Nerf hitting and Trucelence

There is no need to nerf hitting at all, finally they brought hitting back, it has been gone like past NHL games and now we are finally able to counter those LT/L2 ballerina skaters, hitting is big part of the hockey. Truculence could be balanced little bit but normal hits are totally fine. Atm pokechecks and sticklifts are totally broken and unuseable so you are thinking to take that last way to play defence in this game? NHL has favoured offence too long time, maybe there is need to nerf offence much more and give better tools to defence with better interceptions (no force hockey anymore), better stickplays and better hitting. 

Like I've been saying eve since they introduced total control,you hardly see open ice charging calls ,elbowing or roughing penalties ,because they have to make total control the best thing ever introduced into the NHL series 

I am a defenseman and I’m not saying take away all tools.. obviously if they nerf hitting they need to also severely nerf puck control for forwards and agility too.. and severely increase poke check for players in proper positions and angles. 

I just want to play a Duncan Keith style where I’m a master with my stick and am fast with smart positioning and play..and IRL hitting and checks are more subtle where it knocks people off the puck but you don’t get massively destroyed from a little shoulder nudge or after passing the puck.. that and there’s so many penalties missed in this game from boarding, charging, interference etc.. 

you have the ballerina types who use trucelence so now they’re flying up the ice, skating in circles, and getting 30 hits a game all in a super small build.. that’s not normal! 

brother I play D so I totally get you.. and big hits have their place but it should be more small to medium hits and then the big huge ones on occasion.

the defensemen and smart hockey players are the ones being punished the most. I have adjusted and used unstoppable and the other one that counters hits but it’s still too much and I shouldn’t need 2 factors to counter the overpowered trucelence. Last night my club played and it was every little hit that sent us flying and changed the game and most of the hit were way after the play or Tiny nudges that sent us flying.. 

I kind of agree hitting needs to be Nerf the defensive AI still horrendous they do not do anything for you and the goalie even though they make good saves but still easy goals that they give up and they need to do better passing cuz the AI is passing is horrible in this game

I've wanted Truculence removed a long time ago and have spoken up about it.  And yes I agree they allow too many late hits and it should be called.  The flow of the game gets ruined by the headhunters and it's even worse this year with the changes to Truc.

Honestly, the whole mode feels like a giant mess right now.   WOC in NHL 25 was in a decent state and with a few tweaks could have been great.  All I think was needed was:

1. Make hip-checks more realistic ( which to give credit was addressed in 26 ).
2. Remove L2 abuse ( not fixed despite claims prior to release.  Seems more abused than in 25 actually, ).
3. Call interference on late hits ( not addressed, but at this point it feels like it's not a bug but an intended design decision )
4. Fix AI goalies giving up extreme short-angle shots they should be hugging the post on ( somehow worse in 26 ).
5. Stop AI goalies from flopping all over the place ( somewhat addressed in 26 )

Instead they made the mind boggling decision to re-introduce EE and add Wheels to the available X-Factors on top of allowing nearly every build archetype to have 97 speed and acceleration.  Then to pile on even more, stick checking feels almost useless and if you try and miss the speed of the offense means you're dead in the water.  We're basically back to playing collapsing defense against super-fast and agile ballerina builds which is not a style of gameplay I find fun at all.   Mix in super-late hits by players with truculence taking you out of the play and crippling your stamina and you get a game that looks and feels less and less like hockey.   

I'm sure my club will figure things out, we always do.  But figuring out how to counter the meta doesn't always result in a fun game to play, and the years where it's not fun are absolutely brutal.  Right now NHL 26 is shaping up to be the most frustrating version of WOC in a few years.

You summed it up perfectly the only thing you are missing is they did not bring back "match team size" in NHL 26 after removing it from NHL 25 which no one asked for.  This dev team is incompetent and completely out of touch with what the community wants.

SeNoR_Jeff13 wrote:

they did not bring back "match team size" in NHL 26

Admittedly I was thinking of game-play but yes, not bringing back the ability to match team size is another odd choice.

SeNoR_Jeff13 wrote:

This dev team is incompetent

I disagree here.  I don't think the state of the game is due to lack of skill on the part of the devs or an inability to implement their vision of what the game should be.   I think what we have right now is the game they want.  A fast, twitch-based game full of "wow moments" with an emphasis on individual play instead of team play.  I don't know if that's what they believe the  majority of the player base wants ( maybe they do, I could be  the one out of touch ) or if they're trying to bring in new players and they think that's the style of game that demographic wants.  Either way, here we are.

NHL 23 was nearly the end of the group I play with.   The goalies were terrible and the ballerinas were running wild.  The next couple of games moved in a good direction.  They weren't perfect, but the progress was there.   NHL 26 is a major step in the wrong direction IMO.

Hits should be rewarded for smart positional play and calculated precision. Instead we have suction hitting, hitting power on overload, and little to no penalties called (for blatant interference, charging, boarding, etc.). It's Brooks Orpik in his prime, hopped up on red bull. The hitting is objectively and unequivocally unrealistic. 

EA is the only hockey game, and they should be a bastion of the sport. Instead, they make a mockery of it.

Me and my club have already given up on playing because of the insanely stupid meta builds, I wish they would remove x-factors entirely and just use a attribute base system like the old days (there were glitch goals but few n far between) and wouldn't be as bad today because the goalies are better. Only reason goalies are beat on most things is because the X-factors make them freeze on their animations and are easy goals shrugs they don't have X-FACTORS in real life but this game doesn't even resemble hockey other than having skates on really kinda sad how far this game has fallen off a cliff :(