Random info from EA about NHL 16

[bigwill33]

Battles in Front - We haven't brought back the old net battle system because we didn't think the pros outweighed the cons. People complained about getting sucked in and we want something more organic. With the focus on the defensive aspects of the game, defenders should have enough tools this year to defend against players in front of the net. Small nudges can bump you off of receiving passes and connecting with one timers. Also if a shooters stick makes contact with a defenders stick when shooting it ca effect the shot quite a bit for both power and accuracy. We have also done a much better job making positioning matter so that players with good defensive skills will get sticks on pucks and do a better job getting flat out interceptions as well. We even fixed a couple bugs where if a player successfully stick lifted a player going for a one-timer that it would still solve despite the stick not being able to make contact. I am not calling that out as something we are most proud of but to give you an idea of how deep we looked into that area to make sure that defending was more predictable to play and that you get rewarded for strong positioning and smart play. It was just as much about fixing current frustrations as it was about adding new pieces to the puzzle.

Player Switching - This is a tough one for me to claim that we have fixed all your worries as sometimes player switching is subjective. Some people want to just be goal side, others want the closest backchecker first as long as he has a chance to make a play, etc.. All I can say, is that we have done work against player switching and gone through a couple of iterations trying to fine tune and make it better. I have seen comments in this thread that you just want the player closest to the puck but from having people playtest, that isn't always true. It isn't even always true that you want the player closest to the puck that is goal side (as an example, what if the closest player goal side is caught in a pivot going the wrong way and by the time you pick them, the puck carrier will already be by them?). We take a lot more into consideration using those base rules but then also looking at your ability to intercept the puck carrier based on both yours and their current speed/trajectory. We then use other logic to ensure we pick someone closer to your own net if the puck is traveling that way so that we don't send you backwards. We also don't want to walk you back switching back and forth across the ice so we try to limit how far away horizontally on screen it will switch as well (assuming you are playing with a up/down camera angle). Our engineers could tell you in a lot more detail what the code is doing but thought you would like to know that we took a good crack at making it better and trying to appease the many ideas of who the next best player to switch to is for all people.

Cameras for Defense - I call this out as cameras on defense as that is the area where cameras tend to cause issues the most and it has been called out specifically in this thread as the need for the Custom 3 camera but this is a new feature for everyone. As mentioned a few posts up in the thread, we don't have custom cameras in for this year but I wanted to let you know that we did update what 'auto zoom' means in camera selection. It may not fit what you are all after but it is actually pretty cool and you should give it a shot. I was a player that was constantly pressing the back button back and forth when playing defense in the previous versions of the EASHL and the new camera actually feels really good without having to do any of that. The functionality works for most cameras, if not all, and what it is does is zoom out to try and keep your player and the puck in view at all times. So if you are holding the blueline and the puck is down deep in the corner, the camera will be zoomed further away than if you were 1 on 1 with a puck carrier in your own zone attacking towards you in the slot. The closest the camera will get is whatever you set the default camera to (i.e. Dynamic Medium) and if you set Auto Zoom to 'On', it will have this functionality. Due to this, I have even been playing defense with Dynamic Low now so that I have high fidelity for 1 on 1 and stick checking situations, yet can still see both the blueline and the puck at all times in the offensive zone.

Q: Can you make the puck 100% loose when a player is idle? Why is it glued to their stick currently? It makes no sense at all.

A: I assume you are referring to the difficulty to get the puck from a player that is standing still/idle because otherwise, the player in possession of the puck, even when standing idle still has 'possession' and will automatically stick handle in their base idle by design.

We have made a lot of changes on our online default settings to pokecheck and incidental contact with the puck carriers stick to ensure they lose the puck when they should. A couple of things that come into play in this case are that we make it easier to track a puck with a pokecheck the slower the puck is travelling and in the case where the puck is 'still', all players, regardless of their pokecheck rating will be able to target the puck. In the past, the way the ratings worked for pokecheck, some players may still miss that puck or not hit it cleanly due to error being applied from their pokecheck rating. We have also looked at the collision of stick on puck to make sure that when you hit it cleanly that it is more of a blunt collision. In 15, sometimes the puck would move slightly but not respond appropriately to the level of contact that was made.

My 2 cents: It is completely asinine that someone online can literally put down there controller and walk away, yet the puck seemingly gravitates towards their player, who then auto-reaches out to grab the puck. Meanwhile, there are 9 other skaters on the ice that cannot dislodge that puck from the uncontrolled player.

On shielding the puck and contact to dislodge the puck from that counter tactic:
Last year, because we didn't have the full range of physical reactions in and working (a big lack on the bottom end for different stumble reactions) players holding the puck out to the side became too powerful. In many cases, they were controlled enough that they shouldn't have gone into a big stumble fall or full fall so that was correct but they probably should have in many cases been at least bumped off the puck. This year, we have the full range of reactions in and working and this has helped a lot.

We can now still have players more in control and prepared if they are in a glide vs in stride but a player that is strong enough and/or comes in with enough relative speed to produce the right amount of force can bump a player off the puck. I should note here that so far for NHL 16, the tuning for a player holding the puck out is that they are as physically prepared as someone in a glide. The only difference in advantage/disadvantage here is the ability to have the puck more protected from where a player can physically get to it.

We actually now have more stumble reactions than we had on last gen. We have added little shrugs where players have a bigger chance to keep the puck, and slightly bigger stumbles where a player can get bumped more cleanly off the puck. This has also allowed us to tune the physical interactions of when you lose the puck much more realistically. Since we don't have some of the more subtle stick and puck interactions that you would need in the many situations that come out of physics driven reactions, we can also look at the distance the puck is from the stick and ensure it comes loose if it is too far away, even if the original stumble was intending to keep the puck (hope that makes sense). The end result is that it feels much more organic and matches the expectation you have for the result more often.

The last thing I will say is that all of this is very important in the way we tune the sub factors on actions like shooting and passing. Since we make you more accountable for being in control, even subtle losses of the puck have an impact to the end result of all of these actions. Just because you lose the puck for a slight moment doesn't mean that the offensive player isn't the one that will pick it back up. However, what it does mean is that if they do pick it back up and shoot right after, they will have less accuracy and control in what they were doing than if they had just kept control of the puck that whole time. These losses of the puck can come from incidental contacts from stick on stick, stick on body, a result of a more subtle collision, etc..

Again, in the end, it makes the offensive player more accountable for their actions, the need for moving the puck, protecting the puck, controlling their speeds and not just driving through traffic and expecting the same result as if they had a clear lane. It also gives defense a much better ability to make their positioning and actions matter.


Spam poke-checking:
We wanted to look at the issue of spamming pokecheck and handle it in a realistic way understanding why the method wouldn't be possible and/or successful in real life. Physically you won't be as accurate if your are stabbing again and again at the puck vs taking one good attempt at it. Thus we looked at your ability to make contact with the puck on your first poke attempt and that is based on a number of factors (relative speed of the puck to your player, the angle to your player the puck is in (better out front, worse to the sides and even worse behind) and your players stick checking rating).

From there, in the spamming case, every poke after that has more possible error applied to it to simulate being out of control. If you wait until you are done the first pokecheck and back in control before poking again, that is pretty much the window (again to be realistic rather than just a game mechanic).

Since stick on stick and stick on body contact can dislodge the puck, positioning alone is much more stifling, (especially with more control while skating), so I think you will find beyond your ability to perform an action (poke, stick lift or hit), just holding your ground can stand a player up and the puck will come loose if a player doesn't try and switch up the lane they are attacking from.

As a side note, we also refined pokechecks to look more at the angle of the 2 sticks to give you more success when you have leverage (so you will be better coming up from behind when your stick is perpendicular to the player that is holding it out to that side vs from the dead front when the two stick are more parallel with one another and you can't get leverage -- this all gets weighed into attributes of the players as well but that's the base mechanic).

Each of the changes makes playing defense more predictable and it also allows the offensive player to know when they are actually vulnerable or what they should be doing to protect the puck better as well.

I think you will find that you no longer have to spam poke check.


All from Ben on the EA Boards. Here is the full list and Q&A segment: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/li...r/9427035.page

[Syce]

and we know that people will continue to spam poke check because thats how they know how to play. so no matter what they do with it. people will continue to abuse the hell out of it.

[Vikes1]

Thanks for the info, bigwill!

[giantsharks]

Thank for posting the info! All the talk of different stumble animations kinda worries me. Also the response to the poke checks seems just off to me, looking at poke checking in a realistic way shouldnt be based around accuracy of poke checking over and over again, i feel like thats more of a bandaid, maybe its just me but i feel like you can poke check over and over with ok accuracy, its more of making you off balance or slowing your momentum down, so i think there should be a risk/reward with pokechecking, you do it and miss,it should be easier for an offense player to get past you. Just my two cents, sorry for the run on sentence

[IHadAlexisTexas]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sycecg

and we know that people will continue to spam poke check because thats how they know how to play. so no matter what they do with it. people will continue to abuse the hell out of it.

In the event that it works as they've planned, people will be crying about penalties and it will be nullified in a patch.

With this series it seems most gameplay improvements are toned back to NHL 12 style after enough whining from the peanut gallery.

[lions67]

Quote: Originally Posted by giantsharks

Thank for posting the info! All the talk of different stumble animations kinda worries me. Also the response to the poke checks seems just off to me, looking at poke checking in a realistic way shouldnt be based around accuracy of poke checking over and over again, i feel like thats more of a bandaid, maybe its just me but i feel like you can poke check over and over with ok accuracy, its more of making you off balance or slowing your momentum down, so i think there should be a risk/reward with pokechecking, you do it and miss,it should be easier for an offense player to get past you. Just my two cents, sorry for the run on sentence

not sure what it is that worries you. this all sounds like a very good step in the right direction.

[bigwill33]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sycecg

and we know that people will continue to spam poke check because thats how they know how to play. so no matter what they do with it. people will continue to abuse the hell out of it.

I pretty much agree with you here. And what makes it worse is that how would anyone know about this change unless they read this Q&A?

But something had to be done, and hopefully after a few iterations of this being in place people start grasping the change.

It is almost time for them to rework defensive controls altogether, IMO.

[mnsportsguy47]

Hey, does anybody know or heard if you will be able to set team and line strategies abd save them this year? It was a pain in the butt to have to set them then wait til the intro and pause then do other team before every game on NHL 15. I think it makes a big difference to how the teams really play..anyone know???. thanks