Picking up pucks while looking away

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

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@Limp_KidzKit wrote:

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@KidShowtime1867 wrote:

Can you post a video of these scenarios? 

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Playing anywhere from 1-3 games max will allow you to see these scenarios.

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We still need to see the particular scenarios the OP is talking about to make sure we're seeing the same thing. Yes, I get you can reproduce this by playing. However, it's entirely possible the situations won't be totally identical. 

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See, I disagree with approach. Personally, I don't need a video to discuss the general idea of puck pickup success rates and their relationship with in-game avatar's line of sight. I believe it can be "generally" discussed without needing a specific video to nitpick. Because we the know the drill right? A video is posted, the original point of the video is lost by "pro tips" and discussing the intricacies of that one specific scenario, and then usually everyone runs a little hot, gets discouraged, and we fail to seize the opportunity to discuss the general point of the video/scenario. I personally believe for every video of someone doing something in a non-optimal way that we can sort of "dismiss" when it comes to "real problems" with said feature/scenario, there is at least a 1:1 ratio of said feature/scenario not working out in an "enjoyable" way while playing in an optimal way that isn't posted on here. 

We all know that similar scenarios can be reproduced, you said it yourself. So let's discuss said similar scenarios where players are picking up pucks outside their line of sight without having the prior "knowledge" required to make such a reaction. I'll start!

It's in my opinion that there's an egregious amount of not only reactions to pucks outside of the line of sight, but an egregious amount of pickup success outside of the line of sight. You can't in any way shape or form ask defenders in this game to realistically keep up with the offense due to their ability to snag pucks that are:

• behind them
• overpowered for the distance between the passer and receiver
• started from behind them and never crossed their line of vision

then add on the ability to drag pucks with possession as the offensive stick shaft is going through a leg paired with almost zero incidental body contact and you have "backup and hope" simulator on most rush opportunities for defensive players. We need to start making offense a skill and not just something you pickup and do successfully. One-handed, behind the back, backhanded receptions on a puck they never saw should have a next to zero percent success rate, especially given the ridiculous speeds seen in default online sliders. It's not a skilled play, it's not "vision", it's the game bailing out visonless, skilless players who get to use a top-down view of things, forgot to plan ahead, and just whipped a lazy pass over to their teammate while going "ah what the heck, let's see what happens."

Onto the "under the hood" portion of this discussion, what attributes/context are being used in whatever calculation is being used to determine someone's ability to react to a puck? For context, I play NHL 20 and have been fine-tuning sliders and rosters for 3+ years now. All of my players have 36/100 offensive and defensive awareness, yet I still find that they react to pucks outside their line of vision way too often. And what's hard to "fix" about this scenario with sliders, is that the "reaction time effect" slider seems to be globally applied rather than contextually applied. What I mean by that is, if I move that slider too high, all of a sudden short distance passes where the receiver is looking at the passer, even when lacking pace, seem to result in bobbled pucks if the distance covered is small enough. So, it doesn't seem to be applied like we see the goalie "screen effect" sliders are where vision is for the most part respected. It seems like distance is more of the factor of "reaction time" than vision. I'd expect that "reaction time" would be in relation to both distance AND vision, but I haven't had great success in finding a sweet spot where players aren't able to receive slow pucks outside of their vision but can inside. It just plays like a catch all.

All of my players also have 99/99 puck control and 99/99 hand-eye. Are those being used in the pickup calculation? I always assumed OA and DA were the two main factors for pickups due to how the online game seems to approach those sliders, is offline different? I'd assume OA/DA being the literal minimum value would "overpower" Hand-eye and PC inwhatever calculation is resulting in behind the back pickups from happening, but maybe I'm wrong? I'd also argue that the "puck pickup type" effect slider might need a more granular breakdown. It's a very tricky slider that seem to treat forehand as "good" and everything else as "bad" when experimenting. I never quite found a value that distinctly treated normal backhands as any more "correct" than a one-handed behind the back backhand reception. It's more granular, sure, but maybe it would allow more freedom when it comes to "punishing" poorly placed passes if forehand, backhand, and one-handed receptions all had their own values to change.

Please see if you can get this info from the dev team and relay it here. I'd love to further understand these calculations for both my own personal gain and for the community's ability to discuss this topic.