My god if that unrealistic speedboost hitting is still in nhl 25..
Better not be..
Forum Discussion
Hitting needs a complete overhaul. What was done in 24 was awful. Hip checks lol. Tiny snipers destroying big power forwards. It’s like physics don’t apply in this game.
Gosh hitting was brutal, felt like an arcade game. Thought realism was the target these days, not arcade game mechanics...
Besides the awful hipchecks of NHL 24 the hitting in 24 wasn't that bad. I get it some people don't like the new mechanics of hitting. It's kind of like the hit stick in Madden now. I hated it at 1st until I actually learned how to time it better and not going after silly hits that probably worked in the past due to hitting aim assist helping so much. As for realism being the target it's always gonna have an arcade feel to it. At least for offline players they can adjust sliders to get a more realistic experience.
Hip Checks have always been strong for small players, a lot of people just didn't know how to do them before they changed the controls. Though, early on this year before they patched it they were absurd with the lock-on they would get. Nowadays I don't stress about them too much since you can usually see them coming from a mile away. If Brad Marchand is hunched over coming for your kneecaps, it doesn't really matter how big you are.
Really the only change I'd like to see is for the animation to not be possibe to just be "held down" indefinitely. It should behave like the big hits where your character lunges and is uncontrollable for a second, the way you angle your skates for a hip check will take you out of the play if you whiff in real life, it should do the same in this, and the animation should end shortly after it starts so you have to time it better.
Worst part of 2024
I don't know why they changed it to the current version. The constant lunging for a hit feels so unrealistic.
The biggest issues for me regarding hitting were:
-Hitter often took longer to recover from the hit than the player being hit-Hits often never registered due to broken contact mechanics(hitter does the animation, player being hit doesn't even react)
-Truculence once again carried bad defenders who got burned because of the massive "contact/hitbox" it created. You could blow by a defenseman and he clips the loose thread on your number stitching and knocks you over
-Two different hitting buttons was a terrible idea, especially because of how the stick defaults to completing a hit as opposed to just whiffing on the shot attempt. The input was entered in a shot situation, it should NOT change to a hit without any further controls input.
-Hip checking being one button(common theme) was a terrible idea, it was also OP'd because both the hitter and player being hit could be practically standing still and it would cartwheel the playerHipchecks themselves aren't the issue (and despite popular belief, they are something that does occur in real life and is relatively easy to do), it's the fact people were unwilling (or unable?) to learn the new shoulder check mechanics and hipchecks only really taking technical contact into account-- this led people to soley rely on the unbalanced hipchecks which was essentially recreating the Truculence meta.
All we need is for proper hipcheck momentum + energy reduction tuning and a more fluid way to check at a moments notice.
Add to problems that against Playstation, its almost impossible to hit them as a Xbox user. I dont know why but alongside a multitude of other issues with cross platform, PS players seems to have an invulnerability aura where you line up for a perfect hit and just soft of slide around the PS player without actually hitting him.
Call me crazy, but I think the analog sticks on PS provide quicker response time.
Avoiding hits in '24 was about holding backhand and pushing LS away from the incoming hit. I think PS users get a slight advantage here because the dead zone on dualshock controllers is much smaller than standard xbox controllers.
I'm surprised no one has confirmed whether it's in the game or not. That leads me to believe that EA thinks it's a good thing and is leaving it as it was.
There is always a ton of things that can't be talked about that should get answers to imo, but alas that doesn't happen.
So true, most revealing info comes out when you start playing and people do gameplay videos
