[Long read] Feedback regarding card progression and rewards.
Before I start giving feedback, let me just quickly explain what I’ve been doing in HUT since the tail end of NHL 16 and from NHL 17 onwards to this point. The past 8 years or so, I’ve played HUT religiously. I mean I’ve put more time into HUT than any other game really and it is largely due to my love for hockey and wanting to play it in some form myself. Thousands upon thousands of hours, so many hours that I quite frankly don’t even want to know the numbers. I know the best cards because I know who is good real life, I know who’s about to get a card because I check the game scores, I know who has scored and who hasn’t, who had a bunch of assists and who did not. I know that Matthews has struggled with shooting this year due to an injury, I know that Bedard only has 3 goals so far, I know that Kaprizov and Kucherov have absolutely lit it up so far, I know the Jets are the fastest team in NHL history to 15 wins, etc, etc. Just some of the things that show how much I love hockey. Now, lets get into my feedback regarding NHL 25 progression and rewards.
WHAT KIND OF PERFORMANCE IS REWARDED?
TOTW: Only the 85 is a real upgrade to players, an upgrade that actually matters. The other cards are currently 83s and even though some of them are decent, its not like an 83 is gonna make your top 6 anymore at this point, its just not something that's viable. And how exciting is an 83 anyway? Outside of the weekly 86, TOTW isn't a real upgrade currently. And guys like Kucherov or Kaprizov have not gotten a TOTW despite both guys being well over PPG. And before this, TOTW was set at 82/85.
Currently, TOTW is more like LOTW (Line Of The Week) because it is 5 players only and those are NHL players only. It is obvious that not only does TOTW badly need the overalls to be released so that we can have varying overalls in TOTW, but also needs to expanded to a full team again so that other leagues aren’t just simply ignored. Obviously the game is NHL, but lots of people follow the CHL, if for nothing else then to see how their favorite teams’ prospects are doing, how the top prospects in the upcoming draft are doing, etc, etc. And many people follow the leagues of their own countries such as Extraliga, the SHL and the Finnish Liiga, but those cards are not represented in TOTW.
MS/GB/POTY: It appears that these cards are actually viable for upgrades. Players getting huge boosts for hitting a milestone, scoring in OT or making a diving save/scoring between the legs. But these are limited to a single event in a game or popping off for one game, meaning that either some random goalie gets an 85 currently or some random forward gets a POTY for a filthy goal, like lets say Ryan Donato against the Kings in the shootout a while back, great goal, fantastic effort, but will he get a card for it? He hasn’t so far and if he does get a card for it, is anyone gonna remember why he got the card? But these cards don't necessarily seem to reward multipoint games either, or at least I so far I have not seen Kucherov get a GB card for a 3 or 4 point game and he has had multiple 3 point games. Same goes for Kaprizov and yet he has not received one new item in addition to his base card.
To summarize, MS/GB/POTY cards can be a boost to a player but man they seem extremely specific and do not necessarily reward consistency.
Event cards: These cards have actually been somewhat solid with Patrick Kane, Jay Bouwmeester, Sidney Crosby, the Hughes brothers, Zetterlund, Parayko, Kopitar, etc, etc.
X-Factors: While it is nice to see that guys like McDavid now truly stand out with their charged XF items that are rare to see, I think they will end up being too rare. It also nice to see the Captains XF items for elite players like Kucherov and Nylander, but its also painful to see that players like Nico Hischier or Cole Caufield get a base XF item that won’t upgrade. While of course neither player is quite as elite offensively as McDavid, Kucherov or Nylander, there’s no denying what a force Hischier is out there and how amazing it would be to have a 200 foot center as the Devils XF, even though it’ll most likely be Jack Hughes at some point with a Captains XF. But the cost of building them is absurd and is highlighted by the terrible rewards. Something has to change there.
Icons: Some icons will never receive an upgrade and the Holo icons will not receive monthly upgrades but instead will receive upgrades at the developer's discression, meaning that guys like Gretzky and Lemieux will be stuck at 86 for an unpredictable amount time despite the high cost to build the cards. And since they won't receive those guaranteed monthly upgrades, you have nothing to look forward to and you're just hoping that the developers give them cards. And then there's the question of whether you're able to build or earn those cards, what abilities they will have, etc. It used to not be a such an issue as you'd know that your icon was gonna match the ovr or that he was going to get an upgrade soon to go past the MSP. But now we not only don't know when the upgrades are coming, we also know that it may just be easier to keep buying and selling the special cards they get seeing as those cards could be extremely rare. I mean what's the point of releasing a new Gretzky or Lemieux every month if you could just naturally upgrade them every month like you used to?
To summarize: Some icons won't receive any more upgrades and some receive upgrades at unspecified times. Icons are essentially not worth it because you don't know when they'll upgrade.
TL;DR: Upgrades across the board are in a weird place and are seemingly designed to keep overalls low.
It is unclear honestly who gets rewarded with new cards and who doesn’t. It seems that if someone has an MSP incoming, they are artificially held back from getting new cards, which was proven when Malkin hit 500 goals and 800 assists and did not receive a milestone card for those achievements and instead received a FH item that started at sub 80 ovr. While the fantasy item is exciting in the long run, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a Malkin card you could actually play with in the meanwhile? Same goes for Kaprizov, he has absolutely demolished it this season so far and yet he has not received a card yet. It seems that Kaprizov may receive a Next Gen event MSP, given that he is a former Calder winner. But this does not mean, in my opinion, that he should be held back from receiving other items before. Elite players have more good games and rack up points, hence why they deserve more cards. Kaprizov having 9 goals and 19 assists and being stuck at a lower overall than Dylan Guenther who, while he has a respectable 7 goals and 5 assists to start the season, isn’t quite at the same level as Kaprizov who is still stuck at his 83 base overall. I mean on one hand, it is nice that I still have some week 1 cards in my team and they have not become useless yet. But on the other hand, I still have week 1 cards in my team and that’s how boring it is, that’s how little we are able to build or even want to build.
To combat the progression, I think at least the following need to happen:
- TOTW is expanded into a full team again, with at least the top line, possibly top two lines, consisting of NHL players and then the bottom defensive pairing and the bottom 6 lines consisting of CHL/SHL/AHL/etc players. And overalls can stop being stuck at 82/83 and can go up past that if an elite player happens to pop off.
- Gamebreakers need to reflect real life performances more. Mason Marchment recently had a 5 point game, surely that deserves a nice gamebreaker card? Draisaitl has four game winners for the Oilers this season, of which I think three (against the Flyers, Wings and Isles) came in overtime, yet Draisaitl has yet to receive a card for those types of performances because of his MSP, even though this is another case of an elite player doing elite player things and deserving an upgrade. Gamebreakers also need to be what PT’s/LM’s used to be, meaning that every time content is released, new ones are released because they reflect real performances game to game, every single week.
- X-Factors I think should be as long as the rewards get better. Right now its just impossible to do McDavid unless you sacrifice everything else for him, which just does not lead to a fun team to play with.
Up next, lets talk about rewards…
ARE THERE EVEN REWARDS IN THE GAME?
Needless to say, this is without a doubt the worst year for rewards in HUT. And I don’t mean by a little, I mean that by far, it is the most awful year for rewards and its not close. While the idea with the XP path was that you could play whatever you wanted and you’d get rewards, that’s just not the case now is it? There are lots of moments for coins and player items that one must make use of, there are a bunch of objectives that require you to insert cards into your lineup outside of your normal selection in order to receive those rewards and it also takes an enormous amount of time to grind the levels. And quite frankly, the rewards have been laughable. While I think that the XP player was a fantastic idea (Kuemper has been amazing for me), some of the packs in the XP path are laughably bad, to the point that only a fool would even bother grinding to get them if they weren’t just something to get past while trying to reach Eichel’s XP card. Packs such as five 68+ overall players are simply insulting, almost a rude gesture towards the player when it is extremely obvious that nobody is going to have a bunch of those freaking 68-72 overalls in their teams past day one, let alone past level 20, 30, 40 or 50!!! Some of the packs include 80+ overalls players, but so far I think personally I’ve pulled 82s at best and quite frankly, they’ve been such unremarkable cards that I couldn’t even tell you who I’ve pulled from those packs because I genuinely have not cared about the pulls enough to even accidentally memorize them.
XP Path: While a good idea, it needs refinement. Either moments also start counting towards XP, even if its just 50 XP per moment. The XP path simply should not include packs like five players 68+ overall or 5 player packs that also include completely useless sub 75 overall NHL alumnis, etc, etc. The XP path packs should include more 80+ overall players, more choice packs for guaranteed players (even if they’re BND), etc, etc.
Moments: While moments can be easy to do, the fact is that sometimes you’re looking at 20-30 moments *every week* and you’re just melting your face off thinking about the boredom that is grinding those moments.
And lets also talk about the Panarin moments. Those moments were EXTREMELY hard then the difficulty said “pro”. I think that for the moments that include a guaranteed 86 ovr player, its fine that they are as hard as the Panarin moments were because then it means that not absolutely everyone can get the player, but they should be labeled as such. Go ahead and make the opposing team superstar+ like you did with the top shelf goals moment, go ahead and make it difficult like top shelf goals or a comeback from down 3 goals in the third period. But label the moments as “HUT Titans Moments – For the titans of HUT who are capable of battling the beast and winning” or something, anything that makes it clear that you’re going in for a rough time but that the reward is going to be worth it.
Objectives: While some of the objectives players have been decent (Dubois, Brodie), I think that this is another case where you need to play with specific items in order to get them and it gets boring. And while you’re at it, you’re also grinding TOTW objectives, possibly GB objectives, event objectives, etc. And are you going to achieve all of these in rivals and champs? No, you’re going to achieve them playing Squad Battles and for some, that’s incredibly boring and tedious. I get that not everything needs to be a little walk in the park for a piece of apple pie and vanilla ice cream, but if you do all of these, when are you playing with your actual squad against actual people?
The competitive packs are a great idea and while, again, 30 wins in extremely hard in week against human players, most of us obviously have to play most of those games against the CPU in SB while playing with relevant objectives items to get more of the few rewards we have. 30 wins is hard to get and that’s why we are grateful that its possible to do in SB, but man is it tedious to play 30 games against the CPU, especially if you want to maximize your use of time and use cards relevant to other objectives. And while it is ok in some cases that a singular objective gives a 76 ovr player (UT) and nothing else, at some point you look at the “Random 76/77/78/etc ovr player (UT)” packs like “Yeah, that’s 100000% going to be a player of that overall”, instead of a 76+ pack or a 78+ pack with a small chance of pulling something useful. You know that while you can use cards at that overall as fodder for sets, it would also be nice to be able to use those pulls in the lineup instead of just filing them to the side.
To help with rewards, at least the following need to happen
- The XP path needs to include more 80+ ovr player packs with at least 6-7 80+ ovr players in one pack.
- If moments are indeed emphasized as heavily as they are, they also need to give XP. Keep in mind that in some cases, you need to grind the objectives AND moments to get enough collectibles to complete a set. This would play into the “play how you want” philosophy.
- Rewards need to enable the average player to actually upgrade their team instead of being stuck pulling cards that don’t make their first week team, let alone their team at this point in the game.
- More + packs in moments, objectives, etc. No more of these 76 ovr player packs, make it a 76+ ovr pack so that its at least a small chance of pulling something that might change your whole team, especially if you happen to get a pull like that which is tradeable and able to be auctioned in the auction house.
- Because of the lack of rewards and lack of good packs in general, the market is extremely expensive and any players you’d actually want in in your lineup cost so much that all the coins you’ve spent acquiring up to this point in the game could only land you maybe 2-3 new players that will still be on your team a month from now.
The lack of variety in rewards and their low quality is killing one of the most addictive parts of the game, building up your team. Without good rewards, its not possible to keep building new players, nor is it likely that you’ll pull anything decent that actually makes your team. I still have some week 1 players in my lineup and it just makes the game so boring. I’m not going to pay 100k+ for a replacement when they are only marginally better, so I just keep waiting and hope that my players don’t fal behind.
If you actually read all of this, props to you because I really miss having fun in this game and this game is just not fun. I’ve never been this bored this early into the cycle, but here we are. And I’ve seen plenty of other HUT veterans saying the same thing. Its not that we’re tired of the game itself, its that we are tired of not receiving anything worthy of the time we put into the game.
