Hey everyone, Rammer here. I want to start by thanking everybody for all the great feedback that we've been receiving via the NHL 10 forums and the NHL 10 twitter feed. Just recently, we talked about our first roster update as well as our new tuner sets that allow us to tune over 2000 variables in gameplay on a nightly basis if we wanted to. We will continue to listen to feedback and tweak gameplay as needed but unfortunately, these tuner sets do not extend outside of gameplay.

So, I want to let you know that we have a Title Update that is currently being tested by Sony and Microsoft. Once we get the final go ahead from them, the update will be made live for you to download. We are hoping both console updates will be available to you by November 5th but the way things work at times, it may be sooner (or potentially later). As I get a more solid confirmation of when the TU will be available, I'll post the info on twitter.

Here are a couple of the key fixes that we've made in the Title Update:

Fixed the exploit to slap-shot a 5-hole goal from below the face-off circle.

• Although our goalies are much improved in NHL 10, there was an exploit when shooting from below the face-off circle that resulted in a goal more often than not. The goalies are now tuned to better handle shots from this area.

Increased speed of passes with Manual passing on.

• This year we added Hardcore Passing (manual passing) that gave you total control of your pass speed and direction. Overall, the new passing was well received but the consensus was that you should be able to pass the puck harder and that the bottom-end speed was too slow.  We've increased the bottom-end speed so the passes are crisper and also increased the top-end slightly as well.

Reduced the ability to boardplay players who are far away from you.

• It was a little unrealistic being able to 'suck' a player into boardplay as he was skating away from you so we've made it much harder to pin a player that is skating away. The further he is from you, the less likely you'll be able to boardplay him.

Tuning of trade logic.

• Too many superstars were being offered up for trades so we've dialed this back along with reducing how often players are repeatedly offered up for trade.

Added the ability for a user to apply boost slots to authentic helmets.

• We've added the ability to apply boost slots to an authentic helmet so users can get the benefit of the boosts without having to wear a helmet with a design on it.

Here are some of the other main fixes that will be in the Title Update:

• Fixed the bug that would make a player sometimes exit pass blocking (L1/LT) when they got close to their goalie.
• Fixed the bug that would prevent offline Be a Pro player from getting ice-time in some situations.
• Fixed a crash that could happen on delayed penalty shots.
• Improved logic for how fighting affects teamplay scores in Be a Pro.
• Prevent L1/LT from allowing players to bypass stumble animations.
• Improvements to goalies to reduce 5-hole goals in some contexts.
• Tuned thresholds for injuries from hard shots.
• Added the ability to escape a prefight circle by pressing L2/LB.
• Fixed the bug that made it possible to "shoot" a puck slowly out of the one-handed animation such that nobody could pick it up.
• Improved goalie aggressiveness when poking the puck on cross-crease passes.
• Improved the ability of defencemen are able to do puck pickups behind them to help defend cross-crease passes.
• Reduced the ability to stuff the puck through the goalie by running into him without shooting (most common on wraparounds and reaching puck pickups).
• Reduced accidental interference in front of net.
• Fixed the offline Be a Pro line-change bug where the player is stuck at the bench.
• Prevent slap passes from being deflected at large angles.
• Fixed the bug where the goalie does not react to a shot if he's banging his stick on the ice to signal the end of a penalty.
• Fixed the bug that makes flip dumps to the middle of the offensive zone go over the glass frequently.
• Fixed the bug that makes CPU center win draws to the the same side all of the time.
• Fixed the bug in the stat tracking of passing.
• Prevent accidental saucer passes after receiving the puck while trying to poke check (because both actions are on R1/RT).
• Tuning to reduce occurrence of tripping penalties when the player being tripped is stationary or moving slowly.
• Tuning to game logic to make it a little easier to stay up on the NHL team during 4-game trial in BAP.
• Many other changes to improve our ability to refine the gameplay tuning with via tuner sets.

That's it for now. Join some of the developers and I during next week's NHL 10 Community Playdate where we will also have a Live Chat set up to discuss this and anything else NHL 10 related.  Look out for more details on that soon!

I want to wrap up by wishing good luck to the all the EASHL teams that are battling it out for supremacy this October season.  September was a great start and October is looking to be pretty exciting finish right to the end of the month!

Sean

Gameplay Director Jason "redshirt" Rupert noticed that some people wanted to get more insight into the tuner sets that are available for the game.  Below is his breakdown of today's Tuner Set #2 that went out last night. Rupes has been very active in the community listening to gameplay feedback and providing insight into the gameplay aspects of NHL 10.  Make sure you jump into the NHL 10 forums to discuss all things EA SPORTS hockey and provide your feedback for the team.

In addition to the roster update another Tuning Set has been posted to the servers this week. This is actually the second tuning update. The first tuner set, V1.01,  was posted before the launch date of the game and it addressed a number of things based on feedback from the demo (the list is below). Most of the V 1.02 changes are to address online gameplay balance with a few changes for offline play as well.

For all the details go to the In the Crease blog:  Tuning Set Update #2

NHL 10 Gameplay Producer Sean Ramjagsingh continues the tutorial series with a couple of quick videos to help gamers produce better offensive results.

There has been some discussion around some of the offensive controls from last year's game and he shows us that these are still in the game and are just mapped to different controls.

The second video looks at utilizing the new boardplay feature by effectively dumping and chasing the puck as many teams do in real hockey.  We have seen some people talk about not being able to pull off the offensive scheme and this video should help people learn some of the better techniques to pull it off.

Check out both videos on the In the Crease blog:  Gameplay Controls / Dump and Chase

You've been asking about Hardcore mode and we've got Rammer to go in-depth with the new Game Styles and Litty has provided a couple of videos to show some of the different styles.  He played all the games in the videos using all different game styles (from casual to hardcore) and all different levels (from rookie to superstar), just like you will be able to do when the demo hits soon.

Do you really think you're Hardcore?  Well this year we've added a game style just for you. We've even called the Game Style 'Hardcore' (there are also three other game styles that I'll elaborate more on a little later). Before I get into the details of Hardcore Mode, let me back up a little bit to pre-production of NHL 10 which was the phase in the project where we tried to determine all the features that we wanted to add and figure out how we can squeeze it all into one year. It's at this time that we collaborate the ideas that we have with the ideas that the community has suggested through the various forums to form the feature set. We decided that this was the year we were going to give our hardcore users the gameplay experience that they've been asking.

For Rammer's complete blog with gameplay videos from Litty, check out the In the Crease blog:  So you think you're Hardcore?

Are you ready for more NHL gameplay videos with your host David Littman?  We're well aware that the hockey community can't get enough of these raw gameplay clips describing the new enhancements for NHL 10, so Litty spent this afternoon playing the game and looking for stuff to share with our fans.  Some of these enhancements have been talked about before while for others so there should be no surprises...or have they???