As someone who played NHL 09-14 for 500+ hours every year, I have to say that this game is a massive disappointment. It's my first "next gen" console NHL game, and I heard that 15 and 16 were a lot worse, but this is still unacceptably bad...
The EASHL is a mess.
The servers are flat out TERRIBLE. It's insane how many times a player won't connect with the rest of his team to the player-type selection screen after finding an opponent. Club challenge is even worse, it seems like it has a success rate of 20% or lower (and this is a big problem for 6v6 leagues since OTP invite-only lobbies were removed...). Also, the ping listed in-game is either a flat out lie or there is some problem causing more lag than there should be. I'm a West coast player and when I play on West servers it's fine but I'll still get short lag spikes a couple of times per game, but on East servers it feels like I'm skating in quicksand and there are always a few very long lag spikes. My ping is never higher than 45 on East servers (aside from the few spikes), but in every other online game I've played I've never had nearly as many problems with a ping of 100+. 40+ ping in this game feels like 200 ping on most other online games.
As for gameplay itself, it just isn't very fun. It feels slow and super defensive, and most goals feel cheap and require little to no skill. Acceleration needs a boost, speed and agility might need a slight boost, poke checks need to be nerfed a bit (I'm saying this as a defenseman), one touch passing doesn't work most of the time, wrap-arounds need to be nerfed.
Now these are just my opinions and may not be the things that need to be fixed, but there is clearly something wrong when most people in these 6v6 leagues don't play this game unless they have scheduled games. It is having an impact on finding games in EASHL since there aren't nearly as many people playing anymore. Back in NHL 13/14 it was very easy to find people to play with, this year I'm spending an hour plus just trying to find people to play with and an additional 30+ minutes getting into our first game. It just flat out discourages me from playing anymore (aside from 6v6 league games).
As a side note, one thing I'd recommend is allowing people to own or be a GM of one club and join a 2nd club at the same time. If you want to play 6s with people you often have to club-hop, but with the new EASHL arena unlock system it makes it almost impossible to stay on one team to unlock stuff.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE BRING BACK OTP (INVITE-ONLY) LOBBIES. It has a huge impact on 6v6 leagues.
As for Be a GM/Franchise, a couple of things ruined it for me.
The team finance system is a joke. You get 10-25K bonuses for completing owner goals, but that doesn't even cover a fraction of the cost of upgrades, it doesn't make a dent. And sometimes the owner wants you to upgrade two things in one year but it's impossible to do unless you don't repair your facility and let it turn to ****.
I wish there was a way to completely remove the player morale system as well. I won the cup with a young team still improving, and my captain refused to re-sign with me because "he didn't think the future of the team looked good". And then in free agency the team morale just drops for no reason. Another year I finished the year with 90 team morale, only didn't re-sign a 4th liner, and it plummeted in the off-season and made it was incredibly hard to sign any decent free agent because the "locker room was a mess".
The scouting also doesn't make much sense to me. NHL teams have a lot more than one scout who travels the world.
I'm not going to touch on modes like BAP and HUT since I never cared for them or played them much, but the modes that I do play just aren't very fun anymore. It doesn't help that fixes come out at an incredibly slow pace. A key defensive tool (stick lift) was completely broken and left untouched for a month, and insane deflections and rebound goals from turd shots from the point was left in for that same period of time as well.
As someone who played NHL 09-14 for 500+ hours every year, I have to say that this game is a massive disappointment. It's my first "next gen" console NHL game, and I heard that 15 and 16 were a lot worse, but this is still unacceptably bad...
The EASHL is a mess.
The servers are flat out TERRIBLE. It's insane how many times a player won't connect with the rest of his team to the player-type selection screen after finding an opponent. Club challenge is even worse, it seems like it has a success rate of 20% or lower (and this is a big problem for 6v6 leagues since OTP invite-only lobbies were removed...). Also, the ping listed in-game is either a flat out lie or there is some problem causing more lag than there should be. I'm a West coast player and when I play on West servers it's fine but I'll still get short lag spikes a couple of times per game, but on East servers it feels like I'm skating in quicksand and there are always a few very long lag spikes. My ping is never higher than 45 on East servers (aside from the few spikes), but in every other online game I've played I've never had nearly as many problems with a ping of 100+. 40+ ping in this game feels like 200 ping on most other online games.
As for gameplay itself, it just isn't very fun. It feels slow and super defensive, and most goals feel cheap and require little to no skill. Acceleration needs a boost, speed and agility might need a slight boost, poke checks need to be nerfed a bit (I'm saying this as a defenseman), one touch passing doesn't work most of the time, wrap-arounds need to be nerfed.
Now these are just my opinions and may not be the things that need to be fixed, but there is clearly something wrong when most people in these 6v6 leagues don't play this game unless they have scheduled games. It is having an impact on finding games in EASHL since there aren't nearly as many people playing anymore. Back in NHL 13/14 it was very easy to find people to play with, this year I'm spending an hour plus just trying to find people to play with and an additional 30+ minutes getting into our first game. It just flat out discourages me from playing anymore (aside from 6v6 league games).
As a side note, one thing I'd recommend is allowing people to own or be a GM of one club and join a 2nd club at the same time. If you want to play 6s with people you often have to club-hop, but with the new EASHL arena unlock system it makes it almost impossible to stay on one team to unlock stuff.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE BRING BACK OTP (INVITE-ONLY) LOBBIES. It has a huge impact on 6v6 leagues.
As for Be a GM/Franchise, a couple of things ruined it for me.
The team finance system is a joke. You get 10-25K bonuses for completing owner goals, but that doesn't even cover a fraction of the cost of upgrades, it doesn't make a dent. And sometimes the owner wants you to upgrade two things in one year but it's impossible to do unless you don't repair your facility and let it turn to ****.
I wish there was a way to completely remove the player morale system as well. I won the cup with a young team still improving, and my captain refused to re-sign with me because "he didn't think the future of the team looked good". And then in free agency the team morale just drops for no reason. Another year I finished the year with 90 team morale, only didn't re-sign a 4th liner, and it plummeted in the off-season and made it was incredibly hard to sign any decent free agent because the "locker room was a mess".
The scouting also doesn't make much sense to me. NHL teams have a lot more than one scout who travels the world.
I'm not going to touch on modes like BAP and HUT since I never cared for them or played them much, but the modes that I do play just aren't very fun anymore. It doesn't help that fixes come out at an incredibly slow pace. A key defensive tool (stick lift) was completely broken and left untouched for a month, and insane deflections and rebound goals from **** shots from the point was left in for that same period of time as well.
Given the title of this thread, I just want to get in a little representation for offline/franchise type of player seeing as there is a dev responding here. I know you EASHL guys have a lot of gripes and I'm not trying to get in your way or change the focus, but I consider myself a "long term fan" and I'm curious about the direction for franchise-mode.
I have to say, relative to past EAS NHL titles, full-sim/10 min periods in '17 is the best I've played. It took a little getting used to, but I've had some great games thus far. I was really surprised by the ebb and flow to the game. It really does, in a condensed manner, mimic a real game.
The gameplay supports the overall "length" of the game very well. I feel as if I'm doing the right amount of attacking and defending and it's just because I'm playing the game to win (as opposed to just playing and hoping the game will finish in the context of reality). My point is, by games end, win or lose, the game has simulated enough instances of real hockey that it's evoked my emotions, good and bad, proportionately. And given the "tuning" of the gameplay, 10 min periods allow enough hockey to be played for a storyline to develop and a sense of accomplishment with a winning outcome, and for lack of a better term, a sense of "well I had my chances" on the losing side .
Now, let me get to the gripes (in no particular order):
The A.I. - Learning to play with them is one thing. I mean, they have their tendencies/patterns and learning and adapting to them can only help. But there are just too many things that they've been doing for too long that I'm really growing too tired of...
What I call the "Neutral Zone Shuffle" really needs to be addressed. This is where the A.I. team has the puck in the Neutral Zone and does this silly dance until they can walk in. They don't dump the puck in, they don't regroup like even bantam and **** teams are taught to, they just twerk around until all my A.I. teammates have gathered at our blue line near the center and A LOT of space magically opens up on the wings for them. What's more, is that their very hard to get a body on at this point. It's been this way for a few iterations now. In '17 you can actually poke it away from them, but because all your teammates are discussing their plans for after the game (I think that's what there doing, I can't figure out why they've all gathered in one spot), the puck just goes to another opposing A.I. player and we "rinse and repeat".
If proper regrouping can't be accomplished then dumping should be the only real option left. There shouldn't be those kind of options in the Neutral zone with 5 defenders back. It just shouldn't happen, but it happens every game it's getting really tiresome.
"Where is he going?! Where the bleep is he going?!" This refers to A.I. players just wandering off, over skating simple plays, being behind offensive players for no reason. Some specific examples would include: weak side forward on a PK. Every time I take control of the puck side forward on a PK, my A.I. teammate always has to follow me and it's not that I've gone too far in a wrong direction. I'm within reach of the opposing forward on the boards and the point man, but here comes my teammate right to where I am. I don't get it. What's more, a 5-on-3 PK is even worse. They have no sense of what to do. To be fair though, PP units don't know how to set up a 5-on-3 either. Again, it's been around for too long, and it's really getting old.
More can be said of the A.I. (like how the all of sudden they just start ignoring passes), but let's move on.
Stats are good. Goals, shots, PP/PKs, all good. Hits are low when playing games. Not that we need more hitting, but it's seems a hit only counts if you destroy a player rather than remove him from the puck. This goes for both human and A.I teams.
If you play all or most of your games in a franchise/season mode, stats like hits and faceoffs aren't comparable to the rest of the league because simmed games are based on real life percentages and not within the parameters of the actual gameplay. I take 30 to 40 faceoffs per game and all other teams (through the sim engine) take 60 to 80, giving them what looks like very inflated numbers. Scaling appropriately needs to be implemented or just don't bother tallying those stats because there's no point to analyzing how you measure up to the rest of the league.
Player likeness... There's like seven players on my team that all look the same, and their not the Hanson brothers. I understand it's a difficult task to scan players, but the effort with generic faces is really killing the emersion. What's sad is, with the options available for generic faces, so much more "likeness" can be accomplished. We could use some more face types, but it isn't that bad. Through the create-a-player, I re-did the Islanders (just to see, because I can't edit player appearances) with generic faces and got some really good results. We need to be able to edit appearances for players with generic faces, because games like FIFA and the Show have been much better at this for a LONG time. If you don't have an intern capable of this, give me the data base and an editor and I'll do it for free. Gladly. This aspect has just been too bad for too long, and again it's wearing me down.
Some things for Franchise mode, like: how about giving us the ability to add pre existing injuries like they do in the Show. I mean the Show and other sports titles have a lot real life things you should be copying.
Overall, it's a good game. It has a lot of key things in place, but there's too many old problems that are to redundant and tiring. I mean, I really hate dealing with the Neutral Zone Shuffle and it's been around for too long.
So, as a "long term fan", I'd like to know where EA stands on Franchise type modes and if Full Sim, 10 min periods are going to be a standard and continue to be tuned and worked on within those parameters. Are this long standing issues fixable? Are they even issues on your end?
Love the conversation about NHL 12 for example, here is many old schooler complaint. NHL 09, 10, 11, and 12 the EASHL community and leagues were off the charts. It was never more fun to play this game back then. There was something so right with how the game played, it was just flat out fun to play!!! Since NHL 13 and the implementation of TPS (the birth of sim), ever since year by year the EASHL community has suffered greatly as fewer players from previous years came back, year by year they gave up on the game as EASHL just isn't as fun as it used to be. My question is you have to realize this, yes? That EASHL has lost it's flair/fun? The days of Kontenders, white knights, fearless, composure, ninth wonder, cross crease cheese, unbreakable cycle, reservoir dogs, and countless other top clubs and all their members played religiously day in day out all year round until the next years game came out, then repeat another year. Something happened at NHL 13, the game became less fun, (more real) but less fun.
What is EA's stance on bringing this fun back to EASHL??? Please don't tell me its gone forever and you aren't bringing it back, it was a noble attempt to redirect the game to a sim, but you lost the fun factor. I understand there are people who like the game as is, but I can tell you as someone who's played the 09/10,11,12 year games and kept playing 13,14,15,16,17 and I'm not telling you something you don' t already know, this game does not have the fan following it once had, not even close, it was a cult, addicted NHL EASHL players 4 to 6 hours a day/night, every day. This is not the case anymore, doesn't EA want that fan dedication back?
Please explain in terms of fun factor from old school to new school, thanks..
Yes, it is an interesting debate. It is easy to draw a line in the sand there as that is when the game changed the most. However, it is hard to say if EASHL for those particular teams was still building in popularity in 12 still and just fell off in 13 or if it had already declined. I mean, we can look at the telemetry and we do, but trying to just talk on a high level here.
When the game changes, it is going to appeal to different crowds in nature. However, the glory days of something can purely be when something is brand new as well. It is definitely our goal that all of our community likes the next game as much or more than the last as well as bringing in new players to the community. I remember a lot of complaints back then though that have been addressed in the changes made -- the grass can be greener looking back but I am not sure it isn't the changes in gameplay alone that necessarily lead to some players playing less games than they once did.
This isn't me passing the blame and saying it isn't gameplay since our main job here is to continue to make the game as great as we can and conversations and comments like this definitely get noticed.
As a side note though, you may even want to look at outside telemetry such as how many hours a week someone has for videogames over an 8 year span of their life. It may just be different teams these days that can put in the same hours as those original teams from NHL 09 and it could be that those teams spend more time on twitter and snapshot to communicate with each other than us old school guys do on forums. Kinda joking but there is some truth to it.
The bottom line, regardless of year is that fun is subjective. We see it within our game changer discussions in terms of what is important to work on next, how people would tune the player classes, etc.
trust us when we tell you, TPS hurt the game and the fan base. at the very least, it had alienated anyone who had somewhat mastered the 09-12 years. there was no motivation to keep playing since no one really asked for a new skating engine in the first place. personally, i just spend that time i used to dedicate for NHL on other games now like GTA or whatever new shooter is out.
Asking a Dev to "trust us" that the TPS is broken and useless is, in fact, useless. Proof is in the sales. I highly doubt they monitor online-user activity, but the clearest way for the Devs to see the game failing to sustain it's fan-base over the last eight-nine years is to look at the sale numbers.
Guaranteed there's been a HUGE drop in sales since the inception of the Next Gen consoles. Doesn't mean EA profits have dwindled because as far as I know HuT packs bring in a ton of profits.
i already brought up the sales point with either he or rammer over twitter. they know. that's why i suspect they're responding to us.
Just watch an NHL game and see all these players flying around, making quick cuts on their skates etc, quick acceleration... Then play NHL 17 to see and experience NONE of that.
Just watch an NHL game and see all these players flying around, making quick cuts on their skates etc, quick acceleration... Then play NHL 17 to see and experience NONE of that.
If you could play NHL 17 with the same camera angles and cuts that you see in an actual NHL game, I think you'd find the speed and action are virtually the same. In fact, I think the speed of the video game is a little TOO fast. But that's understandable given that the game is mostly meant to be played online and with accelerated periods.
Just watch an NHL game and see all these players flying around, making quick cuts on their skates etc, quick acceleration... Then play NHL 17 to see and experience NONE of that.
If you could play NHL 17 with the same camera angles and cuts that you see in an actual NHL game, I think you'd find the speed and action are virtually the same. In fact, I think the speed of the video game is a little TOO fast. But that's understandable given that the game is mostly meant to be played online and with accelerated periods.
there's nothing wrong with the speed of the players but speed/acceleration/agility are poorly implemented and not consistent.... mostly thanks to tps
about the only thing that is as fast as real play is skating straight ahead and even then only when it actually works (sometimes it's like you just stop skating and or skate but slow down significantly... usually when you deviate just a hair from straight away).
also any time you use the 45 cut then you are basically moving faster than NHL.
I swear it seems that sometimes all the tps/animation stuff makes you feel really fast and other times it's like you are swimming upstream. people that learn to exploit that system as much as possible have a huge agility and speed advantage (especially with the puck) over players that just fight against it trying to ride the stick all game forcefully trying to make their players go where they want.
The issue isn't the fact that the game changed and people had to relearn the skating aspect of it.
The issue was, and still is, control. The game FELT great to play in 'the glory days'. The issues that came with TPS were, and still are to this day, 100% about control and the way the game FEELS to play.
TPS makes the game FEEL clunky, and has since it was introduced. You can make the best game ever made but if it FEELS clunky you will alienate a lot of players.
This is the most important aspect of every single video game ever made. The control and the FEEL. NHL has FELT clunky/bad to play since TPS.
The clunky/bad feeling of control in this game is the #1 reason why people dislike it and are playing it less and less.
People don't need customization and all that jazz in EASHL, although it is great can't argue that. EASHL could be the most basic and bare bones mode and people would play it all year if the CONTROL and FEEL of the game was good again.
Look at a game like rocket league. Super simple, super high skill ceiling, and it FEELS great to play. Imagine if you had to constantly tap LT in order to orient your car in the direction you want, and it would still sometimes spin out of control. That is what NHL is like since TPS.
Make NHL FEEL great to skate and control your player again and 95% of the remaining issues become minor annoyances that you can chip away at in the coming years.
This sums up why most people are quitting the game, couldn't of really said it better myself.
Without a doubt this is 100% the biggest issue with NHL since TPS.
Imagine rocket league FELT like your car had a flat tire or you were driving on a rim the whole time, even though you weren't.. It would not be a successful game.
This is what NHL is like since TPS. It simply doesn't FEEL good to play. Solve this issue of FEEL and control and you instantly have a good game again.
To me, it really comes down to abandoning this push for super-realism in every possible scenario. I feel like I'm playing a flight simulator sometimes because of all the nuances in the game that will bite you in the **** if you aren't paying attention to every single one. Sometimes I feel like I need more coordination to play this than I do to play in real life.
"players that just fight against it trying to ride the stick all game forcefully trying to make their players go where they want."
That's the problem right there, its not possible to not ride the stick, everyone is guilty of this and it's the cause of being non responsive. Its a game with 6" tall characters on a tv screen, there is no first person perspective as in real life where you can calculate in 3,2,1 I'm going to do this as the defender/puck carrier approaches, on the tv screen there is no good special awareness thus run into jamming the stick to react but your player doesn't do what you tell it to do.
Its a video game! games should be fun, you should have control, it should be responsive.
Sure I can glide and use slight movements all game, but its slow, its boring, and still isn't full proof. Hockey games have always been fast paced riding the stick, read and react. TPS has taken our ability to react away, we can read but momentum takes you right into trouble even if you see it coming, the mechanics just take too long to react.
This is not rocket science here, there are players who like this slow frustrating grind sim style, but there are just as many if not more who are stressed and frustrated that their once favorite game is no longer fun to play.
EA would not regret putting out an EASHL only game mode based on old mechanics (remake of NHL 11 for example). Please consider this!!!!
I really think, at this point, Ben... You should ask EA to consider making different EASHL lobbies. One for casuals with arcade settings so they can have their super responsive, super slide, dangle fest of a hockey game like they had in NHL 09. One lobby that stays as is for those "in between". And One lobby for hardcore hockey fans with everything pumped up to maximum sim.
And before we bring out "but we don't want to segregate the user-base", let me just point out that 10 000 users = 3500 Casuals + 3500 "Hybrids" + 3000 Harcores = 10 000 users. And people will have a lot more fun playing in smaller groups of like-minded users.
I really think, at this point, Ben... You should ask EA to consider making different EASHL lobbies. One for casuals with arcade settings so they can have their super responsive, super slide, dangle fest of a hockey game like they had in NHL 09. One lobby that stays as is for those "in between". And One lobby for hardcore hockey fans with everything pumped up to maximum sim.
And before we bring out "but we don't want to segregate the user-base", let me just point out that 10 000 users = 3500 Casuals + 3500 "Hybrids" + 3000 Harcores = 10 000 users. And people will have a lot more fun playing in smaller groups of like-minded users.
this is completely inaccurate. just go to LG and see how the most hardcore players feel about the game. Nuge is literally the only one who likes it and thinks it's fine. Every top pro series team is quitting after this season. I'm talking like the top 15-20 players on the planet.
The EASHL is a mess.
The servers are flat out TERRIBLE. It's insane how many times a player won't connect with the rest of his team to the player-type selection screen after finding an opponent. Club challenge is even worse, it seems like it has a success rate of 20% or lower (and this is a big problem for 6v6 leagues since OTP invite-only lobbies were removed...). Also, the ping listed in-game is either a flat out lie or there is some problem causing more lag than there should be. I'm a West coast player and when I play on West servers it's fine but I'll still get short lag spikes a couple of times per game, but on East servers it feels like I'm skating in quicksand and there are always a few very long lag spikes. My ping is never higher than 45 on East servers (aside from the few spikes), but in every other online game I've played I've never had nearly as many problems with a ping of 100+. 40+ ping in this game feels like 200 ping on most other online games.
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This is my experience as well, being on the West Coast. A 45 ping feels more like 150, which would make sense because when I just pibg to random places on the east and Canada my ping is 125+.
I think the amount of calculations and precision that the skating engine takes to skate well is not online friendly at all, with any kind of minor internet hiccups. I never play offline, but I remember playing nhl 13 in an offline mode real quick, and I was really happy with the skating engine. It felt awesome......then I went online and it was flat out terrible, and my player was clunky, slow, and turned like a aircraft carrier. I could not believe the difference between the skating online and off. I just don't think the tps skating translated well over the internet.
IMO the game has lost a ton of it's fun factor, with the tps skating, the amount of canned animations, inputs that never register a button press, and all the auto things your player does that you cannot control, nor requested him to do. This game needs an organic feel to it, and it doesn't have that at all. I thought new gen consoles would bring this type of gameplay, especially after they skipped 14.
I understand that you have to sell games, and the best way to do that is to try and appeal to the masses, a little give and take so everyone can get some level of enjoyment out of it, no matter what your definition of "fun" is. I get that, I really do.....however, imo, eashl should have been something else. It's a competitive online mode that shouldn't have any automated reactions, it shouldn't have any RNG that effects the game such as a players stick breaking while taking a slapshot.
While sticks breaking is surely authentic and realistic to the sport of hockey and should be included in offline modes, this should never happen in a eashl game (or I guess vs/hut either although I do not play those modes). Until a stick breaking during a uncontested shot is the direct result of user error something like this should have been removed long ago. One of the reasons this game is losing it's fun factor is because things like this have been plaguing the game for years, holding it back from giving the game an organic feel where you have control over the outcomes of the game.
The AI is another factor in eashl which has held the fun feel of the game back for years! Since playing this game from 09 until now, I do not no a single person or any team in eashl history that would prefer playing against less humans than as many as they have or more. A team of 1 skater and a G should get destroyed by any average team of 6 humans. This is the whole reason you had to even put match room size as an option to begin with. It's not because teams didn't want to play just because there weren't as many humans, they didn't want to play because they felt a team with more AI held an unfair advantage.
I could go on forever about the feel and balance of the game, it's the main reasons I wanted to be a game changer. I could make this game fun again. I would love to help the devs on a private level if they ever wanted to have a discussion with me about the game.
I just don't understand why they don't release a realistic tuner for online game play. Or even more arcade. Anything different. They're clearly aggravating the most of us. I don't know why as a company they're waiting until we stop playing to finally make a change.
I know, I talk to them regularly when I hang around their streams!
JERZ is the most vocal of the bunch about it, and many, like him, think that EASHL is "boring" because (and I quote) you can't be as "individualistic" as you used to. Now I like JERZ. I think he's a great HUT player. In fact, he wants to quit LGHL and dedictate himself to LGUHL starting next season. Guess why?
I played with JERZ in club. And he was getting mad at me because when I made a save and I would see players from the opposing team would swarm around me, I'd freeze it for a face off. He wanted me to pass it out, regardless, because (and I quote again) "it makes the game boring and take too long"... I mean, that's fine if he feels that way. That's the way he likes to play. I don't.
I wouldn't put too much stock into what the "top 15-20 NHL 17 players on the planet" say when there's about 4000 player base on each console (Xbox One and PS4) on LGHL.
Games just not as fun as it used to be. Too much randomness, not enough customization, not competitive cause of the bounces, nothing to play for etc. been playing NHL religiously since NHL 09 and this will be the last year I waste any money on this franchise. Disappointed year after year. NHL 09 and 10 were the peak for this franchise, 11-13 were still fun but the last few were not.
And with EA to continue to ignore the e sports revolution and still not offer and end of the year club tournament is mind boggling. Although with the current state of the game I somewhat understand. But bringing that back would def up the competitiveness and help in bringing back a lot of the competitive players they alienated.
Given the title of this thread, I just want to get in a little representation for offline/franchise type of player seeing as there is a dev responding here. I know you EASHL guys have a lot of gripes and I'm not trying to get in your way or change the focus, but I consider myself a "long term fan" and I'm curious about the direction for franchise-mode.
I have to say, relative to past EAS NHL titles, full-sim/10 min periods in '17 is the best I've played. It took a little getting used to, but I've had some great games thus far. I was really surprised by the ebb and flow to the game. It really does, in a condensed manner, mimic a real game.
The gameplay supports the overall "length" of the game very well. I feel as if I'm doing the right amount of attacking and defending and it's just because I'm playing the game to win (as opposed to just playing and hoping the game will finish in the context of reality). My point is, by games end, win or lose, the game has simulated enough instances of real hockey that it's evoked my emotions, good and bad, proportionately. And given the "tuning" of the gameplay, 10 min periods allow enough hockey to be played for a storyline to develop and a sense of accomplishment with a winning outcome, and for lack of a better term, a sense of "well I had my chances" on the losing side .
Now, let me get to the gripes (in no particular order):
The A.I. - Learning to play with them is one thing. I mean, they have their tendencies/patterns and learning and adapting to them can only help. But there are just too many things that they've been doing for too long that I'm really growing too tired of...
What I call the "Neutral Zone Shuffle" really needs to be addressed. This is where the A.I. team has the puck in the Neutral Zone and does this silly dance until they can walk in. They don't dump the puck in, they don't regroup like even bantam and **** teams are taught to, they just twerk around until all my A.I. teammates have gathered at our blue line near the center and A LOT of space magically opens up on the wings for them. What's more, is that their very hard to get a body on at this point. It's been this way for a few iterations now. In '17 you can actually poke it away from them, but because all your teammates are discussing their plans for after the game (I think that's what there doing, I can't figure out why they've all gathered in one spot), the puck just goes to another opposing A.I. player and we "rinse and repeat".
If proper regrouping can't be accomplished then dumping should be the only real option left. There shouldn't be those kind of options in the Neutral zone with 5 defenders back. It just shouldn't happen, but it happens every game it's getting really tiresome.
"Where is he going?! Where the bleep is he going?!" This refers to A.I. players just wandering off, over skating simple plays, being behind offensive players for no reason. Some specific examples would include: weak side forward on a PK. Every time I take control of the puck side forward on a PK, my A.I. teammate always has to follow me and it's not that I've gone too far in a wrong direction. I'm within reach of the opposing forward on the boards and the point man, but here comes my teammate right to where I am. I don't get it. What's more, a 5-on-3 PK is even worse. They have no sense of what to do. To be fair though, PP units don't know how to set up a 5-on-3 either. Again, it's been around for too long, and it's really getting old.
More can be said of the A.I. (like how the all of sudden they just start ignoring passes), but let's move on.
Stats are good. Goals, shots, PP/PKs, all good. Hits are low when playing games. Not that we need more hitting, but it's seems a hit only counts if you destroy a player rather than remove him from the puck. This goes for both human and A.I teams.
If you play all or most of your games in a franchise/season mode, stats like hits and faceoffs aren't comparable to the rest of the league because simmed games are based on real life percentages and not within the parameters of the actual gameplay. I take 30 to 40 faceoffs per game and all other teams (through the sim engine) take 60 to 80, giving them what looks like very inflated numbers. Scaling appropriately needs to be implemented or just don't bother tallying those stats because there's no point to analyzing how you measure up to the rest of the league.
Player likeness... There's like seven players on my team that all look the same, and their not the Hanson brothers. I understand it's a difficult task to scan players, but the effort with generic faces is really killing the emersion. What's sad is, with the options available for generic faces, so much more "likeness" can be accomplished. We could use some more face types, but it isn't that bad. Through the create-a-player, I re-did the Islanders (just to see, because I can't edit player appearances) with generic faces and got some really good results. We need to be able to edit appearances for players with generic faces, because games like FIFA and the Show have been much better at this for a LONG time. If you don't have an intern capable of this, give me the data base and an editor and I'll do it for free. Gladly. This aspect has just been too bad for too long, and again it's wearing me down.
Some things for Franchise mode, like: how about giving us the ability to add pre existing injuries like they do in the Show. I mean the Show and other sports titles have a lot real life things you should be copying.
Overall, it's a good game. It has a lot of key things in place, but there's too many old problems that are to redundant and tiring. I mean, I really hate dealing with the Neutral Zone Shuffle and it's been around for too long.
So, as a "long term fan", I'd like to know where EA stands on Franchise type modes and if Full Sim, 10 min periods are going to be a standard and continue to be tuned and worked on within those parameters. Are this long standing issues fixable? Are they even issues on your end?
Appreciate the unique perspective. This board is definitely more heavily weighted to that of the EASHL community. We see a similar view as yours more commonly on the Operation Sports forums. At the end of the day, that is one of the hardest parts of the job. The one thing that connects us all is an interest in hockey but what a hockey videogame should be, is different for all of us since different factors are used to quantify success.
The addition of presets and the gameplay slider work we did was an attempt to be able to reach more styles of hockey that people are after. As has been mentioned in this thread, we have talked about offering those different experiences for online play -- one of the things I liked about GM Connected was the ability for people to play on any of the game styles we had tuned -- I would like to see that taken even further where people could share Custom Presets to play online with. The changes open up some doors for us to possibly go that way.
All that said, when we worked with the Gamechanger group, we wanted to expand the group to better represent more styles of play. We added a goalie to the group, a full sim fan, some core HUT players, etc. to expand to the group of core EASHL players that we have and even there we expanded our EASHL representation to even more of the core league members. On top of that, we also do a lot of consumer insight testing and User Research sessions/play tests to get both veteran and new users in to play our different modes, give feedback on paper prototypes/feature ideas, etc.
We take those perspectives into account as we are deciding on the feature set, developing the game and looking at tuning/patches for the game.
At some point, we need to make tough calls and pick a direction but ultimately, we are aware of what all the different groups would like to see from the product when we make those calls.
Many of the things you have called out have been discussed. Speaking specifically of Gameplay, the AI issues are something of specific interest but they are also some of the toughest things to get right -- realistic human hockey players.
Hellspawn said it all above. Way too long to read all of it but I'm sure I agree with general theme.
And please stop mentioning how many people there are in this game. 95% of this game's user base are horrible at online play and it doesn't matter how the game plays because it makes no difference to them. Most of the "better" gamers over the years all agree with most of what hellspawn said above.
Here's what really sucks... This game played 10x better in beta. Still full of issues but way better than right now. Oh well.
By the way since beta I've been consistently at 10-12ms unless some West coaster is bringing the game down. For almost a week its been consistently 18-20 ms no matter what I do. And there has been an impact.. Passes are slightly less accurate at times, occasionally one timers don't fire, etc. And believe me I know what I'm talking about it's not my network and all my friends are saying their ping response has jumped this week. It's **** like this that frustrates the hell out of you. Everyone I know that had been active players in this game user to average a good 5 hours a night and out of the ones that still play I would say they all play less then half of that. It's just not nearly as much fun game anymore. Most of it is all the little **** that just doesn't work right or is flat out broke.
Oh yeah network has definitely been awful this week. Never used to see the "poor" quality. Then I set up my wired connection to combat it. Still get poor connections so I know it's not my Internet. Getting 45mb and 4.5mb. Should never have lag on that. Yet I've been pulling over 100ms lag with 0 packet loss sometimes playing in net
If you could play NHL 17 with the same camera angles and cuts that you see in an actual NHL game, I think you'd find the speed and action are virtually the same. In fact, I think the speed of the video game is a little TOO fast. But that's understandable given that the game is mostly meant to be played online and with accelerated periods.
You must just be talking about skating speed (which I feel the top end speed is fine). What needs a boost is passing/shooting speed. NHLers can easily wrist a puck from their own end and hit the glass behind the oppositions net. I don't even know if it's possible to make it to centre ice from your own goal line with a wrister in this game. Ringing it around the boards with a slap shot is also quite noticeably weaker in the video game.
As for TPS, I agree it has made the gameplay feel less fun but I think there is a way to keep it and have more control of your skater. EA needs to add advanced controls so players who choose to use them, can have more control over their skater. Imagine holding a modifier so you can use your RS to pivot however you choose. Advanced controls could also help with manually be able to hold the blue line, manually knocking/grabbing a puck out of the air etc...
Replies
The EASHL is a mess.
The servers are flat out TERRIBLE. It's insane how many times a player won't connect with the rest of his team to the player-type selection screen after finding an opponent. Club challenge is even worse, it seems like it has a success rate of 20% or lower (and this is a big problem for 6v6 leagues since OTP invite-only lobbies were removed...). Also, the ping listed in-game is either a flat out lie or there is some problem causing more lag than there should be. I'm a West coast player and when I play on West servers it's fine but I'll still get short lag spikes a couple of times per game, but on East servers it feels like I'm skating in quicksand and there are always a few very long lag spikes. My ping is never higher than 45 on East servers (aside from the few spikes), but in every other online game I've played I've never had nearly as many problems with a ping of 100+. 40+ ping in this game feels like 200 ping on most other online games.
As for gameplay itself, it just isn't very fun. It feels slow and super defensive, and most goals feel cheap and require little to no skill. Acceleration needs a boost, speed and agility might need a slight boost, poke checks need to be nerfed a bit (I'm saying this as a defenseman), one touch passing doesn't work most of the time, wrap-arounds need to be nerfed.
Now these are just my opinions and may not be the things that need to be fixed, but there is clearly something wrong when most people in these 6v6 leagues don't play this game unless they have scheduled games. It is having an impact on finding games in EASHL since there aren't nearly as many people playing anymore. Back in NHL 13/14 it was very easy to find people to play with, this year I'm spending an hour plus just trying to find people to play with and an additional 30+ minutes getting into our first game. It just flat out discourages me from playing anymore (aside from 6v6 league games).
As a side note, one thing I'd recommend is allowing people to own or be a GM of one club and join a 2nd club at the same time. If you want to play 6s with people you often have to club-hop, but with the new EASHL arena unlock system it makes it almost impossible to stay on one team to unlock stuff.
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE BRING BACK OTP (INVITE-ONLY) LOBBIES. It has a huge impact on 6v6 leagues.
As for Be a GM/Franchise, a couple of things ruined it for me.
The team finance system is a joke. You get 10-25K bonuses for completing owner goals, but that doesn't even cover a fraction of the cost of upgrades, it doesn't make a dent. And sometimes the owner wants you to upgrade two things in one year but it's impossible to do unless you don't repair your facility and let it turn to ****.
I wish there was a way to completely remove the player morale system as well. I won the cup with a young team still improving, and my captain refused to re-sign with me because "he didn't think the future of the team looked good". And then in free agency the team morale just drops for no reason. Another year I finished the year with 90 team morale, only didn't re-sign a 4th liner, and it plummeted in the off-season and made it was incredibly hard to sign any decent free agent because the "locker room was a mess".
The scouting also doesn't make much sense to me. NHL teams have a lot more than one scout who travels the world.
I'm not going to touch on modes like BAP and HUT since I never cared for them or played them much, but the modes that I do play just aren't very fun anymore. It doesn't help that fixes come out at an incredibly slow pace. A key defensive tool (stick lift) was completely broken and left untouched for a month, and insane deflections and rebound goals from turd shots from the point was left in for that same period of time as well.
Nah, a lot of players feel this way.
Nice post
I have to say, relative to past EAS NHL titles, full-sim/10 min periods in '17 is the best I've played. It took a little getting used to, but I've had some great games thus far. I was really surprised by the ebb and flow to the game. It really does, in a condensed manner, mimic a real game.
The gameplay supports the overall "length" of the game very well. I feel as if I'm doing the right amount of attacking and defending and it's just because I'm playing the game to win (as opposed to just playing and hoping the game will finish in the context of reality). My point is, by games end, win or lose, the game has simulated enough instances of real hockey that it's evoked my emotions, good and bad, proportionately. And given the "tuning" of the gameplay, 10 min periods allow enough hockey to be played for a storyline to develop and a sense of accomplishment with a winning outcome, and for lack of a better term, a sense of "well I had my chances" on the losing side .
Now, let me get to the gripes (in no particular order):
The A.I. - Learning to play with them is one thing. I mean, they have their tendencies/patterns and learning and adapting to them can only help. But there are just too many things that they've been doing for too long that I'm really growing too tired of...
What I call the "Neutral Zone Shuffle" really needs to be addressed. This is where the A.I. team has the puck in the Neutral Zone and does this silly dance until they can walk in. They don't dump the puck in, they don't regroup like even bantam and **** teams are taught to, they just twerk around until all my A.I. teammates have gathered at our blue line near the center and A LOT of space magically opens up on the wings for them. What's more, is that their very hard to get a body on at this point. It's been this way for a few iterations now. In '17 you can actually poke it away from them, but because all your teammates are discussing their plans for after the game (I think that's what there doing, I can't figure out why they've all gathered in one spot), the puck just goes to another opposing A.I. player and we "rinse and repeat".
If proper regrouping can't be accomplished then dumping should be the only real option left. There shouldn't be those kind of options in the Neutral zone with 5 defenders back. It just shouldn't happen, but it happens every game it's getting really tiresome.
"Where is he going?! Where the bleep is he going?!" This refers to A.I. players just wandering off, over skating simple plays, being behind offensive players for no reason. Some specific examples would include: weak side forward on a PK. Every time I take control of the puck side forward on a PK, my A.I. teammate always has to follow me and it's not that I've gone too far in a wrong direction. I'm within reach of the opposing forward on the boards and the point man, but here comes my teammate right to where I am. I don't get it. What's more, a 5-on-3 PK is even worse. They have no sense of what to do. To be fair though, PP units don't know how to set up a 5-on-3 either. Again, it's been around for too long, and it's really getting old.
More can be said of the A.I. (like how the all of sudden they just start ignoring passes), but let's move on.
Stats are good. Goals, shots, PP/PKs, all good. Hits are low when playing games. Not that we need more hitting, but it's seems a hit only counts if you destroy a player rather than remove him from the puck. This goes for both human and A.I teams.
If you play all or most of your games in a franchise/season mode, stats like hits and faceoffs aren't comparable to the rest of the league because simmed games are based on real life percentages and not within the parameters of the actual gameplay. I take 30 to 40 faceoffs per game and all other teams (through the sim engine) take 60 to 80, giving them what looks like very inflated numbers. Scaling appropriately needs to be implemented or just don't bother tallying those stats because there's no point to analyzing how you measure up to the rest of the league.
Player likeness... There's like seven players on my team that all look the same, and their not the Hanson brothers. I understand it's a difficult task to scan players, but the effort with generic faces is really killing the emersion. What's sad is, with the options available for generic faces, so much more "likeness" can be accomplished. We could use some more face types, but it isn't that bad. Through the create-a-player, I re-did the Islanders (just to see, because I can't edit player appearances) with generic faces and got some really good results. We need to be able to edit appearances for players with generic faces, because games like FIFA and the Show have been much better at this for a LONG time. If you don't have an intern capable of this, give me the data base and an editor and I'll do it for free. Gladly. This aspect has just been too bad for too long, and again it's wearing me down.
Some things for Franchise mode, like: how about giving us the ability to add pre existing injuries like they do in the Show. I mean the Show and other sports titles have a lot real life things you should be copying.
Overall, it's a good game. It has a lot of key things in place, but there's too many old problems that are to redundant and tiring. I mean, I really hate dealing with the Neutral Zone Shuffle and it's been around for too long.
So, as a "long term fan", I'd like to know where EA stands on Franchise type modes and if Full Sim, 10 min periods are going to be a standard and continue to be tuned and worked on within those parameters. Are this long standing issues fixable? Are they even issues on your end?
i already brought up the sales point with either he or rammer over twitter. they know. that's why i suspect they're responding to us.
Just watch an NHL game and see all these players flying around, making quick cuts on their skates etc, quick acceleration... Then play NHL 17 to see and experience NONE of that.
If you could play NHL 17 with the same camera angles and cuts that you see in an actual NHL game, I think you'd find the speed and action are virtually the same. In fact, I think the speed of the video game is a little TOO fast. But that's understandable given that the game is mostly meant to be played online and with accelerated periods.
Agreed.
about the only thing that is as fast as real play is skating straight ahead and even then only when it actually works (sometimes it's like you just stop skating and or skate but slow down significantly... usually when you deviate just a hair from straight away).
also any time you use the 45 cut then you are basically moving faster than NHL.
I swear it seems that sometimes all the tps/animation stuff makes you feel really fast and other times it's like you are swimming upstream. people that learn to exploit that system as much as possible have a huge agility and speed advantage (especially with the puck) over players that just fight against it trying to ride the stick all game forcefully trying to make their players go where they want.
To me, it really comes down to abandoning this push for super-realism in every possible scenario. I feel like I'm playing a flight simulator sometimes because of all the nuances in the game that will bite you in the **** if you aren't paying attention to every single one. Sometimes I feel like I need more coordination to play this than I do to play in real life.
That's the problem right there, its not possible to not ride the stick, everyone is guilty of this and it's the cause of being non responsive. Its a game with 6" tall characters on a tv screen, there is no first person perspective as in real life where you can calculate in 3,2,1 I'm going to do this as the defender/puck carrier approaches, on the tv screen there is no good special awareness thus run into jamming the stick to react but your player doesn't do what you tell it to do.
Its a video game! games should be fun, you should have control, it should be responsive.
Sure I can glide and use slight movements all game, but its slow, its boring, and still isn't full proof. Hockey games have always been fast paced riding the stick, read and react. TPS has taken our ability to react away, we can read but momentum takes you right into trouble even if you see it coming, the mechanics just take too long to react.
This is not rocket science here, there are players who like this slow frustrating grind sim style, but there are just as many if not more who are stressed and frustrated that their once favorite game is no longer fun to play.
EA would not regret putting out an EASHL only game mode based on old mechanics (remake of NHL 11 for example). Please consider this!!!!
And before we bring out "but we don't want to segregate the user-base", let me just point out that 10 000 users = 3500 Casuals + 3500 "Hybrids" + 3000 Harcores = 10 000 users. And people will have a lot more fun playing in smaller groups of like-minded users.
this is completely inaccurate. just go to LG and see how the most hardcore players feel about the game. Nuge is literally the only one who likes it and thinks it's fine. Every top pro series team is quitting after this season. I'm talking like the top 15-20 players on the planet.
The EASHL is a mess.
The servers are flat out TERRIBLE. It's insane how many times a player won't connect with the rest of his team to the player-type selection screen after finding an opponent. Club challenge is even worse, it seems like it has a success rate of 20% or lower (and this is a big problem for 6v6 leagues since OTP invite-only lobbies were removed...). Also, the ping listed in-game is either a flat out lie or there is some problem causing more lag than there should be. I'm a West coast player and when I play on West servers it's fine but I'll still get short lag spikes a couple of times per game, but on East servers it feels like I'm skating in quicksand and there are always a few very long lag spikes. My ping is never higher than 45 on East servers (aside from the few spikes), but in every other online game I've played I've never had nearly as many problems with a ping of 100+. 40+ ping in this game feels like 200 ping on most other online games.
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This is my experience as well, being on the West Coast. A 45 ping feels more like 150, which would make sense because when I just pibg to random places on the east and Canada my ping is 125+.
I think the amount of calculations and precision that the skating engine takes to skate well is not online friendly at all, with any kind of minor internet hiccups. I never play offline, but I remember playing nhl 13 in an offline mode real quick, and I was really happy with the skating engine. It felt awesome......then I went online and it was flat out terrible, and my player was clunky, slow, and turned like a aircraft carrier. I could not believe the difference between the skating online and off. I just don't think the tps skating translated well over the internet.
IMO the game has lost a ton of it's fun factor, with the tps skating, the amount of canned animations, inputs that never register a button press, and all the auto things your player does that you cannot control, nor requested him to do. This game needs an organic feel to it, and it doesn't have that at all. I thought new gen consoles would bring this type of gameplay, especially after they skipped 14.
I understand that you have to sell games, and the best way to do that is to try and appeal to the masses, a little give and take so everyone can get some level of enjoyment out of it, no matter what your definition of "fun" is. I get that, I really do.....however, imo, eashl should have been something else. It's a competitive online mode that shouldn't have any automated reactions, it shouldn't have any RNG that effects the game such as a players stick breaking while taking a slapshot.
While sticks breaking is surely authentic and realistic to the sport of hockey and should be included in offline modes, this should never happen in a eashl game (or I guess vs/hut either although I do not play those modes). Until a stick breaking during a uncontested shot is the direct result of user error something like this should have been removed long ago. One of the reasons this game is losing it's fun factor is because things like this have been plaguing the game for years, holding it back from giving the game an organic feel where you have control over the outcomes of the game.
The AI is another factor in eashl which has held the fun feel of the game back for years! Since playing this game from 09 until now, I do not no a single person or any team in eashl history that would prefer playing against less humans than as many as they have or more. A team of 1 skater and a G should get destroyed by any average team of 6 humans. This is the whole reason you had to even put match room size as an option to begin with. It's not because teams didn't want to play just because there weren't as many humans, they didn't want to play because they felt a team with more AI held an unfair advantage.
I could go on forever about the feel and balance of the game, it's the main reasons I wanted to be a game changer. I could make this game fun again. I would love to help the devs on a private level if they ever wanted to have a discussion with me about the game.
JERZ is the most vocal of the bunch about it, and many, like him, think that EASHL is "boring" because (and I quote) you can't be as "individualistic" as you used to. Now I like JERZ. I think he's a great HUT player. In fact, he wants to quit LGHL and dedictate himself to LGUHL starting next season. Guess why?
I played with JERZ in club. And he was getting mad at me because when I made a save and I would see players from the opposing team would swarm around me, I'd freeze it for a face off. He wanted me to pass it out, regardless, because (and I quote again) "it makes the game boring and take too long"... I mean, that's fine if he feels that way. That's the way he likes to play. I don't.
I wouldn't put too much stock into what the "top 15-20 NHL 17 players on the planet" say when there's about 4000 player base on each console (Xbox One and PS4) on LGHL.
And with EA to continue to ignore the e sports revolution and still not offer and end of the year club tournament is mind boggling. Although with the current state of the game I somewhat understand. But bringing that back would def up the competitiveness and help in bringing back a lot of the competitive players they alienated.
Appreciate the unique perspective. This board is definitely more heavily weighted to that of the EASHL community. We see a similar view as yours more commonly on the Operation Sports forums. At the end of the day, that is one of the hardest parts of the job. The one thing that connects us all is an interest in hockey but what a hockey videogame should be, is different for all of us since different factors are used to quantify success.
The addition of presets and the gameplay slider work we did was an attempt to be able to reach more styles of hockey that people are after. As has been mentioned in this thread, we have talked about offering those different experiences for online play -- one of the things I liked about GM Connected was the ability for people to play on any of the game styles we had tuned -- I would like to see that taken even further where people could share Custom Presets to play online with. The changes open up some doors for us to possibly go that way.
All that said, when we worked with the Gamechanger group, we wanted to expand the group to better represent more styles of play. We added a goalie to the group, a full sim fan, some core HUT players, etc. to expand to the group of core EASHL players that we have and even there we expanded our EASHL representation to even more of the core league members. On top of that, we also do a lot of consumer insight testing and User Research sessions/play tests to get both veteran and new users in to play our different modes, give feedback on paper prototypes/feature ideas, etc.
We take those perspectives into account as we are deciding on the feature set, developing the game and looking at tuning/patches for the game.
At some point, we need to make tough calls and pick a direction but ultimately, we are aware of what all the different groups would like to see from the product when we make those calls.
Many of the things you have called out have been discussed. Speaking specifically of Gameplay, the AI issues are something of specific interest but they are also some of the toughest things to get right -- realistic human hockey players.
And please stop mentioning how many people there are in this game. 95% of this game's user base are horrible at online play and it doesn't matter how the game plays because it makes no difference to them. Most of the "better" gamers over the years all agree with most of what hellspawn said above.
Here's what really sucks... This game played 10x better in beta. Still full of issues but way better than right now. Oh well.
By the way since beta I've been consistently at 10-12ms unless some West coaster is bringing the game down. For almost a week its been consistently 18-20 ms no matter what I do. And there has been an impact.. Passes are slightly less accurate at times, occasionally one timers don't fire, etc. And believe me I know what I'm talking about it's not my network and all my friends are saying their ping response has jumped this week. It's **** like this that frustrates the hell out of you. Everyone I know that had been active players in this game user to average a good 5 hours a night and out of the ones that still play I would say they all play less then half of that. It's just not nearly as much fun game anymore. Most of it is all the little **** that just doesn't work right or is flat out broke.
You must just be talking about skating speed (which I feel the top end speed is fine). What needs a boost is passing/shooting speed. NHLers can easily wrist a puck from their own end and hit the glass behind the oppositions net. I don't even know if it's possible to make it to centre ice from your own goal line with a wrister in this game. Ringing it around the boards with a slap shot is also quite noticeably weaker in the video game.
As for TPS, I agree it has made the gameplay feel less fun but I think there is a way to keep it and have more control of your skater. EA needs to add advanced controls so players who choose to use them, can have more control over their skater. Imagine holding a modifier so you can use your RS to pivot however you choose. Advanced controls could also help with manually be able to hold the blue line, manually knocking/grabbing a puck out of the air etc...