Tripping edge case, hand on knee. Thoughts?
I've taken a couple of tripping penalties recently that I'm not sure should be penalties. In both cases I've definitely made a mistake and I accept that in the current system these are penalties, but I'm not sure if these should be penalties going forward or not. I'd be curious to see what @NHLDev or anyone else thinks.
Case 1: I'm chasing and managed to get myself at a good spot just to my opponent's side where I shouldn't be putting my stick into his feet. All I really want to do here is put my stick in a spot where I can prevent him from going to his backhand, but I forget to aim my DSS and it ends up being a poke right at the puck. The only contact is my hand on his knee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhMRjJcgWIM
Case 2: Complete brain fart by me here. I start my poke much later than I would like and by the time I do it my opponent has a step on me. As with the first clip my hand makes contact with his knee and he goes down. This one isn't as bad as the first one as the top of my stick does make contact first, but I could still go either way on if this should be a penalty or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S21ErhZnCEs
Case 1: I'm chasing and managed to get myself at a good spot just to my opponent's side where I shouldn't be putting my stick into his feet. All I really want to do here is put my stick in a spot where I can prevent him from going to his backhand, but I forget to aim my DSS and it ends up being a poke right at the puck. The only contact is my hand on his knee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhMRjJcgWIMCase 2: Complete brain fart by me here. I start my poke much later than I would like and by the time I do it my opponent has a step on me. As with the first clip my hand makes contact with his knee and he goes down. This one isn't as bad as the first one as the top of my stick does make contact first, but I could still go either way on if this should be a penalty or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S21ErhZnCEs 0
Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
1. Puck first is not a penalty.
2. It's not tripping if the person doesn't trip!
I think they have the DSS balancing in a pretty good spot atm. What needs addressing is pokes on gliding people, especially when the glide is going in the same direction as the force of the poke is going. These scenarios should not result in a trip, it would remove some of the frustration imo.
Mechanical issues like these are becoming very nuanced which is actually a good thing believe it or not. They require lots of thinking and game-balance consideration and posts like these invoke the hard-hitting discussions we need so thank you for that!
I think loose-puck battles, especially along the wall (also the pin feature) needs some serious TLC. I could see a more intuitive body-positioning mechanic along the boards to fight for the puck negating a lot of the “in-tight” tripping penalties I see which seem to frustrate the community. I also think it would help negate those scenarios where you get beat out of the corner despite all hockey knowledge telling you that you shouldn’t have due to a wonky bounce, incidental stick contact, etc.
I’m loving this game offline right now. My own aI still drive me nuts, and the CPU superhuman boosts when it comes to puck pickups and dislodges can get me pretty frustrated at times, but overall with my strategy adjustments I’m seeing the opponent AI play a pretty good game of hockey which is more than encouraging. Next step is to obviously tone done the blatant discrepancy of ability and reaction time that the AI team has over your team.
Of course because the sticks seem to pass right through the legs i often see a stick that should bounce off outside of leg goes through leg, in between both legs then causes a trip
most trips i see in EA NHL would ever be a trip in real life.
is what it is, you just learn to deal with it.
I brought this up in a similar discussion awhile back and a Dev commented that it was something they were looking into. Lets hope they fix it for NHL20.
it's not that bad.
There is an option to not take them.
Yeah, it's really not. In my experience tripping penalties are down quite a bit and in almost every case are the result of people trying a poke check from a bad position.
There are still a few questionable scenarios ( like the videos I posted above ) where there might be some room to refine tripping penalties further, and that's the conversation I was hoping to kick off. Unfortunately there appears to be little interest here.
Actually, now it’s a penalty. Since the 14-15 NHL season
We have the stick divided into two (with ability to tune where on the shaft that divide starts) and we have the upper and lower leg separated (with ability to tune where on the leg that starts as well) so that we could negate the cause of a trip if the upper leg was hit by a portion of the stick above that divide. We added this specifically for those reach in scenarios.
Overall, after our logic updates and tuning we felt that overall balance was in a decent place (looking at skill gap and offensive vs defensive balance) and it encouraged more manual stick control with DSS since the DSS rules do allow more forgiving reach in behaviour if done in a controlled way so we took it as a regular poke being the more aggressive action and if you wanted to reach in with control you should use DSS.
We will continue to look at overall balance and control as there are pieces on a case by case basis when looking at the details that could be improved for realism but we will still always make our final decisions based on balance and game behaviour we believe is best to promote for the community as a whole.
Thanks for posting specific examples and appreciate those that participate with constructive conversation.
Our logic dictates what contact will cause a player to fall. It isn't black and white as you describe. For a bit more info, here are a few pieces in the current tuning:
- With a poke from the front (a tunable degree pie) your stick blade can make contact with a players skate without causing a trip. This was done to encourage pokes from a good gap in good position without as harsh of a result. From beyond that radius and as you get towards the back, it is much easier to trip a player from bad positions where you don't have an angle to the puck
- Your stick needs a minimum amount of contact with the leg before a trip will be called, anything less than this will not be called
- When in DSS, you can actually even swipe right through a full leg from outside to in as long as you don't continue through the second leg without causing a trip. Making contact will negate future contact with the offensive players stick to cause stick on stick contact or with the puck to knock it loose but you won't get a penalty. If you swipe inside to out on the leg, it will cause a trip as well. This was done to encourage players with control to try and take away lanes that players may cut to and even give them some leniency as they try to reach in with control to get to the puck (which is why it would have worked better to use DSS in the above video examples unless we do tune the logic for pokes as well)
I haven’t normally poked once since DSS has been here due to its inaccuracy, and I think eliminating the standard poke from the game would mitigate a lot of these complaints. This will bring another “skill gap” element and might actually make the complaints go down as people adapt to DSS and learn how to utilize it safely and efficiently.
I think RS could be used to incorporate the “cross-check shoves” if you will, as well as normal checking and your stick all-in-one if RB was used as a hit modifier rather than a stick modifier. Holding RB and holding RS is a loaded up hit. Holding RB and flicking RS is a cross-check shove. This would also make cross-checking a manual penalty rather than just an auto-called one which would be a fun new addition imo. Too much momentum when using the shove is what could lead to a cross-check penalty.
But yeah, the tripping isn’t a problem in this game other than the low speed gliders. Imo, you should need to be moving your feet to draw a trip. Other than that, people need to be a little less careless with DSS/stop using a non-modified RB poke.
The problem seems to be the same as when battling for possession along the boards. Dev explained to me that if the puck pickup animation is about to trigger, it is considered the same as having possession, therefore a trip. Even though the puck looks like it is loose and possession isn't established, the mechanics don't function that way. I seriously hope this gets cleaned up sometime soon. Hopefully for 20, but not sure if I will buy it at this point.