Good post! There’s a few reasons to why the game is scripted, pre-programmed based on positioning, and uses the same game engine in all game modes.
1. Hockey is a team sport. There’s either bots or other players on the ice.
2. How are the bots supposed to behave, as in ”be programmed”, in an unscripted 1v1 game? Random movement?
3. In an FPS games theres no bots. In a FPS theres no rules.
If you compare FIFA to NHL, in this game mode, they have almost the same ”issues”. Exept the playing field is much bigger. But you see the same wierd player speed changes, wierd penalties, strange tackles, insanely stupid passes and wierd goals.
It’s because the engine is based only on positioning. There’s no RNG in this game. Even the puck is affected more by timing and player positioning, than of actual physics or player attributes. And lets not forget about Internet delay and consistency.