Forum Discussion

Hero

Re: Nerf hitting and Trucelence

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:

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

2 Replies

SeNoR_Jeff13
Seasoned Scout
6 months ago
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.
PlayoffError
Hero
6 months ago
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.