NHL HUT 20 vs 21

After Playing the trial for 21, I can tell you there are some major and minor changes to look for and, more importantly to help you build your team.  Or if you're looking for a reason to buy the new game, here are going to be the differences on why to upgrade. 

First, and to me the BIGGEST CHANGE which will make this game a bit less aggravating, NO MORE CONTRACTS.  You heard me correct.  Thank you EA!  No more wasting time buying more contracts and applying them.  They are gone.  Injuries I think are gone as well, as I do not see any healing item.  GOOD JOB EA!             ;

Now lets move on with a few modes that have been removed.

Say goodbye to Online Seasons, Competitive Seasons, and Draft Champions.  Not a huge loss.  I didn't play Online Seasons once in 20 (always played Rivals) and they put out so few Competitive Seasons last year, most won't notice it.  It's all about the Champions Seasons anyway.   Draft Champions was fun, but again no one played because there wasn't much of a reason to.  Anyway, to quote Michael Kay , "SEE YA".  

All other modes are still there, Squad Battles, Rivals, Champions Seasons, Challenges.   They also added in an exhibition game.

There is one new mode called HUT RUSH.   I will be going into a more detailed look into RUSH after the game is released and I am not limited to 10 hours of gameplay, but this is more of a 3 on 3 game mode where you play quick 2 min games to rack up points.  Point will then yield you coins, cards, and packs for use in your HUT.   I feel this was made to replace draft champions.  For those who played CHEL or 3 vs. 3 last season, same thing.  Looks like prizes are given out weekly as well.        I recommend playing this at first as a quick way to add a few gold players to your team.   

Sets - We've added Team Building Sets!  Now, once you play enough to build an entire team of 88 or higher, you can then use the gold base cards of a full team and put them into a set.   To get an 85 overall player.  I'm going to wait until more info is revealed about this player, he may be upgradable, so I'll hold off on this being a good or bad idea.

Very small note - Auction House search has changed.  Now price range is just a price range of what the player is going at that moment.  No way to search based on buy it now currently.  I hope they add that back.  Not sure why that had to be removed?   Also, anyone else notice the filters aren't working for position at all?  They better have all these worked out by the 13th.         

Now  

All in all, I don't think they removed anything of importance, killing contracts makes this so much better, and Rush seems like a fun new mode that hopefully will change enough weekly to keep it interesting.          

I will say, there will be people saying there wasn't much changed, this is a problem....well, I am NOT one of them.  We all play this game as bad as we make it seem sometimes, but in the end, there's a love of building a team we all enjoy and there isn't much you cna change about that.  Great job making the gameplay better, the modes more interesting, and we buy the new ones for the new players, not the different game modes.   So yeah, after playing about 3 hours of my trial so far, I'd recommend pre-ordering this game if you were on the fence.  

And yes, packs give the same crappy odds so don't expect much out of them.