For the love of God turn down the poke check
While I realize poke checking is a big part of hockey, the poke checking in this game is far too prevalent. Currently in almost every mode of play all players do is pound poke check and there it ruins the game for those of us who want a realistic hockey experience and not a button mashing festival. Unfortunately as it is now the only choice a player has is to also constantly poke check and that aint hockey.
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There has been so many posts about this that I don't think anyone can say its this or that. Many people, due probably to a mix of OP'd poke checks and playing the game like old years of weaving through players, are not enjoying the game as much this year.
Bottom line is we can all adapt and most of us probably will. But if you want to talk about a realistic hockey experience I have never ever watched real hockey where players just kept swinging their sticks at pucks non stop. Realistically if you poke at someone on the ice and miss, odds are he will get by you or if you try again right away you will take him down.
Having said this, I still see a ton of people just weaving through center ice like years of past hoping to dangle a whole team. Many (including myself) need to learn to pass more and quicker. But if I protect the puck properly and have body on a guy, he should not be able to poke as often as he wants until he strips the puck from me. Realistically at some point he would take a penalty. Beating a player 1 on 1 is also part of the game. Ironically enough that was something EA pushed this year.
As I said its a bit of both worlds IMO.
Finally, it seems like pokes are connecting on a consistent basis.
Isn't the problem here that you also can poke from behind and through someones skates/legs, without getting a penalty?
All we need is a bit higher acceleration, to make bodychecks more effective and for the sticklift to be more than a penalty button, giving defenders more tools to choose from.
100% correct couldn't agree more.
EXACTLY!
Penalize the poke attempts from behind more and I'm ok with the rest.
o look a game changer wants the one good thing about 18 gone, not surprised
Finally the defensive side of the game is balanced with the offensive side and of course some people are going to complain because they can’t dangle and hold onto the puck as often as they could before. Watch a real NHL game and players don’t hold on and/or have possession of the puck as we can and do in this game.
You have to be kidding. B-Bunny's comment is right on target. People spam the poke check with total impunity this year, no matter where they are or how out of position they are. You can put your stick literally through someone's legs from behind and knock the puck away. There's no excuse for it. And it's not a small thing - it affects every game.
Offensive players do this all the time when forechecking against dman in their own zone.
Offensive players sticks go through dman legs/skates etc all the time too allowing. That shouldn’t be allowed with then. Same with sticks going through the boards.
Any time an offensive player's stick goes through a d-man's legs or skates, the puck should come loose. That's actually how the game is supposed to work - it just doesn't always play out that way in practice.
Sticks through the boards is a much tougher coding problem, apparently. I think it's ridiculous that we have to deal with vanishing sticks, but the devs say it's a necessary compromise if we want players to be able to stickhandle along the boards.
In any case, the sticks-through-the-boards problem doesn't have anything to do with allowing poke checks through players' bodies. The first one is a design/coding problem. The second one -- pokes through bodies -- is a question of what rules you put in place. All you need to do to stop this is to say that if a player's stick goes through an offensive player's body (or skate), then his poke will not have any effect on the puck. That's realistic - the whole reason poking through players' bodies is a problem is that it allows the poker to get the puck when IRL he would have had no chance at it. And it's something the devs said, at least, was in the game last year. Even if you don't call more penalties for putting your stick into someone's skates, just making the poke through the legs ineffective will help reduce the amount of pokecheck spamming.
The weird thing is that both this year and last, sticks do occasionally collide with legs and bounce off. No idea why the devs don't just code that into the game permanently.