Scoring
Backhand, forehand, backhand, goal. I feel trying to make good plays and set up 1T shots, or anything else just seems far less effective than just backhanding for every goal.. it's sad that it can ev...
Forum Discussion
As an over 10 year EASHL goalie veteran this year has been especially crap for us human goalies.
Certain automatic animations have screwed us into letting up rebounds and goals we shouldn’t have if our goalies weren’t flopping around so much and also letting in those tricklers. I’m a better than average goalie in this game. I study and pay very close to every aspect in this game and adjust from year to year. I’ve watched other top goalies to see what traits and attributes work best and sometimes adjust my goalie builds accordingly.
I’m primarily a lone wolf drop in player because I like the challenge. Each season I usually make it to Platinum or better and I know its because of my play rather than being carried by teammates.
Last year I had over 500 wins, over 100 shutouts and a SV% of .815.
So far this year I have almost 300 wins and over 50 shutouts but a SV% of .777 in A LOT less games played and I still have 3-4 seasons more to play.
How can anyone logically explain that? I didn’t get worse at the game and especially to be almost .40 worse in a lot less games played. The only logical explanation are those ridiculous unnecessary animations, the “EA” goals and the fact that like every year EA favours offence over defence and goalies.
For more proof. There are what 14 character builds this year? ONLY 1 is a goalie and such a lousy standup build that I’ve yet to see anyone use. Again no goalie love.
EA killed the goalies especially this year. I’ve noticed a lot less people playing goalie this year. Chat with people during games and the majority will say nothing positive about playing it, only negatives. Same things said on any social media.
Furthermore last year EA took away the ability to “paddle down” when in butterfly. A very useful tool that all goalies use in all levels of real life hockey. Yet, EA mapped “desperation” saves to two different buttons! I’ve asked why on this forum a few times the past year or so and I’ve still yet to receive a response. Why? Because obviously EA doesn’t have an answer and/or can’t admit to such an obvious mistake. How was this ability not put back in this year? Will it finally be put back in next year for 26?
I've only played goalie a little bit. Back when my friends all played we would have "goalie tournaments" none of us ever played goalie so we would do 4v4 games and each of us had a seed in the tournement. If you were up, you drafted your team vs the other goalie and winner moved on. It was actually a lot of fun because we were all so bad at goalie but you could never expect what the goalies would do. Desperation saves and extreme aggression was always on the table. I have all the respect in the world for anyone who can play that many games as a goalie. Even more so, one who does that in drop in. Out of curiosity, apart from just gameplay, do you think there are things the game could do to incentivize players choosing goalie? Any reason you've never just joined a club? I think the one timer boost has probably dropped save percentage. Some of the abilities like 1T and CC also likely account for some lower percentage. Not sure if you've gone up many people running tip jar but it seems that can be pretty good if gone unchecked too.
I do think incentivizing goalie would be nice. But as someone who mains goalie, the only thing that really would do that for me personally is give the goalies a complete 10% bump. In theory if everything goalie was bumped 10% all sv% should bump up 10% as well. This would place the best goalies in the game at around .900-.920 which would be quite realistic for statistics. The issue is that with proper defense you could probably accomplish this now, however too many people puck chase, puck watch, forwards not helping out on defense or leaving the zone too early, also on the rush defense take themselves out of the play by trying to hold a blue line without support behind them. All of this contribute to low save%. So if EA were to bump goalies 10% there are probably a handful that would see .980 and above because they only play with the same group of guys who play exceptional defense. We’re kind of caught between the casual competition and the “pro team”. Maybe a 5% bump would be a happy medium but at this point I am unsure.
Update: as a very very small sample size, I played 12 games with a very competent group of guys and I’m holding a .912 save%.
Was thinking about this some more as well, because of the attention given to defense and goalie, it would be nice to add an additional statistic to the intermission screen such as High Danger Chance %. Basically if there are 10 shots and 8 of them are within the High Danger Chance area, this statistic would be 80%, similar to the faceoff and pass % statistic. This will at least give some information and attention that could be brought to whether or not the defense is doing an adequate job of protecting the center of the ice.The issue is that with proper defense you could probably accomplish this now, however too many people puck chase, puck watch, forwards not helping out on defense or leaving the zone too early, also on the rush defense take themselves out of the play by trying to hold a blue line without support behind them. All of this contribute to low save%.
Well said.
Was thinking about this some more as well, because of the attention given to defense and goalie, it would be nice to add an additional statistic to the intermission screen such as High Danger Chance %. Basically if there are 10 shots and 8 of them are within the High Danger Chance area, this statistic would be 80%, similar to the faceoff and pass % statistic. This will at least give some information and attention that could be brought to whether or not the defense is doing an adequate job of protecting the center of the ice.
This is a great idea.
Last year I had over 500 wins, over 100 shutouts and a SV% of .815.
So far this year I have almost 300 wins and over 50 shutouts but a SV% of .777 in A LOT less games played and I still have 3-4 seasons more to play.I don't think this is a good metric to conclude EA "broke goalies".
Although you alluded to studying closely every aspect of the game in an effort to adjust to core gameplay changes that happen every year - assuming that you should be just as dominant in one year's release as you were in another and then determining that feature (playing goalie) is now 'broken' because you're not getting as many wins just isn't right.
How can anyone logically explain that?
Logically - it's not just you analyzing the game and getting better. There's a lot of players that grow each year not to mention core gameplay elements that require adjustments can either sink a previously dominant player or take a player that wasn't seeing success and finally getting some wins by mastering a new element of the gameplay.
So it's easy to logically explain how you have less wins this year than last and saying it's solely due to poor goalie gameplay does not encompass all elements that would lead to you being less dominant that last year.
The only logical explanation are those ridiculous unnecessary animations, the “EA” goals and the fact that like every year EA favours offence over defence and goalies.
This is not the only logical explanation as to why you're not getting as many wins this year as last. There are a plethora of reasons why that would be and I'm not discrediting changes to the goalie logic aren't playing a role, but it's just one of many changes you may have not adapted to as well as you did last year. Not to mention, you only play drop-ins. The level of skill there is wildly varying so you may just be getting matched up with poor defenders or against teams with really skilled offensive players.
And please don't say this is an attack. It's just an observation with no malintent.
You need to read my post again.
It’s not about the wins! I actually have more this year in less games compared to last year at this time. I’ll probably have a lot more wins at the end of this year in less than total games played than last year. Yet my SV% will be much lower.
This year I’m even more selective with whom I play with and against. One of the reasons why I have a better winning % than last year. Yet my SV% is much lower.
I’m a better than average goalie. I’m very capable of adjusting and adapting to the game play each year. I’ve gotten better at playing goalie each year except this one. Actually I’m still playing better than I did last year but the difference? Those “EA” crap goals and those unnecessary animations that cause my goalie to flop around resulting in goals. That’s the only logical reason I can think of that has caused my SV% to drop so much.
There is also a lot more players complaining and noticing this year than years past about playing as a goalie. A lot more that have even stopped playing goalie as a result. The reason? Those crap “EA” goals caused by those stupid unnecessary animations. That is the reason why EA has broke the goalies this year. That’s all the proof I need.
Furthermore, how does anyone reason why they removed a very well used tool “paddle down” to replace and in the process duplicating “desperation save” to two different buttons?!?! That would be like removing your toilet paper holder with another soap dish/holder. Now you have two soap dishes and no toilet paper holder. That would be idiotic making absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yet that’s EA!
So I loaded up NHL 24 and compared stats between the games (only 3's and only doing mental math for averages) I looked at the top 20 global goalies and there does seem to be a drop in save percentage. In 24 it was around .75 and in 25 it's .73 actually pretty consistent with all the top goalies so the mental math wasn't too bad. The GAA was also consistently a bit higher. 3.7 ish for 24 and 4 ish for 25. Human goalies more than anything in this game needs more love haha! Human goalies make the game a lot more fun. If I was developing the game human goalies would have boosted attributes vs their cpu counterparts to make up for cpu ability to read inputs as soon as it's communicated to the game. This would also incetivize clubs to find a goalie. I would love to see cpu save percentage vs Human. My assumption is the Human is generally taking out the short side backhand cheese but they're giving up more routine goals, just my guess based on my small sample size of games so far in 25. I'm sure others and especially goalies could give a better snapshot of the current situation. The goal should be that a mid/ low level user goalie produces equal saves to cpu goalie. I personally feel (and I know some would disagree) that cpu skaters are in a great place for WoC. You can't depend on them, they play like low level humans. Most clubs would rather anyone than a cpu, however there ARE worse humans out there so not every club searches for a human. In an ideal state WoC games would be fully human vs human. Just gotta find the right incentives to make that happen.
