NitroXIIII just want to say people like you are great. Really love that you're digging into this stuff to give us more information.
IMO, "Ankle Breaker" is pretty much useless for in-game situations and should be retooled to work like a "Crosby badge." What I mean by this is that it should improve a player's ability to hard-cut 180 degrees in the opposite direction (a la Crosby famously breaking MacKinnon and others' ankles in the corners) while carrying the puck. It should allow a player to do this a few times in a row.
The following would require some work and alterations to the skating engine but might be interesting to read: you could make it so that these 180-degree cuts are an actual skill that players have an attribute for. With the existence of a stat like this, you could then have attribute thresholds where if a player has a low enough stat, repeated cuts back and forth would result in the player losing balance and stumbling (getting their ankles "broken"). The final result would be a player with the ankle breaker badge doing what the badge's name means: excellent cuts that cause the opposing player to stumble if they try to keep up.
I hope at least someone takes the time to read this!
There was a release back on the PS360 version where you could wipe out. It was not liked very much because people felt they lost edges on places they shouldn't and it punished defense mostly for defenders And it was never brought back again. So I'd assume that is why it never returned again.
I vaguely remember that! Was it NHL13? They did a NUMBER on the skating that year in general... it was pretty bad. Do you remember exactly what caused it and what the wipe-outs looked like? I've somehow completely erased memories of this feature from my old brain lol.
I feel like there could be a better way to implement it, though. Especially with the modern skating engine and animations. NBA2k does "ankle breakers" somewhat similarly except the badge itself causes the opposing defender to fall if they try to track your movements and you pull off a good enough dribble move.
EDIT: Yeah it WAS NHL13! I just scoured the annals of YouTube for footage of it and found this clip (good old Rammer on the sticks lol): NHL13 Losing an edge
After watching that clip, idk man... I feel like it would have been a good feature if tuned right. A player trying to cut backward after going max-speed and without doing a full-on hockey-stop cut (which I referred to previously in the Crosby example) SHOULD lose their edge if they're not an elite skater. This obviously would need to be tuned so that it ONLY happens during ridiculous top-speed turn attempts. A completely player-controlled situation.
That aside, what I was suggesting wasn't that. I was talking more about repeated cuts back and forth and back and forth.
I just don't think it's a feature the majority of the community would be wanting. The skating aspect is the most important part of the game I'd say. We don't even know what NHL 25 is bringing to the table in terms of movement either so I'm sure we shall find out more come the 27th and I can't wait to talk about it then. They do have that 1 clip where a defenseman kind of gets shook and aims to recover hard by swinging his stick over to get back into a better defensive position. None of the deke traits matter much until they refine/rebuild dekes in general. Most of the dekes are too much West - East, East- West side to side. They need to have more of angle to them where they would be going to the side and forward past a defender making them harder to hit on great timed dekes.
I'd just rework some of the traits to something like....
Puck on a string - stickhandling speed increased 15-20%
I'd rename Ankle Breaker to Quick Step - Dekes are 15-20% faster in motion and distance traveled.
I think it's BECAUSE the skating is the most important part of the game that it should have more in-depth nuances like what I suggested. I'm not in favor of making it more complicated controls-wise. I think differentiating players based on skating skill is important and I feel like the badges could have more of an impact in that regard rather than "+- a certain percentage of a specific attribute."
I've always been a proponent of adding more granular attributes to the game for this reason. For example: there should be a "backhand" attribute. More granularity provides for more nuance and player differentiation. Look to the NBA2k series for inspiration. While that series has blundered over the last couple of iterations (which sports game hasn't, am I right? =P), the number of attributes each player has is really well done.
Heck, 2k even has "player tendencies" for AI players. I'm not sure why EA Sports hasn't thought to implement this yet considering there are so many modes with AI players. Like, imagine a system where certain wingers (like Ovi or Stamkos) would opt to set up for a one-timer on their off-wing while others would look for cutting opportunities or what have you.
