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 facing the play and waiting for the puck. Scenario: Defenseman pickup the puck, the Center from other team is facing the defenseman and waiting for the pass coming to a guy behind him. The Center does not react and lets a soft pass right by him to the offense player from the other team. Scenario 2: Defenseman pickup the puck, the Center from other team is facing AWAY from the defenseman. The defenseman attemps a hard fast pass towards his teammate somewhat close to the center. The Center casually stretch while not looking at all anywhere near where the puck came from and intercepts the puck....not even fumble it or anything...just clean pickup.Completely moronic how frequently this occurs. Where is the hockey IQ in that, the risk vs reward and proper positioning rewards in this? This needs to change next year. IF you are facing away from the play, at BEST you could maybe stretch and deflect the puck but mostly, you shouldnt even try to stop that pass.

@KidShowtime1867 wrote:Can you post a video of these scenarios? Playing anywhere from 1-3 games max will allow you to see these scenarios.

@EA_Aljo wrote:@llamaverox 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.So your metrics of "realism" are solely based on the fact that the animations present are "realistically correct" if you will? So, if the blades "realistically" interact with the ice but then you tune the game speed, acceleration, and agility to silly levels that result in what's essentially weightless movement that rivals NHL 09 rather than NHL 13, you consider that a "win" for realism?I agree that people advocating for "full sim" probably don't want a full sim video game, but I'd also argue that this community is way too quick to label a request as "full sim" simply because it disagrees with status quo of said feature which almost all of them present in the game are tuned to wildly arcadey settings.This is easily confirmed by putting an NHL game on and any streamer bro of 6s game live on twitch and you'll see that there's an extremely wide gap between "real" and this game which doesn't' even look like hockey when you watch it. There's such an insanely infinite spectrum of "middle ground" tuning that falls in between the silliness present by default and the real life product, why can't we all try to talk about getting there without sacrificing accessibility? Accessibility doesn't NEED to be easy to master. It needs to be easy to understand. Rocket League isn't a complex game control-wise, but it's an incredibly hard game to master. NHL has a very complex control scheme in comparison, but it's tuned in a way where you don't need to be anything more than a novice at the game to score 3+ goals because offense is just wildly easy and unbalanced. Are you under the impression that if offense had even an ounce of accountability/skill required to be moderate successful that this game would lose all accessibility and fun? I strongly disagree if that's the case based on the fact that all of these much harder games have much higher followings, player counts, payouts for tournaments, and respect when it comes to being considered a legitimate esport.NHL could be a legitimate esport, it just can't get out of its own way because it's so committed to casual players having competitive level success which is something not found in any legitimate esport.

@EA_Aljo wrote:@llamaverox 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 wrote:@Limp_KidzKit What you're asking for is a full on simulation. That's just not what we're going for so some liberties are going to be taken. A player might not be looking right at a puck and still pick it up. That's because this is a video game. A real world player may have turned their head in that instance though. Another example is the stick phasing through objects. There are times this is intended. Without it, there would be bigger issues. We also have to consider if something is just too tedious and takes away from the overall fun. I get that fun is subjective. Everyone has a different idea of what that is. Making the game overly difficult to play isn't in our best interest though. That would satisfy a very small part of the overall playerbase. We're trying to grow the game and not restrict it to a very minority of the players that insist on a full simulation.Thanks for all the feedback.No sports game is full on simulation, you all have no idea how well that would sell, so you can't assume that the player base would not grow based on it. NHL 13 was the closest to simulation, and when it was nerfed slightly to a little more free flowing NHL 14 was considered "the greatest NHL game of all time" and "the last good nhl game"The NBA games have always been pretty close to simulation with maybe needing a bit more arcade and they sell extremely well. As does MLB which is pretty close to simulation and sells well too. The closer you are to simulation the better imo.

@llamaverox wrote:@EA_Aljo wrote:@Limp_KidzKit What you're asking for is a full on simulation. That's just not what we're going for so some liberties are going to be taken. A player might not be looking right at a puck and still pick it up. That's because this is a video game. A real world player may have turned their head in that instance though. Another example is the stick phasing through objects. There are times this is intended. Without it, there would be bigger issues. We also have to consider if something is just too tedious and takes away from the overall fun. I get that fun is subjective. Everyone has a different idea of what that is. Making the game overly difficult to play isn't in our best interest though. That would satisfy a very small part of the overall playerbase. We're trying to grow the game and not restrict it to a very minority of the players that insist on a full simulation.Thanks for all the feedback.No sports game is full on simulation, you all have no idea how well that would sell, so you can't assume that the player base would not grow based on it. NHL 13 was the closest to simulation, and when it was nerfed slightly to a little more free flowing NHL 14 was considered "the greatest NHL game of all time" and "the last good nhl game"The NBA games have always been pretty close to simulation with maybe needing a bit more arcade and they sell extremely well. As does MLB which is pretty close to simulation and sells well too. The closer you are to simulation the better imo.You can also tell it's a flaw in how your company views sports games in that Madden is consistently considered horrible because of it's dedication to arcade elements that people will buy because it'sthe only "simulation" football game on the market and it's in air quotes for a reason. People are yearning for full feature simulation style sports games. Which it seems like EA is either too conservative/unwilling to provide. You all want kids to play and kids are no longer the primary market for video games.

Picking up pucks while looking away

18 Replies

llamaverox
2 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@llamaverox
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
Community Manager
2 years ago
@llamaverox

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.
Limp_KidzKit
2 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@Limp_KidzKit
What you're asking for is a full on simulation. That's just not what we're going for so some liberties are going to be taken. A player might not be looking right at a puck and still pick it up. That's because this is a video game. A real world player may have turned their head in that instance though. Another example is the stick phasing through objects. There are times this is intended. Without it, there would be bigger issues. We also have to consider if something is just too tedious and takes away from the overall fun. I get that fun is subjective. Everyone has a different idea of what that is. Making the game overly difficult to play isn't in our best interest though. That would satisfy a very small part of the overall playerbase. We're trying to grow the game and not restrict it to a very minority of the players that insist on a full simulation.
Thanks for all the feedback.
I am not asking for a full on simulation. I'm asking for already available and working features such as vision and incidental contact to be tuned properly. I don't think having more reliable incidental body contact is "full simulation" and I don't think asking for the hockey equivalent of the OBJ catch to not have a 100% success rate is advocating for "full simulation."
I mean, I play NHL 20 Ajio haha. There's not even an option for "full stick incidental contact" like in 23 and 24 so I'm obviously not more concerned with "full simulation physics" than the general flow of the game being more comparable to real life hockey. I don't claim to be a "full simulation" guy, I don't want to play a full simulation game, and I don't believe me advocating for the game to be "more real" makes me a "full sim" player. I mean, the game as it currently plays by default is standing shoulder to shoulder with Wayne Gretzky's 3D hockey and NHL Hitz. So, to me "dialing back" the arcadeness wouldn't result in this game becoming sim, it would result in this game becoming a more balanced experience between arcade and sim.
Fun is certainly subjective. I find having a game that's both accessible and feels like the sport that's allegedly being portrayed is rather fun.
Limp_KidzKit
2 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@llamaverox
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.
So your metrics of "realism" are solely based on the fact that the animations present are "realistically correct" if you will? So, if the blades "realistically" interact with the ice but then you tune the game speed, acceleration, and agility to silly levels that result in what's essentially weightless movement that rivals NHL 09 rather than NHL 13, you consider that a "win" for realism?
I agree that people advocating for "full sim" probably don't want a full sim video game, but I'd also argue that this community is way too quick to label a request as "full sim" simply because it disagrees with status quo of said feature which almost all of them present in the game are tuned to wildly arcadey settings.
This is easily confirmed by putting an NHL game on and any streamer bro of 6s game live on twitch and you'll see that there's an extremely wide gap between "real" and this game which doesn't' even look like hockey when you watch it.
There's such an insanely infinite spectrum of "middle ground" tuning that falls in between the silliness present by default and the real life product, why can't we all try to talk about getting there without sacrificing accessibility? Accessibility doesn't NEED to be easy to master. It needs to be easy to understand. Rocket League isn't a complex game control-wise, but it's an incredibly hard game to master. NHL has a very complex control scheme in comparison, but it's tuned in a way where you don't need to be anything more than a novice at the game to score 3+ goals because offense is just wildly easy and unbalanced. Are you under the impression that if offense had even an ounce of accountability/skill required to be moderate successful that this game would lose all accessibility and fun? I strongly disagree if that's the case based on the fact that all of these much harder games have much higher followings, player counts, payouts for tournaments, and respect when it comes to being considered a legitimate esport.
NHL could be a legitimate esport, it just can't get out of its own way because it's so committed to casual players having competitive level success which is something not found in any legitimate esport.
Limp_KidzKit
2 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@llamaverox
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
Community Manager
2 years ago
@Limp_KidzKit

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.
Limp_KidzKit
2 years ago
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
Community Manager
2 years ago
@Limp_KidzKit

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.

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Picking up pucks while looking away

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