Janikka

Thanks for the update. Are there any plans to transition into a more bare-bones platform with decreased additional content? Sorry if you've already mentioned this and I missed it. I do give credit to Kenu and the rest of the staff for making the presentation and broadcasts so much more polished and professional. SG has come far from the days when I was co-hosting streams with Kenu and spilling water all over his tech equipment. However, I believe saving money on this type of content (broadcasts, articles, whatever it is) and just focusing on the core platform would make the whole operation more sustainable. I believe that 99% of the scene probably doesn't even care about that content, no matter how much it has improved. The bulk of the community payments comes from the sheer number of Lite teams, right? I think most people are only paying the ever-increasing price of entry because everyone else is playing in the ECL, and people are mainly interested in joining teams that participate in the competitive leagues and tournaments. Basically, if you don't pay for the player and license fees, you are reduced to a casual-only player and left out of the scene. You have nothing to play for unless you're content playing just for fun. Is the game itself good enough without the rush of competitive play? I'm not so sure. Most people really only need the core platform: the hosting and organizing of leagues, the team and player management, the statistics system, the conflict resolution by admins, etc. I understand the push for better broadcasts, articles, and other content. After all, it not only looks better and makes the whole operation feel bigger and more meaningful, but greater engagement should also bring greater numbers. That should translate into better visibility, attract better sponsorship deals, garner more revenue and result in continued growth. But perhaps that is not realistic at the end of the day? The user count has grown a lot, but the revenue streams apparently haven't. Or if they did, they seem to have dried out. The core problem may be the actual game that this whole operation is based on. Not only is the NHL series rather stagnant and not very well-designed around competitive play, it continues to be quite niche in the grand scheme of things. As a conspicuous example, most of the active followers on the streams seem to be players in the scene, which is in contrast to big esports games where you have mass viewership and plenty of fan activity around the players and organizers themselves. I truly commend Kenu and the other people behind SG on their beautiful vision and the hard work they have put into realizing it over the years. Some years ago, doing the streams with Kenu, I personally got to see him behind the scenes juggling multiple things at once while going all out to give us the best experience possible. I hope he continues at the helm through all of this despite the thankless position that he now finds himself in. I honestly believe that he's the most passionate and committed person for the task, and we are lucky to have him. But maybe it's time to scale back? As an irrelevant aside, I'm kind of baffled by what the internet has become. It's like half the people are communicating through glorified predictive text algorithms, resulting in a back-and-forth of em dashes interspersed with the algorithms' rote attempts at engaging the reader. I miss when people wrote in broken English, but with their own authentic thoughts behind every word. I know I've become the old man yelling at the cloud, but I'll take it.

My pronouns are he/him. But thanks for the compliment and for breaking down the numbers like you just did.

I have questions about the current organizational or ownership dynamics. A company called Reactio Media is or was somehow involved (as evidenced by the current Twitch account that hosts all the SportsGamer streams). I can't find any pertinent information about the company online, but its owners are involved in various companies whose background information is available. https://www.proff.fi/yrityksen/sports-gamer-oy/espoo/kuntosalit-ja-muu-urheilu/3192899-5I10L8 Here is some information on SportsGamer where we find those two names, the Salutskijs, that are involved in various companies, including SportsGamer today. Before I pay for any license or other fees to anyone, I want full transparency on the ownership. Who are these guys? What exactly does their involvement in SportsGamer entail? Some of the companies they are involved in have notably high turnover rates (which in no way guarantees that these companies are profitable, of course, but it's an interesting detail). Is some of the money SportsGamer collects from the community going to the Salutskijs somehow, despite your financial breakdown in the official update? Have the Salutskijs contributed to the finances of SportsGamer at any point? https://pureevents.fi/ota-yhteytta/ I also found this, a company called Pure Events. Perhaps formerly known as Reactio Media? The contact page includes the Salutskijs and some people who are much more familiar to us here on SportsGamer. So, my attempted sleuthing is all over the place, as you can see. I'm just confused about the big picture. I am not leveling any accusations. I just want information. What's going on behind the scenes?

Free RD/LD. Pro only.

Any thoughts now that we have had some more time using the various abilities? Before I share mine, I will emphasize: I am not calling for any specific bans. I'm OK with either banning certain abilities or banning nothing. Any bans or lack thereof should be based on an established consensus, and (as Furyan said) the most important thing is clarity from SportsGamer around this topic ahead of the ECL. So first of all, banning Truculence seems like a popular move. I get that, for sure. The games get pretty crazy with everyone running around destroying each other with this ability. There's a possible counterargument though that if not for boosted hitting, defensemen have few tools against forwards right now. Also, certain other abilities like Big Rig get very powerful if they are not met with Truculence. I've seen some games where the defense has basically nothing left to do besides getting in the forward's lane, and even then they may get knocked down by reverse hits. That brings us to Unstoppable. You could make the case that this is another broken or at least poorly balanced ability this year. The game is very lenient on when you're allowed to reverse hit. Reverse hitting doesn't require your opponent to attempt a hit. In fact, it doesn't seem to require much of anything. I constantly see players get laid out by reverse hits simply by being too close to the puck carrier. I can't imagine this is by design. Conversely, the skating abilities seem just fine so far. I thought Wheels was going to be a problem, but it really isn't. All it does is provide a speed boost once you get to full speed. The result is that you only get beaten by Wheels on defense if you're late anyway or mismanage your stamina. Elite Edges is now more situational than before. As far as I've noticed, it only seems to activate on L2 pivots. It's by no means mandatory to use even if your opponents are using it. EE doesn't even need to be a part of this discussion in my opinion. Not that anyone's even talking about it.

I don't play slow because of the perks. I play slow because of my brain. And I don't use the right stick because NHL didn't have it when I wasn't old.

I'm having a bit of trouble connecting the dots between my post and this question. But no, I don't think that's ok.

I don't know about that. There's one McDavid in the NHL. Meanwhile, if Wheels becomes the meta, that's where everyone allocates their AP. So this idea about it being a strategic tradeoff is kind of an illusion, and everyone's build ends up looking very similar. On defense, it's not so much about needing to keep an eye on one guy with the extraordinary ability to blow past you when you're not paying attention. It's simply about adjusting to a meta where everyone uses the ability, so through sheer repetition (because you're facing it in every single game against almost every forward), you adjust your routine to skating back earlier or whatever. Whether players like the meta (whatever the meta becomes) is the only real factor in whether specific abilities should be banned or not.

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.