All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

[Bleak5170]

1. Anytime the goalie freezes the puck, two random players will lock up and do their little aggro dance. Not once has this led to a fight in my games. I am beyond sick of seeing this canned animation play over and over and over yet never amount to anything.

2. "Enforcers" almost never fight. I play as the Sens vs. the Leafs a lot, (coach mode - both teams CPU-controlled) and Neil, Kassian, McLaren, and Orr have been on the ice together several times. How many times have they fought? Zero. The center on the Leafs goon line, (David Bolland - a guy with 2 career scraps), has fought more than his two enforcer wingers. And Milan Michalek is far and away the PM leader for Ottawa. Not only does he hit everything that moves, he starts fights! This could not be LESS like the guy in real life.

3. The odd time you get an enforcer, (or truly tough player), to fight, it's almost always versus a non-fighter. And worst of all, the non-fighter often wins, (handily at that). There's something not right when a guy with a fighting skill rating of 70, annihilates a player with a 90.

4. The majority of real NHL fights end in a draw or something reasonably close. 90% of the tussles in NHL 14 result in a knock-out, (a somewhat rare occurrence in the real world NHL).

5. Huge hits seem to be the impetus for pretty much every fight in the game. It would be nice to see random eruptions of violence just because there happens to be two tough guys on the ice. Or fights taking place right after a face-off. Or when one team is losing 6-0.

I know most people probably turn off fighting altogether, (I know I did when it was that first-person nonsense), but it's sad to see such a highly-touted feature this year, implemented so poorly.

[JezFranco]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

On your first point I have noticed that if you press triangle during the "aggro dance" they'll push even more, and I have got into a couple of fights as a result.

I've started hitting less during fights and instead, trying to doge, then press down on the stick, which takes a huge amonut of damage/fatigue, and if enough causes a non-knock win.


However, I think the handling during fights is to unresponsive. Like sometimes if you try and punch but your opponents pushes you or dodges, your player will then throw a punch about 3-5 seconds later without you even touching the sticks. That just feels awkward, slow and unresponsive.

I understand that fighting skills makes a big difference, but as it is, it's not working very good.

I still play with fights on, because I like the fact that you'll get punished when you do something you shouldn't. It's just that I feel that I could just as well watch a CPU-vs-CPU fight as trying to affect it, because my controller input doesn't seem to do much difference.

[Splitter77]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

had a sweet thing happen last nite while playing.
i play offline against the cpu, and i had a fight going on against the cpu, while my fight was still going on, the two cpu players that were in a scrum dropped the gloves too. it was the best thing ive seen in the game this year.

[adayinthelife]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

had a sweet thing happen last nite while playing.
i play offline against the cpu, and i had a fight going on against the cpu, while my fight was still going on, the two cpu players that were in a scrum dropped the gloves too. it was the best thing ive seen in the game this year.

Really? This I have yet to see. Did they each get 5 min fighting majors as well? Every few fights I'll see maybe one or two other groupings of guys doing the little dance that OP mentioned, but I've never seen it break into another fight...

[Splitter77]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

Really? This I have yet to see. Did they each get 5 min fighting majors as well? Every few fights I'll see maybe one or two other groupings of guys doing the little dance that OP mentioned, but I've never seen it break into another fight...

yup. they all got 5 min for fighting.
even the commentary mentioned it. i think they said something along the lines of "now you have a choice of fights to watch." or something like that.

[adayinthelife]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

yup. they all got 5 min for fighting.
even the commentary mentioned it. i think they said something along the lines of "now you have a choice of fights to watch." or something like that.

That's awesome, and a very far cry from the terrible first-person-all-other-life-forms-disappear fighting system they've had for the past however many years.

On topic, I do agree with some of the issues mentioned and would really like to see things like proper players fighting addressed (I don't feel like this is an epidemic in my experience, but it's incredibly inconsistent - sometimes the right guys jump in to fight, other times not at all). I still feel like this is light years ahead of where it was.

[walhalla]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

had a sweet thing happen last nite while playing.
i play offline against the cpu, and i had a fight going on against the cpu, while my fight was still going on, the two cpu players that were in a scrum dropped the gloves too. it was the best thing ive seen in the game this year.

The same thing happened to me too. I was playing as Jets @ Canucks, and a scrum began in front of Vancouver goal, after the whistle. Then the player I was controlling dropped the gloves with a Vancouver player. A second or two later Kevin Bieksa started fighting with Anthony Peluso, while my fight was still going on. I was amazed to say at least! All four received 5 min fighting majors. I can confirm, it really can happen.

[Bleak5170]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

yup. they all got 5 min for fighting.
even the commentary mentioned it. i think they said something along the lines of "now you have a choice of fights to watch." or something like that.

Okay that's pretty cool. I have had a couple of instances where it looked like two other guys were going to go but nothing came of it. I'm totally surprised that can happen in offline games.

[synjin]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

Good points, though try tapping the triangle during the aggro dance like the other poster mentioned, it works sometimes. And I agree on the wrong people fighting. Even when I'm trying to start one during the faceoff... I have Joe Rechlicz (TGH) and Aaron Volpatti (GRD that fights) centered by Matty Perreault (PLY that NEVER fights IRL). So who fights when I tap the triangle? Matty-freakin-Perreault.

We should have the option to turtle. And CPU guys who get jumped for doing something wrong should do it if they are total non-fighters.

Also, I've thrown huge hits that result in a major penalty and injury, but zero reaction from the CPU players. I've also thrown hits that barely connected on a puck-carrier that resulted in an auto-fight. Consistency is just atrocious.

The instigator is pretty much never called.

The 3rd man in penalty is never called.

Fighting 3 times with the same player in the same game doesn't result in an automatic Game Misconduct (according to NHL rules, it's supposed to).

In blowout games (3+ goal differential), Fights and matching roughing started in the final 9 minutes or so should recieve additional 10M misconduct penalties. That's what the refs do to keep the game from getting out of hand.

If I'm going to start a fight pre-faceoff, I should be able to choose the player that I want to fight with, not suffer through watching a 185 lbs non-fighter tangle with a 250 lbs TGH from the other team.

1. Anytime the goalie freezes the puck, two random players will lock up and do their little aggro dance. Not once has this led to a fight in my games. I am beyond sick of seeing this canned animation play over and over and over yet never amount to anything.

2. "Enforcers" almost never fight. I play as the Sens vs. the Leafs a lot, (coach mode - both teams CPU-controlled) and Neil, Kassian, McLaren, and Orr have been on the ice together several times. How many times have they fought? Zero. The center on the Leafs goon line, (David Bolland - a guy with 2 career scraps), has fought more than his two enforcer wingers. And Milan Michalek is far and away the PM leader for Ottawa. Not only does he hit everything that moves, he starts fights! This could not be LESS like the guy in real life.

3. The odd time you get an enforcer, (or truly tough player), to fight, it's almost always versus a non-fighter. And worst of all, the non-fighter often wins, (handily at that). There's something not right when a guy with a fighting skill rating of 70, annihilates a player with a 90.

4. The majority of real NHL fights end in a draw or something reasonably close. 90% of the tussles in NHL 14 result in a knock-out, (a somewhat rare occurrence in the real world NHL).

5. Huge hits seem to be the impetus for pretty much every fight in the game. It would be nice to see random eruptions of violence just because there happens to be two tough guys on the ice. Or fights taking place right after a face-off. Or when one team is losing 6-0.

I know most people probably turn off fighting altogether, (I know I did when it was that first-person nonsense), but it's sad to see such a highly-touted feature this year, implemented so poorly.

[Bleak5170]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

And I agree on the wrong people fighting. Even when I'm trying to start one during the faceoff... I have Joe Rechlicz (TGH) and Aaron Volpatti (GRD that fights) centered by Matty Perreault (PLY that NEVER fights IRL). So who fights when I tap the triangle? Matty-freakin-Perreault.

Seriously. That is exactly what I am seeing. I am mystified as to why EA doesn't let us edit a player's fighting tendencies, so we could at least set guys like Perreault and Michalek to "Never". Although it's also bewildering why guys who are set to "Rarely" scrap way more than those whose tendency is "Often".

[nyr2k2]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

i'm reluctant to throw hits with key players for fear of being forced into a fight. rick nash? won't throw a hit with him. seems like every time i lay someone out, an opponent comes flying across the ice to fight me and i have no option to decline it. it would be one thing if an instigator penalty was assessed, but it's not. the player is punished for legal, physical play.

last night i was playing and had two guys go on an aggressive forecheck against just one defender. i cleaned the guy out with arron asham, and had dominic moore wide open in front of the net with not a soul around. as i retrieved the puck with asham i got ready to fire it up to him, but realized asham had frozen while he waited for an opponent in the neutral zone to skate back to start a fight i didn't consent to. **** that ****.

i like the engine in general, but the events that precipitate fights are unrealistic. the lack of automatic misconducts for 3 fights and lack of instigators is really bothersome as well.

[Lindros88]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

I agree. NHL 14’s fighting engine is a step in the right direction and so much better than that horrid first person fighting engine, but there are definitely a lot of problems that need to be ironed out. The non fighters should seldom fight, and only pair off with players of comparable ability when they do get into fights. And if you decide to attack a non fighter with a tough guy, they should be prone to turtling to avoid the encounter. I don’t even think you can do that in this game. Now that fights can happen spontaneously and against your will, of course they remove the turtling feature, when it makes the most sense to implement it.

I agree with you on the grappling after whistles. It’s absurd how everyone magnetizes to the closest opponent on the ice after a whistle. It should be context sensitive. Like if you get too close to the goalie, throw snow on the goalie, or if you had just thrown a hit on someone before the whistle.

Not only am I annoyed that almost every fight ends in a TKO/KO, but every punch thrown that isn’t dodged/blocked by the opponent, seems to land flush every time. Since the vast majority of punches don’t solidly connect in a real hockey fight, I was hoping to see a lot of glancing blows, whiffs and punches hitting shoulder pad and helmet. But it’s still Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. The frequency of TKO’/KO’s is inexcusable. Imagine how cool it would be if the knockouts were rare in the game? Seeing most fights end with a KO, cheapens the effect.

[emericaridr11]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

I agree with you on the grappling after whistles. It’s absurd how everyone magnetizes to the closest opponent on the ice after a whistle. It should be context sensitive. Like if you get to close to the goalie, throw snow on the goalie, or if you had just thrown a hit on someone before the whistle.

this annoys me....

Press Lb to get off the After Whistle "Grappling"

[JezFranco]

Re: All the things wrong with the Enforcer Engine

Me and a mate are playing GM Connected (we two against the cpu).
We're playing with washington and god is Ovie a problem. His hitting attributes and speed are so high so he gets into fight often twice or three times a game as he keeps flattening opponents with his hits, even if we're trying to avoid it.

However yesterday we witnessed our first simultaneous fight.
I got into a fight but noticed that while i was dodging punches i was hearing smacks and hits off screen. After the fight my mate called me and asked me "were you also fighting?"
That was pretty cool with a big brawl and two simultaneous fights.
Like mentioned the system needs to be ironed out but this is certainly a step in the right direction.