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.
One of the main points in my post was that we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating so I am not sure why so many of the responses are talking about accountability on the offensive side when it comes to skating (I know a few people keyed in on that though). It is mostly the deking system, the strides and the deking turns that went into NHL 15 that allowed for too much lateral acceleration for puck carriers. When we get a chance to look back at deking, that is one of the main things we want to look at but I have tried to tune with what we currently have and it just makes your player stop when turning sharp as opposed to bleeding off more speed. We need better control there.
We also know that a puck carrier in the real world may lose the puck trying to do some of the turns that puck carriers in our game do (which would be the case in some of those moves in that NHL 16 video depending on the player that is doing them). That is why on Full Sim settings, that is all there and there are sliders to dial that in even more -- we know how to make things even more sim but we are playing 4 minute periods so there are certain compensations that are made. We do hit your shooting accuracy and puck control impact on your accuracy of shooting and passing when doing those types of moves though.
We also heard the feedback from the community around skating speed last year so we made the base EASHL classes better skaters and we knew that would probably hurt defense and goalies at some point even though they all went up together since they are the ones reacting.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
In the Lidstrom clip, it isn't old school VC at all in my opinion. When he fully turns, he is actually moving his skate blades to the way he is rotating/turning and comes to a stop as well, holding his ground to make the play which you can do with the current model. The one difference is that he does rotate his upper body form what his skates are doing to try and keep his shoulders and stick more square to the puck carrier and that is where we would want to go with a more advanced defensive stick. There have been discussions about that too. However, when you watch NHL players skating at speed, they need to rotate their hips and their skates need to be parallel with the direction they are travelling so they are always skating either forwards or backwards in most cases. The upper body rotation is a difference but again, its still a skating commitment and we tune our pokecheck accordingly, not hitting you as hard to your sides as we do the back to still give you a better 180 in front of you rather than an upper body that rotates and only great pokechecking out front where you are square which may be the more realistic way with all capabilities modelled. That is an example of what I mean about tuning the game within the current abilities.
Some of the changes that went in this year that were called out by others earlier in the thread were actually pretty good changes for defense -- Updates to the VC angles, when you should rotate (angles to the puck, etc.), the angles you could do backwards strafing cross overs at with speed before having to rotate your hips to a backskate, updates to need more of a roll to get a step out pivot or a d turn so that would more reliably get stops with VC held when you wanted them and frames within pivots that you could change your mind and get on/off VC to stay skating one way or the other to avoid commitment before you actually planted a foot and physically made that commitment. That also helps in 1v1 modes when the AI was just a frame into a pivot as you switch into them and want them to keep skating backwards. If you press VC before it gets further into that pivot, it will let you keep skating backwards where last year, you would stay committed to that pivot and then have to flip back around.
I also like the change where you can hit the left stick or VC in any order and as long as it is within the frame limit, you will start skating backwards -- before there were players that hit their left stick slightly ahead by a frame or two so the game would make them start forwards and then swing them to backwards on the input of VC -- that helps stability a lot too. I get that for many of you the strides aren't enough but we are committed to giving people more control and a better playing hockey game. Our expectations are high too. We would liked to have done more too but we stress our development directors out as it is for how long we work on the game before closing things down, always trying to get one more change in.
Is TPS here to stay? After all of this feedback from your hardcore user base do you see it possible to move on from TPS and into something new and improved?
One of the main points in my post was that we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating so I am not sure why so many of the responses are talking about accountability on the offensive side when it comes to skating (I know a few people keyed in on that though). It is mostly the deking system, the strides and the deking turns that went into NHL 15 that allowed for too much lateral acceleration for puck carriers. When we get a chance to look back at deking, that is one of the main things we want to look at but I have tried to tune with what we currently have and it just makes your player stop when turning sharp as opposed to bleeding off more speed. We need better control there.
We also know that a puck carrier in the real world may lose the puck trying to do some of the turns that puck carriers in our game do (which would be the case in some of those moves in that NHL 16 video depending on the player that is doing them). That is why on Full Sim settings, that is all there and there are sliders to dial that in even more -- we know how to make things even more sim but we are playing 4 minute periods so there are certain compensations that are made. We do hit your shooting accuracy and puck control impact on your accuracy of shooting and passing when doing those types of moves though.
We also heard the feedback from the community around skating speed last year so we made the base EASHL classes better skaters and we knew that would probably hurt defense and goalies at some point even though they all went up together since they are the ones reacting.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
In the Lidstrom clip, it isn't old school VC at all in my opinion. When he fully turns, he is actually moving his skate blades to the way he is rotating/turning and comes to a stop as well, holding his ground to make the play which you can do with the current model. The one difference is that he does rotate his upper body form what his skates are doing to try and keep his shoulders and stick more square to the puck carrier and that is where we would want to go with a more advanced defensive stick. There have been discussions about that too. However, when you watch NHL players skating at speed, they need to rotate their hips and their skates need to be parallel with the direction they are travelling so they are always skating either forwards or backwards in most cases. The upper body rotation is a difference but again, its still a skating commitment and we tune our pokecheck accordingly, not hitting you as hard to your sides as we do the back to still give you a better 180 in front of you rather than an upper body that rotates and only great pokechecking out front where you are square which may be the more realistic way with all capabilities modelled. That is an example of what I mean about tuning the game within the current abilities.
Some of the changes that went in this year that were called out by others earlier in the thread were actually pretty good changes for defense -- Updates to the VC angles, when you should rotate (angles to the puck, etc.), the angles you could do backwards strafing cross overs at with speed before having to rotate your hips to a backskate, updates to need more of a roll to get a step out pivot or a d turn so that would more reliably get stops with VC held when you wanted them and frames within pivots that you could change your mind and get on/off VC to stay skating one way or the other to avoid commitment before you actually planted a foot and physically made that commitment. That also helps in 1v1 modes when the AI was just a frame into a pivot as you switch into them and want them to keep skating backwards. If you press VC before it gets further into that pivot, it will let you keep skating backwards where last year, you would stay committed to that pivot and then have to flip back around.
I also like the change where you can hit the left stick or VC in any order and as long as it is within the frame limit, you will start skating backwards -- before there were players that hit their left stick slightly ahead by a frame or two so the game would make them start forwards and then swing them to backwards on the input of VC -- that helps stability a lot too. I get that for many of you the strides aren't enough but we are committed to giving people more control and a better playing hockey game. Our expectations are high too. We would liked to have done more too but we stress our development directors out as it is for how long we work on the game before closing things down, always trying to get one more change in.
I am hopefull you're testing your online experience out with 6 v 6 teams in EASHL with clients that have consumer class internet, with team members across North America on both sides.
Is TPS here to stay? After all of this feedback from your hardcore user base do you see it possible to move on from TPS and into something new and improved?
We are always looking at new tech. There are some pretty cool ideas and methods out there for advanced locomotion systems. We definitely have our eye on them.
Motion is one thing though and control is another. Trying to keep things simple, it is difficult to give a player control over different facing directions, skating forwards/backwards/strafing, the different angles you can have your stick out to (deking, defensive sticks in lanes, etc.) and how that all blends with different abilities to receive pucks, shoot pucks, pass pucks, etc.
So yes, we definitely want to see where we can advance things but even if there is a good tech solution for the motion, there is a lot to consider.
Thanks for responding, Ben. I appreciate that. I will remain hopeful for improved skating in the future. The game is slowly getting better but in my honest opinion based on my love for the game/sport, TPS in its current state is what's holding us back.
One of the main points in my post was that we need to look at the offensive capabilities within skating so I am not sure why so many of the responses are talking about accountability on the offensive side when it comes to skating (I know a few people keyed in on that though). It is mostly the deking system, the strides and the deking turns that went into NHL 15 that allowed for too much lateral acceleration for puck carriers. When we get a chance to look back at deking, that is one of the main things we want to look at but I have tried to tune with what we currently have and it just makes your player stop when turning sharp as opposed to bleeding off more speed. We need better control there.
We also know that a puck carrier in the real world may lose the puck trying to do some of the turns that puck carriers in our game do (which would be the case in some of those moves in that NHL 16 video depending on the player that is doing them). That is why on Full Sim settings, that is all there and there are sliders to dial that in even more -- we know how to make things even more sim but we are playing 4 minute periods so there are certain compensations that are made. We do hit your shooting accuracy and puck control impact on your accuracy of shooting and passing when doing those types of moves though.
We also heard the feedback from the community around skating speed last year so we made the base EASHL classes better skaters and we knew that would probably hurt defense and goalies at some point even though they all went up together since they are the ones reacting.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
In the Lidstrom clip, it isn't old school VC at all in my opinion. When he fully turns, he is actually moving his skate blades to the way he is rotating/turning and comes to a stop as well, holding his ground to make the play which you can do with the current model. The one difference is that he does rotate his upper body form what his skates are doing to try and keep his shoulders and stick more square to the puck carrier and that is where we would want to go with a more advanced defensive stick. There have been discussions about that too. However, when you watch NHL players skating at speed, they need to rotate their hips and their skates need to be parallel with the direction they are travelling so they are always skating either forwards or backwards in most cases. The upper body rotation is a difference but again, its still a skating commitment and we tune our pokecheck accordingly, not hitting you as hard to your sides as we do the back to still give you a better 180 in front of you rather than an upper body that rotates and only great pokechecking out front where you are square which may be the more realistic way with all capabilities modelled. That is an example of what I mean about tuning the game within the current abilities.
Some of the changes that went in this year that were called out by others earlier in the thread were actually pretty good changes for defense -- Updates to the VC angles, when you should rotate (angles to the puck, etc.), the angles you could do backwards strafing cross overs at with speed before having to rotate your hips to a backskate, updates to need more of a roll to get a step out pivot or a d turn so that would more reliably get stops with VC held when you wanted them and frames within pivots that you could change your mind and get on/off VC to stay skating one way or the other to avoid commitment before you actually planted a foot and physically made that commitment. That also helps in 1v1 modes when the AI was just a frame into a pivot as you switch into them and want them to keep skating backwards. If you press VC before it gets further into that pivot, it will let you keep skating backwards where last year, you would stay committed to that pivot and then have to flip back around.
I also like the change where you can hit the left stick or VC in any order and as long as it is within the frame limit, you will start skating backwards -- before there were players that hit their left stick slightly ahead by a frame or two so the game would make them start forwards and then swing them to backwards on the input of VC -- that helps stability a lot too. I get that for many of you the strides aren't enough but we are committed to giving people more control and a better playing hockey game. Our expectations are high too. We would liked to have done more too but we stress our development directors out as it is for how long we work on the game before closing things down, always trying to get one more change in.
So what about bringing vision control back then? You didn't really say much on VC, I understand you guys are trying to balance forward skating abilities but vision control is near useless as it is now. It needs to be fixed so people can make small, smooth, quick movements in front of the net while facing the puck without flopping around like a fish out of water.
In my opinion, if vision control is anything less than instant towards the puck,(like it used to be) it's broken. While holding VC you should also be able to move at least 2 to 3 strides laterally with T pushes before you start skating full out. Trying to stay between a puck carrier and his intended pass recipient is like pulling teeth in this game, it is not hard to move small amounts while facing the puck carrier in real life.
So what about bringing vision control back then? You didn't really say much on VC, I understand you guys are trying to balance forward skating abilities but vision control is near useless as it is now. It needs to be fixed so people can make small, smooth, quick movements in front of the net while facing the puck without flopping around like a fish out of water.
In my opinion, if vision control is anything less than instant towards the puck,(like it used to be) it's broken. While holding VC you should also be able to move at least 2 to 3 strides laterally with T pushes before you start skating full out. Trying to stay between a puck carrier and his intended pass recipient is like pulling teeth in this game, it is not hard to move small amounts while facing the puck carrier in real life.
Yes, we understand this deficiency. That is what we tried to start addressing with precision skating. In the old games, you could do what you can physically do from a stand still and slow speed at any speed so the game needing controls or context to decide between the two wasn't needed. There were a lot of discussions on the old forums around this. People had theories that if you had VC held then it should be those strafes when below a certain speed. The issue is that from a stand still, a player may actually want to accelerate backwards fast. They may also want to move laterally with speed to angle a player off to the boards without pivoting to forwards and thus need to backskate there. If we forced you to be slower and doing strafes, you wouldn't be able to do that.
People also say that VC should always face the puck. This isn't true of real life either. I mentioned it before but at speed, since you can't be strafing the whole way down the ice, you try to keep the puck in your front 180 degrees and backskate, keeping the puck in front of you but in some cases you are facing forward while the puck is up to 90 degrees to your side until you choose to pivot and commit to forward skating. If we made you face the puck, as the player got closer to you and increased that angle, the game would force you to commit to a pivot and/or force you to slow down so you could start strafing. Again, probably the reason why in the old games it just let you strafe at any speed.
Definitely a lot to think about but we do want to improve on what was started with precision skating and find a better way to blend it in and not overcomplicate the controls in the process even though someone on skates has many more things that they can physically do than can be inferred by one stick and a modifier.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
Thank you for the response.
I know there's only so much you can do to design your game around lag, since ideally, there wouldn't be any, and you want to make the game as good as you can. Factoring in lag issues will bring the highest possible quality of the game down.
However, as it is right now, even a little lag has drastic effects on the skating engine. I'm not sure how much of this you guys can test or experience close to where the game is made ( I don't know where the server is located ), but if you could play the way I do, and a lot of other members do, you would see how much of a battle it is with your controller.
The system seems to do so much reading and reacting to player inputs at specific times, that with a little delay, it throws everything off balance and creates a ton of issues you guys may not have been able to foresee.
The key takeaways is limiting unwanted spins (especially when you just get the puck and then spin right into an attacker) and unpredictable pivots and to make everything feel more responsive. As much good as the delays you have built in to help with changing you mind on things like pivoting to backskating, it may infact be making everything feel less responsive.
Off topic, I'm glad you are on top of the online guys all the time to improve things, because it's a struggle most nights for a lot of people. A little lag goes a long way towards a miserable experience (and like I said, I show as only 10 ms of lag for most games). A lot of lag makes the game literally unplayable at an enjoyable level.
I know people hate the comparisons, but Rocket league has a bunch of servers just for the west coast. We have 2 for North America. I know more servers isn't always the answer, and I also know they are different types of games, but I never have connection issues with other games, and tons with this one. There are many other threads on these boards about this type of thing.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
Thank you for the response.
I know there's only so much you can do to design your game around lag, since ideally, there wouldn't be any, and you want to make the game as good as you can. Factoring in lag issues will bring the highest possible quality of the game down.
However, as it is right now, even a little lag has drastic effects on the skating engine. I'm not sure how much of this you guys can test or experience close to where the game is made ( I don't know where the server is located ), but if you could play the way I do, and a lot of other members do, you would see how much of a battle it is with your controller.
The system seems to do so much reading and reacting to player inputs at specific times, that with a little delay, it throws everything off balance and creates a ton of issues you guys may not have been able to foresee.
The key takeaways is limiting unwanted spins (especially when you just get the puck and then spin right into an attacker) and unpredictable pivots and to make everything feel more responsive. As much good as the delays you have built in to help with changing you mind on things like pivoting to backskating, it may infact be making everything feel less responsive.
Off topic, I'm glad you are on top of the online guys all the time to improve things, because it's a struggle most nights for a lot of people. A little lag goes a long way towards a miserable experience (and like I said, I show as only 10 ms of lag for most games). A lot of lag makes the game literally unplayable at an enjoyable level.
I know people hate the comparisons, but Rocket league has a bunch of servers just for the west coast. We have 2 for North America. I know more servers isn't always the answer, and I also know they are different types of games, but I never have connection issues with other games, and tons with this one. There are many other threads on these boards about this type of thing.
Seth, you play with Charlie, who has 70+ pings(no idea how he plays this game) because of his bad location and his skating seems fine. So you really think its your connection thats causes the issues ?
Ok, I finally got a guy exploiting it in VS, his record was 84-14 or something along those lines. Ranked with 10 spots of top 100 in vs. He went up 3-0 early in the game against me doing the dipsy doodle stuff. And every time someone on my team would come close to him he would peel away, making the pivots quicker then my guys could skate into him.
This is the one thing that should be addressed to some point, with puck control or something to reduce this exploit.
After the game I sent him a message, saying EA should watch you play because they can learn about things that get exploited and need addressing, to fix the TPS. But see this is why I love NHL17, I played smart positional defense, not allowing him to gain space and with the reduced puck control I was able to knock the puck off his stick and with truth grit and determination, I beat him 5-3.
This is what he said back to me after that the game.
I tired showing this back in NHL 15 but I think EA thought it was about how you could exploit the AI but in fact, its more about the puck control and puck carriers skating ability.
So what about bringing vision control back then? You didn't really say much on VC, I understand you guys are trying to balance forward skating abilities but vision control is near useless as it is now. It needs to be fixed so people can make small, smooth, quick movements in front of the net while facing the puck without flopping around like a fish out of water.
In my opinion, if vision control is anything less than instant towards the puck,(like it used to be) it's broken. While holding VC you should also be able to move at least 2 to 3 strides laterally with T pushes before you start skating full out. Trying to stay between a puck carrier and his intended pass recipient is like pulling teeth in this game, it is not hard to move small amounts while facing the puck carrier in real life.
Definitely a lot to think about but we do want to improve on what was started with precision skating and find a better way to blend it in and not overcomplicate the controls in the process even though someone on skates has many more things that they can physically do than can be inferred by one **** stick and a modifier.
Yeah I see what you mean, you pretty much need seperate buttons for VC and back skate for it to be effective then it looks like, what if it were changed so that clicking R3 while holding in LT would toggle between backskate and VC? As far as I know R3 doesn't do anything without possession of the puck, I could be wrong though. And Ben, these forums are for civil discussions, no cursing please... lol jk
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
Please define 'poor connection', so we all know what you're talking about. HUT / VS / EASHL? What's the minimum to get decent gameplay? And why isn't this mentioned on the cover of the game/specs?
And I do see that as a battle against your opponent and not just the mechanics in the game.
No, sethamphetamines, I talked about that right above the developer's post that you quoted, actually. You and others have pretty much followed up with whatever I might have written back, though.
I understand the point about accountability. I agree that deciding whether to commit, and to what extent, needs to be either rewarded or punished accordingly. It's just unbalanced, as others have pointed out. A lot of the issues were already discussed, but I'd like to bring up another example.
I'm on defense, and a forward is trying to enter the zone along the board. I close the angle effectively, so realistically, he should have to dump the puck in, pass back into the neutral zone, or try to find a team mate's stick at the center lane or the opposite board. Instead, he pulls his stick over to the side, brings it back and blows past my player into a hustle toward the net. This move grants him this invisible bubble that I have no way of penetrating. A check will simply bounce off like a blaster bolt hitting a lightsaber in Star Wars. My only option against a player who's good with this move is to skate back and let him enter the zone, or to try and poke at the puck and hope I don't trip him as he pulls his stick to the side. Pinning against the boards may sometimes work, but whether that move even activates feels rather haphazard and carries an unreasonable risk against a good player. TPS exacerbates the problem a great deal, contributing to this situation with not just the increased accountability that was talked about, but a great imbalance between the forward and defenseman.
I agree that some of those "offensive" accels are way to fast and effective. They looks even quite funny visually, so to implement those was mistake imo.
As well all those RS autodekes. RS should be strictly used for offensive/defensive manual stick movement.
Skating works great offline. Most realistic/best it's ever been.
Except for the fact it is completely missing a very important mechanic of skating..
Go into practice mode and put the puck in the high slot. You should be able to skate around the entire perimeter of the zone while strafing/t-pushing and more or less facing the puck the whole time.
Can't do it. This important part of hockey is completely missing from the game and has been for 5 years now.. This can't be sugar coated anymore, it's a joke TPS has been allowed to remain in this state for soo long now.
Dev, you can say that nhl players don't do this stuff very often, but this is a video game it's not real life. Almost every single time the puck is being worked around in one of the teams zone the players without the puck would constantly be on and off of using strafes/t-pushes.
Go play be a pro In nhl 12 and pay attention to how often you are using VC. You constantly use it throughout the game. Also pay attention to how smooth and good it FEELS. No more constant tapping and repositioning of the joystick. No more clunkiness. It just works. And it FEELS good.
I don't for a second think this is an easy thing to fix/solve, it should be #1 priority though. This issue is easily one of the biggest contributors to your game not being as fun as it used to be. Just look at that AI player all herky jerky in the OP. Human players constantly fight with that crape too. We have to deal with that crape just so that you can turn around backwards and make a pass on your forehand? I'm sorry but proper facing/strafing/t-pushes at slower speeds are a 100% more important mechanic.
Go into a drop in game and pay attention to how many players use the current back skating mechanic to help them make plays and avoid the 'accountability' errors. Almost never see it. Then next game pay attention to how many players, both AI or human, clunkily spin in wrong directions, herkily jerkily stop and start and lose their check, constantly tapping and or fighting with their LS. You probly can't go more than 1 minute real time without multiple skaters displaying similar issues to the herky jerky AI in the OP video..
When you think about it, it is absolutely absurd that we have had to deal with this for 5 years.
A good example of what certain aspects of this skating engine feels like to play with and control would be; Go into GTA and pop your back 2 tires. Now try to drive around the city full speed and try to stay on the road and avoid hitting other cars. Can it be done? Sure. What does it FEEL like though? It FEELS like a chore. You are constantly readjusting your steering and really have to pay attention and fight with the controls to accomplish this task. That is a perfect analogy of what certain aspects of TPS make us do every single game we play. It's that constant tapping/readjusting that just gets tiring and disengages users and saps the fun out of playing the game.
No one is going to enjoy a game for long periods of time where they have to constantly tap/readjust/fight with their joystick to accomplish a task that should be easy and FEEL and control in a smooth manner.
Skating works great offline. Most realistic/best it's ever been.
Except for the fact it is completely missing a very important mechanic of skating..
Go into practice mode and put the puck in the high slot. You should be able to skate around the entire perimeter of the zone while strafing/t-pushing and more or less facing the puck the whole time.
Can't do it. This important part of hockey is completely missing from the game and has been for 5 years now.. This can't be sugar coated anymore, it's a joke TPS has been allowed to remain in this state for soo long now.
Dev, you can say that nhl players don't do this stuff very often, but this is a video game it's not real life. Almost every single time the puck is being worked around in one of the teams zone the players without the puck would constantly be on and off of using strafes/t-pushes.
Go play be a pro In nhl 12 and pay attention to how often you are using VC. You constantly use it throughout the game. Also pay attention to how smooth and good it FEELS. No more constant tapping and repositioning of the joystick. No more clunkiness. It just works. And it FEELS good.
I don't for a second think this is an easy thing to fix/solve, it should be #1 priority though. This issue is easily one of the biggest contributors to your game not being as fun as it used to be. Just look at that AI player all herky jerky in the OP. Human players constantly fight with that crape too. We have to deal with that crape just so that you can turn around backwards and make a pass on your forehand? I'm sorry but proper facing/strafing/t-pushes at slower speeds are a 100% more important mechanic.
Go into a drop in game and pay attention to how many players use the current back skating mechanic to help them make plays and avoid the 'accountability' errors. Almost never see it. Then next game pay attention to how many players, both AI or human, clunkily spin in wrong directions, herkily jerkily stop and start and lose their check, constantly tapping and or fighting with their LS. You probly can't go more than 1 minute real time without multiple skaters displaying similar issues to the herky jerky AI in the OP video..
When you think about it, it is absolutely absurd that we have had to deal with this for 5 years.
A good example of what certain aspects of this skating engine feels like to play with and control would be; Go into GTA and pop your back 2 tires. Now try to drive around the city full speed and try to stay on the road and avoid hitting other cars. Can it be done? Sure. What does it FEEL like though? It FEELS like a chore. You are constantly readjusting your steering and really have to pay attention and fight with the controls to accomplish this task. That is a perfect analogy of what certain aspects of TPS make us do every single game we play. It's that constant tapping/readjusting that just gets tiring and disengages users and saps the fun out of playing the game.
No one is going to enjoy a game for long periods of time where they have to constantly tap/readjust/fight with their joystick to accomplish a task that should be easy and FEEL and control in a smooth manner.
I have no major issues with what you are describing. I guess I'm just not very picky. I really like this game. I'm sure your points are valid but I personally don't have any major gripes about the skating. I fear that EA will go back to the NHL 12 float fest. I'm a sim guy. I don't like the arcade style of game play.
Yeah I see what you mean, you pretty much need seperate buttons for VC and back skate for it to be effective then it looks like, what if it were changed so that clicking R3 while holding in LT would toggle between backskate and VC? As far as I know R3 doesn't do anything without possession of the puck, I could be wrong though. And Ben, these forums are for civil discussions, no cursing please... lol jk
That is funny. The word it masked out was an-a-log (without the dashes obviously)
R3 without possession of the puck is hip check right now but yes there may be ways that the control could change. Lots of knock on issues when you start to do that though.
Replies
Shoots. Scores.
We also know that a puck carrier in the real world may lose the puck trying to do some of the turns that puck carriers in our game do (which would be the case in some of those moves in that NHL 16 video depending on the player that is doing them). That is why on Full Sim settings, that is all there and there are sliders to dial that in even more -- we know how to make things even more sim but we are playing 4 minute periods so there are certain compensations that are made. We do hit your shooting accuracy and puck control impact on your accuracy of shooting and passing when doing those types of moves though.
We also heard the feedback from the community around skating speed last year so we made the base EASHL classes better skaters and we knew that would probably hurt defense and goalies at some point even though they all went up together since they are the ones reacting.
And to hit on points like Seth's. If you have a poor connection and get latency in this game, it is going to be a problem. People that have better connections are going to find all the subtle behaviors much more on point than those with worse connections. I talk to our online team all the time making sure they understand the issues that the community is bringing up and trying to see if there is anything that can be done to improve the experience for even more players.
In the Lidstrom clip, it isn't old school VC at all in my opinion. When he fully turns, he is actually moving his skate blades to the way he is rotating/turning and comes to a stop as well, holding his ground to make the play which you can do with the current model. The one difference is that he does rotate his upper body form what his skates are doing to try and keep his shoulders and stick more square to the puck carrier and that is where we would want to go with a more advanced defensive stick. There have been discussions about that too. However, when you watch NHL players skating at speed, they need to rotate their hips and their skates need to be parallel with the direction they are travelling so they are always skating either forwards or backwards in most cases. The upper body rotation is a difference but again, its still a skating commitment and we tune our pokecheck accordingly, not hitting you as hard to your sides as we do the back to still give you a better 180 in front of you rather than an upper body that rotates and only great pokechecking out front where you are square which may be the more realistic way with all capabilities modelled. That is an example of what I mean about tuning the game within the current abilities.
Some of the changes that went in this year that were called out by others earlier in the thread were actually pretty good changes for defense -- Updates to the VC angles, when you should rotate (angles to the puck, etc.), the angles you could do backwards strafing cross overs at with speed before having to rotate your hips to a backskate, updates to need more of a roll to get a step out pivot or a d turn so that would more reliably get stops with VC held when you wanted them and frames within pivots that you could change your mind and get on/off VC to stay skating one way or the other to avoid commitment before you actually planted a foot and physically made that commitment. That also helps in 1v1 modes when the AI was just a frame into a pivot as you switch into them and want them to keep skating backwards. If you press VC before it gets further into that pivot, it will let you keep skating backwards where last year, you would stay committed to that pivot and then have to flip back around.
I also like the change where you can hit the left stick or VC in any order and as long as it is within the frame limit, you will start skating backwards -- before there were players that hit their left stick slightly ahead by a frame or two so the game would make them start forwards and then swing them to backwards on the input of VC -- that helps stability a lot too. I get that for many of you the strides aren't enough but we are committed to giving people more control and a better playing hockey game. Our expectations are high too. We would liked to have done more too but we stress our development directors out as it is for how long we work on the game before closing things down, always trying to get one more change in.
I am hopefull you're testing your online experience out with 6 v 6 teams in EASHL with clients that have consumer class internet, with team members across North America on both sides.
We are always looking at new tech. There are some pretty cool ideas and methods out there for advanced locomotion systems. We definitely have our eye on them.
Motion is one thing though and control is another. Trying to keep things simple, it is difficult to give a player control over different facing directions, skating forwards/backwards/strafing, the different angles you can have your stick out to (deking, defensive sticks in lanes, etc.) and how that all blends with different abilities to receive pucks, shoot pucks, pass pucks, etc.
So yes, we definitely want to see where we can advance things but even if there is a good tech solution for the motion, there is a lot to consider.
So what about bringing vision control back then? You didn't really say much on VC, I understand you guys are trying to balance forward skating abilities but vision control is near useless as it is now. It needs to be fixed so people can make small, smooth, quick movements in front of the net while facing the puck without flopping around like a fish out of water.
In my opinion, if vision control is anything less than instant towards the puck,(like it used to be) it's broken. While holding VC you should also be able to move at least 2 to 3 strides laterally with T pushes before you start skating full out. Trying to stay between a puck carrier and his intended pass recipient is like pulling teeth in this game, it is not hard to move small amounts while facing the puck carrier in real life.
Yes, we understand this deficiency. That is what we tried to start addressing with precision skating. In the old games, you could do what you can physically do from a stand still and slow speed at any speed so the game needing controls or context to decide between the two wasn't needed. There were a lot of discussions on the old forums around this. People had theories that if you had VC held then it should be those strafes when below a certain speed. The issue is that from a stand still, a player may actually want to accelerate backwards fast. They may also want to move laterally with speed to angle a player off to the boards without pivoting to forwards and thus need to backskate there. If we forced you to be slower and doing strafes, you wouldn't be able to do that.
People also say that VC should always face the puck. This isn't true of real life either. I mentioned it before but at speed, since you can't be strafing the whole way down the ice, you try to keep the puck in your front 180 degrees and backskate, keeping the puck in front of you but in some cases you are facing forward while the puck is up to 90 degrees to your side until you choose to pivot and commit to forward skating. If we made you face the puck, as the player got closer to you and increased that angle, the game would force you to commit to a pivot and/or force you to slow down so you could start strafing. Again, probably the reason why in the old games it just let you strafe at any speed.
Definitely a lot to think about but we do want to improve on what was started with precision skating and find a better way to blend it in and not overcomplicate the controls in the process even though someone on skates has many more things that they can physically do than can be inferred by one stick and a modifier.
Thank you for the response.
I know there's only so much you can do to design your game around lag, since ideally, there wouldn't be any, and you want to make the game as good as you can. Factoring in lag issues will bring the highest possible quality of the game down.
However, as it is right now, even a little lag has drastic effects on the skating engine. I'm not sure how much of this you guys can test or experience close to where the game is made ( I don't know where the server is located ), but if you could play the way I do, and a lot of other members do, you would see how much of a battle it is with your controller.
The system seems to do so much reading and reacting to player inputs at specific times, that with a little delay, it throws everything off balance and creates a ton of issues you guys may not have been able to foresee.
The key takeaways is limiting unwanted spins (especially when you just get the puck and then spin right into an attacker) and unpredictable pivots and to make everything feel more responsive. As much good as the delays you have built in to help with changing you mind on things like pivoting to backskating, it may infact be making everything feel less responsive.
Off topic, I'm glad you are on top of the online guys all the time to improve things, because it's a struggle most nights for a lot of people. A little lag goes a long way towards a miserable experience (and like I said, I show as only 10 ms of lag for most games). A lot of lag makes the game literally unplayable at an enjoyable level.
I know people hate the comparisons, but Rocket league has a bunch of servers just for the west coast. We have 2 for North America. I know more servers isn't always the answer, and I also know they are different types of games, but I never have connection issues with other games, and tons with this one. There are many other threads on these boards about this type of thing.
Seth, you play with Charlie, who has 70+ pings(no idea how he plays this game) because of his bad location and his skating seems fine. So you really think its your connection thats causes the issues ?
This is the one thing that should be addressed to some point, with puck control or something to reduce this exploit.
After the game I sent him a message, saying EA should watch you play because they can learn about things that get exploited and need addressing, to fix the TPS. But see this is why I love NHL17, I played smart positional defense, not allowing him to gain space and with the reduced puck control I was able to knock the puck off his stick and with truth grit and determination, I beat him 5-3.
This is what he said back to me after that the game.
I tired showing this back in NHL 15 but I think EA thought it was about how you could exploit the AI but in fact, its more about the puck control and puck carriers skating ability.
Yeah I see what you mean, you pretty much need seperate buttons for VC and back skate for it to be effective then it looks like, what if it were changed so that clicking R3 while holding in LT would toggle between backskate and VC? As far as I know R3 doesn't do anything without possession of the puck, I could be wrong though. And Ben, these forums are for civil discussions, no cursing please... lol jk
Please define 'poor connection', so we all know what you're talking about. HUT / VS / EASHL? What's the minimum to get decent gameplay? And why isn't this mentioned on the cover of the game/specs?
I understand the point about accountability. I agree that deciding whether to commit, and to what extent, needs to be either rewarded or punished accordingly. It's just unbalanced, as others have pointed out. A lot of the issues were already discussed, but I'd like to bring up another example.
I'm on defense, and a forward is trying to enter the zone along the board. I close the angle effectively, so realistically, he should have to dump the puck in, pass back into the neutral zone, or try to find a team mate's stick at the center lane or the opposite board. Instead, he pulls his stick over to the side, brings it back and blows past my player into a hustle toward the net. This move grants him this invisible bubble that I have no way of penetrating. A check will simply bounce off like a blaster bolt hitting a lightsaber in Star Wars. My only option against a player who's good with this move is to skate back and let him enter the zone, or to try and poke at the puck and hope I don't trip him as he pulls his stick to the side. Pinning against the boards may sometimes work, but whether that move even activates feels rather haphazard and carries an unreasonable risk against a good player. TPS exacerbates the problem a great deal, contributing to this situation with not just the increased accountability that was talked about, but a great imbalance between the forward and defenseman.
As well all those RS autodekes. RS should be strictly used for offensive/defensive manual stick movement.
Anything extra with modifiers.
Except for the fact it is completely missing a very important mechanic of skating..
Go into practice mode and put the puck in the high slot. You should be able to skate around the entire perimeter of the zone while strafing/t-pushing and more or less facing the puck the whole time.
Can't do it. This important part of hockey is completely missing from the game and has been for 5 years now.. This can't be sugar coated anymore, it's a joke TPS has been allowed to remain in this state for soo long now.
Dev, you can say that nhl players don't do this stuff very often, but this is a video game it's not real life. Almost every single time the puck is being worked around in one of the teams zone the players without the puck would constantly be on and off of using strafes/t-pushes.
Go play be a pro In nhl 12 and pay attention to how often you are using VC. You constantly use it throughout the game. Also pay attention to how smooth and good it FEELS. No more constant tapping and repositioning of the joystick. No more clunkiness. It just works. And it FEELS good.
I don't for a second think this is an easy thing to fix/solve, it should be #1 priority though. This issue is easily one of the biggest contributors to your game not being as fun as it used to be. Just look at that AI player all herky jerky in the OP. Human players constantly fight with that crape too. We have to deal with that crape just so that you can turn around backwards and make a pass on your forehand? I'm sorry but proper facing/strafing/t-pushes at slower speeds are a 100% more important mechanic.
Go into a drop in game and pay attention to how many players use the current back skating mechanic to help them make plays and avoid the 'accountability' errors. Almost never see it. Then next game pay attention to how many players, both AI or human, clunkily spin in wrong directions, herkily jerkily stop and start and lose their check, constantly tapping and or fighting with their LS. You probly can't go more than 1 minute real time without multiple skaters displaying similar issues to the herky jerky AI in the OP video..
When you think about it, it is absolutely absurd that we have had to deal with this for 5 years.
A good example of what certain aspects of this skating engine feels like to play with and control would be; Go into GTA and pop your back 2 tires. Now try to drive around the city full speed and try to stay on the road and avoid hitting other cars. Can it be done? Sure. What does it FEEL like though? It FEELS like a chore. You are constantly readjusting your steering and really have to pay attention and fight with the controls to accomplish this task. That is a perfect analogy of what certain aspects of TPS make us do every single game we play. It's that constant tapping/readjusting that just gets tiring and disengages users and saps the fun out of playing the game.
No one is going to enjoy a game for long periods of time where they have to constantly tap/readjust/fight with their joystick to accomplish a task that should be easy and FEEL and control in a smooth manner.
I have no major issues with what you are describing. I guess I'm just not very picky. I really like this game. I'm sure your points are valid but I personally don't have any major gripes about the skating. I fear that EA will go back to the NHL 12 float fest. I'm a sim guy. I don't like the arcade style of game play.
That is funny. The word it masked out was an-a-log (without the dashes obviously)
R3 without possession of the puck is hip check right now but yes there may be ways that the control could change. Lots of knock on issues when you start to do that though.