I like what you had to say here. I do however think making these changes actually lowers the skill ceiling in a way but regardless this is not a bad idea. I think the key thing you mentioned that I like here was better rewards for correctly timed poke checks. A defender who is guarding a puck carrier that is inside the "triangle" of that defender is no longer properly positioned to poke check the puck away and must rely on a different tool (such as a bump, hit, or stick lift) to properly separate the carrier from the puck. I actually like seeing more people use dekes every now and again as it really brings some creativity to the mix but we still need to be able to get rewarded with a poked puck or a lifted stick when we are performing them in the correctly positioned spots.
How do you figure being able to properly defend and having pokes and lifts miss when attribute ratings are high and positioning is proper will lower the skill ceiling but forwards are given one touch dekes by the press of a button and that isn’t low skill? Deking also doesn’t cause skaters to lose momentum and with these op badges they can gain momentum whereas stick checking animations slow the skater, pause the skater and in some instances cause the skater to flail their body unbalanced and take them way out position? Stick checking is the most important and used defensive tool and the state it’s currently in resembles pee wee hockey not NHL. The elite stick checking badge doesn’t even work. I’ve experimented with the stick checking attribute at base and 99 with the combination of defensive awareness, discipline, puck control and hand eye at all different variations and it’s still incredibly unreliable. The stick simply avoids the puck carrier like two magnets. It’s preposterous to force a defenseman to have to hold in one button while aiming with another and pushing in the aim button to make a successful poke when, like I mentioned above, a forward can press one button and do one of the multiple Datsyuk style dekes. The game is unbalanced and favors too heavily on forwards and it makes the game unplayable for defenders. Off topic rant but the badges ruin the game and unskilled players rely on them and get rewarded too often because of them. I have never seen so many non hockey plays being rewarded than in this years game. The videos I’ve seen posted not only here but on other platforms where they are arguing stick checking working properly are from people playing vs lesser tiered players who haven’t grasped the fundamentals of the game, controller scheme and/or lack situational awareness when in possession of the puck in different circumstances.
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