@KidShowtime1867 wrote:
@Jagavekov wrote:It seems like you're purposely not understanding what I am saying, and it is frustrating. I am not saying anything should be artificial.
Let me be as clear as possible:
If the skating, passing, receiving, puck handling, board effects, and defensive mechanics were altered to be even a little more realistic, players would be incentivized to ice the puck on the PK once in a while, along with many other benefits.
Nothing artificial about that.
LOL naw bruh, I'm proving my point over and over and you're coming back at me with some ambiguous "make the mechanics more realistic" comment.
The game is far from perfect when it comes to simulating the real sport. And something you continuously and purposefully ignore about what I'm saying is that EA - or ANY developer for that matter - has yet to accomplish the complete 1:1 simulation of any sport. Ever.
You want game mechanics that are "more realistic" so that players are incentivized to dump the puck on the PK. I'm not misunderstanding that. It makes perfect sense and I fully agree with you.
EA has attributes on each player that are folded into calculations that are playing out in any given scenario. It actually is quite amazing if you take a step back and really assess how the game engine works and the grueling slog that is compiling code that allows things to play out in such a way that feels realistic and balanced.
Combined with needing to take into account animations databases, the choices made by the game engine to select those animations, calculating the physics in the background and deciding what plays out with the added benefit of the puck itself and the physics they've programmed for it, etc - it's absolutely amazing that we have the games we have today. (again, a reminder for some of you: I'm not saying this game is perfect)
All of this is completely lost on sweaty HUT players who get a bad bounce here and there (or god forbid, a bad bounce that KEEPS happening to them) and then just rage that the "game is unrealistic", "broken" and my favorite, "EA (a company who was worked on an official NHL-licensed videogame for 30+ years) knows nothing about hockey"
So, circling back to your "make the mechanics more realistic" - how exactly do you propose EA does that without animation selection, attribute and physics calculations, folding into those equations synergies, X-Factors, etc? When you're calculating all of those elements, you have to take liberties with certain things. For example; the idea that a stick becomes 'muted' after it clips a player's leg to simulate the fact that that stick would've been otherwise deflected by the leg it went through in real life. This was done ON PURPOSE by EA because the having the engine calculate a stick reaction based on contact with the geo of another player model is something that would likely inhibit the ability for the game engine to tackle much more complex aforementioned calculations.
In saying that - there's definitely room for the engine to improve upon those things but those improvements take a TON of time and debugging. Again - this process is completely lost on your average player and I get that. But when confronted with this reality, gamers often dismiss the issues they see as the developers being 'lazy'. The reality is this stuff is intense and takes so much time to solve. I firmly believe the transition to Frostbite will allow things like this to be tackled with more granularity, providing more realism, but this takes time and things will be phased into the engine so as not to disrupt other elements.
"Making the mechanics more realistic" will look different for every player. What seems "realistic" to you (such as a nerf to puck possession, forcing players to feel more under pressure while holding the puck) may come across as "broken" to someone who thinks it's ridiculous that an NHL caliber player is bobbling a perfect pass and can't control a puck. Then EA needs to take that feedback into account and consider what needs to be done to strike a balance between SIM and FUN.
Ultimately, I think many of the 'realism' gripes come from the battle around this balance. The quicker you are to accept that reality, the less angsty you'll be towards the game overall and thus - you will improve your enjoyment.
With all that being said, I feel like I need to remind anyone who actually reads this; NHL 24 is not perfect. And @Jagavekov makes a great case for improving the realism, but some of the complaints are rooted in a dissatisfaction with losing and seeing outcomes play out that don't fit one's particular view of what hockey should be in the virtual world. There doesn't appear to be ANY concessions given to the development team surrounding the simple nature of game development, nor does there ever seem to be a willingness to admit that certain mistakes are being made by the people playing. When I give clips the Zapruder treatment, I'm trying to enlighten people as to mistakes being made in the clip so that people can learn how to get the best outcomes in the situation presented. What's funny is that people are willing to DM me and thank me for the tips, but unwilling to reply to threads thanking me in fear of backlash from other users who simply want to bash EA after taking an L.
I completely understand the limitations of technology. We are not close to being able to perfectly simulate the physics of the sport, the game cannot be perfect. I completely get it, I am not asking for perfection or anything close to it. I understand that the more ambitious things I have talked about - more manual controls, full controls of the stick at all times, accounting for players' line of sight, etc - are very difficult to implement and are the best-case scenario, and are probably not happening soon. I am ok with that. I am also not asking for ultra-realistic full 20 minute period online games with perfectly accurate box score stats, not even close. That would be boring, and not fun, and way too far on the "sim" side of the balance between sim and arcade.
However, some of the reasons this game is horrible are simply choices that have been made, likely misguided attempts to cater to the lowest common denominator of potential customer. They saw Fortnite emotes were big with "the kids", so we now have EASHL players doing dances and levitating before games. Its very Steve Buscemi "Hey fellow kids" energy. Not gameplay related, and not a big deal, just completely inauthentic and immersion-breaking, but it just tells you the mindset of the people behind the game. A more gameplay-related example of this is L2/LT abuse being part of the game for almost a decade. There is no technological reason that that should have been in the game for so long. I know you always talk about how great you are at stopping it, but watch high-level tournaments from the past decade and there are plenty of L2/LT abuse goals against good players who are also presumably good at defending it, so it was there, and it was a problem, and the team admitted so this year by nerfing it.
I understand fixing offline play is hopeless because the AI is awful and they aren't going to fix it anytime soon because that is not where the player base is, but online play could be made a lot better with just tweaking the online sliders. No supercomputers needed for that, no huge team of coders for that, no futuristic technology for that. Just the integrity to make the game play like hockey and let the players come to them, rather then giving them what they THINK players want - Harlem Globetrotters on ice, Michigan goals and hip checks.
For example:
- Turn the board effect on puck carrier up - players would have to respect the boundaries of the playing field, a basic for recreating any sport
- This would reduce time and space for the puck carrier, resulting in less corner dancing and would encourage more puck movement and more hockey plays
- Tune all of the skating sliders (acceleration, agility, speed) to be more realistic and actually account for momentum
- This would result in less figure skating and would encourage more puck movement and more hockey plays
- Tune the passing, reception, and interception sliders to be less forgiving with pass speed, reaction time, and orientation
- This would require more thought going into "weighing" the pass so that it is hard enough to not get interception but soft enough that the intended target can receive it, I get aiming with the left stick can be finicky so make it more about the "power" of the pass - how long you press the pass button - to be more forgiving.
There are many more that I'm sure others have opinions about, but those are basic, simple changes that would make the game better and more realistic, while also being fun. If these changes would make the box score stats too low, then these could be changed:
- Increase game speed slightly
- Increase period length slightly
- Make goalies worse at stopping high-quality chances
All these proposed changes are just altering settings in the game that already exist. We don't have to wait for the Playstation 11 for that, these are easy changes that already exist.
The Sim VS Arcade problem can be solved by having multiple modes for each game type. Have a 3-on-3 arcade mode and a 5-on-5 more balanced mode for each game type (EASHL, HUT, VS). Get rid of the ones eliminator stuff, that is stupid, more "hey fellow kids" Fortnite trash, and not hockey and further splits the player base. Problem solved.
Want lots of space, fancy dekes, and Harlem Globetrotters on ice, play 3s. Want more of a "sim" game while also getting accurate box score stats in 5 minute (or so) periods, play 5s. Best of both worlds.
