Goalies
Goalies are god awful this year.. What a joke
Edit: Removed profanity. Per the Answers HQ rules, please keep your posts free of swearing. -CM
Forum Discussion
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerThanks for the details. That helps a lot. If you happen to get video, please post it. Appreciate the feedback!
@EA_Aljo Can I just upload an entire game we played last night where we absolutely dominated the opposing team? We doubled their shots, had like 3x the time on attack and lost 8-4 because their goalies was diving across the net left and right saving well set up plays, and then they would just come down the ice, skate into the goalie, forget to shoot, and score.
They goalies are way overprogrammed to stop actual hockey plays, and peewee level against broken stuff or anything else.
They goalies are way overprogrammed to stop actual hockey plays, and peewee level against broken stuff or anything else.
- EA_Aljo
Sure. You're welcome to upload whatever game footage you like. I'll take a look at the goals. I played a few games last night. It would have been nice if our goalie made cross-crease saves, but he let in several, unfortunately. I did see some pretty great saves that they most likely wouldn't have in previous games and my defense could have been better. Are your opponents scoring them frequently against you or were all 8 goals scored by other means?
- @EA_Aljo the goalies are very good this year and thats better. the NHL series goes downhill once EA tunes the game to placate the content creators and drive up offense. people are just lazy and dont want to earn anything but then complain about the lack of realism in the game.
Instead of uploading the whole 20+ minute game I broke it down into a bunch of shorter videos. Keep in mind all of these clips are from a single game, except for the very last one which is from our immediate rematch against them. I hope you and everyone else watch all these clips, because they get progressively worse as we go.
Heres our first good chances of the game. Wide open one tee saved followed by a wide open wrister from the same spot and another chance in tight
Heres there counter a few moments later:
Not great D by our wing but the dman had a clean poke that failed entirely and then our goalie cant get over to make a save, which would be fine if theirs didnt go on to stop 24 shots.
Bonus clip of blatant interference that goes uncalled:
Later on in the game I get a clean lane to the net when one dude is shot out of a cannon on the backcheck but i still get off a pretty good chance that is stuffed. Again not awful, but when the other team is scoring on every look they get, its annoying.
More robbery from their goalie
More of the same
By the way, to this point both of our goals are from penalty shots. Which shouldnt even be in the game and I would still love someone to tell me why were forced to play with made up rules in a competitive game mode but no one ever can answer that.
Heres some more robbery from their goalie followed by our goalie being entirely useless
More saves from their goalie
I get a clean break in against the goalie but cant get a shot off because of the goalies stick
Me getting stoned on a break again and then immediately getting robbed on a cross crease
Again, not my best moves or anything but another clean look thats stopped followed by an insane save on the second chance play.
Heres a shooting gallery of shots that start off a little clunky at first but capped off by the desperation save on the backdoor manual sauce over the defender, which leads to a break out where they score of course. Sorry for cutting the clip short by a second
More dumb saves
We continue to pressure and naturally get caught giving up a 2-0, our goalie fails to make a save where their goalie has stopped a bunch of these exact looks, if not even better ones
Second bonus clip from our rematch against them. More insane saves followed by them just stumbling around and scoring on accident
As you see, in a vacuum, some of these arent that bad, and you'd almost expect 1-2 of these in a game, but this happened over and over again all game. The outcome of the game was totally taken out of our control by AI goalies. Theirs made incredible saves all game long and ours couldnt do anything. This shouldnt be happening. Giving one team Dominik Hasek, and the other a beer league goalie ruins the game.
- @mikeq67 90% of the shots you guys took was at the goalie. Maybe trying to lift the puck once or twice might help. Hell maybe try and screen him for a couple because you know, that indeed works.
Also there needs to be an RNG element to the game to simulate human error. If you guys want accurate and real to life gameplay then I suggest not trying to find that in a video game where not everything is possible.
As a goalie main I love the gameplay this year compared to past titles. We complained about how easy it was to get cross crease cheese goals so they made it harder. Now people are complaining about how hard it is. The NHL community is starting to look like the Call Of Duty community LOL.
- @mikeq67 This. Dominate the play, pass the puck around in offense, shoot one-timers, and no reward. One breakout from the other team, backhand-forehand-goal, and the our goalies save percentage is pretty much 0.
Goalies are decent in hockey plays, but everything else god awful.
Skate straight line forget to shot and ram the goalie, goal. Where’s the interference? Shots from zero and negative angle, goalie makes a save opposite direction leaving the post open, goal. How about try to pass a goal, yup goas in because goalie still doesn’t react to opponents passes when close. How many years this bug has been in the game?
EA just once again, has the wrong people making decisions with this franchise, it’s so infuriating.
Right now, most people are still in the honeymoon phase with this game and don’t see how this crap is going to play out with what they’ve done to the goalies, and the implications this is going to have on the overall gameplay once people really figure the game out. Let me explain…
People cried about cross crease goals going in the last few years, when in reality it’s their horrible defence allowing teams to get them in the first place. Granted, pass interceptions were abysmal and complete RNG at times. Now pass interceptions were worked on for 23, and are actually pretty decent now when compared to NHL 22, that alone was enough of a nerf to the cross crease meta, because now the D actually have the tools to pick off these passes and be rewarded for good positioning. This is how the game should be balanced, THE HUMAN D given the tools to succeed!!! But once again, EA, rather than putting the game in the players hands, decides to double down on AI determining the outcome of games, by now bailing out massive defensive breakdowns by human users, when they have just been given the tools to succeed to stop it themselves in the first place.
Why year after year do these devs feel the need to make the AI more impactful in the game, when in reality they should be as non impactful as possible. Not only that, but the fact EA doesn’t realize that each mode needs to be tuned completely seperate from one another. Again, let me explain…
Offline modes, the AI should be impactful, and provide a challenge for offline players by being aggressive and having goalies and AI defenders be difficult to beat. Move on to online HUT and Versus mode…. You can only control 1 player at a time in these modes, so the AI should be positionally solid, but very passive, which would force players to have to switch when defending and not just rely on the AI playing fetch for them. Positionally good so that when SWITCHED TO by the human, they can make a play. Goalies in HUT and versus should also be CONSISTENT in what goes in the net, and should not be the reason teams win or lose.
Now onto EASHL, imo AI shouldn’t even exist in this mode, this should 100% be purely humans, it’s what the mode was made for, but I get that not everyone can get a full squad on to play and it would suck not being able to play at all. That being the case, the AI should literally be pylons in this mode, they should be treated like BOTS in fortnite, where they are just beyond bad and not impactful, but just there to be enough of a decoy. This is not HUT or versus where you only have control of 1 player, you have other human user teammates there that should be reading plays and playing man on man coverage anyways. The AI goalies in club, again should be as consistent as possible, they should not have these constant save of the year moments and determine the outcome of games while the other teams goalie plays like a peewee bum. I honestly don’t get the mindset of these devs thinking the AI in online modes should be as good as your average player in this game, when in reality they should be bad which will force you to find other humans to play with.
These human goalies being programmed to make these miraculous cross crease saves is a complete joke and people don’t realize how the meta of the game is going to further turn into a 1 man show style of play because passing simply won’t be rewarded anymore. I’m already 150+ games into playing 23, I’m 52-2-1 in drop ins, 19-0-0 in HUT, global champion for 1s eliminator, 12-0-0 in 3s eliminator, and 63-3-3 in club, I can 100% tell you guys, the meta is to pass as little as possible. Puck interceptions being jacked up, and goalies stopping cross creases the way they are, means breakaways, wrist shot and slap shots, taking it to the net, and rebounds are now the meta. Not once of those things in the meta requires you to pass the puck, does nobody else realize this?
Please for the love of god NHL devs, please rethink your mindset on how you tune this game…
