24 Skating vs 23 Skating
I’ve been flipping back and forth playing 24/23 using the same teams for both games. I’m starting to think how the players skate in 23 is actually better than 24. The poke check in 23 is 10x be...
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@TTZ_Dipsy wrote:Being made of lead works in a game like Killzone but it's not fun in something like NHL; I'm glad we can tear around the way we do now - the issue is defense not being able to keep up with the attacking team
I completely disagree with this.
There is a reason that ice hockey is a billion times more popular than ball hockey or broomball.
The limitations of maneuvering that exist in ice hockey create a sort of unpredictability that makes it so great, and that makes it different from other sports. The fact that you can't turn at sharp angles with speed, and that it takes time to accelerate and get up to speed, creates a randomness to picking up loose pucks and makes it necessary to plan where you are going a bit, which is fun.
The momentum and randomness of skating is part of what made NHL 94 so great and legendary, and why to some it "feels" more like hockey than current games. Obviously it is primitive in many ways compared to the current games, but it captures something about hockey that the current games don't, and I think the skating momentum is a huge part of it.
Not to mention, when you can turn sharply with full speed and instantly accelerate to full speed, you never really feel like you are going fast, which is not fun. I've been playing a lot of NHL Legacy on PS3, and its amazing how much faster you feel when you get up to top speed, because it takes time and staying in a somewhat straight line to do so. Skating fast is fun, it feels good to feel like you are skating fast. Anticipating a play and beating your opponent because you have speed and they don't is fun. That doesn't happen in NHL 24, because everyone can accelerate and close gaps so quickly.
Also, people are always complaining about player separation and there have been gimmicky attempts to fix this (x-factors), but more realistic skating would go a long way. If skating was more physics based and players had more momentum, the skating advantages that Makar and McDavid had would stick out more. If every d-man can fake and juke and turn and accelerate like Makar, then he is not special. That is what we have now. Evading a forechecker with Makar - or an agile, quick puck-moving d-man build - would be more fun and rewarding if you couldn't also easily do it with Ben Harpur - or a 6'6 240 pound defensive d-man. In the latter case, you might have to pass d-to-d or go off the glass and out sometimes. I know, the horror.
More realistic skating momentum would also reduce the prevalence of the 0-5 trap, which is boring as hell, and reward forechecking. If it takes time to get up to speed, then a puck carrier attacking the stationary 5 neutral zone players with speed (think Jack Hughes or Mat Barzal or Scott Gomez in the 2000s) will burn them, because they can't accelerate instantly to pursue the puck carrier.
So I guess what I am saying is that more authentic and momentum based skating would not only be more realistic, it would also be more fun. It may initially not feel good to not have the insane responsiveness to your every input that we have now, but I think it would be for the better.
Well ice hockey popularity in general comes down to TV coverage. In theory, ball hockey is vastly more accessible and should be more popular but ice hockey is also way faster than floor/field hockey which people naturally gravitate towarda as well.
I agree it's not realistic/authentic, but this is still a video game and you need to take liberties to keep up engagement - it's unfortunately a necessary evil.
I hate having random bouts of fatman lag - I certainly don't wanna make that the new normal.
I agree it's not realistic/authentic, but this is still a video game and you need to take liberties to keep up engagement - it's unfortunately a necessary evil.
Says who? This sounds like "conventional wisdom" that just becomes taken as gospel because it was said enough times.
We don't have data on how many copies of these new games are selling but engagement doesn't seem good. It takes forever to find games even with crossplay, and they have put the game on like five massive sales and its been out for a couple months. Anecdotally, there are lots of people returning to older games, especially NHL 94, 2004, and 2014/legacy, and I personally know quite a few people that run the gamut from casual hockey fan to hardcore fan that want nothing to do with the new games because of the Fortnite on ice/Harlem globetrotters on ice direction the game has taken. There are tens of thousands of posts on a forum dedicated to reviving/rebuilding NHL 2004, which is a 20 year old game from four console generations ago that takes some work to get to run on modern computers.
If by "engagement" you mean the 1% of players who watch influencer videos and buy $100s of dollars of HUT packs every year then yeah, engagement seems good.
"Lets make a deke that happens twice a year controlled by one button", "lets make skating backwards with the puck a viable offensive strategy", "lets remove poke checking and pass interceptions from the game", "lets make skating insanely responsive and remove momentum and acceleration from the game" are all decisions in the past decade meant to cater to these so-called "casual" players that have resulted in this game being on life support.
It sounds like these mythical "casuals" that I have heard so much about, that have enough interest in a hockey game to spend 30-60 dollars on it but are so turned off by hockey that the game has to be a complete mockery of the sport to "engage them".
They apparently want a hockey game but don't want a "hockey" game".
I've never met or spoken to one of these people, but apparently they are the target market for this game? Wouldn't they be better of buying one of the other thousands of games out there if they don't like hockey? GTA? COD? Elden Ring? Microsoft Flight SImulator? League of Legens? Halo? Final Fantasy? Diablo? Overwatch? R6 Siege?
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