys.

I'm just not 100% in agreement that a large chunk of guys would be willing to do what they need to in order to reach another level in their NHL94 game, and it's not just click on the mentality of being better, but I would agree that would be the first step you'd have to take.

Casual gamer is a term, and does apply to a lot of NHL94 guys.