Community Manager
@FloundinatorQQ wrote:
@Spawnessj wrote:
We had the same issue again last night. Work our butts off to fight for a win after some really crappy losses and the win we got didn't count.
This game simply does not reward playing good hockey. It hasn't in a long time. IE having good positioning poking pucks away and the carrier 9 times out of 10 just gets it back. You can try bumping people off the puck l, but it doesn't matter your build, they will get a shot or pass off too cleanly.
They want to keep the game "balanced" so even though there our plenty of us that are actually decent at this game, we are handcuffed because of the people that don't play this gane as much, so they don't want to make it "unfair" for them. (Even though they could play offline modes to get better).
If this were the case, we wouldn't constantly be seeing the same teams near the top of the leaderboards. While I can understand losing to lesser skilled players occasionally, if your club is truly better than the majority of the teams you go up against, you should be winning a lot more than losing.
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@FloundinatorQQ wrote:
@Spawnessj wrote:We had the same issue again last night. Work our butts off to fight for a win after some really crappy losses and the win we got didn't count.
This game simply does not reward playing good hockey. It hasn't in a long time. IE having good positioning poking pucks away and the carrier 9 times out of 10 just gets it back. You can try bumping people off the puck l, but it doesn't matter your build, they will get a shot or pass off too cleanly.
They want to keep the game "balanced" so even though there our plenty of us that are actually decent at this game, we are handcuffed because of the people that don't play this gane as much, so they don't want to make it "unfair" for them. (Even though they could play offline modes to get better).
If this were the case, we wouldn't constantly be seeing the same teams near the top of the leaderboards. While I can understand losing to lesser skilled players occasionally, if your club is truly better than the majority of the teams you go up against, you should be winning a lot more than losing.
I'm not saying my club is truly better than majority of the teams we are playing, but we've lost allot of games when our defense has been burned, people will exploit the goalie sitting deep in his own net, watching as the skater gets close, does one forehand glide, snap a wrister and score. You will almost never see an NHL goalie sut that deep in his own crease and just let every one of those shots go in, they will usually sit at the top of the paint and maybe throw a poke to disrupt the scoring chance. Now, if the goalies were to do that whenever someone burns the defense, then good on the skater for beating the goalie, I will 100% give them that credit, however since like nhl 16, once the defense is burned, the goalies literally just let those goals in and that is why you see the same teams at the top of the leaderboards, while the other teams are actually trying to play hockey like you're supposed to and getting burned for it.
The fact that this is still a discussion after so many years and it's still being defended that just because they can win, means they're good. It just means they've learned to exploit parts of this game that should have been improved to make the hockey experience better, parts that majority of the community brings up year after year, but all we get is a copy and paste every year, with the issues still there.
Also playing drop-ins, yes at the moment I'm a silver 3,(on the xbox one) but I am constantly shutting down platinum players and higher, why? Because it's easy to read what they're doing, there's a reason I made top 250 drop-ins on the Xbox one version out of all ps4 and Xbox one players, whereas I had a +/- of +9.
Don't get me wrong, we've had some club games that were close and lost by one or 2 goals and those games I wasn't mad about losing, but when it's people exploiting parts of the game that EA has failed to at least try to make better or make improvements on, it's hard to want to even touch the game. But since it's the only hockey game out there, we're kind of handcuffed...
I don't mind loosing to a better team, or even a lesser team that played better it is how we loose games like he says above. Penalty on the Bot Defender at the worst time, the defense bot collecting the puck and taking it from the blue line back behind our net just to loose it. The goals that go in because the goalie can't stop a shot from the worst angle. NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY DEFENSE BECAUSE OUR TOOLS HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY especially the lift stick which is critical at certain points of countering the cycle. Or the bot goalie on the other team making some tremendous saves over and over stopping everything even the new glitch deflect goal which I actually am happy is back but not as a glitch but a goal that should be made more often if not defended properly. I don't mind loosing I hate the way the losses are out of our control or when we do win one it doesn't count as this topic was initially started.
Community Manager
@Spawnessj wrote:
I don't mind loosing to a better team, or even a lesser team that played better it is how we loose games like he says above. Penalty on the Bot Defender at the worst time, the defense bot collecting the puck and taking it from the blue line back behind our net just to loose it. The goals that go in because the goalie can't stop a shot from the worst angle. NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY DEFENSE BECAUSE OUR TOOLS HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY especially the lift stick which is critical at certain points of countering the cycle. Or the bot goalie on the other team making some tremendous saves over and over stopping everything even the new glitch deflect goal which I actually am happy is back but not as a glitch but a goal that should be made more often if not defended properly. I don't mind loosing I hate the way the losses are out of our control or when we do win one it doesn't count as this topic was initially started.
Bots are going to take penalties. They aren't immune to that. There is nothing built in to the game that forces them to take penalties at times that are more advantageous to your opponent though.
Defense is harder now. I get that. I primarily play defense so of course I'm not exactly happy with the changes. However, I have adapted so defending isn't as challenging as it was at the start. Defense is still very much playable, but people are going to have to adapt to using the available tools differently.
I've seen AI goalies make amazing saves on both sides of the ice. I've seen them fail as well. Again, there is nothing boosting one team's players over the other.
How are deflections a glitch? We had a ton of complaints last year that they weren't working well enough. They're a viable way to score, but you also have give the shooter a lane to make those happen and you have to leave the player in front of the net open. When my team sees our opponents setting up for these shots, we defend the majority of them.
If you are seeing teams constantly take shots at bad angles, they should be easier to defend since you're recognizing a pattern. I'm not saying goalies shouldn't stop these shots better, but they can also be defended.
This is very close to an ice tilt discussion. I'm leaving it up for now, but if that continues, it'll need to be locked.
@FloundinatorQQ
If you're not using human defenders, the chances of getting burned are more likely. I normally set my AI D partner to High Pressure. This way, they don't play so passively that they let opposing players walk in. However, I'm always there as a back up if they get past them.
Goalies are always an area of contention and one of the most difficult parts of the game to get perfect. As you can see with the change to stopping cross-ice one Ts, that was improved. People are finding other ways to score. Most teams will play to the meta and not try to set up good plays. They go for the easier ways to score. Especially, when a team isn't defending them well. We can't just take away every option for goals. The advantage is often on the shooter when there's a breakaway. There's a breakdown in defense or a bad turnover causing that to happen. Again, not saying we can't improve here, but keep in mind the events it takes to put someone in a good position to score. My club tends to play hockey like you're supposed to and are very often rewarded for it. There are certainly aspects about this game that drive me crazy, but when we see a team that tries the same exploits repeatedly, we normally shut them down.
None of this is me saying the game is great and doesn't need any work. I'm very much with many of you and the complaints, but I also know the game isn't forcing anyone to lose and when goals against us happen, it's most often because there was a mistake on our part somewhere.
@EA_Aljo fair enough. On another topic, what attributes would help my skater not get bumped off the puck as easily, because I've tried a Grinder build and a power forward build, but both sem to get knocked off, just as easily as a Sniper or dangler. I have my strength and balance to like mid 80s, but that doesn't seem to do much. I've even tried stick handling away form where the puck carrier is, but the seem to either knock me off or poke across my body without a penalty. Just wondering if you have any tips or ideas
