Janikka

I'm just learning to play goalie in the current iteration of the game right now. From my perspective as someone who has played plenty of G in the past before all these shooting abilities were a thing, I quite like the challenge they bring to the goaltending position. Without the abilities, it's adequate to be somewhat careless with your positioning and whatnot. It's just a very forgiving position to play without skaters having those abilities. With them, there's a lot more to account for, you have to be more precise with positioning, and there are more factors that play into the goalie's decision-making in various situations. If you rely on the animations, you do get burned a lot as a goalie. I kind of suck for now so it happens quite a bit, but to me these goals aren't as unfair as a lot of people make them out to be. If you get your goalie's actual body in front of the puck, like the center of the torso, it pretty much never goes in no matter the shooter's abilities (unless you leave your five-hole open by not dropping into the butterfly when the puck is near the crease). You can't always do that, obviously, which is where decision-making and these instinctive split-second risk vs. reward calculations come into play. So all in all, I think the abilities just make goaltending a whole lot more interesting. I also don't think they are random in the sense that outcomes occur without any rhyme or reason. There's pretty much always some kind of internal logic to each outcome in my opinion, and something you could have done differently to produce a more favorable outcome. It's just that sometimes, you make a good decision in terms of risk vs. reward and still get beaten as the goalie because the risk that was objectively worth taking ended up materializing in that situation. Goalies who have more experience with the current meta may well disagree with me, and they would probably be right as they a lot more hours playing against the shooting abilities, but this is how I see it right now.

My ideal is just eliminating as much of the randomness as possible. Of course, the randomness isn't exactly random under the hood, but various competing factors coming together to produce each outcome. This is reflected to players as perceived randomness. Regardless, puck receptions are a good example. I don't see it as a dichotomy between what we have now and making them fully manual, whatever that would entail. The outcome of puck receptions could be far more straightforward. It currently involves too many variables that contribute to the perceived randomness, and the interaction of some of those variables is poorly designed. As a player, you can still account for a lot of them, but all of them put together lead to gameplay that's far less predictable than it could be. This is why the outcomes often feel somewhat out of control for the player. Taking a page out of Psyonix's book doesn't mean upending the whole game and having to figure out impossible mechanics for each action, such as making pass receptions fully manual. It means a departure from EA's current design philosophy where the various mechanics are confused by too many factors that don't play together so well. The Abilities are a good example of this, by the way. They clash with the game's core mechanics by overpowering them, which makes the core mechanics less reliable and thus seemingly more random. This is reflected to everyone on the ice from goalies (as an example, think of perfect positioning not always leading to the expected outcome due to Close Quarters) to defensemen (being in position for an interception or disruption that gets overrided by the abrupt speed boost and physics-defying phantom stick afforded by some of the shooting traits) and forwards (beating a defenseman only to have Stick 'Em Up cleanly dislodge the puck at an impossible angle).

I think Rocket League is about as close as you can get to a pure skill-based game in anything remotely similar to NHL. I know a lot of people think a hockey game should have a lot of randomness to it because it's in the nature of the sport, but personally I wish EA took a page out of Psyonix's book to better cater to those of us dreaming of an unadulterated competitive experience where outcomes are determined almost exclusively by our actions (of course some other variables are inevitable, such as how lag compensation is implemented in the netcode).

What does that have to do with my message?

The traits exacerbate the randomness of the gameplay that's pretty random to begin with, so I'm all for banning everything. The boosts can stay. I've disliked the traits since they were introduced.

It would be nice to know how exactly the game determines a one on one situation where Shutdown is activated. It's never been clear to me. There are theories floating around, but they're all based on conjecture, such as what a one on one should mean or a perceived consistency in how the trait works.

Just to be clear, I take it this means both the silver and gold versions? You didn't specify, which would refer to a comprehensive ban of the trait, but just making sure.

The golden tipper is at least as OP as last year, I saw some pretty crazy tip-ins when our center used the trait last night. Not sure about the silver tipper yet.

We seem to be getting a bunch of non-ECL teams too. A lot of teams from Central Europe. Finding another ECL Pro team is very difficult, so I support the idea of common passwords for the time being.

in: @Jakeexh @Kauppias4 Welcome! This completes our roster.

Zenegeim (FCL, ECL, and beyond) in: @Sanezh (C) @Janikka (A) @pakjiz (A) @imosi @jubex0r @Viktorhall (Still looking for #1 LW and 50/50 G.)

Still looking. Also looking for a Goalie to share the ice time ~50/50 (whoever plays better gets the big games).

Thanks for the encouragement. I would perhaps not be the best candidate to run a defending school. When it comes to the current era of the ECL, I've only played in Pro (and a bit in Lite), so it would probably be good for someone guiding others to have experience from the top league and know what it takes to get to that level.

Really interesting, thanks for doing this and reporting on the outcome. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing, and I'd love to see teams at least in ECL Elite take the next step in competitiveness by having dedicated coaching. As long as this scene doesn't stagnate or regress (and we've unfortunately seen some signs of that), I think that would be a natural step for teams to gain an edge over the competition.

Congrats, but where is the legendary MKivinen95?