Gamechanger – Ideas and Feedback for Goalies

[betweenthepipes]

Hey guys, I'm very grateful to have been added to the Gamechanger program this year. I know there is already a thread created by Tony, but my main focus is on goalies and making sure that this position will be playable, enjoyable, and skill-based next year. I will do my best to push ideas and get them implemented.

I'd like to get your feedback on what you want to see changed for goalies next year. Feel free to let me know what shouldn't be changed as well.

Here is a summary of my main ideas as well as a video, but what's more important are your ideas:

- Get rid of the invisible wall around the net and posts – if we want to play inside of our net and get scored on because of that we should be able to. Let us decide the outcome of the game.

- Fix the input delay in goalie movements.

- Fix backward movement.



Looking forward to your ideas OS!

[csamuelsvt]

I post this on the other thread on this very topic as it pertains to this, so I'll post this again here.

The goalie position needs to honestly be completely revamped and made DYNAMIC. They did some things to them that are better(more cosmetic than anything i.e. the goalies glove position is higher/better stance), but there is still plenty of warping by the A.I. and the goalies simply go down WAY too early in the butterfly position at odd times, especially when you're close in. I absolutely HATE all of the glove saves in the game as well....they just need to completely redo the position/animations and not recycle the ones that have been in since NHL '07 while adding in a few new ones. Goals that should go in after remarkable plays, do not go in, however if you take shots from the opposite blue line on the goalie, the weak shots go in...makes no sense. Anyone that has played, knows what I'm talking about.

If you want to see goalies that are dynamic, go see NHL 2K11 was it or NHL2k12 and look at how they react to the puck. The saves are beautiful to look at along with their reactions to when they give up a goal. Everything 2K did made the position look realistic

[miner7g]

When I next get on the ice I might get some video to illustrate some of the points that I'm about to make. This is all on the top of my head and things that have been nagging me for awhile; I might miss some points but I'll make sure to edit them in when they come to me. Here goes:

First of all, I'm a huge equipment geek. This is the guy that goes on the goalie customizers on the major goalie sites and plays around with goalie customizers. Players got a lot of customization (some of it completely ticky-tack, but I digress) and I thought, why do the goalies have to have the same ol' '9 color zone or less' goalie pads? Nowadays goalies have tons of variation, and they're only getting more complicated. I'm not an animator/modeller/programmer so I have no perspective on how hard it would be to isolate color zones but there should be WAY more than 9.

I'll provide a picture.
Goalie Suggestions pt. 1.jpg
I'll point out each part in numbers.
1.) That is one thing that Vaughn has implemented with the last few pads they've put in. Half the part on the outside can be one color, and the top a different color, currently impossible to put in. I can list off a number of goalies that have used this, yet it's still not replicable in the game.
2.) Might be hard to spot in this picture, but Miller has the blue part as so, and MOST times that would include the entire bottom of the pad. Not so with him. You can't do that in the EA NHL games. That side is blue, but if you see him standing up...
Goalie Suggestions pt. 2.jpg
Voila!
3.) The CCM blocker has been in for what... Three years? And this has been an extremely popular part, making the very leftmost zone colored. This isn't an option, and beauties like these:
Goalie Suggestions pt. 3.jpg
Those, majestic pads, cannot be replicated in the game. Why deprive the EASHL of such majesty? I could point to any number of different pads that sadly can't be made. Oh, before I forget, my FAVOURITE VARIATION of the Subzero II Brian's set isn't able to be made. My heart breaks ---
Goalie Suggestions pt. 4.jpg
--- when I cannot use these. (The green areas are those that currently can't be edited in that way.)
Honestly, if they implemented these things I'd buy a PS4 tommorow. I'm a nut that way, and there are others that would agree.

Now to the gameplay aspect, as I said, I don't have a PS4 myself, however I have played at my friends' places quite a bit and a few things stick out to me.

The Shuffle
It feels clunky and sloppy. Once you move, you're locked in for a half a second before you can do anything else, which isn't how it goes in real life. Your goalie basically spends a clumsy amount of time when in precision movement to move a very small amount, when simply in real life if you wanted to quickly move all you'd need to do is twist your foot and progress into a T-push seamlessly, or if you wanted to change facing all you would do is twist and step. Again, clunky.

The T-Push
I love Eddie Lack, I do. But c'mon. Twisting around for a full back-push? REALLY? C'mon! The first time I did that I almost threw the controller (I would've had it not been my friends), The only reason you would do that is on a dump-in/a deep pass when you're out aggressive, which is very ineffective because of the input delay (as you've mentioned earlier, thanks man.) A much more effective backward movement would be a combination of long and short C-cuts, keeping you square to the shooter. This is more widely used for that reason than the backward-t-push.

The Butterfly Push
As in, the one that kind of sucks. Speaking of cross-creasers, this is the most common answer TO them. This is another thing I get is hard to implement in-game because when you hit the butterfly button it doesn't assume you might want to immediately push sideways into butterfly, but this is the move I do every game to counter those cross-crease passes. Like I said, I'll get some video later but I'll try to summarize it as best I can. When you are standing up, square to the shooter, and someone passes it, I immediately swing the back-leg back and slant it towards the ice, and use the leg that is still forward to PUSH back to the opposite post where the shooter is. Thus by the time I arrive there, the shot is presumably already coming and your pad is already down. The problem is right now, it seems like it takes forever to start. It may be the input delay, but it seems to me like when you're standing up it likes to go down into butterfly first, THEN push. Which is the opposite of what you want. You want to use the momentum of going down to carry your slide faster. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about as a goalie yourself.

Coming Off The Post
Pretty frustrating. When I was playing it seemed like it made you go to the other post, and/or make you come out of the crease at the most awkward angle possible, and this is probably in part because of the invisible barrier that has plagued goalies for the last, what... 5-7 years? At least? Anyway, the biggest part of goalies today has been staying square, getting your chest in front of the puck, and it seems like we're put at a disadvantage in that regard.

Rebound Control
To this point, I think it's because of the lack of new animations being layered on to goalies. Angling the blocker to put the puck in the corner, directing the puck over the glass for a whistle/directing it to the corner where it's relatively harmless, putting the stick along the ice to basically kill the rebound and easily cover it, angling the pad as the shot comes off it to put the puck to the corner, all of this isn't in the game, or implemented badly. Heck, I live in Burnaby, I'd volunteer to model it myself.

The Reverse VH
I hope they'll implement this. One huge thing about the Reverse VH is how great it is for scrambling when the puck is close to the net, and for covering passes across. When I went to a goalie school, my instructor told me: "If a puck goes along the ice, in your crease for a one-timer, that's your fault. Nothing should pass through your crease." We practised going into reverse VH, holding out the stick and directing the puck coming out of the corner/stop the puck with the stick and cover it. Neither of these are put into use in NHL 16, and that is a HUGE part of how goalies operate nowadays.

Cutting Down Angles
http://www.theplayerstribune.com/jon...kings-snipers/
Full disclosure, I dislike the Kings. But I do like Jonathan Quick and how technical he is, and the first part of this article perfectly describes how I approach the game and why goalies in EA NHL are seriously flawed. Most of the work is done before the shot, you're playing the percentages. When a pass comes out to the middle, I immediately come out far and get into a low stance, preparing for either a high shot or one along the ice.

I'll give a run-down of my thoughts in this situation, and provide a fancy picture!
Goalie Suggestions pt. 5.jpg
See here? This is cutting down the angle. You're covering what the puck sees, not what the shooter sees. He's low just incase he shoots five-hole, but looming over the puck. If you looked at it from the puck's perspective, the top of the net would be utterly invisible. All you would see is the goalie's (in this case, Mason McDonald's) chest. This is a huge thing that the game definitively lacks: pre-shot preparation. You can't loom over a puck, you can't stick your pad out a certain way in anticipation for a shot, all you can do is stick yourself infront of it and hope. You could either A.) Add some controls where you can commit to a side with your pad/blocker/glove before the shot just so you're infront of it before it's shot, or add a system in which the goalie animations are situational. I'd imagine the latter would be much harder to implement, but it would make goalies so much more effective.

Anyway, I'll most likely have more ideas pop into my head later on but that's my spiel on what I'd like to see. Thanks for reading my enormous wall of text!

EDIT: One thing I've noticed in the previous gen, I'm not sure if this carried over to the next-gen game: The puck comes off the stick in an unrealistic way, in fact I remember one goal I had in particular where as I shot it, the puck curled on my blade AROUND the pad and into the net. This makes it even worse for goalies because how are you supposed to cut down the angle when the angle of the shot becomes different?

Another edit: Man, this is an entire article's worth. Sorry that you had to read this.