Let's Talk: NHL 21 Gameplay Trailer
September 17, 2020 3:13PM
edited September 17
Hey, everyone. For this week's Let's Talk, we'd like to hear your thoughts on the new gameplay trailer that has been released today. Check it out and let us know what you think. Full details can be found here.
Post edited by EA_Blueberry on
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this trailer is positive now. we can see more on beta how this upgraded defense move between circles and blue-line will do work if any offensive TOP player will do cover his stick with LT.... it was not at this trailer.
When you say script interaction with sticks, are you talking about how they pass through players and objects? If so, that will still occur, but you can't play the puck for a bit after this happens. This helps simulate the time it would take for a player to move their stick around the player/object so they are in a good position to make a play on the puck.
Nice to hear and see comments about stuff you been working on.. North and south plays and a more active AI is good news.
I Wonder how much input you guys got from the Technical Test and how the final realese will end up, but im sure, on board!
Am I the only one who hears them talk about how they improved defense while watching a bunch of footage of defense looking awful and getting destroyed by offense like a bunch of Timbit hockey league players?
Even after watching this, I’m very skeptical of the AI improvements. The AI can look competent in small samples in NHL 20 which is obviously what a trailer is, so that will easily be my biggest testing spot during my 10-hour trial. The goal they showed the caps giving up didn’t look like improved defense AI at all. That scenario was somewhat of a 4-3 right? So how did it end up being an easy 2-0 because of one pass? If you’re playing man in that particular rush, the user error should’ve allowed the original puck carrier a chance to freely walk into the slot and use his crashing teammates as screens to setup a great scoring chance or it should’ve resulted in the backside cut being open because that guy beat the back checking wing and Dillion would’ve naturally started closing on the guy where the initial pass was made in the trailer. If you’re playing zone in that scenario, the pass shown in the trailer should’ve been available, but Dillion’s “zone” would’ve been the weakside meaning worst-case scenario for him, he takes at least one guy out of the equation. I’m not saying that rush shouldn’t have resulted in a great chance/goal there especially with the user error, but the way the goal was scored showed absolutely no improvement over 20. Dillion got confused and stopped at the tops of the circle.
The breakouts/forechecks didn’t look much better imo. I’ve seen the CPU forecheck effectively against me, but the same issue we saw in 20 I saw in the trailer with kovalchuk. Why is he leaving the zone early as the strong-side wing? I know that’s a strategy but isn’t that reserved for the weak side player? I get that he was the weakside wing for a split second, but the puck carrier was skating around the boards, behind the net, towards his side. You are the strong-side wing in that scenario lol. If that strategy worked effectively, he should’ve already made his “leaving the zone” cut, right? Why is he stationary/so late in the original read? By now, I’m expecting a wing to be there since you know, I see him there, but he’s now just starting his weakside strategy read while simultaneously turning into the strong-side wing.
Same play, watch Gudas in-front of the net. He stutters, gets confused, then doesn’t support the puck. As the non puck-carrying defenseman, you’re job is to give your partner an outlet. That means he should either be behind the net on the weakside, or he should be standing by the strong-side post to give his partner a reverse option. This should be something that can be set in strategies like 2k and FIFA. I personally teach and love the strong-side post mentality, but some systems like behind the net. Some forechecks will force you to do one or the other but that’s the chess match that’s entirely missing from this game. Maybe I’m being too in-depth, but on a very rudimentary level, the AI D partner is doing nothing to support the puck there.
With that being said, I don’t want to be just pessimistic here, the new goalie animations look really nice! Loving how they’re catching their momentum, love how they’re dropping/driving into saves which allows them to combat a shooter changing the angle, and that save from markstrom at the end looked like a very good save through a screen. If the tech is there for goalies to do that stuff now, I am fully expecting screens to be a much bigger factor in the game. This also means that the improved AI should put themselves in a screening position when they’re able too, but we’ll see how that goes when we get our hands on the game. Seems like most improvements were based around the rush which is a tad disappointing. Shooting through a screen should be a rewarded skill in this game. I’ll add that I am skeptical still with the momentum-catching animations. Will CPU goalies be forced to use these, or are these just fun animations that will trigger sometimes for them/be more for human goalies?
Lastly, with all of these new dekes in the game, I think it’s time we put a “deke” attribute effect slider in the game as opposed to deking in general (unless I’m confused by what the deke slider does under the “puck control” section). I want dekes to be fun with the right people, not just deking being hard or easy based in a slider. I really have struggled to find the right combination of AE + fatigue effect + deke slider in the current list of sliders we have. I don’t think my player should be punished for trying a deke you know? If his deking attributes are high enough and if he’s not too tired, the deke should work imo. It seems like I have to sacrifice something to make deking even fun with top-line skill guys at times so I think that slider would be able to be fine-tuned a little more. Now that I’m writing this, I’d love to see more of these attribute effect sliders in general to replace the over-arching “attribute effect” slider. I think it would give a lot more granular control over what you want to matter while not making globally making bottom-line guys so inept compared to their top-line counterparts.
please watch the trailer at least ten times. I'm also a big critic but I can't help but notice that AI on the defensive actually fights in two and complements. But of course it's also possible that it's just a montage of the best. But certainly EA uses both sides of the coin in the trailer and we can think that it should have decided for a total defense as in football. and then she found out that it's too defensive, so she added the offensive elements .... but it's more like my dream
It's not just you.
Nothing in that trailer makes me think that the woeful disparity between offense and defense we saw in the technical test is going to be addressed in the final product.
It's also telling how the first mention of any improvements on defense is talking about improved forechecking. Don't get me wrong, better forechecking by the AI would be great to have, but it really shows how in EA's mind they're thinking primarily about offense even when talking about defense.
This trailer bears little resemblance to what I experienced i the beta as far as defense. Also. They only talked about the AI D. Defense in the tech test was a mess for both AI and human players.
A big MEH from me.
I mean the same holds true for human goalies too. Majority of the changes are for just AI goalies awhile humans still feel lackluster in terms of being in solid position on breakaways and still getting burned too much
That's why I asked if this was all implemented in the tech test , I sure didn't see improved defense/goaltending/ai in the eashl games I played. Maybe those improvements show up in some of the other 12 modes *shrug
They are between your ears. (don't mean it as a jab either just that now you gotta train your brain to sit back more and wait for your chance to poke or drive them off the puck)
The improved goalie was in the game. The AI goalie was much better for the most part. Short side was very hard to pull off. There were new animations for both the AI and Human goalies. They didn't feel quite right for the humans so hopefully they got tweaked a bit but there were there.
middle of the ice is meaning between the circles?
I hear they are supposed to give defense some skates in 2-3 years.
Improved goalie was not present in the games I played. I'll give you different animations but the goalies were swiss cheese. We noticed the rebounds were a bit better but the snipes were way up.
You talking on human or AI? Either way the new animations are the changes and as the video said it's about positioning your goalie better more than ever. You really gotta challenge shots from out if you want to stop them. I had to even move out farther which felt like I will get smoked more from passes on the side of the net for 1 timers.