One thing I miss is the skill difference between players in the old gen game.
You could almost instantly tell who was good in a game, even random drop in games, just by the way they moved about, deked, held onto the puck, etc. Individual player skill stood out.
In the new gen game almost everybody looks and moves exactly the same, good player or bad. Player skill just doesn't stand out remotely close to what it used to.. Another reason why this game just isn't as fun or engaging anymore. It's just super bland.
One thing I miss is the skill difference between players in the old gen game.
You could almost instantly tell who was good in a game, even random drop in games, just by the way they moved about, deked, held onto the puck, etc. Individual player skill stood out.
In the new gen game almost everybody looks and moves exactly the same, good player or bad. Player skill just doesn't stand out remotely close to what it used to.. Another reason why this game just isn't as fun or engaging anymore. It's just super bland.
yeah it's simple:
1. very bland
2. handles like a two wheeled shopping cart.
One thing I miss is the skill difference between players in the old gen game.
You could almost instantly tell who was good in a game, even random drop in games, just by the way they moved about, deked, held onto the puck, etc. Individual player skill stood out.
In the new gen game almost everybody looks and moves exactly the same, good player or bad. Player skill just doesn't stand out remotely close to what it used to.. Another reason why this game just isn't as fun or engaging anymore. It's just super bland.
yeah it's simple:
1. very bland
2. handles like a two wheeled shopping cart.
"We have had countless threads discussing the issues with the skating and it hasn't been addressed in how many years now?"
I don't disagree with that, however the voices have never been as loud or as many as now about this topic of "anti TPS", that is progress, that is a movement, that is what we need to inspire EA to finally listen and do something about it.
NHL DEV said they can tune TPS, why not tune it all the way down to remove as much weight/momentum as possible and let us play like that for one month and get feedback how everyone either enjoyed it or didn't, then go from there.
Tuning TPS for a period of time probably isn't a bad idea, but for people like me it will be tough to test, since we refuse to buy anymore versions of the game until it is fixed. We'll have to rely on updates from people that actually want the game to work properly again that bought the game this year.
I agree, just tune down/out TPS for a few weeks and see what the feedback is like. The game is already a ghost town anyways so it's not like you're going to hurt the game at all.
I used to think TPS was better than the old skating, more realistic and all that. These days I can only agree with this thread. Playing defense, I do quite well but it's a constant battle against the mechanics of the skating engine. The way I see it, the battle should be against the opponent. That's what I'd prefer to focus on instead of whether my player responds the way I want him to.
There are quite a wide range of suggestions and ideas within the thread and other threads that branch into this topic. Some just want the control back they had in past games by switching systems, others want more control within TPS, and there are a lot of ideas on how that can be achieved.
I understand all of the angles. I understand there are multiple factors that lead to different individuals fun factor within a game but the extreme comments don't necessarily make a better point.
When we put out the Beta this year, it was an opportunity for everyone to play the game. Nowhere in the Beta did it show signs that we were changing our core skating engine, so we haven't been trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes in this process.
In the old engine, there was never a sense of committing. That is a huge factor in hockey. Once you commit to a direction, you can't just turn back the other way without some form of recovery, pivot and transition. I played those games a ton too, in highly competitive EASHL games and gave up 0 shots on plenty of occasions because of the accountability being so low.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
Those that find the new game fun to play on defense have learned the mechanics within the skating engine, look at their player from a physical perspective more than just a dot they are moving around on the screen and understand where they are committing to a pivot, etc.. They understand that they angle they are trying to take sideways, above or below that lateral line with vision control on is going to impact how their player needs to pivot and that it won't be possible at speed to keep your shoulders square to the puck at all times but that you can keep the puck in the front 180 degrees by skating either backwards or forwards as needed.
I also agree to have that, we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating. We had a lot of work to do to work on the core mechanics of the game over the last few years and other than a few additions and fixing the attribute differentiation, we haven't done too much to deking and players movement with the puck. That is something we definitely want to look back at. In some cases there are abilities that a real world player has with the puck that aren't present and there are other abilities that are far more powerful in our game than they should be (i.e. the strides, lateral acceleration, etc.)
That said, when we tune the game, we do so with the current abilities and mechanics in mind and have tuned defensive mechanics so that if you play your angles and how you commit correctly, you can have a lot of success on defense. As we change/add abilities on defense or offense, the rest of the game will be tuned accordingly with the same goals of balance.
I understand fun factor but I don't believe the route there is back to the days of skating sideways across your skates at full speed without ever needing to pivot, but then allowing a player to skate through your stick/legs without any impact on the puck as a counter. That is an odd arms race of power that never looks at some of the main factors of accountability within hockey.
It is a bit misinterpreted what we can do within our tuning. The pivots are built into the core skating system. You won't be able to just feel like you did in NHL 12. We can tune how the control is read based on inputs and how those are interpreted into the system, we can also tune physical parameters and how attributes impact them such as agility with and without the puck, backwards vs forward skating, momentum impacts on turning radius at speed and how much speed is lost when turning, etc. You can also play with the skating on different game styles and play with some of the skating sliders we have available this year to see what impact some of the overall changes can make on how it feels but no matter what the core system was built with more physical reality in mind to capture one of the biggest differentiators in how things play out in the real world of hockey.
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game. If your opponent just skates straight, then it is easy. If they change their pace/check their speed, cut over on you, accelerate, etc., you start to have to make a decision. Do you stay back and leave the slightly bigger gap because they are now wider and less of a threat? Do you cross over and try to keep a tight gap giving them a chance to cross over into the inside? Do you slow to a glide minimizing the gap and give them a chance to skate by with speed? When do you choose to pivot to forwards? If too early, they can cut back on you, if too late, they may beat you with speed around the outside. In a system where you can just stay square and not have to pivot or commit, a lot of that one on one battle is lost.
There are quite a wide range of suggestions and ideas within the thread and other threads that branch into this topic. Some just want the control back they had in past games by switching systems, others want more control within TPS, and there are a lot of ideas on how that can be achieved.
I understand all of the angles. I understand there are multiple factors that lead to different individuals fun factor within a game but the extreme comments don't necessarily make a better point.
When we put out the Beta this year, it was an opportunity for everyone to play the game. Nowhere in the Beta did it show signs that we were changing our core skating engine, so we haven't been trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes in this process.
In the old engine, there was never a sense of committing. That is a huge factor in hockey. Once you commit to a direction, you can't just turn back the other way without some form of recovery, pivot and transition. I played those games a ton too, in highly competitive EASHL games and gave up 0 shots on plenty of occasions because of the accountability being so low.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
Those that find the new game fun to play on defense have learned the mechanics within the skating engine, look at their player from a physical perspective more than just a dot they are moving around on the screen and understand where they are committing to a pivot, etc.. They understand that they angle they are trying to take sideways, above or below that lateral line with vision control on is going to impact how their player needs to pivot and that it won't be possible at speed to keep your shoulders square to the puck at all times but that you can keep the puck in the front 180 degrees by skating either backwards or forwards as needed.
I also agree to have that, we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating. We had a lot of work to do to work on the core mechanics of the game over the last few years and other than a few additions and fixing the attribute differentiation, we haven't done too much to deking and players movement with the puck. That is something we definitely want to look back at. In some cases there are abilities that a real world player has with the puck that aren't present and there are other abilities that are far more powerful in our game than they should be (i.e. the strides, lateral acceleration, etc.)
That said, when we tune the game, we do so with the current abilities and mechanics in mind and have tuned defensive mechanics so that if you play your angles and how you commit correctly, you can have a lot of success on defense. As we change/add abilities on defense or offense, the rest of the game will be tuned accordingly with the same goals of balance.
I understand fun factor but I don't believe the route there is back to the days of skating sideways across your skates at full speed without ever needing to pivot, but then allowing a player to skate through your stick/legs without any impact on the puck as a counter. That is an odd arms race of power that never looks at some of the main factors of accountability within hockey.
It is a bit misinterpreted what we can do within our tuning. The pivots are built into the core skating system. You won't be able to just feel like you did in NHL 12. We can tune how the control is read based on inputs and how those are interpreted into the system, we can also tune physical parameters and how attributes impact them such as agility with and without the puck, backwards vs forward skating, momentum impacts on turning radius at speed and how much speed is lost when turning, etc. You can also play with the skating on different game styles and play with some of the skating sliders we have available this year to see what impact some of the overall changes can make on how it feels but no matter what the core system was built with more physical reality in mind to capture one of the biggest differentiators in how things play out in the real world of hockey.
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game. If your opponent just skates straight, then it is easy. If they change their pace/check their speed, cut over on you, accelerate, etc., you start to have to make a decision. Do you stay back and leave the slightly bigger gap because they are now wider and less of a threat? Do you cross over and try to keep a tight gap giving them a chance to cross over into the inside? Do you slow to a glide minimizing the gap and give them a chance to skate by with speed? When do you choose to pivot to forwards? If too early, they can cut back on you, if too late, they may beat you with speed around the outside. In a system where you can just stay square and not have to pivot or commit, a lot of that one on one battle is lost.
I played quite a bit of real hockey before, so I understand completely what you mean my committing and getting caught, there should be accountability, but with the skating in this game sometimes when on defense, when you are holding L2 and you let off the LS to glide for a bit to close the gap and then try to skate backwards again he stops completely and half turns around before he starts skating backwards again.
It also seems like accountability and committing in this game only applies to defense, you can angle a forward perfectly towards the boards so he has no where to go and he goes from full speed to a 180 turn just by toe dragging the puck. The same rules don't apply to puck carriers as they do for everyone else and this needs to be addressed.
I'm aware that if you glide that you can turn sharper, but if you are full speed and go into a glide for a split second before you toe drag the puck to avoid a hit, wouldn't you still be full speed? How can that player turn towards the boards and do a complete 180 within a 2 foot radius? And thats while your check bounces right off them with no affect.
My biggest gripe by far is vision control, like I said earlier I've played a lot of hockey in my life, 15 years of playing defense, so I realise how easy it is to be squared to the puck. With this skating engine it's a huge task to look at the puck carrier on defense and is a lot of the reason why opposing forwards get passes through the slot against me in game. Holding vision control while staying between the puck carrier and his teammate has your player constantly flip flopping around randomly to each side.
I agree that there should be accountability but it seems to only work one way in this game and TPS needs a ton of work on the defensive side of things, agility while backskating is horrid and forwards can do back to back to back dekes without losing the puck.
I think you will find that most people appreciate the effort and reasons for physics based skating. My opinion, and the impression I got from reading many other posts here is I'm not alone, is that the execution of this skating engine just isn't good enough. With the state that it's in, and the rate at which it's improved so far, we would rather just go back to NHL 12 skating than have to battle with this.
A big part of the problem is lag. The skating engine does pretty good offline, and even online with very minimal lag. Unfortunately, many people are unable to play the game that way. There is at least a tiny amount of lag in most of the games they play online. Adding this lag does terrible things to the skating engine, and it feels much worse than just a little delay. For me, my player feels like he's floating all over the ice. Trying to defend the slot is impossible for me. I try to move just a little bit to the right to follow the puck, and my guy is now on the complete other side of the net. Turning takes for ever, yes even at low speeds. Direction changes lead to all types of spins and pivots that are not only unnecessary, but completely unpredictable. Throw in an opponent carrying the puck who maybe isn't fighting the same lag as I have (and all the other issues that brings, like pokes and hits not working, skate contact with the puck not registering) and the game is all frustration and zero fun. I cannot stress this enough. The frustration level in these situations is just not worth it.
But even if you take out the lag aspect, because I have played this game without lag on a few occasions, there are still improvements to that need to be made. There are still weird pivots at times. The offensive players having more control and agility and tools is just not balanced.
In your post, you talked about having to know which way your player is going to pivot, or what he can do at certain speeds, or in certain situations. There is no training for this in the game, and to make matters worse, online with a minimal amount of lag makes the skating engine too clunky. (my issues with lag are well documented on this site, but I average 10ms in EASHL and most of my games feel terrible)
The bottom line is, either we aren't advanced enough technologically to properly replicate real life skating, or there isn't enough time/money to do what needs to be done to make the skating engine work like it should. Because of that, most of us would rather have a crappy skating engine that works, than a terrific one that doesn't.
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game.
It's a battle against the mechanics because in my experiences, that is what gives me the biggest troubles, not my opponent.
For example, Playing defense against the rush, and my opponent slows down, I have no idea what will happen when I try to match his speed. I let go of LT, and tap the opposite direction on the contoller. Sometimes I slow down, sometimes I spin around (probably if I don't time letting go of LT properly), sometimes I slow down too much, sometimes I pivot slightly and go sliding way out of position. So to be fair, I will accept criticism that these could all be user error (though I would counter having to battle through lag exaggerates all these issues unfairly), but even given that fact, none of this is realistic. A hockey player can easily slow down in that situation. I suck at skating and I can slow down in that situation. Even I would not pivot slightly and go flying out of position to the side, or start pivoting/spinning unpredictably.
And this is just one example. Another one is defending the slot and trying to follow the puck while guarding an open man as the other team passes it around. It's too common that your player will start spinning around, losing control, and getting out of position. This isn't the realistic effect of drawing your opponent out of position because of your passing game. This is your opponent trying to get you to lose your battle with the mechanics of the skating engine and taking advantage.
Again, maybe it's a skill level thing. But since skating is such a basic skill, you shouldn't have to have complicated moves and timing in order to perfectly turn to the right and face a puck, or even just slow down. It takes less skill to do a between the legs deke or windmill around a defender. And in real life, the punishment for not being perfect with your skating isn't as punishing as it is in this game.
This is a good example of the game maybe being realistic, but not feeling realistic.
I think you will find that most people appreciate the effort and reasons for physics based skating. My opinion, and what the impression I got from reading many other posts here is I'm not alone, is that the execution of this skating engine just isn't good enough. With the state that it's in, and the rate at which it's improved so far, we would rather just go back to NHL 12 skating than have to battle with this.
A big part of the problem is lag. The skating engine does pretty good offline, and even online with very minimal lag. Unfortunately, many people are unable to play the game that way. There is at least a tiny amount of lag in most of the games they play online. Adding this lag does terrible things to the skating engine, and it feels much worse than just a little delay. For me, my player feels like he's floating all over the ice. Trying to defend the slot is impossible for me. I try to move just a little bit to the right to follow the puck, and my guy is now on the complete other side of the net. Turning takes for ever, yes even at low speeds. Direction changes lead to all types of spins and pivots that are not only unnecessary, but completely unpredictable. Throw in an opponent carrying the puck who maybe isn't fighting the same lag as I have (and all the other issues that brings, like pokes and hits not working, skate contact with the puck not registering) and the game is all frustration and zero fun. I cannot stress this enough. The frustration level in these situations is just not worth it.
But even if you take out the lag aspect, because I have played this game without lag on a few occasions, there are still improvements to that need to be made. There are still weird pivots at times. The offensive players having more control and agility and tools is just not balanced.
In your post, you talked about having to know which way your player is going to pivot, or what he can do at certain speeds, or in certain situations. There is no training for this in the game, and to make matters worse, online with a minimal amount of lag makes the skating engine too clunky. (my issues with lag are well documented on this site, but I average 10ms in EASHL and most of my games feel terrible)
The bottom line is, either we aren't advanced enough technologically to properly replicate real life skating, or there isn't enough time/money to do what needs to be done to make the skating engine work like it should. Because of that, most of us would rather have a **** skating engine that works, than a terrific one that doesn't.
I think L2 being back skate should be out of the game besides in the neutral zone, bring back vision control, also have it so if you hit L2 with possession of the puck, you square up with the net.
L2 can't do both, the current state of vision control is a perfect example of this, you need to be stationary for near 2 seconds before you even look towards the puck, that isn't acceptable. Since TPS this has been a problem, it was barely improved since 16.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
All this talk about accountability is well and good, but it rings really hollow because the accountability you've introduced is almost entirely on the defensive side. Here's a clip of someone using VC on offense in 1v1 modes.
Look at the sequence beginning at the 2:40 mark. Look at his agility, the ease with which he pivots, the way he maintains his speed while completely reversing his direction and maintaining a glide. And in order to do that, he doesn't need to make any complicated calculations about "committing to a pivot," making sure he lets go of LT just long enough so that he turns to face the puck, or any of the other things you have to do on defense. He just has hold down LT, then extend the right stick and move the LS. There's no doubt the guy in that video is a skilled player. But I don't see much accountability there.
The default online sliders for this game are set so that that skating has ZERO impact on the player's ability to control the puck. None. How does that create accountability? And dekes have only a small impact on puck control, too.
Setting all that aside, there just remain big problems with the skating engine. Weight shifts are exaggerated -- AI players in particular are constantly taking themselves out of the play by shifting their weight the wrong way. Pivots are awkward, not smooth, and AI players in particular regularly find themselves turning the wrong way or ending up with their backs turned to the play, on offense and defense. As we've said a hundred times, go look at that clip of the Nyquist goal where he skates around for half a minute. The offensive and defensive players are constantly shifting back and forth, but every one of them is facing the play almost the entire time.
And that's the second problem, which is that simply facing the puck while skating remains absurdly difficult, much more difficult than it is IRL. I'm not talking about being able to skate sideways across your skates at full speed. I'm talking about being able to move backward while pivoting your body to face the puck. That's something NHL defensemen do all the time, and I have no idea how to do it in this game. (Letting go of LT to face down ice and then going back to LT to turn to face the puck is a kludge to solve this problem, not an actual solution.)
Look at Lidstrom in the 2nd sequence in this clip. He begins the sequence by facing up ice while skating backward, so he can keep an eye on the trailing forward. Then, as the puck carrier turns toward net and looks to make the pass, Lidstrom pivots to face him while still moving backward, and deflects the puck away.
That's old-style vision control in action: he pivots to face the puck while moving. And we should be able to do that in this game, too. Maybe we can -- if so, please make a video showing someone doing it. But I, at least, have no idea how to make that play consistently. And that's frankly absurd.
I love that the developer comes on and responds to our posts, thats awesome and you should be commended for wading into a snake pit of passionate hockey fans.....Mr Seth is right, in the end, If the latancy issues cannot be corrected, then the gameplay will continue to suffer and eventually your player base will suffer as well....I hope you guys are listening to your customers......
It is obvious at this point that the development team isn't interested in giving more control to players. I disagree that the current engine is all that realistic, it just isn't, making a game more unresponsive isn't realistic, and I don't know how that became a thing.
I just hope you realize that committing to the current 'vision', 'path', or whatever you want to call it is going to lead to even worse places for the game than it's already in, but by all means, keep going that way, I'm curious to see how long people deal with it.
Also, what is all of this accountability talk? How were you less accountable pre TPS. If I got scored on or lost pre TPS, I knew what I did wrong and would make sure not to make the same mistake again. Now (granted I don't have 17, but played the beta), if you get scored on, you can't tell if it was your fault, or the game not responding, or your player not moving in a direction you told him to. I really don't get this argument.
There are quite a wide range of suggestions and ideas within the thread and other threads that branch into this topic. Some just want the control back they had in past games by switching systems, others want more control within TPS, and there are a lot of ideas on how that can be achieved.
I understand all of the angles. I understand there are multiple factors that lead to different individuals fun factor within a game but the extreme comments don't necessarily make a better point.
When we put out the Beta this year, it was an opportunity for everyone to play the game. Nowhere in the Beta did it show signs that we were changing our core skating engine, so we haven't been trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes in this process.
In the old engine, there was never a sense of committing. That is a huge factor in hockey. Once you commit to a direction, you can't just turn back the other way without some form of recovery, pivot and transition. I played those games a ton too, in highly competitive EASHL games and gave up 0 shots on plenty of occasions because of the accountability being so low.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
Those that find the new game fun to play on defense have learned the mechanics within the skating engine, look at their player from a physical perspective more than just a dot they are moving around on the screen and understand where they are committing to a pivot, etc.. They understand that they angle they are trying to take sideways, above or below that lateral line with vision control on is going to impact how their player needs to pivot and that it won't be possible at speed to keep your shoulders square to the puck at all times but that you can keep the puck in the front 180 degrees by skating either backwards or forwards as needed.
I also agree to have that, we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating. We had a lot of work to do to work on the core mechanics of the game over the last few years and other than a few additions and fixing the attribute differentiation, we haven't done too much to deking and players movement with the puck. That is something we definitely want to look back at. In some cases there are abilities that a real world player has with the puck that aren't present and there are other abilities that are far more powerful in our game than they should be (i.e. the strides, lateral acceleration, etc.)
That said, when we tune the game, we do so with the current abilities and mechanics in mind and have tuned defensive mechanics so that if you play your angles and how you commit correctly, you can have a lot of success on defense. As we change/add abilities on defense or offense, the rest of the game will be tuned accordingly with the same goals of balance.
I understand fun factor but I don't believe the route there is back to the days of skating sideways across your skates at full speed without ever needing to pivot, but then allowing a player to skate through your stick/legs without any impact on the puck as a counter. That is an odd arms race of power that never looks at some of the main factors of accountability within hockey.
It is a bit misinterpreted what we can do within our tuning. The pivots are built into the core skating system. You won't be able to just feel like you did in NHL 12. We can tune how the control is read based on inputs and how those are interpreted into the system, we can also tune physical parameters and how attributes impact them such as agility with and without the puck, backwards vs forward skating, momentum impacts on turning radius at speed and how much speed is lost when turning, etc. You can also play with the skating on different game styles and play with some of the skating sliders we have available this year to see what impact some of the overall changes can make on how it feels but no matter what the core system was built with more physical reality in mind to capture one of the biggest differentiators in how things play out in the real world of hockey.
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game. If your opponent just skates straight, then it is easy. If they change their pace/check their speed, cut over on you, accelerate, etc., you start to have to make a decision. Do you stay back and leave the slightly bigger gap because they are now wider and less of a threat? Do you cross over and try to keep a tight gap giving them a chance to cross over into the inside? Do you slow to a glide minimizing the gap and give them a chance to skate by with speed? When do you choose to pivot to forwards? If too early, they can cut back on you, if too late, they may beat you with speed around the outside. In a system where you can just stay square and not have to pivot or commit, a lot of that one on one battle is lost.
The bold part should be a priority along with fixing human controlled goalies. The balance between offense and defense is still very unfair. I find it deplorable that goalies are still in a horrible state after 2 years. Fix it already.
It is obvious at this point that the development team isn't interested in giving more control to players. I disagree that the current engine is all that realistic, it just isn't, making a game more unresponsive isn't realistic, and I don't know how that became a thing.
I just hope you realize that committing to the current 'vision', 'path', or whatever you want to call it is going to lead to even worse places for the game than it's already in, but by all means, keep going that way, I'm curious to see how long people deal with it.
Also, what is all of this accountability talk? How were you less accountable pre TPS. If I got scored on or lost pre TPS, I knew what I did wrong and would make sure not to make the same mistake again. Now (granted I don't have 17, but played the beta), if you get scored on, you can't tell if it was your fault, or the game not responding, or your player not moving in a direction you told him to. I really don't get this argument.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
All this talk about accountability is well and good, but it rings really hollow because the accountability you've introduced is almost entirely on the defensive side. Here's a clip of someone using VC on offense in 1v1 modes.
Look at the sequence beginning at the 2:40 mark. Look at his agility, the ease with which he pivots, the way he maintains his speed while completely reversing his direction and maintaining a glide. And in order to do that, he doesn't need to make any complicated calculations about "committing to a pivot," making sure he lets go of LT just long enough so that he turns to face the puck, or any of the other things you have to do on defense. He just has hold down LT, then extend the right stick and move the LS. There's no doubt the guy in that video is a skilled player. But I don't see much accountability there.
The default online sliders for this game are set so that that skating has ZERO impact on the player's ability to control the puck. None. How does that create accountability? And dekes have only a small impact on puck control, too.
Setting all that aside, there just remain big problems with the skating engine. Weight shifts are exaggerated -- AI players in particular are constantly taking themselves out of the play by shifting their weight the wrong way. Pivots are awkward, not smooth, and AI players in particular regularly find themselves turning the wrong way or ending up with their backs turned to the play, on offense and defense. As we've said a hundred times, go look at that clip of the Nyquist goal where he skates around for half a minute. The offensive and defensive players are constantly shifting back and forth, but every one of them is facing the play almost the entire time.
And that's the second problem, which is that simply facing the puck while skating remains absurdly difficult, much more difficult than it is IRL. I'm not talking about being able to skate sideways across your skates at full speed. I'm talking about being able to move backward while pivoting your body to face the puck. That's something NHL defensemen do all the time, and I have no idea how to do it in this game. (Letting go of LT to face down ice and then going back to LT to turn to face the puck is a kludge to solve this problem, not an actual solution.)
Look at Lidstrom in the 2nd sequence in this clip. He begins the sequence by facing up ice while skating backward, so he can keep an eye on the trailing forward. Then, as the puck carrier turns toward net and looks to make the pass, Lidstrom pivots to face him while still moving backward, and deflects the puck away.
That's old-style vision control in action: he pivots to face the puck while moving. And we should be able to do that in this game, too. Maybe we can -- if so, please make a video showing someone doing it. But I, at least, have no idea how to make that play consistently. And that's frankly absurd.
Nailed it. There is no valid argument why VC is not back in the game. Also fully agree that offense has practically 0 "accountability".
My guess is that with the "small resources, small team" argument, TPS was left as is to focus on other stuff to justify the yearly release. Sorry, but TPS really does feel incomplete and barely functional.
Don't nerf offense, that is going in the wrong direction. That is taking skill away from the game, making it even more bland, even less fun. This game needs the individual skill of players to stand out again with the way players maneuver and use their creativity with the controls. It does not need to go in a direction that makes players look even more all the same by lowering the ability for a player to be creative even more than this gens game already has.
Go the other direction. Fix the herky jerky skating while maneuvering around at slower speeds and build in proper facing and t-pushing. Add those things and dmen will have enough tools to shut the offense down.
Here are a few examples of what I mean when I'm talking about exaggerated weight shifts and awkward, clunky pivots that leave the AI, in particular, totally out of the play.
Here, the back defenseman is in fine position in the center of the ice, but when he tries to slide over slightly to the right, he ends up sliding all the way past the hashmarks, gifting the offensive player a clean path to goal:
Similarly, look here at the RD. He's in perfectly fine position, but when he tries to move a bit to the left, his weight shift ends up spinning him so that he ends up with his **** practically facing up ice, taking him completely out of the play:
Then there's the AI's difficulty in pivoting smoothly (or at all), which creates all kinds of trouble. In this clip, look at #52. He's the LD, but he moved into the slot when the puck went behind the net. When the play starts, he's not in a bad position -- he's facing the puck carrier (who's curling out from behind the net after getting out of a scrum). But then #52 first bizarrely decides to turn his back on the puck carrier and then gets stuck in that all-too-familiar back-and-forth-back-and-forth motion, making him effectively useless on the play:
Of course, sometimes AI players just don't even really try to pivot. They just shake a bit, and keep their backs to the puck for the whole play, making them about as defensively useful as pylons:
Finally, to repeat something I've said in other threads, the problems with TPS aren't just on the defensive side, although defense is where the clunkiness of the skating system is most obvious. Even when you have the puck, starting is often slow and awkward. Look at Seguin in this clip. He gets the puck. I'm telling him to go up ice. But (I guess because his weight shifted slightly to the right as he was receiving the puck) instead of just pivoting to his left and moving up ice, he sort of skates backward, and swings slightly back to his right, before finally getting it together:
Now, maybe that's a realistic representation of how a top-notch NHL skater receives a pass and moves up ice. But to me, it looks (and felt) really unrealistic, as well as feeling really clunky. It's like the skating system really wasn't built for movements at slow speeds.
Replies
You could almost instantly tell who was good in a game, even random drop in games, just by the way they moved about, deked, held onto the puck, etc. Individual player skill stood out.
In the new gen game almost everybody looks and moves exactly the same, good player or bad. Player skill just doesn't stand out remotely close to what it used to.. Another reason why this game just isn't as fun or engaging anymore. It's just super bland.
yeah it's simple:
1. very bland
2. handles like a two wheeled shopping cart.
Tuning TPS for a period of time probably isn't a bad idea, but for people like me it will be tough to test, since we refuse to buy anymore versions of the game until it is fixed. We'll have to rely on updates from people that actually want the game to work properly again that bought the game this year.
I understand all of the angles. I understand there are multiple factors that lead to different individuals fun factor within a game but the extreme comments don't necessarily make a better point.
When we put out the Beta this year, it was an opportunity for everyone to play the game. Nowhere in the Beta did it show signs that we were changing our core skating engine, so we haven't been trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes in this process.
In the old engine, there was never a sense of committing. That is a huge factor in hockey. Once you commit to a direction, you can't just turn back the other way without some form of recovery, pivot and transition. I played those games a ton too, in highly competitive EASHL games and gave up 0 shots on plenty of occasions because of the accountability being so low.
It became an arms race between offense and defense of who could be more powerful with all players able to do all the dekes, pass just as well, shoot just as well, etc..
The accountability is now higher. Within that accountability, we can certainly give more control though and that was what some of the changes this year were all about. We could certainly have a better transition into precision skating (but that doesn't mean that you would all of a sudden be able to go into a strafe or t-push from full speed either).
Those that find the new game fun to play on defense have learned the mechanics within the skating engine, look at their player from a physical perspective more than just a dot they are moving around on the screen and understand where they are committing to a pivot, etc.. They understand that they angle they are trying to take sideways, above or below that lateral line with vision control on is going to impact how their player needs to pivot and that it won't be possible at speed to keep your shoulders square to the puck at all times but that you can keep the puck in the front 180 degrees by skating either backwards or forwards as needed.
I also agree to have that, we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating. We had a lot of work to do to work on the core mechanics of the game over the last few years and other than a few additions and fixing the attribute differentiation, we haven't done too much to deking and players movement with the puck. That is something we definitely want to look back at. In some cases there are abilities that a real world player has with the puck that aren't present and there are other abilities that are far more powerful in our game than they should be (i.e. the strides, lateral acceleration, etc.)
That said, when we tune the game, we do so with the current abilities and mechanics in mind and have tuned defensive mechanics so that if you play your angles and how you commit correctly, you can have a lot of success on defense. As we change/add abilities on defense or offense, the rest of the game will be tuned accordingly with the same goals of balance.
I understand fun factor but I don't believe the route there is back to the days of skating sideways across your skates at full speed without ever needing to pivot, but then allowing a player to skate through your stick/legs without any impact on the puck as a counter. That is an odd arms race of power that never looks at some of the main factors of accountability within hockey.
It is a bit misinterpreted what we can do within our tuning. The pivots are built into the core skating system. You won't be able to just feel like you did in NHL 12. We can tune how the control is read based on inputs and how those are interpreted into the system, we can also tune physical parameters and how attributes impact them such as agility with and without the puck, backwards vs forward skating, momentum impacts on turning radius at speed and how much speed is lost when turning, etc. You can also play with the skating on different game styles and play with some of the skating sliders we have available this year to see what impact some of the overall changes can make on how it feels but no matter what the core system was built with more physical reality in mind to capture one of the biggest differentiators in how things play out in the real world of hockey.
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game. If your opponent just skates straight, then it is easy. If they change their pace/check their speed, cut over on you, accelerate, etc., you start to have to make a decision. Do you stay back and leave the slightly bigger gap because they are now wider and less of a threat? Do you cross over and try to keep a tight gap giving them a chance to cross over into the inside? Do you slow to a glide minimizing the gap and give them a chance to skate by with speed? When do you choose to pivot to forwards? If too early, they can cut back on you, if too late, they may beat you with speed around the outside. In a system where you can just stay square and not have to pivot or commit, a lot of that one on one battle is lost.
I played quite a bit of real hockey before, so I understand completely what you mean my committing and getting caught, there should be accountability, but with the skating in this game sometimes when on defense, when you are holding L2 and you let off the LS to glide for a bit to close the gap and then try to skate backwards again he stops completely and half turns around before he starts skating backwards again.
It also seems like accountability and committing in this game only applies to defense, you can angle a forward perfectly towards the boards so he has no where to go and he goes from full speed to a 180 turn just by toe dragging the puck. The same rules don't apply to puck carriers as they do for everyone else and this needs to be addressed.
I'm aware that if you glide that you can turn sharper, but if you are full speed and go into a glide for a split second before you toe drag the puck to avoid a hit, wouldn't you still be full speed? How can that player turn towards the boards and do a complete 180 within a 2 foot radius? And thats while your check bounces right off them with no affect.
My biggest gripe by far is vision control, like I said earlier I've played a lot of hockey in my life, 15 years of playing defense, so I realise how easy it is to be squared to the puck. With this skating engine it's a huge task to look at the puck carrier on defense and is a lot of the reason why opposing forwards get passes through the slot against me in game. Holding vision control while staying between the puck carrier and his teammate has your player constantly flip flopping around randomly to each side.
I agree that there should be accountability but it seems to only work one way in this game and TPS needs a ton of work on the defensive side of things, agility while backskating is horrid and forwards can do back to back to back dekes without losing the puck.
I think you will find that most people appreciate the effort and reasons for physics based skating. My opinion, and the impression I got from reading many other posts here is I'm not alone, is that the execution of this skating engine just isn't good enough. With the state that it's in, and the rate at which it's improved so far, we would rather just go back to NHL 12 skating than have to battle with this.
A big part of the problem is lag. The skating engine does pretty good offline, and even online with very minimal lag. Unfortunately, many people are unable to play the game that way. There is at least a tiny amount of lag in most of the games they play online. Adding this lag does terrible things to the skating engine, and it feels much worse than just a little delay. For me, my player feels like he's floating all over the ice. Trying to defend the slot is impossible for me. I try to move just a little bit to the right to follow the puck, and my guy is now on the complete other side of the net. Turning takes for ever, yes even at low speeds. Direction changes lead to all types of spins and pivots that are not only unnecessary, but completely unpredictable. Throw in an opponent carrying the puck who maybe isn't fighting the same lag as I have (and all the other issues that brings, like pokes and hits not working, skate contact with the puck not registering) and the game is all frustration and zero fun. I cannot stress this enough. The frustration level in these situations is just not worth it.
But even if you take out the lag aspect, because I have played this game without lag on a few occasions, there are still improvements to that need to be made. There are still weird pivots at times. The offensive players having more control and agility and tools is just not balanced.
In your post, you talked about having to know which way your player is going to pivot, or what he can do at certain speeds, or in certain situations. There is no training for this in the game, and to make matters worse, online with a minimal amount of lag makes the skating engine too clunky. (my issues with lag are well documented on this site, but I average 10ms in EASHL and most of my games feel terrible)
The bottom line is, either we aren't advanced enough technologically to properly replicate real life skating, or there isn't enough time/money to do what needs to be done to make the skating engine work like it should. Because of that, most of us would rather have a crappy skating engine that works, than a terrific one that doesn't.
It's a battle against the mechanics because in my experiences, that is what gives me the biggest troubles, not my opponent.
For example, Playing defense against the rush, and my opponent slows down, I have no idea what will happen when I try to match his speed. I let go of LT, and tap the opposite direction on the contoller. Sometimes I slow down, sometimes I spin around (probably if I don't time letting go of LT properly), sometimes I slow down too much, sometimes I pivot slightly and go sliding way out of position. So to be fair, I will accept criticism that these could all be user error (though I would counter having to battle through lag exaggerates all these issues unfairly), but even given that fact, none of this is realistic. A hockey player can easily slow down in that situation. I suck at skating and I can slow down in that situation. Even I would not pivot slightly and go flying out of position to the side, or start pivoting/spinning unpredictably.
And this is just one example. Another one is defending the slot and trying to follow the puck while guarding an open man as the other team passes it around. It's too common that your player will start spinning around, losing control, and getting out of position. This isn't the realistic effect of drawing your opponent out of position because of your passing game. This is your opponent trying to get you to lose your battle with the mechanics of the skating engine and taking advantage.
Again, maybe it's a skill level thing. But since skating is such a basic skill, you shouldn't have to have complicated moves and timing in order to perfectly turn to the right and face a puck, or even just slow down. It takes less skill to do a between the legs deke or windmill around a defender. And in real life, the punishment for not being perfect with your skating isn't as punishing as it is in this game.
This is a good example of the game maybe being realistic, but not feeling realistic.
+ 1
L2 can't do both, the current state of vision control is a perfect example of this, you need to be stationary for near 2 seconds before you even look towards the puck, that isn't acceptable. Since TPS this has been a problem, it was barely improved since 16.
All this talk about accountability is well and good, but it rings really hollow because the accountability you've introduced is almost entirely on the defensive side. Here's a clip of someone using VC on offense in 1v1 modes.
Look at the sequence beginning at the 2:40 mark. Look at his agility, the ease with which he pivots, the way he maintains his speed while completely reversing his direction and maintaining a glide. And in order to do that, he doesn't need to make any complicated calculations about "committing to a pivot," making sure he lets go of LT just long enough so that he turns to face the puck, or any of the other things you have to do on defense. He just has hold down LT, then extend the right stick and move the LS. There's no doubt the guy in that video is a skilled player. But I don't see much accountability there.
The default online sliders for this game are set so that that skating has ZERO impact on the player's ability to control the puck. None. How does that create accountability? And dekes have only a small impact on puck control, too.
Setting all that aside, there just remain big problems with the skating engine. Weight shifts are exaggerated -- AI players in particular are constantly taking themselves out of the play by shifting their weight the wrong way. Pivots are awkward, not smooth, and AI players in particular regularly find themselves turning the wrong way or ending up with their backs turned to the play, on offense and defense. As we've said a hundred times, go look at that clip of the Nyquist goal where he skates around for half a minute. The offensive and defensive players are constantly shifting back and forth, but every one of them is facing the play almost the entire time.
And that's the second problem, which is that simply facing the puck while skating remains absurdly difficult, much more difficult than it is IRL. I'm not talking about being able to skate sideways across your skates at full speed. I'm talking about being able to move backward while pivoting your body to face the puck. That's something NHL defensemen do all the time, and I have no idea how to do it in this game. (Letting go of LT to face down ice and then going back to LT to turn to face the puck is a kludge to solve this problem, not an actual solution.)
Look at Lidstrom in the 2nd sequence in this clip. He begins the sequence by facing up ice while skating backward, so he can keep an eye on the trailing forward. Then, as the puck carrier turns toward net and looks to make the pass, Lidstrom pivots to face him while still moving backward, and deflects the puck away.
That's old-style vision control in action: he pivots to face the puck while moving. And we should be able to do that in this game, too. Maybe we can -- if so, please make a video showing someone doing it. But I, at least, have no idea how to make that play consistently. And that's frankly absurd.
I just hope you realize that committing to the current 'vision', 'path', or whatever you want to call it is going to lead to even worse places for the game than it's already in, but by all means, keep going that way, I'm curious to see how long people deal with it.
Also, what is all of this accountability talk? How were you less accountable pre TPS. If I got scored on or lost pre TPS, I knew what I did wrong and would make sure not to make the same mistake again. Now (granted I don't have 17, but played the beta), if you get scored on, you can't tell if it was your fault, or the game not responding, or your player not moving in a direction you told him to. I really don't get this argument.
The bold part should be a priority along with fixing human controlled goalies. The balance between offense and defense is still very unfair. I find it deplorable that goalies are still in a horrible state after 2 years. Fix it already.
+1
Nailed it. There is no valid argument why VC is not back in the game. Also fully agree that offense has practically 0 "accountability".
My guess is that with the "small resources, small team" argument, TPS was left as is to focus on other stuff to justify the yearly release. Sorry, but TPS really does feel incomplete and barely functional.
Go the other direction. Fix the herky jerky skating while maneuvering around at slower speeds and build in proper facing and t-pushing. Add those things and dmen will have enough tools to shut the offense down.
Here, the back defenseman is in fine position in the center of the ice, but when he tries to slide over slightly to the right, he ends up sliding all the way past the hashmarks, gifting the offensive player a clean path to goal:
Similarly, look here at the RD. He's in perfectly fine position, but when he tries to move a bit to the left, his weight shift ends up spinning him so that he ends up with his **** practically facing up ice, taking him completely out of the play:
Then there's the AI's difficulty in pivoting smoothly (or at all), which creates all kinds of trouble. In this clip, look at #52. He's the LD, but he moved into the slot when the puck went behind the net. When the play starts, he's not in a bad position -- he's facing the puck carrier (who's curling out from behind the net after getting out of a scrum). But then #52 first bizarrely decides to turn his back on the puck carrier and then gets stuck in that all-too-familiar back-and-forth-back-and-forth motion, making him effectively useless on the play:
Of course, sometimes AI players just don't even really try to pivot. They just shake a bit, and keep their backs to the puck for the whole play, making them about as defensively useful as pylons:
Finally, to repeat something I've said in other threads, the problems with TPS aren't just on the defensive side, although defense is where the clunkiness of the skating system is most obvious. Even when you have the puck, starting is often slow and awkward. Look at Seguin in this clip. He gets the puck. I'm telling him to go up ice. But (I guess because his weight shifted slightly to the right as he was receiving the puck) instead of just pivoting to his left and moving up ice, he sort of skates backward, and swings slightly back to his right, before finally getting it together:
Now, maybe that's a realistic representation of how a top-notch NHL skater receives a pass and moves up ice. But to me, it looks (and felt) really unrealistic, as well as feeling really clunky. It's like the skating system really wasn't built for movements at slow speeds.