REAL Total Control (Not Arcade)
[Update (1/23/24)] Towards the bottom of this post, you will see my original post that I posted a few months ago (it may be worthwhile to first start your reading down at my original post). Since...
Forum Discussion
@ssoliz91
--the game should simply offer more modes of play from “Pure Arcade” to “Pure Simulation” with tiers in between.--
Now I will sound like the guy that only has negative thoughts on everything lol 😅 ...Actually, it's both, positive and negative...
Pure Arcade and Pure Simulation modes are actually an awesome idea but there's a real problem that come with this....the size of the nhl community. Spliting the community in half once more would be pretty hard to take. Now you have to imagine most of the modes we have now...and double that. I can already hear the crickets singing in the lobbies and the search time doubling or more. The outcry would be huge.
In other hand, it could be a great addition to solo mode or versus mode such as HUT.
Maybe if the game was only on one generation and the entire community altogether, it could work out...but until then, I'm not so sure. You would be best working out a well balanced in-between arcade-simulation close to what you get now.
Fair enough; it is a small community relatively speaking.
Here’s a wild idea:
What if they stopped releasing a game year by year and simply made one game/app that perpetually updated and evolved. So it wouldn’t be called NHL 24, 25, 26, etc., it would simply be called NHL. And instead of paying a one-time fee every year, you pay a monthly fee of $5 (USD) which would come out to $60/yr.
- This would keep the entire community inside one game/app making online matchmaking so much better.
- It would also be a good way to attract new players, as it wouldn’t be such a heavy financial commitment to try out the game for the first time.
- It would also remove the headache of every year losing progress and needing to start over in whatever mode you play.
- Of course they could always generate more money with in-game purchases for the next level of customization that people like in games like Call of Duty.
- If you want, you can always use old rosters from years prior when playing with your favorite teams offline or in Online Versus.
I'm not sure I want to see such granularity with the controls, but I appreciate the effort. We do need to drastically slow this game down to real speed levels, making passing either full-manual or near full-manual, and we need incidental contact to be a much larger aspect of the online game so that body positing matters much more than it currently does.
I don't see the community getting behind 1000 controls, but I do believe if we could make the skill gap with our current selection much higher (closer to a game like rocket league, or slapshot: rebound) then we'd see a lot more real hockey from this series without needing to "main" the game to simply remember all of the controls.
EA_AljoCommunity Manager
You can already use full manual passing by changing the sliders. For online, it's the online pass assist slider. I have a feeling fully manual passing would be more frustration than fun for most players.
@EA_Aljo wrote:You can already use full manual passing by changing the sliders. For online, it's the online pass assist slider. I have a feeling fully manual passing would be more frustration than fun for most players.
Well yeah, I know you can choose to be at a disadvantage and not get auto sauce passes and have to actually focus to make every pass but that doesn't really do what I'm asking.
Fully manual passing is easier than its ever been. My 60 year old dad can use it and loves it. I mean, it's really no more difficult than your average FPS or MLBTS using Zone hitting and it's way easier than doing extremely simple plays in a game like Rocket League. Its also why I said "full or near full" since even 1/100 pass assist its a night and day difference when compared to 0/100 and definitely 90/100 or whatever absurd value is default these days.
If your "passing" slider is anywhere north of 5/100 when using 0/100 "passing assist", your "fully manual" passes go exactly where you aim them as long as you're passing in-front of you and on your forehand. Wouldn't that be a skill in its own? Putting yourself in a good position to make a good pass? You know, just like we ask defenseman to do when intercepting pucks? I mean, why is it that a game shouldn't have a skill gap on one side of the puck but should on the other?
If we're so concerned about accessibility and making the game "fun" and "pickup and play" worthy, It begs me to ask questions such as:
Why is DSS needing to be full manual with no room for error otherwise its a miss/penalty oh and that's not including the ridiculous artificial slow down for initiating DSS because apparently its impossible to skate with your stick out?
Why do pass interceptions need to be in the perfect state with the perfect chant/prayer/astrology sign/palm reading to get a pick?
Why is body checking needing to be perfectly timed with an additional input than before?
Why does LB needs to be used at the exact right time with the exact right body position AND you need to hope the game doesn't just auto-sauce past you?
Why do net-front tieups need to be used in the exact right place with the exact right timing AND require the offesnive player to be at or extremely near to a dead stop?
Right? I mean, those aren't very "fun" or "easy" mechanics are they?
But asking the offense to simply put the puck on their forehand to guarantee "perfect" accuracy then simply point LS at their intended receiver is just wayyyyy too frustrating of an experience? Does anyone actually have fun playing insanely easy games? Half of the fun of a game is improving, maybe even more than half. So, instead of having realistically beatable goalies and making "routine" offensive plays just a little bit harder and require a little bit of practice and effort, we just make robo goalies who can save everything under the sun until theyre tired of saving 10 backdoor one-timers because the offense requires the dexterity of a toddler to properly execute and then they sit down and take a break while they get scored on and that's the "skill" we're going for?
Kind of blows my mind to be honest. Do we want accessibility or not? The current direction contradicts itself if accessibility is the main driving force since defense is quite simply a mix of insane micromanagement of your avatar and voodoo to have success. I mean just this year we took an extremely underwhelming yet easy to use checking system and made it a bit harder. That doesn't sound like "press button to michigan" does it? Last year we decided holding your stick out to do a manual defensive move should be artificially slower and harder than IRL. And why? I can only assume it was to mitigate defensive success in using said "fully manual" feature so I think the community was doing a pretty fine job of not only adapting but exceeding expectations in using the fully manual stick controls.
So why does offense need to be sponsored by Gieco's "so easy a caveman can do it" slogan but it's totally acceptable to add skill gaps and added attention to detail on the defensive side of the puck? It's just a totally backward appraoch to real hockey. Offense is harder than defense. Defense just has to slap the puck away and put their body in a decent position. Offense needs to complete passes, it needs to use deception to lure defenders in, it needs to generate time and space, then lastly needs to execute the final blow of shooting all to simply get a shot on net. Yet in this game defense is out here playing Arma and offense is playing fortnite. We gotta pick one here if we're going to have a balanced game fun skill gaps.
