What happened to the "push puck forward" animation?

[iaxy]

The skating engine feels great this year. The one exception is that I can't see / feel enough difference between skating normally and exploding and accelerating quickly. Even if the speed is there, there are no enough animations to show this happening.

Also, does anyone see players pushing the puck forward as in NHL 13? What I mean is the clear separation of the puck form the stick some 4-5 feet ahead of the players stick when the player skates at full speed.. I thought that was a great feature, but for some reason I can't see it in NHL 15

[JezFranco]

That feature was dropped a while ago.
Was it in 13? I thought it was dropped earlier.

I liked it though, evne if it was buggy (your player would reach and grap the puck sometimes the split second he pushed the puck sometimes).

[iaxy]

I loved that feature - both visually and in the context of gameplay.

It really gave skating depth and variety and a sense of vulnerability (if you overdid it). I remember EA drumming on and on about that at the time of introduction and personally I thought it was revolutionary in that it gave separation similar to the foot / ball separation in football (soccer in the US). It was definitely a move in the right direction.

I played so little of NHL 14 that didn't even notice or question the removal of that feature.

Why do developers remove good things like that? Do they not realise they irk the long term fans of their product?

NHL does a good job with the skating engine but it could have been so much better with that feature included.

[JezFranco]

I'm not sure if this was ever abused online ( in never play NHL online) but I remember I was sometimes manage to abuse it.
If you were skating straight up with the puck and the CPU defender gets ready to lay out a big hit on you, you could push the puck just before impact, giving the puck to the CPU player, making him the puck carrier and then you gave him the big hit instead...

Now come to think about it... in 13 wasn't he push puck an automatic feature? When you reached full speed the player pushed the puck, right?
What I'm refering to above was probably in an earlier version, where you pushed a button (tap vision control?) and the player manually pushed the puck?

[iaxy]

You make a valid observation about the fact that it wasn't perfect, but for large parts it worked, it was fun, it added to the arsenal of moves and it looked very real.

The foundation was there already 3 years ago and you would have thought EA would have it perfectly integrated by now (especially on Next Gen).

Instead they take it out all together and we go back to the 90s animations of no separation of puck from stick.

Maybe not a big deal for most gamers but I play on True Broadcast camera and in that view it looks really silly how players always skate at full speed with the puck glued to their sticks.

I'll draw the parallel with FIFA. Just imagine the ball being glued to the players foot as in the Atari games... not cool right?

[moosebaloney]

Quote: Originally Posted by iaxy

I'll draw the parallel with FIFA. Just imagine the ball being glued to the players foot as in the Atari games... not cool right?

Don't bust on "Soccer" for the Atari 2600. That game was so realistic. 3v3 coordinated movement. Adjustable goal sizes. Birds eye camera angle... and don't forget the firework goal celebrations! I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for FIFA to catch up to that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OCRa6mamGI

[hotjoint]

Push the puck was last in NHL 12