NHL 21 complete mess!
What happened to EA??? They used to be so... average.... at making hockey hockey games. This one is a complete mess. The goalies are non existent. Even with the sliders all the way to 100, the goalie...
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There is no input and reaction lag on the AI's part so it can definitely seem like something's up - I'd still recommend adjusting your strats to be purely defensive and for you to stay in the middle since your ai puts highest priority on covering what they deem to be positional mistakes.
NHL only ever gets 1 or 2 patches so that's why the tuner number is so low. Plenty of real players have played thr game so I know they have a lot of real feedback in that regard
Thank you for your reply. As it stands I can’t really play this game any longer. It’s so unlike hockey that it can’t be designed by people who know the sport. It’s gone downhill over the years and I should have heeded the reviews, I’ve tried everything. Moved the sliders, changed the difficulty, used a highly defensive team. Nothing seems to work. The AI is just atrocious. You can’t touch the computer but the computer touches you and your flat on the ice while they are scoring against a great goalie with the highest slider rating in every category. It’s as if the goalie isn’t even there.
I’ll just let the game sit dormant and hope for an update to strengthen the goalies and defense and stop catering to the computer, because as it stands, the game is completely unplayable unless you put it on super easy and tie the hands to the computer so much that they look like bumbling fools out there. I don’t know what EA was shooting for but this game is still an arcade game and nothing like a sim, even though I have it near full sim. It’s almost like HtThe Ice. Remember that game? This is that game.
I hear ya - you notice it a lot when circling with the puck and going for pokes; the ai just seems to always be able to counter. In these types of situations though I tend to launch up and immediately change players to pincer to cause a big juicy hit.
I remember seeing a fairly decent ice hockey game from an indie developer on the store last week but that'd probably be more akin to 3on3 arcade. In any case, a break will always do some good -- PS+ has been killing it lately and Game Pass is top notch
THat was another thing I have a problem with. You mentioned circling the puck and the AI always counters. I've noticed, not just in this game, other NHL titles by EA as well, that the computer is always faster than you, no matter who you use. Even if you increase every players speed the computer will always have a huge edge on you. Which makes it much harder to poke check or get in front of the computer to get the puck or stop the play.
I know these sports games are nothing more than copy/paste code from previous years and they add a couple new features and call it a brand new experience but this time around they seemed to forget to add defence and turned up the computers difficulty while spending no time on player ability. I do hope they come out with another patch and tuner soon.
EA_AljoCommunity Manager
Every time there was a new tuner, people complained it ruined the game. We also get accused of adding stealth changes that aren't in the patch notes. This is also a reaction to the complaints every year that the beta is better. So, the dev team only makes a tuner update when it seems to be absolutely necessary.
I appreciate the response but the goalies are absolutely horrible. Like I said, even at the highest rating in sliders the goalies are chain link fences and the puck is a BB. I can share the shots on goal for the computer and show video of how easily they score 90% of the time they shoot. This is by far the worst NHL to date and I just bought it yesterday and am about to uninstall it for NHL 19. That's how bad the defense and goalies are. It's a complete mess. Every year EA boasts of all the changes and better goalies and whatnot but do far EA hasn't lived up to their word. I'm getting tired of seeing the computer skate to the net, make a move and score every single time, regardless of my defense. I've been playing NHL games since the days when you made them for Genesis. From the beginning. I've bought each year except for last year and was contemplating this year and went ahead anyways. I regret that decision. I should have heeded the reviews saying how bad the goalies were this time around. Please, fix this mess. This is not hockey, this is not even a sim, it's arcade hockey where the goalies belong in peewee hockey. These goalies are horrible. They stop nothing. I switched it to rookie and still the computer scores goal after ridiculous goal after pathetic goal while my goalie just sits th3re looking like he's taking a dump. It's horrendous.
- EA_Aljo
Are you seeing 90% of shots for and against you count as goals? I haven't been experiencing this personally and we're not getting other reports of it. I'd like to find out why this is happening to you.
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- EA_Aljo2 months ago
