After noticing last night when we were doing our "only ourselves ranked game" deal that DD Trane was only a 46 overall
I thought maybe I should post this here in case it'll help others unfamiliar with the basic setup of NHL's Online Be A Pro universe. It's long, it's not as concise or clear as I'd prefer, bu maybe it'll help and serve as a resource of a sort for folks when they start.
Go into Xbox Live and select "EA Sports Hockey League." In there, select "My Pro" and you will see a menu. Ignore "Hockey Shop" completely at this time.
Instead go directly to "Edit Pro." You'll notice the next menu has each individual position.
In online be a pro, you create separate builds for each position, which is an awesome feature and allows for maximum flexibility once in a lobby. But it means you have to go through a bunch of steps for each position to be fully ready to play. But fear not, once you go through the initial build process, making adjustments as you level up or making changes to you physical stats or gear is much more manageable.
Anyway, once you are in "Edit Pro" select Center and it will load your info. Here you should immediately go one step to the right and select the Info tab. You'll note some lines on this area have a green mark on the left. This green mark indicates these are Universal areas, meaning these areas will apply to all of your player positions. That is, such things as name, birth year and so on will apply to all your online positions. However, other areas including height and weight, handedness, jersey number, player type and such apply only to the specific position. So your defenseman can be a right handed, 6'6" 235 lbs defensive defensman, while your Left Winger can be 5'10", 175lbs, left handed and a playmaker while your RW can be a 6'1" 197lbs right handed sniper.
For now, we are building your Center, so keep that in mind and set up your height, weight and player type to your liking. Also make sure to browse the "Play by Play Name" to select something close to if not exactly the name you're using for Gary Thorne to use in the play by play. Also remember you can change your dude's name later at any time by going back into this menu.
Ok, now go one more tab to the right to the little head looking icon and here, you can mess with your face. These will all be universal changes that will apply to all your online pros.
Now, one more move to the next tab to the right and you can select some cosmetic things that will apply only to this position, not all your pros. Stuff like whether you tuck in your jersey or whether you have a visor and so forth is in here.
The final area in this Edit Pro menu is actually the one farthest to the left and deals with your equipment. Here you can choose your stick, you skates, your gloves, etc. and will apply specifically to each different position. Besides the cosmetic aspects of brands and stick colors, note that for your stick and your skates, you actually have choices to make that affect performance. Stick flex and blade curve can thus be customized for each position, as can your skate blade radius. Pretty neat that you can give your defenseman a really short radius but give a speedy forward a longer skate blade.
Ok, now that all that is taken are of, go through all that Edit Pro mess again FOR EACH POSITION! Yes, this is initially a lengthy, time consuming process, but once done, it's done, and you can go back in and tweak very easily at any time later.
Once you're done with Edit Pro, now you need to go into the My Pro menu again and head into Edit Attributes. Here is where you assign your level-up points into each position's abilities. Note that this process is much quicker because you can get it all done for every position without having to load back out to a higher menu page. This process really doesn't take too long, but it's important not to leave any available attribute points in the bank. They don't do any good there!
You will start with a fair number of points to distribute in each area, so customization is where it's at. There are three areas, Offense, Defense, and Athleticism, for each position, so make sure to hit the LB and RB to cycle until you've spent all your points in each of the three areas for each player.
Note that at first, a bump of one "level" in any attribute costs only 10 points, but as you level up, each level will cost more. That is you can get Passing from 65 to 70 only spending 10 pts per level, but to go from 70 to 71 it will cost 20, and once you get to 75 each next step may cost 30 or 40 or 50. This is where the Player Types come into play. You will be able to boost the Passing attribute for a Playmaker up to 80 for a lot fewer points than it would take you to do so for a Grinder or a Sniper. Similarly a Sniper should be able to increase his shooting numbers at much less cost than a 2-way forward.
Note that in this Edit Attribute area you can change your Player Type for each position at any time, but if you do so, you attribute points will be reset. This is the easy way to re-roll your guys at each position, whether you want to change your RW from a Sniper to a Grinder, or your Defenseman from an Offensive Defensman to a Defensive Defensman, or if you just want to reset and do a quick re-roll without changing player type. However to adjust height and weight you have to go into the Edit Pro menu instead.
It's important that at some stage, you have gone through this lengthy process for all positions so that you have maximum flexibility as to what position you can play in games. But at the very minimum you need to set up at least one forward and your Defensman by distributing all the attribute points you have available.
At any time feom the EASHL menu you can do a Drop In Game where you will play with randoms. These games count towards leveling your player, so they can be very handy and I've found them to be pretty painless and often fun. But in these drop in games you will likely have no choice as to what position you will play because those random f***ers are fast as s*** at selecting positions. But no worries, if you have distributed your points in each position, you'll be A-OK no matter where you play.
The only caveat is to say I'd avoid playing goalie until you've played a bunch of goalie offline because that can get really ugly really fast if you don't have your skills sharp. Elsewhere on the ice you can f*** up as you like and you will almost never be the worst player on your team but as goalie, that can be very painful to endure if you're not solid.
Well I hope this wasn't too long and confusing and that it helps somewhat to get you ready for EASHL play. When we get enough people, we do like to play each other, either in practice or with our pros in a private game where we wear the unis of different teams and have the full crowd and play by play and all that. These games don't count towards leveling up, but playing against friends is almost always more fun just because there's less of a chance of getting blown out and even if it happens, hey, it's among friends! Otherwise, I myself am a stickler for having at least three guys for OTP play, but others such as Vader don't seem to mind playing with only two.
Looking forward to seeing you out there on the virtual ice. The ghost of Dick Fein lingers as the spirit of pond hockey lives on with the EASHL!
