Is anything being done about Truculence?
Please can someone from EA explain how truculence is balanced for 3v3 club play, would love to hear a response… You guys nerfed stick checking for 23, yet truculence remains just as good if not bett...
Forum Discussion
@TITAN_NHL wrote:I’m honestly tapping out for the year. Not spending another year dealing with this when I play 12 club games tonight and 10 of them have 2 forwards running truculence. Good luck all my forum buddies and I hope you guys can enjoy it, but I simply cannot.
Back to WoW for me until I hear about some positive changes for the game, later dudes!
Sounds like my crew is running '22 this year and we're tapping out of '23 as well. Haven't even burned through the 10-hour trial yet and it's already feeling cumbersome just to get a decent game of hockey going.
EASHL flooded with truculence, drop-ins allowing trolls to laugh like jackals while they ruin everyone's game, OVP and HUT still allowing LTers to dominate with unrealistic movements all in the name of 'creativity'.
Too high of a price tag with no quality of life changes. Sure, new animations and such are neat, but the stagnation of everything else takes away from those improvements.
I'll play more when it hits EA Play in the spring or if the price falls to $10 for black friday.
I thought NHL 15 was bad. '23 is shaping up to be one of the worst launches. Like most of you, this is coming from someone who has bought every game since NHLPA Hockey in 1993 for Sega Genesis. It's a sad day.
Ya man I know you have been a huge defender of EA and the game in general over the years. Like I’ve said in the past, they need to stop listening to these HUT pack warrior content creators, or these GM mode simulator menu streamers, and actually listen to the top end talent in the game and balance it around that. I’ve said it many times that if the game is balanced around the top tier level of gameplay, than it’s balanced for everyone.
Your average player who logs in to have some Beers and play with the boys is completely ignorant to many of the flaws in this game. They get scored on and either don’t care, or if they do, they blame it on something that’s not actually the real reason they got scored on in the first place.
You get EA listening to the same babies that complain about 1 man show ballerinas, but then ask for cross creases to be nerfed to the point that know it doubles down on the amount of 1 man shows and rush style offense because actually setting up in the zone is meaningless, considering when you finally open up a scoring chance you’re getting a save of the year against you anyways. I see it time and time again, these people contradict themselves in what they are even asking for, but these are the casuals that EA listens to.
This is such a fragile minded community as well, where I don’t blame EA for being forced to listen to the casuals who cry about getting dominated and blame the game rather than realizing it’s a skill issue. Instead EA implements ways to keep games as close as possible by making the game less rewarding year after year so that your average Andy’s can stay close in the game and think “we were close we got them next time”, which in turn keeps them playing the game rather than logging off after what should have been a 15-0 game.
This game is nothing but crybabies that quit at a 2 or 3 goal spread constantly, because nobody can handle adversity, or actually realizing they aren’t the top tier dangle snipe and celly hero they actually think they are. This game not only doesn’t enforce shady tactics, but it promotes them. The majority of the players who consider themselves “top players” in this game are given the tools to choose their opponents every time they log in, and compete on leaderboards and rack up their points per game against nothing but silvers, with zero punishment for backing out against top teams. Who gets punished instead???? The top teams who have to go back to the lobby and search for a new game, or get the “lost connection to opponent” before puck drop and sent back to the Eashl menus where you have to invite your whole squad back and search again having your time wasted, while the other team gets rewarded for finding that silver team of monkeys and have no punishment for doing so.
Tried doing some drop ins a few days ago, played 4 games with 3 of them having complete trolls skating offside and purposely taking penalties. You know what punishment there is for them??? Absolutely none… the only ones getting punished are the ones trying to play the game properly. The fact nothing has been done about this year after year when the devs have fully admitted they know this is an issue is a complete joke.
Look at Eashl playoffs… you want to win the title and prove you’re the best????? Well your only shot in doing that is to cherry-pick your opponents, Ea thought they were clever blacking out the names in the pre game DR, but never thought to check the triangle button that tells you Who’s on the other team anyways. So now in order to win, the teams that cherry-pick their opponents and take the week off work are the ones who win, rather than actually having a real ranking system for the playoffs. Just play the most games against the most scrubs and you got yourself a championship.
Literally every aspect of this game either caters to the complete casual, trolls, or shady scrub hunting teams/players, while everyone else has to suffer. The fact theirs technologies out there that other games have to combat these issues, and Ea doesn’t even attempt to use it is a joke. Look at Overwatch with their quitting games penalty, other games have vote to kick options for trolls… I mean they have HUT champs already in the game which should be implemented for Eashl playoffs. Have the regular season kinda count as rivals games to earn your way into the playoffs, then have the same style of playing 20 games of playoffs and however many wins you have of those 20 is the tier you finish in, and give actual club rewards and titles based on that..: Not perfect, but would be much better than the system of just take the week off work and play as much as possible that we have now…
The fact this game has 5 levels of prestige, yet you have everything needed unlocked at level 50 is a joke… once people hit level 50 all that means is they freely get to quit every game they are losing and there’s nothing to gain for sticking around… There needs to be some form of incentive to finish games even if you are losing, or some form of punishment for leaving a certain amount of games in a 24 hour period… the best fix for this IMO would be to add in a currency you gain when completing a game, which is then used to buy your xfactors, zone abilities, boosts, chel custom gear. Same goes with club, when completing club games you gain currency for arena unlocks, as well as used to buy your clubs way into the playoffs. Make it a grind to purchase things and spread it out rather than giving it all in the first 50 levels, then people will be willing to stay in games to make sure they get the currency used to progress their skaters strength, appearance and club…
So tired of the backwards mindset of EA and what gets rewarded in this game…
@TITAN_NHLI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the offense is not just surviving, but thriving. Even with Truculence. As for the defense, this is what we have to work with:
Poke causes player slowdowns.
Bad poke to puck physics.
DSS causes inane player slowdown.
Slow backward to forward pivot speed.
Barely functional hitting without Truculence.
Stick checking non-existent.
Unhelpful position play.
Shots through sticks.
Shots through bodies.
Unrealistic offensive retention.
Etc.
Etc.
vs
9 Day Points totals for Top 5 players = 5,002.
9 Day Goal totals for Top 5 3's clubs = 4,425
9 Day Goal totals for Top 5 5's clubs = 2,282
9 Day Goal totals for Top 5 6's w/ goalie clubs = 2,161
I hate to see what the numbers for something like 3's drop-ins would be, but the game isn't even 10 days old and scoring is in the thousands and people want to further gimp tools that help with defense. There's a problem here, yes, but I don't think it's the skill of the defense. More like, you can do everything you can technically do to defend in this game to include positioning, but the odds are wholly still stacked against you. I honestly can't understand anyone who looks at those numbers and thinks there needs to be further nerfs to provide even more scoring in this game.I get what you’re saying and I’m not saying scoring is low. The problem is that it’s high because of the amount of trash goals that go in, and plays that require no skill to set up, yet the skilled plays and goals that should go in aren’t. It’s literally once a game someone just drives it to the net without even shooting and loses it into the net. Or the constant rebounds that a peewee goalie would be taught to handle.
My whole point is that backwards mindset of Ea that they gimp the Defensive tools of the humans on the ice and make up for it with superhuman AI goalies which is not what should be happening. It needs to be reversed to where human D are given tools to succeed and if they make a mistake they are punished. The AI goalies aren’t the ones who are going to like or dislike the game, the humans playing D and getting burnt on a play they should be rewarded for are the ones who are going to dislike the game. Or the forwards that set up 10+ beauty cycling plays throughout a game just to be denied by an AI goalie, are also not going to enjoy the game. Now you have nobody enjoying it and no reward for the actual players using the controllers. EA could program the game so you could just shoot the puck at the blueline and score 50% of the time, doesn’t mean scoring is fine just because there’s an abundance of it…
Your mindset aligns with the backwards mindset of EA. You’re saying truculence is fine because it’s the only tool D really have now, whereas the mindset should be to nerf truculence and buff stick checking. Yet EA comes in here and hears people defending truculence and thinks it’s fine rather than fixing the actual flaws
I mean penalties exist in 3v3 OT in the NHL, what world would EA decide it shouldn’t exist in their game, but leave in stick checking penalties ?
- @Deeboo_91 I mean to be fair what lots of people also do is get 8 or 12 people and match up against each other and goal trade, hit trade, etc to get prestige within a day or 2 so everything is unlocked. It's what my friends have done. He had like 148 goals in 20 games played.
Yep, I’ve heard about this as well. It’s literally just every shady tactic under the sun in this game that EA promotes and it just degrades the whole game to a point of it just being a waste of time joke to play.
I mean, it’s already a waste of time to play when you consider how many games out there either run off a season pass, or expansion type of system where everything you do and all progress you make stays with you for the whole games lifespan. Yet here we are, grinding to prestige 5 year after year to unlock the same crap we already unlocked, all our stats wiped out, all the money spent in HUT by players just wiped out 12 months after the game comes out. As soon as a game starts making you feel like your time is wasted, or it doesn’t respect the time you’ve put in, especially in an aging community where it’s hard for them to retain new players to replace the old ones leaving, it’s doomed
- @TITAN_NHL Yeah I'm personally tired of having to unlock the same stuff each year. We talk about loyalty type things. That is something that should carry over. Now each month we have to re-earn what we had in NHL 22 instead of all new stuff.
ya exactly, like how many years can we be expected to the same grind for the same thing we’ve already previously done and accomplished. Imo until EA adopts a season pass style of play where they do away with a yearly release, this game is never going to be anything other than mediocre at best.
You would think in the year 2022, a gaming company would realize that when you NEED crossplay in your game just for your playerbase to actually be able to find games, that free to play with a season pass is probably something you should be looking into considering it will create a much larger potential for new players into your game without someone having to spend $90 on a game with a dead playerbase, one of the greediest gaming companies, and non stop negativity surrounding the game whether it’s forums, Reddit, etc just to be able to TRY it. Especially considering this game has no in game way of helping new players find others to play with, and actually get into Eashl
Gaming in general is honestly just in such a horrible state. It’s like every company is just hungry for micro transactions, while putting as little as they possibly can back into the game, treating their playerbase like they are idiots. There’s no creativity anymore, or anyone trying to actually set the bar higher with video games. It’s just about how quick they can pump out a game for a AAA title price.
It’s like the gaming industry went from developers who had a passion for gaming and wanted a platform to express their creativity and actually take pride in their work, to now where it’s like the devs don’t even play their own games and are so out of touch with what gamers actually want and instead are just creating games for multi billion dollar companies with guys in suits that haven’t played a video game in decades.
- @Deeboo_91 THIS! Streamers complained about DSS and not being able to score more, and now here's a thread about how hitting should be nerfed next.
This isn't hockey. Imagine a world where someone in the same response, says “this isn’t hockey”, but defends being able to board and charge people all game long because penalties for it don’t exist..
this is the NHL community in a nutshell
My problem is that people defending truculence, are the same people that probably literally don’t even play 3v3 Eashl, and think I’m just asking for D nerfs. I’m asking for penalties, which exist in the real 3v3 NHL…. Adding penalties to 3v3 Eashl literally does not affect any other mode in this game. If you don’t play 3v3 Eashl than you shouldn’t even be giving your opinion in this thread, and if you do play 3v3 Eashl you must be blind to not see that this is an issue, and if you would like proof that it’s an issue, by all means I’ll get my club to run 3 truculence players and play your team in club and see how it goes.
These are the types of people EA listens and caters this game to. “I want real hockey”, but wants real penalties left out of the game. “I hate ballerinas”, but fine with goalies robbing back door plays, leading to more ballerinas since it’s essentially a passing nerf. Etc
@TITAN_NHL wrote:My problem is that people defending truculence, are the same people that probably literally don’t even play 3v3 Eashl, and think I’m just asking for D nerfs. I’m asking for penalties, which exist in the real 3v3 NHL…. Adding penalties to 3v3 Eashl literally does not affect any other mode in this game. If you don’t play 3v3 Eashl than you shouldn’t even be giving your opinion in this thread, and if you do play 3v3 Eashl you must be blind to not see that this is an issue, and if you would like proof that it’s an issue, by all means I’ll get my club to run 3 truculence players and play your team in club and see how it goes.
Do you prefer the penalty shot versus a 2-minute minor?
We will play 3's if that's all the humans we have, but I have to admit that the penalty shots really bug me. I know it's not allowed in the NHL, but in EASHL - I wouldn't mind penalties being 1-minute of 3v2 or something.
It's the penalty shots that kill me because so many teams can exploit that. I wonder if that's why they killed penalties in 3v3?
1) This sounds maybe like a 3s problem, more so than a truculence problem?
2) When the developer nerfs pretty much all other defensive tools (poke check spam nerf has gone a little too far? stick lift utterly broken=auto penalty) , then this is what results.
3) Hitting feels very unreliable rn without truculence it seems
@IceLion68 wrote:1) This sounds maybe like a 3s problem, more so than a truculence problem?
2) When the developer nerfs pretty much all other defensive tools (poke check spam nerf has gone a little too far? stick lift utterly broken=auto penalty) , then this is what results.
3) Hitting feels very unreliable rn without truculence it seems
When I was playing the trial, I felt the addition of 'second chance puck movement' resulted in a lag being introduced in the hitting animations. Makes things feel clunky and off for sure. Also resulted in weird things like this:
Sure, I was a little overzealous with WPG#88 on the body check - but there doesn't appear to be any way to stop your player from following through so much after a hit in your own zone.
I also feel WPG#81 should've been able to swoop in and steal that puck from STL#16 but the second chance animation blocks him from doing so, while STL#16 regains possession without any impedance.
- @TITAN_NHL 3v3 EASHL hockey isn’t hockey. It’s a lesser version of threes eliminator. There’s only one defensive tool left and you want to eliminate it? No thanks.
EA NHL 1991-1997 and 2004-2015 WAS hockey. It was so good. It was innovating. It was fun. The game isn’t fun anymore.
Hockey is turnovers. Hockey is chaos. Hockey is boxing out for a loose puck. Hockey is dumping and chasing. Hockey is random goals from all other the ice; most going in the six or seven hole. EA NHL is the exact opposite of everything i mentioned. Glitch goals, LT spamming and other exploits like self board pinning to avoid a hit. Goalies who are amoebas when a Datysuk flip occurs and have only five save animations…
I wish EA catered to me. The game would play like 2K and be as fun as HITZ.
But they don’t. I would definitely be fine with them removing penalty shots in 3s and just forcing the team to kill the penalty 3v2. Knowing EA though they would end up making it just a 4 on 3 PP with your team getting an AI on the ice as the PP, like what’s programmed in hut/versus OT, which if that was the case I’d rather them keep the penalty shot.
Right now a penalty shot is literally a guarantee with how bad goalies are at stopping them, and the guaranteed goal that hits 100% of the time literally takes zero skill to pull off, I could do it with 1 hand on the controller and score every time. If penalty shots are going to be in the mode, at least make it look like scoring on one takes SOME skill and effort, it’s just a bad look for the game
Would you please read before positing. I’ve literally said like 8x in this thread that I’m not asking for hitting to be nerfed, I’m asking for penalties for boarding and charging to be in 3s like it is in REAL HOCKEY.
The only actually nerf I want to hitting is the amount of hit assistance truculence gives you, you don’t even need to line up your hits the game does it for you and no matter what move your opponent makes, the game auto corrects your positioning which is completely unfair to the forward.
Adding penalties to 3s literally does not change the way D plays in any other mode in the game so I don’t get why you’re upset, it would be no different than playing 6s with truculence right now and having to actually be aware of the way you’re hitting people to not take a penalty.
- @TITAN_NHL They do have penalties in 3s; they result in penalty shots all the time.
When have you seen a boarding call in a 3v3 NHL OT? Lol are you really this ignorant bro?
There literally is no boarding or charging penalties in 3v3 Eashl so I dunno what you’re going on about.
You know why people don’t take boarding penalties in OT in real NHL? Cause teams don’t put goon enforcers out on the ice for OT and use their skilled players cause the goons wouldn’t keep up…. Doesn’t mean that if mackinnon were to board some guy in the numbers that he wouldn’t be getting a penalty in real NHL.
again, these are the types of people EA caters and listens to, that can’t even think about what they are commenting about and think to themselves whether it even makes sense
In the beta the year EASHL 3s was introduced penalties did result in a 4v3 PP. There was a lot of negative feedback to that due to it adding more AI players on the ice. The result was the current mechanic of all penalties being a penalty shot. At the same time they removed charging, boarding and elbowing as penalties in the mode. I have no poof or insider knowledge but I've long suspected the removal of those penalties was not for gameplay purposes but was due to them being able to result in a five minute major which somehow messed with the change to awarding penalty shots. The only exception was interference which admittedly throws the theory for a loop.
There's a couple of things likely keeping us stuck with penalty shots instead of 3v2 or 3v1 power players. First is just the need to rework the game logic on how many players to allow on the ice. Conceptually for us it seems easy enough but depending on how the game logic is written and what the change may entail it might not be worth it from a development perspective. Second would be the need to add new AI logic to handle these scenarios which again may just fall into the category of more work than it's worth.
As for the penalties themselves, I'm kind of OK with where they are right now. With all the open space in 3s if you get charged it's kind of on you. Although I would like to see the window for hitting a player after they've gotten rid of the puck to be a lot smaller. If I pass or shoot the puck and you need to take multiple strides to get to me before you can hit me that should be interference all day long. That change might be enough to make charging not being called more palatable.
Boarding can stay out as far as I'm concerned. Yes it's not "real hockey", but from a video game perspective it's fine. Imagine the consequences to the mode if players couldn't be hit from behind while facing the boards with the puck. Especially this year. You can't poke the puck off them. You can't use body positioning. If you commit to one side of them or the other they just spin in the opposite direction and are gone ( and unlike in 5v5 modes double teaming them on the boards results in too much open space ). 3v3 would become nothing but players standing with their face against the glass waiting to bait the defense into either a penalty or getting burnt. How fun is that?
The thing is though, that nobody can sit here and say in 3v3 Eashl that there isn’t a massive advantage to hitting rather than stick checking. If they don’t want boarding or charging calls, and are ok with hitting a guy 4-5 strides after he moves the puck with no penalty, than get rid of stick checking penalties and just treat it as what it is, an arcade mode at that point.
Regardless of the reasoning of why it is the way it is, the fact is it’s completely unbalanced, and as a game developer trying to make a “competitive” game, it’s their job to balance the game as best as possible.
Also, the fact my build I’m using right now is a 6’5” power forward with truculence, and I have 89 speed and 89 accel, when the max in the game is 95 is a complete joke. This means the builds that are supposed to be small and agile with speed, are being kept up with by power forwards with ease, allowing the power forward to demolish the smaller player after they move the puck with the late hits that are allowed, because if you’re playing actual man on man coverage, you’re always close enough to lay a late hit on those forwards regardless of how quick they move the puck.
I absolutely hate playing a truculence build, but my team runs 3 of them now and I literally always ensures we outnumber the other team because at least 1 of them are always laying on the ice. There is no amount of quick puck movement you’re going to use to avoid being on the ice all game long against a full truculence team because the speed difference is barely noticeable, as well as a 3 second window of hitting them.
Myself having 89 speed/accel as a goon build, playing with my team that is excellent at covering their guy, ensures that they are never going to have enough separation from us that we aren’t finishing the hit
In no world should a 6’5” goon only be like a 5% difference in speed. It should be so noticeably slower. Realistically a goon build should be in the low to mid 70s max as it’s skating
- @TITAN_NHL Did I say boarding penalties were in EASHL 3v3? No. I said penalties were; many times tripping and interference calls are made and penalty shots occur in that mode. Did MacKinnon board some guy IRL? No, he hasn't.
The ignorant one isn't me...
@MATTDALOR1AN wrote:
@TITAN_NHLthe library is free, btw. You can learn to read thereWhat @TITAN_NHL is trying to say is, IRL, no - you're likely not going to see a boarding call because the flow of 3v3 IRL doesn't tend to manifest a scenario in which a player is even going to get the opportunity to board somebody. But in EA's 3v3, because of the nature of truculence, teams are specifically going for big hits because the mechanic is so balanced towards the hitter. When something like boarding happens (which it does when a team is simply gooning for hits) - they're not being called for the penalty whereas in real life, they would. Plus, it changes the entire META of 3v3 from pure hockey to "who can knock down the other team the most"
I know @MATTDALOR1AN is trying say there ARE penalties, and he's not wrong - but he's missing the point that boarding in 6v6 should be boarding in 3v3 and it's not.
This is resulting in the truculence META dominating, and it shouldn't. It ruins 3v3.
If all penalties were being called in 3v3 (which they're not) then it would discourage entire teams from using truculence builds and force players to maybe utilize more strategic methods (maybe 1 truculence, a PMK and a TWF, etd etc) to win rather than just trying to mow down the other team for odd-man rushes.
Exactly, thanks and hopefully it clarifies it for him lol
EA_AljoCommunity Manager
Hey, everyone. I've had to remove a couple posts. Let's watch the personal attacks, please.
I totally agree that truculence is ridiculously OP, but I also dont think I want to find out how awful defense would be without it. As it is now with the L2ing and being able to turn away from hits, without truculence you wouldnt be able to stop anyone.
This x factor crap is so bad and ruins the game, but its everywhere so they are likely going to keep forcing it down our throats.
I also completely agree with all the comparisons to how OP it is compared to poke checks and stick lifts(auto penalty). Poke checks are only effective a small percentage of the time due to how perfect it needs to be coupled with the fact that people just keep control of the puck even when it is poked quite often, and if they dont it probably goes right to their teammate in stride. That coupled with the fact that theyve removed all hitting penalties from 3's which is still a horrendous decision that just further promoted running around mindlessly hitting people.
This game is horrendously balanced
I agree without truculence, playing D would be a nightmare as it currently sits in NHL 23. That being said, that’s on EA to balance stick checking to the point that it’s not the case. Right now there literally is no balance in NHL 23, so I’m not holding my breath
Whoever honestly made the decision to take checking penalties out of 3v3, when it’s not being actually deemed an “arcade mode” which is what 3s eliminator is for, should honestly be fired, and/or never be taken seriously again when bringing an opinion forward at EA.
