NHL 26 needs some changes...

This is why people complain about these x-factor/perks that every sports game insists on having now. They are completely incapable of balancing them properly so you get every single person running the same handful of perks like wheels/elite edges/truculence. Every single team plays one of two ways. A bunch of tiny players with max speed and wheels or a bunch of bigs with truculence. Its so **bleep**ing boring.

The only one that bothered me in 25 was Truculence. Even then, the teams using this and only focusing on hitting was annoying, but those teams were typically not too difficult to beat. Still, I'd love to see this XF toned down a lot. I, like most of you, want a more authentic experience and playing teams full of goons just isn't it. I know the team is looking into various reports with XFs so hopefully, we'll see these get some balancing.

The skating attributes in WOC have always been,  by far, the most important attributes in most builds.   Outside of a couple of the prebuilds, Wheels was never available.   Elite Edges became such a must-have X-Factor that the devs removed it last year ( again, outside a couple of the prebuilds ).

I don't know what else the devs could have expected by adding Wheels, re-introducing EE and allowing a good number of builds to push their skating attributes to 97 on top of those X-Factors.   In my small sample size of games so far it certainly hasn't resulted in more variety of player builds.  It's an arms race, and even as a more defensively inclined player you're almost forced to pump up those skating attributes to the maximum and use these X-Factors to keep up.

There needs to be some serious reconsidering of some of these X-Factors and the allowed attribute ranges, otherwise NHL 26 is just going to be track-meet hockey in WOC.  

I honestly feel like hitting (truculence) is only effective against teams that don't move the puck properly or just aren't that good at the game. But when you play low ping players, that are good, there almost impossible to hit unless there in the corner or skating straight down the ice. I don't see hitting as an issue tbh, with the crack head speed that this game is at with thee tiny builds, poke checking slows you down way to much and even when it does work they still seem to end up with the puck again. 

Im not really sure how we get a happy medium, hitting has to be part of the game, but not overpowered, because if it gets nerfed again it will be like the last couple years of figure skaters raging the puck on 2 ping the whole game.

Truculence definitely needs to be toned down.  But the answsr isn't to let the small speedy builds rule the day either.  Buff stick lift and poke for more defensive builds.  And most importantly...make the goalies much better on breakaways.

One of the things rewarding small speedy guys is that after they break in they can score at an inflated rate.  Well above the conversion rates you'd see in real hockey.  Make the goalies way better in those instances.  Force em to work the puck in the zone more often.

It may be a hot take but I feel like poke checking and stick lifting is just fine, it's just not as easy as years past with how much aim assist it had. 

I am with you on poke checking.  I am okay with it but I don't play defense so I am not the "last line".  The defenders on my team (and on here) wish to have better tools overall.  And if the point is to tone down truculence, maybe making other tools slightly better will lead to more diversity of defenders.  Speaking of aim assist, something that really bothers me is the help truculence gives to hitters.  Can't tell you the number of times I mostly get by a defender and they make contact with a loose thread on the back of my jersey, and then I go flying.  Feels arcadey and I would love it pulled back a bit.