Be a GM Improvements
Posted by Gurndeep Sumal at 15:09PM on Friday, July, 01, 2011

Hey Guys, I’m Gurn Sumal, the Game Modes Producer on NHL 12. So as many of you guys may know we made an exciting announcement this week pertaining to the brand new sim Engine for NHL 12. Now that you know about the sim engine, I want to walk you through some of the other improvements that we’ve made to Be A GM.

When we discussed how we wanted the Sim Engine to work, the vision I had in my head was to have it work like most Game Casts you see on the web. That vision was how the EA SPORTS Action Tracker was born. The EA SPORTS Action Tracker Lets you follow every important event that happens in the game through a visual display on the 2D ice and running play by play text down the right hand side. If you took a look at the way every shot, hit, and penalty unfolds during the course of a game when simmed it will feel as if you’re watching a real life NHL game.

With the new sim engine, we allow you to simulate the game at different speeds and let you pause the sim if want to check out stats at anytime. There is search functionality so that you can focus on particular player’s actions for that game. We even added a net chart to track where shots and goals are occurring on your goalie so you can potentially user player training to improve upon his weaknesses. This lets you guys play Be a GM like a real NHL GM (watching the game) without leaving you in the dark of what’s happening in a game like last year’s Sim Intervention did. If Your Team starts to get into trouble, you can now sim intervene at any point in time of a game (no more period chunks). This lets you be in control of the situation that is at hand whether you’re down by a goal or by 3. There’ll be more on the Action Tracker in the upcoming weeks.

Another new feature we’ve added to the game is Retired Jersey Numbers in all game modes. So this means if you create a player with the number 9 (or a player is traded and is number 9) and put him on Montreal, the game will choose another number for him unless the user assigns one for him manually. We will be retiring numbers from all of the leagues in the game and not just the NHL. If retired jerseys are not your thing well you have the option to turn them off before you create the league.

So along with all the sim engine updates and Retired Jersey’s we have made tweaks to the other systems in Be a GM mode like trading. The trading engine has been reworked so that there is bigger difference between star players and your average NHL player in terms trade value. You’ll also notice the CPU proposing trades that make a lot more hockey sense for both teams (a lot more player for a pick or player and a pick for a player trades). We also added excess trade offer logic that quite simply says if I give the CPU a trade that is too good to be true, it won’t care about its trade block ie. Sidney Crosby for Shawn Horcoff (a really extreme example). This added logic will help with some of the frustrations from last year.

With the trading improvements taken care, the next thing we tackled was Rookies and their ratings when they are created. We’ve tuned the values to be much more realistic so you’ll see about 5-10 guys in the 70 overall range depending on what kind of draft it is (a stronger draft class will have better players than a weaker one) this will give a top 10 pick a little more value. These ranges will line up with all the CHL player ratings ranges that are in the game.

Some other notable things that we’ve done for NHL 12 are:

· Young players no longer will ask for ludicrous contracts at such a young age.

· We’ve increased the amount of injuries to further mimic real life.

· Players should Retain their Jersey numbers during the course of a season (No More Tomas Plekanec Losing his #14 mid way through the year)

I hope you enjoyed this blog and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more info in the near future.

-Gurn