@TTZ_Dipsy
Rebounds, of all things, definitely changed this year. I'll agree that they were pretty easy to exploit in previous years, but goalies direct pucks into the corners or out of play a lot more than they used to. Rebounds are a part of hockey. They are also something professional players know how to set up. Just because someone scores on a rebound, it doesn't mean it's an exploit. You have to allow the shot on net and another player to be there to receive the rebound. If someone is constantly using that against you, change your defense to Protect Net and Collapsing. That's not going to stop everything of course. When I play defense and notice teams going for rebounds, I plant myself low in the slot so I'm there to recover them. This is where you need human defenders. The AI defenders aren't recognizing the habits of your opponents. They just play according to what's happening on the ice as well as the strategies you're using.
Defensive shot blocks and pass interceptions have been improved. Some would say too much as there have been some complaints about how good they are with 20.
As far as forehand-backhand dekes on goalies go, that's a pretty legit move in real hockey. You also have to be relatively skilled to pull it off. There are plenty of times someone fails at it as well. If you're more skilled, you should be rewarded though. You're also giving up an excellent scoring chance, most likely through a breakaway. That can be attributed to bad defense. Goalies can only bail you out so much when that happens.
As far as charging less for an annual update goes, I don't think people realize just how much game development costs. Besides building the game, there's licensing, support, maintaining servers, marketing, etc. There's a ton of costs that go into making the game each year. I get that $60 is a lot for some people, but the price of games hasn't really changed in decades, but everything I mentioned has increased dramatically. There's are often discounts as well as the game moving to the vault in EA Access at some point. I really don't know what the future holds. Of course things could change at some point. Especially with subscription services becoming more popular. So, who knows what will happen? That's not up to me.
