NHL 26 Be A Pro Mode Feedback

Hey EA_Aljo​ couple more things I wanted to toss in here, but I'm sure you may have heard these already

• Icon passing still seems significantly buggy, often opting for the direction you are skating vs the button combo being held
• The R2/RT + Right stick to select specific defenders also seems inconsistent, or maybe too critical on where the stick point relates to which player you switch to? (Earlier tried switching to a d-man behind me on the right (so bottom right corner) but R2 + RS down to the right moved me to the winger who was more directly right than behind me to the right)
• There should be an option like the Icon passing feature defensively to make player switching more efficient

Appreciate the continued feedback. We're aware of these issues, but will have to wait and see if they're addressed.

Gonna add to this: 

There needs to be an ability to select the type of career you will have, like College Football. Examples:
Star player: drafted picks 1-10, will have an immediate impact
Top 6/top 9: Will be picked in the mid 1st to mid 2nd, will take some development. 
Late round pick: Will have to carve your way through the system to prove your worth
Undrafted: Get signed at 22-24 years of age out of Europe/CHL and have to make a name for yourself almost immediately. 

The same story line of a guy that gets drafted in the first round and has to be an immediate star is boring. Sometimes, I want to be a later round pick/undrafted player that proves my worth.

Teams should also draft you based on positional needs. If I'm a LW'er, Carolina shouldn't be looking at me because of their LW depth.
NHL teams DO draft the BPA, but some swings are also made at drafts. 

Penalties for poor play also need a re-work. If I'm a winger fully covering my defenseman in the D zone, and the AI defensemen collapse for a goal against, that's not my fault. I was doing my job.

I love your comments about playstyles. Why am I, a defensive dman, getting penalized for not scoring the game tying goal? If I'm a grinder, my role should be to get pucks in deep, wreak havoc in the corners, and throw the body while playing a defensive shut down game It'd be awesome if you were a grinder and your coach puts your 3rd line against MacKinnon or Eichel with the objective to shut them down. I don't always want to be the next Gretzky, like you said. 

Also, I think we need to scrap the current player builds with more dynamic builds. For example, NBA 2K has a system where you can directly edit your build before you start, choosing which attributes your player will have. It also shows the MAX overall that build can reach. It then shows what 3 players that build shows shades of. 
I don't want to be a DFD stuck with bad skating and offensive skills. What If I want to do prime Ryan Suter build, a DFD with good offensive capabilities good for 40-50 points a season?
I hate being locked into a build, then having to spend what little skill tree points I get to make my sniper have better passing. It sucks so bad.

All that being said, it feels like the new BAP mode was just them painting a pile of **bleep** with gold paint. The core issues a lot of us had with the mode still exist. 

NBLSXSopeX wrote:

I dont think this part is quite accurate. As far as I understand "Attribute Effects" to function is like placing weights to balance the scale before weighing. So, in your Makar example, his stick checking is 96 but with attribute effects being at 5/10 there is less of a gap between his stick checking and say a 90 stick checking player there'll still be small differences, but theyre smaller due to stats holding less weight. A better example I typically use is speed. If you set acceleration and speed to 100, it makes everyone as a whole faster, but attribute effects at lower values means there's less of a speed difference between others and McDavid, whereas high values would increase the stats weight and allow McDavid to show the "true difference" between his speed rating and a high 80/low 90s skater. So to simplify it, 0/10 would be as close to a level playing field with every player using almost slider settings alone and 10/10 would be your players stats heavily influencing the sliders on a player-player basis.

so your saying that if I put the attribute effects slider to 0 all players, human and AI (even on the other team), the sliders take precedence over the actual attributes of a player?

NBLSXSopeX wrote:

This is where I wholly disagree. I dont think "its set to have you fail more than the AI" but I would go to say "its easier for them to gain possession" in the context that they seem to recover from stick lifts/pokes significantly faster than players even when you lift their stick successfully.

Secondly, "reception reaction time" is in regards to passing and how long they take to react to receive a pass or loose puck(i could be wrong about the loose puck part) reception reaction time, to my understanding, does not impact general reactions for poking or intercepting(maybe a little on intercepting because its still "receiving"?) But I interpret it like this "reception reaction time" effects how "long it would take"/"if you have time to" reach behind you to catch a pass that was a little behind you, obviously not just in that 1 scenario, but that "time to receive/gain control" of the puck

what I mean about set to have you fail is that a human will be slower to react than a computer. it seems that the computer AI, on the other team more than mine, reacts as if they already know where the puck is going (pass or anything) a split second after you initiate the pass (or whatever). so example: if the other team is going to pass the puck from one side to the other, I may perceive the pass say 2-3 seconds after the pass is initiated but the AI perceives it say 1 (or .0001) second after the pass is initiated and they block or intercept the pass whereas it may get by me. so even if I'm in the middle of the ice, the pass may get by me due to my reaction time but the computer, who is less than 2 feet away from me blocks the pass like he knew where it was going before I even made the pass. and this goes with the part about the reception reaction time. I put the CPU's up to 100 and more of my pass are getting through than before but still seems like it's not enough. before, out of 10 passes 7 would get blocked, now about 4-5 out of 10 get blocked. and I'm talking about the AI being close enough that their reaction to perceive the pass where it's going and react to it, should be slower where the pass 7-8 out 10 should get by. I watch hockey and more passes get through than they are blocked. it's like EA did not take into account that the computer can "think" faster than a human therefore "react" way faster which is unfair. it's the same as when I'm in the offensive zone playing D at the blue line. the puck is up near or behind their net. the opposing player who is 'guarding' me is facing where the puck is. so I move to one side and he moves with me, I move back and he moves again with me, I move a little up to one side he does the same AND HE HAS NEVER LOOKED BACK TO SEE WHERE I AM. he has been looking at where the puck is the entire time. he has to SEE where I am to move with me. my point is they have to make the AI think and react as a human does if that is even possible. now granted some people have a faster reaction time than others but not a split second. it's just frustrating to have a lot of your passes get blocked that you figured should have gotten through

jprovo1 wrote:

so your saying that if I put the attribute effects slider to 0 all players, human and AI (even on the other team), the sliders take precedence over the actual attributes of a player?

As far as my understanding goes, if it's not exactly even it's still hard to distinguish. Like, you can make your own 85 accel/speed players faster than McDavid by moving attribute effects to 0 and putting in your own speed preferences. Kind of like saying Attribute Effects is taking the rating of players and dividing them into performance groups, the higher the slider the more refined the groupings are. So, if 0 isn't exactly even, you might have a small difference for "high" and "low" stat categories. But I haven't been able to see a difference myself

I'm gonna have another coffee and see if I understand what you're getting at with the rest of your post.

ok so what I mean is say in this pic (NHL rink), I am the star and the opposing AI is circle. my human reaction time is 1.5 seconds according to when I took traffic reconstruction with my department. that is to say it takes an average person 1.5 seconds to perceive something is about to happen and to react to that incident. so by the time the pass was 'released' it took me, on average, 1.5 seconds to perceive that a pass was heading by me and to "react" to stop said pass. now it does depend on how close you are to the passer but in this game, I could be in the middle and this pass will probably get by me (which it has on many occasions).

now in the second pic (NHL rink1), I am star (with my AI teammates) and the opposing player is circle. before I go on, let me say yes it depends on where the other opposing players are but lets say there are 2 of my teammates open. the opposing player is about that far from me and he should not know who I am passing to. so as stated above he SHOULD HAVE A REACTION TIME OF 1.5 SECONDS to react to SEE the puck and then react to the pass. if I go a hard pass and him being so close, he SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO REACT FAST ENOUGH to block or intercept the pass. and I'm not talking about a few players, I'm talking nearly every team I have played, 8 out of 10 of them would block this pass. real NHL players don't block that many passes, shots yes, but not passes. I've watched NHL games and saw passes get by veterans that seemed should have been blocked. yes it does take into account where you are passing and what I mean is yea he'll block it if I pass it into his skates or something like that. but if I do a good pass, he should block it maybe 2-4 out of 10 and that's being generous. I hope I've explained it a little better.

🤔 I'll have to think on that one a little bit. But I do know that hand-eye and puck control stats help if its a saucer pass, but handedness also makes a difference. Like, in your first picture, the star would have an easier time intercepting if they were left handed vs right handed if all other variables are the same because its "harder" to intercept on the back hand(not impossible though). I dont know how much that part will help you though. 

I am right handed but I usually want to play left D (unless the AI coach decides to put me on the right side even though I selected left defense ONLY) because I love doing one timers, so if I'd usually be the one to pass (in second picture). I've done saucer passes, hard saucer passed, hard regular passed, you name it and it get blocked more times than not. not just interception but blocked which leads to a turn over. also I know you have to take into consideration the "sight" picture of the passing lane. what may look like a good passing lane from the over head camera angle (medium to high) may not be. that's probably a big factor to but I'm not on the ice to SEE exactly where the defensive players stick or even skates are. and I know this may be easier for a lot of people but for some (like me) it's hard to determine this. and that goes by saying if I want to do a hard pass, I have to 'hold' the pass button which gives the defensive player more time to either poke check, stick lift, or get into the passing lane. the AI doesn't have to do that, they just pass hard in an instant. and with the new button passing, it's hard to do when for years you used the left trigger and stick to pass. wish there was a way to have the symbols over the players head all the time when you have the puck. my biggest point here is that the AI has a significant advantage over the player because 1) they see ice level, 2) they don't have to "hold" any buttons, and 3) they THINK faster than a human. I did do an experiment with the perceptive reaction time slider and put the AI all the way to 100 and it seems that more passes are getting through than before but still get blocked more times than not. it went from 8 out of 10 getting blocked to 5-6 out of 10 getting blocked. still should be lower but a definite improvement.