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Some more in-depth observations on gameplay:
-Your AI teammates are useless most of the time. The backside help on defense is nearly non-existant! If you go below the goal line to defend the puck carrier, race for a loose puck, or cut an angle down, you will get no help (NONE!) from the backside defender.
This leaves all sorts of easy one-timers, cross-crease chances, and free dishes to the slot for easy shots on goal. This has resulted in about 95% of the goals I have given up thus far.
It even gets worse on the PK. If you stray away from the box you are in as a defender do not expect any help from your AI teammates if you do not immediately make the play.
To see if it was just my play that was causing this I did an experiment. I took a winger while in the defensive zone and just shadowed my point man. The puck was in my zone for minutes at time as a result. The AI defenders were constantly beat to every loose puck, rebound, pass, or just turned around by being off balance by the puck carrier. If you are not doing it yourself you will not ever gain possession of the puck on defense. And if you are doing it yourself you had better be spot on or you will not get any help from your CPU teammates.
This, once again, almost makes playing defense like allowing a dog to hump your leg. It is usually better to just lay back and let them finish than to go on and be assertive and try and stop it yourself.
Also:
The poke check and loose pucks... they are once again in favor of the CPU team. The CPU can break up your passes or knock you off of the puck quite a bit, especially with how wonky the passing seems to be in the zones. Sometimes it seems like the game just decides where you will be passing for you rather than taking into account where you are aiming.
But that being said, the CPU once again gets the benefit of never being caught taking a mis-step to a puck that is loose or poked free. I would put it at around 8 to 9 times out of 10 if you happen to poke the puck off of the CPU player they will get it back or their teammate will rush over to rescue it.
Conversely, if you lose the puck I would say you might get possession around 2 to 3 out of 10 times. This is very similar to what we have seen in the past and it is not good.
-Pinning on the boards is the same if not worse. Try pinning the CPU when you have the angle and speed, it is still a hit or miss proposition. The same is not true for them on you. And once you are pinned you are not getting loose. You must kick the puck along the boards and pray your AI controlled CPU teammate is around or will be the first guy nearest the puck when doing so, because they rarely read this correctly and support properly in either zone.
The CPU can still get pinned and kick in directions that are not realistic. I pinned a player to the boards behind my net and they immediately kicked a perfect pass into the slot for a one-timer and goal.
What would be nice would be the ability to pin someone and then take control of, or call for, a second player to come in for support. One that could dig the puck loose etc.
-CPU goalies play the puck far too often! I know there is a slider for this usually in offline play, but it is quite hard to force face-offs in this demo.
-Setting your face-offs on aggressive is still a punishable strategy. It seems that some time ago when EA redid the face-off logic and play they made it so setting your formation to aggressive would reduce the % of winning the draw. Rather than to make it realistic and give more loose pucks or 50/50 or even give more options when setting your defense up for a face-off EA said if you want to win a draw for an immediate advantage you will have to spam that face-off good. This needs work. The system is completely busted, but they need to finish and complete the face-off stuff that they worked hard on several years ago. It is about 3/4th's complete and it is stale and needs to be caught up with one of the most important factors of a real hockey game, a face-off in the attacking zone (especially during special teams play).
-The lack of intuitiveness on the line change options is still a handicap for this series. Killing a long penalty and want to make sure you have that top line out there after that final dump or clear with under 20 seconds left in the major penalty? Well, you still have to wait until the penalty is over to select that line, or any other.
How unrealistic is it to only be able to choose between line 1 or line 2 on the PK and PP?
How about when you are finishing up your PP and want to get that checking line out so you don't get caught with a dog tired unit out there, but oh you can't! Wait for that door to open and watch as the freshest guy on the ice streaks behind your team because you are gassed because you were stuck cycling through only 2 lines for the past 5 minutes of near real-time power play action.
-Oh, and I mentioned it first and then have seen it mentioned a few other times, but to reiterate; How in the heck do you let the face buttons choose the settings pre-face-off, EA?? How this made it all the way into the game is beyond me. Want to change up your face-off strategy while you are watching stoppage in play? Well I would hope that you didn't want to hit X on PS4 or A on XBone cause you are skipping to the next part of the game, usually the face-off itself, and who knows what strategy you will have selected?! Brilliant! It is things like this that really is inexcusable.
-Not to mention that you must still scroll through the lines by button mashing the same button during gameplay! How many times have you over-cycled through the line that you really wanted to select while playing? Then you have to jam the button 4 more times to hopefully get the line you want. Sometimes you get a little bit of lag and it doesn't register at first. Fun times!
I said years ago to implement the line changes to the d-pad. Up is line 1, right is line 2, and so on. You could do it so many other ways that would be better. How about pulling the right trigger, that has no assignment, and that brings up a 4 button option (perhaps the face buttons) and then selecting your lines that way?
We have been choosing lines this way for 20 years now and it is old and antiquated! Streamline, EA. Less buttons are better.
The opposite goes for fighting. I don't want to accidentally trigger a fight trying to induce a pinning of my opponent to the boards. I don't want to accept a fight half way back up the ice because it is the same control as something else during gameplay! Put in a modifier to fight!!! You can't accidentally pull the goalie anymore with having to hit the left trigger and select, the same should be said for challenging and accepting fights! Fix this already, please.
Cameras:
-Can I get a damn lower camera that is pulled back just enough to show my point men when I am in the offensive zone? Passing back to the blue line on offense should not be a guessing game! Heck, allow me to make a custom camera that has the angle and zoom that I want. Let me customize it for all places on the ice! I know this would break online syncing, but at least give me the option for offline play.
-Let me cycle through the gameplay cameras with select or some other designated button like Madden does now. Simple enough. Less pausing the better.
Timeouts:
Same deal, EA. Allow me to call my timeout from on the ice. Left trigger and another button at the same time should bring up a prompt during a play stoppage "Call Timeout? Yes, hit _". Simple as that. Bam!
-I am really going to miss custom sounds in the next gen version. This isn't EA's fault, but it will certainly be a bummer not having that in there for now. Just a thought.
Serious question: Are you guys that are playing on the toughest setting getting slappers or shots from the points to go in at all? I cannot get my slapper past either goalie no matter what I try, so far. I am also not seeing hardly any shots from the point from the CPU against me. Wondering what your experiences are.
And why can't I pass where I want? My biggest attribute in real life, as well in the game, is my vision. I read plays and space well and can dish pretty nicely. This game really struggles to make the indirect passes look good, like the ones off of the boards coming out of the zone and into the neutral zone areas. I would like to bank a pass here and there, but it is not usually looking good.
I also struggle with what should be easily made passes in the offensive zone. I see a clear lane and a teammate and I do what I am used to doing with the sticks and it goes far from the intended target or is magically poked when there shouldn't even be a chance that this puck is to anyone but my teammate.
I still feel that EA should implement some sort of quick notification of who you are passing to, not a vision cone lol, but perhaps a small icon that would subtly light up when you are targeting them, just for your own sake. It wouldn't meant that the puck would always be spot on because ratings and other factors would impact it, and it should be an option to disable this, but just maybe to see something like "oh, I apparently am not hitting the exact angle needed on the sticks to get it back to the far point man and have selected the player in the slot, I better jam this back a bit further before I release the pass button so it has a chance of making it through." type of option.
Anyway, sorry to be long winded. I just was playing and these things come to my mind. I keep checking my mailbox everyday for that paycheck from EA or the contract offer to work on the game... no luck yet. Hahaha. Peace!
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08-27-2014, 07:13 PM
