Odds that we’ll have penalties at launch?

[JohnnyRu31]

EA seems to hate penalties. Nhl 22 didn’t have any (at least for the short time I played before quitting out of frustration. And Madden never had working penalties. I just want some power plays. I hope this isn’t an issue

[voodoo_magic]

Madden and FIFA are bad for practically no penalties/fouls.
I had no issues with NHL's penalties last year though, so don't know how you didn't get any.
I had penalties at 4 in game settings but also moved most of the individual types of penalty sliders up much higher.
The interference slider at default was leading to a lot of penalties and had to actually reduce that one.

[onlybygrace]

Hard to say...

but take comfort in that when only the HUM gets the penalties, the crowd in the game is gonna show their anger about it.

So instead of them booing the refs, just imagine they are booing the development team.

[Therebelyell626]

I didn’t really feel penalties were that much of a problem in 22. I felt the problem was more of a balance issue than anything.

I was seeing anywhere from 4-8 power plays a game.

The problem is the numbers always skewed more to one team than the other. If I got 8 power plays in a game it was either usually one team getting 1 or 2 while the other was was getting 6 or 7.

The problem is the penalty kill is to aggressive as a whole. As soon as a team goes on the penalty kill they try like hell to get the puck back, and are much more aggressive trying to score goals when they should be parking the bus trying as hard as possible to not concede a power play goal.

What this lead to was a lot of lopsided games where the CPU teams will immediately concede a 5 on 3 power play. Even your AI teammates are too aggressive which leads to a lot of penalties to go 5 on 3 real quick.

They really need to tune AI strategy on the penalty kill. But it’s been like this for over 10 years and I don’t think they know how to fix it at this point.

Another problem the AI is never guessing and making succeed or fail decisions. All they do is map your controller input and follow your players aimlessly up the ice as if they are psychic. Go into practice and set up a one on one against a defensive player. Move your puck carrier around on the ice and watch the the AI just follow your every controller input the second you make it. The defense just tries to cheat instead of reading and reacting. That is why it is to easy to pull the Defensive AI out of position for easy one timers. They don’t read and react.

I doubt it will ever be fixed

[kdutch98]

i have played 2 games so far. 6 minute periods. All Star difficulty. Slider penalty maxed.

game 1 I had 8 power plays, including a 5 on 3. CPU had 4

Second game, I had 4 power plays, the CPU had 2

[SlyBelle]

Yep, I don't have any issues in the number of penalties, last year and this year seems to be fine for me. But the variety and type could be better as most of mine are holding and tripping, with occasional interference.

But that is not huge deal as long as getting the right number of opportunities for special teams play.

[doorknobb]

Anyone else notice that interference penalties are getting called in a ludicrous way (at least in BAP/Franchise) sometimes, which wasn't a problem last year? I've been getting called for interference because the shooting animation of the player makes contact with or gets close to the defender so that I guess technically I'm impeding their movement as soon as the puck is shot. I mean, I'm the puck carrier even after I've taken the shot until the puck makes contact with the goalie or is otherwise blocked, no? I've had several instances in the same game where I'm called for interference as soon as the puck hits the goalie on a shot even though the impediment is the AI missing their check but my shooting animation isn't over when the puck reaches the goalie, and that is giving the game all the benefit of the doubt in the world. Also, the slider on that doesn't seem to fix it.

This obviously tends to happen if you try to take a close-ish range slapper which isn't a great shot but it makes using that to set up a rebound goal much harder. This should have been caught in QA and it baffles me even more that this is not a problem that I ran into last year but somehow came out of nowhere. As a developer (not of games, but conceptually similar when developing projects that involve a team) when you work on a project in pieces sometimes even testing suites can't catch unexpected effects created when the pieces get put together but... that's what QA is for. There are some other weirdness like the AI getting called for tripping out of nowhere - namely nobody got tripped but a tripping penalty still gets called, but I've only had that happen once so it might just be an animation issue. Not a great look overall when new problems pop up in what is more or less the same engine though.

I've been playing with the penalty slider all the way up and I might try it at 3 instead of 4, although with EA's track record, I'd give it even odds that it just overcorrects by undercalling obvious penalties.

[doorknobb]

Quote: Originally Posted by voodoo_magic

Madden and FIFA are bad for practically no penalties/fouls. I had no issues with NHL's penalties last year though, so don't know how you didn't get any. I had penalties at 4 in game settings but also moved most of the individual types of penalty sliders up much higher. The interference slider at default was leading to a lot of penalties and had to actually reduce that one.

FIFA for whatever reason had all handballs turned off by default in single player last year and you had to dig through the settings to turn it back on just to get them called, and after that, the announcers 8 times out of 10 calls penalties "free kicks". Also, it was never made clear to players that penalties had to be manually turned on. That's a design and communication problem and not really related to the underlying game, although whose dumb idea it was to essentially cut out a huge chunk of obvious penalties is beyond me, especially since 'foot' is literally part of the name of the sport itself.