NHL 16

Question

 EA have released some details a bit earlier than usual  this year.  NHL 16 Features
Available only on Xbox One & PlayStation 4
Built with more input from our fans than ever before, NHL 16 steps onto the ice to deliver ways to compete as a team, new features across the most played single-player modes, gameplay innovation at every position on the ice and an unrivalled game day atmosphere.
NEW WAYS TO COMPETE AS A TEAM
Hockey is a sport that comes to life in a competitive team-based gameplay experience. Whether it’s through speed, skill, or physicality, every player makes an impact on the ice no matter what position they play or their role on the team. So grab some friends and jump into either 6 v. 6 Online Team Play, Online Couch Co-op, or the re-imagined EA SPORTS Hockey League and prove that great individuals can’t beat a great team.
The New EASHL
Sharpen those skates and grab your buddies because the EA SPORTS Hockey League is back! This fan-favorite online team mode has been reimagined and lets you choose specialized player classes to deliver a balanced competitive experience on the ice. Player skill and your ability to play as a team will now be the determining factor in who wins and loses hockey games.
6 v. 6 Online Team Play
New copy: Play online with up to twelve skaters including user controlled goalies. Using real-world NHL rosters you can compete in ranked drop-in games against players from around the world or invite your friends to a private OTP session before you step into EA SPORTS Hockey League.
Online Couch Co-op
The perfect way to play when you and your friends want to jump on the couch, join forces and play some drop-in hockey online. It’s the best place to practice your team play skills before playing OTP or EASHL.
A WAY TO PLAY FOR EVERY HOCKEY FAN
Whether you’re an armchair GM, want to live out your NHL pro fantasy, or build your ultimate dream team, NHL 16 will deliver a single-player game mode for every type of hockey fan - each with new features that you’ve never seen in EA SPORTS NHL.
Be a GM: Player Morale
Being a GM is about more than just getting the best players, it’s about getting the right players to play well together. Each player on your NHL and AHL team has a different personality that you will have to manage. Deal with trade demands, teammate relationships, and much more by calling team meetings or adjusting your roster to directly affect your team’s on-ice performance.
Be a Pro: Shape Your Legacy
The way you play dictates the type of player you will become in an all-new Be a Pro progression system. On-ice actions directly influence attributes earned, ensuring that your Pro will reflect the way you play. Sim to your next shift and the ability to work your way up from CHL rookie to an NHL Superstar also make a return in NHL 16.
Hockey Ultimate Team: Single Player Seasons
The most played mode in the NHL series gets even better. Improved player management and the introduction of HUT Single Player Seasons gives you another way to hone your skills before jumping online with HUT Online Seasons or challenging your friends with the Play a Friend feature.
Visual On-Ice Training
Whether you’re new to the NHL series and looking for pointers or are a grizzled veteran trying to perfect your game, this new training tool will help sharpen your offensive and defensive skills no matter your talent level. Visual aids project shooting targets, passing lanes, open teammates, and more.
COMPLETE CONTROL FROM EVERY POSITION
Whether you play as a forward, defenseman or goalie, NHL 16 delivers a balanced gameplay experience that makes every position on the ice meaningful to team success. With gameplay innovation on offense and defense, players have new tools to not only score goals, but to prevent them as well.
Precision Skating
Utilize a new skating tool that allows you to make refined movements with your skater in any situation. On defense quickly jump into passing lanes and intercept the puck, or walk the blueline on the power play and open yourself up for that one-timer in the offensive zone.
Seamless Puck Pickups
The ability to quickly control a pass or corral a loose puck can be the difference between generating a scoring chance and getting leveled. New puck pickups result in smoother transitions when receiving the puck no matter what your position, giving you more time and control to make your next move.
UNRIVALED GAME DAY AUTHENTICITY
NHL 16 brings the game to life with distinct arena atmospheres, the most realistic players yet, and a story-driven commentary package to pull you into the energy of the game like never before.
Distinct Team Arena Atmosphere
Best in class arena authenticity gets even better with the inclusion of authentic arena effects and props including team specific celebrations, mascots, chants, and even signature props like the Lighthouse at the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota.
Story Driven Commentary
Doc Emrick, Eddie Olczyk, and Ray Ferraro are back and now call the game with even more emotion. Hear Doc’s voice rise and fall with the action on the ice and get analysis from Eddie & Ray on the peaks and valleys of a NHL season. An expanded NBC SPORTS broadcast package and new pre-game intros brings the drama to life in more ways than ever before.
Superstar Authenticity
Enhanced facial features and new equipment details synonymous with the league’s top players adds another layer of player authenticity. Use these new equipment elements to customize your own created character giving them a unique look, from custom stick tape, colored skate laces, tinted visors, and more.
Playoff Beards
One of the oldest and most iconic traditions in hockey has arrived. With accurate representations of beard patterns, length, thickness, and growth rates for individual players, the road to the Stanley Cup just got hairier. UT offline seasons and EASHL will probably be my most played modes.  The big one I want to know is if the United Center will be in the game this year? Beards...  Modes...  The new stuff will be current generation only. PS3 & 360 owners can pay full price for a roster update. No doubt we'll hear more during E3.   

Answer 1

The principle goal for the feature was to represent the players in our game with a personality that would be affected by the events going on around them, or happening directly to them. We’ve never really had a concept of this in our game before, the closest thing would be some analysis of a Free Agency (or Resign) offer based on the age of a player and the average age of the team attempting to recruit them. Our goal was to successfully model virtually all of the things that happen to a player throughout any given year of an NHL season, which is a pretty tall order. Thankfully the adoption of the C# tool tuning technology that we’ve been pioneering over the last 10 years really allowed us to add a huge amount of depth to the feature in a relatively short amount of time.
Every player in our game is assigned a ‘personality type’ upon entry into the league, or when they are created (in the case of generated rookies for the draft etc). Each personality type has a collection of traits that impact how they react to certain events. For example, one of our ‘Traits’ we use will govern how well the player deals with change, such as being promoted, demoted, traded, etc. Players with a higher rating suffer very little adverse effects when joining a team, while other players with a lower rating may suffer the effects much longer. We have another trait which we use to model how likely the player is to be a ‘locker room leader’ and whether his presence in the locker room is likely to cause harmony or friction. Finding the right balance of players with the right traits and personalities can give your players boosts to their ratings, to model a harmonious locker room. Each Player on a roster has an opinion of every other player on the roster, and will have a list of ‘Favorite’ players (who are their ‘best locker room chemistry’), and also potentially a list of players they have low locker room chemistry with. These relationships on our development side are handled by C# test harness allowing us model any combination of players in a locker room, but in the game itself, you’ll have a visual representation by allowing you to see the list for every player.
An example of the C# tool, which allows us to ask any player in the game who their opinion on all the other players on their team based on traits, age, and personality types.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/P2OpXBO.png
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In the above example, we see that ‘Simon Despres’ lists ‘J. Gibson’ as his Best locker room chemistry (It is possible for the ‘Best locker room chemistry’ to be on ANOTHER team).Other people that Despres has good chemistry with are ‘K. Palmieri’ and ‘S. Vatanen’ and ‘J. Silfverberg’. Despres does have low locker room chemistry with ‘Sheldon Souray’ and so if Souray is ever traded away, Depres may react positively to Souray’s departure from the team. BUT, it is entirely possible that some other player will list Souray as a high locker room chemistry, or ‘Best locker room chemistry’ and therefore, you will have to balance the moves that you choose to do. Just like ‘Real life locker room politics’, and it’s something you’ve never had to worry about before in any previous NHL title. However, it is now something you’ll have to master if you want to have your team playing to its full potential every game…
You see that Corey Perry was negatively affected by trading away Francois Beauchemin. Every action has an associated C# tuning utility value. Each of our personality types has its own penalty/perk value. I’m only showing one personality type here for illustration purposes.
There are four basic ‘Morale Types’ that feed into a player’s Morale, but we only surface the ‘Overall Morale’ to the user. Each Personality type takes <x> % of ‘Team Performance Morale’, and <y> % of ‘Management Morale’ etc to come up with their Overall Morale. Certain Personalities will be happier if the team is winning, and won’t put much stock in the makeup of the locker room. Other personality types will put more priority on locker room harmony morale, and care less about the decisions that a Team may make in who it signs, releases, or sends down to the AHL etc.
Above is a C# tool example of two different player types being presented with similar scenarios, and how their 4 morale types feed into their Overall Morale. The example player on the left is ‘Happy’ with the Team’s Performance, but ‘Unhappy’ with his Individual Performance. He has ‘Neutral’ morale overall, which means he is unlikely to get any boosts to his ratings in the situation he is in. The player on the right of the picture has ‘Amazing’ Team Mate and Management Morale, overall he is ‘Happy’ and he will likely receive some boosts to his abilities as a result. Managing the various morale values of all your players will be a key to victory in NHL 16.
NHL 16 also introduces ‘Team Meetings’ into the mode, which allows the user to interact the team based on almost 30 different key events that can happen to a team in a season, such as being on a winning streak, losing streak, facing off against a heated rival, or facing elimination in the Stanley Cup Finals. Each of the Team Meetings (and the speech you chose to give to the players based on that meeting) will impact the players on the team based on their personality type and the situation.
As a result of each Team Meeting, every player on the team will consider the situation they were in, and how you spoke to the locker room, their ‘management morale’ will be affected appropriately. Learning what to say and when, based on the makeup of your locker room will be an important factor in maintaining high ‘Management Morale’ for your players.
In addition to ‘Team Meetings’ we also have ‘Player Meetings’ which are specific to a particular player and their grievance (or to provide positive feedback). There are over 20 different specific conversations you can have, ranging on topics from the recent team performance, to failing to renew the contract of their friend, to being made Team Captain (or having the Captaincy removed) and a host of others that occur/trigger based on the personality type of that player.
Each personality type will have a way of wording their concern (which may be positive feedback as well). You’ll be able to get a feeling for the type of personality you are dealing with based on how they word their concern. Josh Manson seems like a pretty easy going guy, he doesn’t like to complain, so he’s probably not the kind of guy that causes a lot of locker room friction. As well, given how he approached you, he’s probably not going to appreciate being told he’s not up to snuff in your view. So choosing your response to Player Concerns will become a valuable skill if you want to manage the locker room.
At any point in the season, you can access your roster via the new ‘Player Morale’ screen and view current issues, or review past events that have positively (or negatively) impacted your player’s morale. To the left you can see a small sample of the 70+ different things that feed into Player Morale over the course of a season.
I hope by now you’ve received enough information on what the dev team has been working on over the last cycle to deliver NHL 16 to you. Player Morale is a very large (and impactful across many areas) feature and I’ve only really scratched the surface of all the depth I’ve put in the feature within this blog. It is my sincere hope that you are excited by what you’ve read, and I hope you know that we on the dev team feel SO lucky to be in a position to work on a game we love, for passionate fans.
NOTE: The players shown in the images above are from an older roster and have since been updated in the game.