Picking up pucks while looking away
Cant believe this is not talked about more. Players skating away from the play, with 0 vision on the puck and player carrying the puck are MORE accurate at interceptions than a guy LOOKING and faci...
Forum Discussion
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerNHL 13 was less sim than we have now. Which is probably why so many still claim to love it. The physics did not take into account real world physics the way they do now. You could skate laterally across your blades for one. I've said it many times and I'll say it again. I don't think the sim people want a sim game when we get push back from making the game harder. Even your suggestion in the other thread for an automatic puck steal goes against the desire for a full sim game.
Do you play offline? If so, do you turn all of the assists off? That would give you more of a simulation experience.
@EA_Aljo wrote:NHL 13 was less sim than we have now. Which is probably why so many still claim to love it. The physics did not take into account real world physics the way they do now. You could skate laterally across your blades for one. I've said it many times and I'll say it again. I don't think the sim people want a sim game when we get push back from making the game harder. Even your suggestion in the other thread for an automatic puck steal goes against the desire for a full sim game.
Do you play offline? If so, do you turn all of the assists off? That would give you more of a simulation experience.
Can you explain how a puck steal would be arcadey and not simulation? In real life you can steal a puck if you get body position as their stick is pushed out of the way by the stick battle.
- EA_Aljo
You're asking for an immediate puck steal with a simple button combination. For this to be full sim, you'd need to get into a good position, lift the stick or poke and then hit a button to pick up the puck. As it is now, you have to knock the puck loose and then skate within reach to pick it up. Which is still more sim even though the puck is automatically being picked up just for being close to it.
Making the game full sim means taking the most basic hockey skills and removing the automation for them. Pick ups and full manual passing are good examples. How much fun would be added to the game if these were more difficult to do?
If there really were as much interest in full sim sports games, there would be more of them. I really think people are overestimating how popular they would be. We already get complaints that NHL is too hard for new people to pick up.
@EA_Aljo wrote:You're asking for an immediate puck steal with a simple button combination. For this to be full sim, you'd need to get into a good position, lift the stick or poke and then hit a button to pick up the puck. As it is now, you have to knock the puck loose and then skate within reach to pick it up. Which is still more sim even though the puck is automatically being picked up just for being close to it.
Making the game full sim means taking the most basic hockey skills and removing the automation for them. Pick ups and full manual passing are good examples. How much fun would be added to the game if these were more difficult to do?
If there really were as much interest in full sim sports games, there would be more of them. I really think people are overestimating how popular they would be. We already get complaints that NHL is too hard for new people to pick up.
Well this game is probably difficult for beginners because there's no tutorials, the default sliders allow for the CPU to do insane 360 spins that would put gold medal figure skaters to shame all while at full speed, defensive actions are inconsistently rewarded even when executed perfectly, the AI can't do extremely simple tasks like "stand next to the opponent in your slot rather than drifting behind the net for no reason", and the goalies have had their limb reactions turned up to "robot" so the only consistent way to score is by doing 1 of the 2 EA approve patterns of scoring which makes new players frustrated because they just watched a real life NHL game where shooting from the slot is rewarded but in this game that's met with a 99.99999% save percentage unless the magic pattern and aim was used.
This game isn't hard for beginners because its a hard game. Its hard for beginners because there's no tutorials and basic hockey concepts are not rewarded in the slightest so a new player whether they be a hockey fan or not would lack the slightest clue as to how to score on a semi-consistent basis.
- EA_Aljo
Apologies for being incorrect with feeling like you wanted a full simulation game. I agree there are certainly aspects that could be more realistic. Hopefully, that will happen. Thanks for all the feedback.
No problem at all. And I don't mean to sound defensive, I just want to make sure my intentions are clear. I don't want to sacrifice "fun" nor "accessibility" for the sake of "realism."
I don't think "realism" plays too nicely with a controller for obvious reasons. Obviously I'm biased, but I feel like my feedback/suggestions are coming from both a "competitive" side and a hockey side. I think there's many ways we could allow for both more of a skill gap as well as respecting the sport of hockey that we simply haven't tried. I find rocket league to be addicting. Always trying to improve, simple controls, yet extremely hard to master. Why can't this series be the same?
- EA_Aljo
I'm in agreement with what you're saying. I definitely want a more realistic game that remains competitive with a good skill gap. I don't really have any issues with the skill gap currently. Players with high skill are going to have that reflect in their rank. It still takes a lot of skill to get to the higher divisions and stay there. I'll make sure the feedback gets passed on.
