They’ve been removed completely. In my gm mode players are playing as if it were nhl19, they’ve even stopped taking passes in stride. I played a cpu vs cpu game and all of the fancy passing plays stopped happening and everyone on the ice is constantly cluttering in the slot again just like nhl19. They broke the game with this stupid patch.
They’ve been removed completely. In my gm mode players are playing as if it were nhl19, they’ve even stopped taking passes in stride. I played a cpu vs cpu game and all of the fancy passing plays stopped happening and everyone on the ice is constantly cluttering in the slot again just like nhl19. They broke the game with this stupid patch.
Original poster is referring to the ease of receptions relative to the pickup angle and speed of the puck.
The new feature we added this year that you are referring to where you can take passes in stride is the same as it was at launch and works as expected. There are some angles of reception where you player is not able to take it in stride (ie when they need to adjust their body more to receive the puck, etc.) but that is the same as at launch as well.
In the Xbox 360/PS3 era the onus was on the passer to put the right level of touch on the pass relative to distance, otherwise it wouldn’t be caught cleanly, would take an extra second to settle, or would bounce away from the recipient, etc. Why is this completely out of the game now?
Similarly, in NHL 20 if you mess around with the pass reception sliders offline and reduce reception ease you get some really good results. Passes being caught on the backhand take a second to settle down or aren’t caught cleanly (unless the guy has amazing hands like Panarin etc), passes that are too hard get bobbled, and guys whiff on one timers if the pass isn’t right in the wheelhouse. The result is an overall game where the puck is a lot looser and more organic/realistic looking. In online modes now players basically have giant magnets/stick vacuums instead of hockey sticks. @NHLDev
TLDR - this game actually has a ton of potential with decent sliders, but the online slider set is laughably bad. Discuss.
Fully understand where you are coming from. The biggest complaint from the community over the last few years has been pickup consistency. When we redid the system this year to add the new mechanic for being able to take the puck in stride, accelerate or decelerate through a pickup, it was an opportunity to look at everything again. As you have said and seen, there are still options to look at how the type of pickup and puck velocity impact your ability to receive the puck but we didn't want to conflict the two at first and that is why we waited a bit for things to settle and if anything pickups were seen as too strong. That is where we looked back at interceptions in a previous update and will continue to look at the pieces you are referring to moving forward for the franchise as we build on this new system.
So the goal is to look at the impacts of those pieces in the system as well as look at adding the defensive deflections back into the same mechanic where they can layer onto skating as the biggest complaint was how they impacted your players skating in cases where you didn't want them to due to being full body actions.
There have been other discussions around the online default settings relative to full sim and also the custom settings that people would like to dial things towards. That is a bigger topic but even in the current settings, we could certainly get the new pickup system dialed in to a similar place that the online default had before when it comes to some more subtle pieces of receptions. Just a tough balance when you are trying to improve overall pickup consistency as a top community call out as well as promote team play more than solo efforts, so we work to solve some of those issues first before messing with another piece since each piece has an impact on another when it comes to the overall perception of balance and what the game rewards.
Good callout though and certainly what I personally prefer when it comes to tuning as I like much more range in the mechanics. NHL 13 and 16 had a lot of variance in pickups in the default online settings as examples.
Replies
Original poster is referring to the ease of receptions relative to the pickup angle and speed of the puck.
The new feature we added this year that you are referring to where you can take passes in stride is the same as it was at launch and works as expected. There are some angles of reception where you player is not able to take it in stride (ie when they need to adjust their body more to receive the puck, etc.) but that is the same as at launch as well.
Fully understand where you are coming from. The biggest complaint from the community over the last few years has been pickup consistency. When we redid the system this year to add the new mechanic for being able to take the puck in stride, accelerate or decelerate through a pickup, it was an opportunity to look at everything again. As you have said and seen, there are still options to look at how the type of pickup and puck velocity impact your ability to receive the puck but we didn't want to conflict the two at first and that is why we waited a bit for things to settle and if anything pickups were seen as too strong. That is where we looked back at interceptions in a previous update and will continue to look at the pieces you are referring to moving forward for the franchise as we build on this new system.
So the goal is to look at the impacts of those pieces in the system as well as look at adding the defensive deflections back into the same mechanic where they can layer onto skating as the biggest complaint was how they impacted your players skating in cases where you didn't want them to due to being full body actions.
There have been other discussions around the online default settings relative to full sim and also the custom settings that people would like to dial things towards. That is a bigger topic but even in the current settings, we could certainly get the new pickup system dialed in to a similar place that the online default had before when it comes to some more subtle pieces of receptions. Just a tough balance when you are trying to improve overall pickup consistency as a top community call out as well as promote team play more than solo efforts, so we work to solve some of those issues first before messing with another piece since each piece has an impact on another when it comes to the overall perception of balance and what the game rewards.
Good callout though and certainly what I personally prefer when it comes to tuning as I like much more range in the mechanics. NHL 13 and 16 had a lot of variance in pickups in the default online settings as examples.