REAL Total Control (Not Arcade)

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   @KidShowtime1867 wrote:
   

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   @KlariskraysNHL wrote: You always feel bad for yourselves, but you can easily do everything your opponent can do. Why aren't you taking full advantage of what is given to you? Handicapping yourself isn't the answer.

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   Exactly. The people so quick to make claims about things being 'too easy' etc are the ones having the most difficulty mastering them. For the most part, they're upset that they're competing against people online who make these things look easy. It's almost as if being really good at something can come off as making it look easy. 

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   @hiperay wrote: it would add a skill that would need to be mastered which would then raise the skill ceiling of the game. 

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   If there's anything I've learned over the past few years, it's that introducing anything that can't be mastered within 2-3 play sessions results in major backlash from users who take a few successive L's immediately after something has been adjusted. 

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I understand EA’s need to do so to attract new buyers but to punish loyal long term ones?  As one of the long term players, yes I can adjust and play the “easy” way but I shouldn’t have to.  I don’t want things to be easy.  I want the opposite.  I’ve enjoyed the challenge of improving my skill and mastering things throughout the years.  I should (well still am) be better at things in this game than the casual newbie.  I’ve put in my time.  New players should have to adjust to us long time players.

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@thebrazenhead75 wrote:

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@KidShowtime1867 wrote:

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@KlariskraysNHL wrote: You always feel bad for yourselves, but you can easily do everything your opponent can do. Why aren't you taking full advantage of what is given to you? Handicapping yourself isn't the answer.

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Exactly. The people so quick to make claims about things being 'too easy' etc are the ones having the most difficulty mastering them. For the most part, they're upset that they're competing against people online who make these things look easy. It's almost as if being really good at something can come off as making it look easy. 

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@hiperay wrote: it would add a skill that would need to be mastered which would then raise the skill ceiling of the game. 

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If there's anything I've learned over the past few years, it's that introducing anything that can't be mastered within 2-3 play sessions results in major backlash from users who take a few successive L's immediately after something has been adjusted. 

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I understand EA’s need to do so to attract new buyers but to punish loyal long term ones?  As one of the long term players, yes I can adjust and play the “easy” way but I shouldn’t have to.  I don’t want things to be easy.  I want the opposite.  I’ve enjoyed the challenge of improving my skill and mastering things throughout the years.  New players should have to adjust to us long time players.

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I just find it funny that there's legitimate esport vets in here saying the game is too easy/unbalanced but apparently we're able to dismiss all claims and "UNO reverse" card the argument with responses like this. This game is the easiest its ever been. The skill gap couldn't be lower in the competitive scene. 16 was a "great equalizer" of a game that saw a large shift to "team play" compared to old gen titles where elite skill could and would take over games, and 19 might as well have made the game a coin flip when any two semi-positionally sound teams play. Comp 6s is actually unwatchable when games like Rocket League, CS:GO, R6 exist. The skill gap required to compete on the respective highest levels of those games absolutely dwarfs the NHL series. It's almost like saying "im a pro too" while playing hotshot racing to an iRacing Pro License holder. Just complete apples to oranges.

You don't need to be bad at a game to not like it and the opposite is true as well. I had tons of non-hockey friends playing the NHL series back when the game speed was at least semi-close to reality and the game balance was in a much better spot. They weren't good but they had fun playing. I was a really good baseball player and hated the sport my last two years playing. 

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@KlariskraysNHL wrote:
@thebrazenhead75I've been around on the NHL forums since they had come out way back in either 07 or 08. I've seen all the changes. I follow the other EA Sports titles and watch how they try to make things more accessible for others. They want people to be able to pick up and play and compete to small degree against the average people of the gaming world. I used to be a hardcore gatekeeper of wanting things to be extremely hard and such and not caring about the new players, but I do now understand the need for fresh blood to come into a game and hopefully stick around. Usually loyal people who have played for many years tend to stick around even with gripes. I mean NHL 24 at best to me is a 7/10 game. Every year I question if I just want to give up the game because it's changing in ways that maybe I don't like, but by the time it rolls around I end up caving in and getting the game.

But overall things like shooting and passing they don't want to be complicated since those are insanely important.

I'm just a 6s human only player so that is how I give my feedback. When it comes to things like Offline/Versus/HUT I'm a bit out of it. But I do know HUT is meant to be insane as the weeks pass and overalls skyrocket to god mode.

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I’ve been playing EASHL since the beginning.  It’s the only mode I play as all offline modes aren’t any challenge whatsoever.  I won’t play HUT because it’s garbage.  But for EASHL, we stuck around.  We took our lumps.  We learned and got better over the years.  That was part of the enjoyment and satisfaction.  If someone is the type of player that can’t commit to that and quits playing the game because it’s too hard then that’s the player I don’t want to play with. 

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@KlariskraysNHL wrote:
@thebrazenhead75... I used to be a hardcore gatekeeper of wanting things to be extremely hard and such and not caring about the new players, but I do now understand the need for fresh blood to come into a game and hopefully stick around. Usually loyal people who have played for many years tend to stick around even with gripes. 

But overall things like shooting and passing they don't want to be complicated since those are insanely important.

I'm just a 6s human only player so that is how I give my feedback. When it comes to things like Offline/Versus/HUT I'm a bit out of it. But I do know HUT is meant to be insane as the weeks pass and overalls skyrocket to god mode.

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I agree with this in that we absolutely do need to have "fresh blood", as you put it, in order for the game to grow. I get that we do not want stuff like shooting and passing to be complicated or it will deter new players from playing. That being said, what is wrong with my idea of it progressively decreasing as you move up tiers, not even necessarily divisions? We should want the game to be a game that is easy to learn but difficult to master but we also want the game to have something to play for. Since NHL 16, when you no longer had to play games to level up because of prebuilds, there has been little of that.  Making passing manual at the top level while giving full assistance at the lower divisions would mean there is more to play towards, and it will increase as the games change. What we have to remember here is that this is not a game like Rocket League or CSGO, which had one title last for years. This is a game that has yearly iterations and so even more so should this game be something that you can improve on as each new game comes out with a higher skill ceiling.

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@KlariskraysNHL wrote:
@hiperayI think the problem that happens is people would complain about a decrease if they match up with people in a lesser rank getting more help per say. Or you could see people tank their players. I mean when I think of sweats they gonna take advantage of stuff. These are things they have to take into consideration.

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@KlariskraysNHLI agree with you to some extent. I think the way to fix this would be to have one set assist rating for both teams based on the lowest div seed. If you look at another game the difficulty is set to what ever the lower rated player is. We could do the same for the ranked games in Chel/HUT. Whatever the lowest div is will be the level of difficulty both teams play at. This makes it so the lower team doesn't have that advantage you speak of and again that there is something more rewarding for being a "div 1 club".

An alternate way to increase the difficulty in relation to something already in the game is the visual assists. So in this scenario passing is 100% manual and you get an indicator for where you are passing it, like it is currently in the training mode. The lower the tier the longer it is:

Division 10 Club: You are brand new and given a nice meter to assist you with both regular and saucer passes. When you go up in tiers, that pass meter (not including saucers yet) decreases down to nothing lets say for Div 5.
Division 5: Congrats you now have no assistance with your regular passes and must be accurate with each one. Now its time to prove yourself as that saucer assist is now going to become shorter and shorter until you are at Division 1 and that decreases the range down to nothing by the time you get there.
Division 1: You are the elite of elite divisions. Few can stand in this realm as your passing now needs to be spot on accurate and utilized correctly in each situation without any guidance from the game. A cross crease seem pass at this level will be much more difficult to pull off than before and all of a sudden these plays that were once shrugged as nothing will be way more impressive and looked at as Top 5 plays if you will. 

Again the cream at the top has to be something worth ranking up for or this doesn't work well. For example, the top 5 clubs of each season get their club name added into the game next season or can submit their own logos (pending copyright, appropriateness, and approval of course). The top 25 players get their names added in for next season.  I know this is more resources needed and multiple game modes to think about here but I am just using this as an example. I am sure there are way smarter people with ideas requiring less resources but this was just what came up from my head in the moment.