Janikka

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?

Zenegeim (FCL, ECL Pro Qualifiers) Zenegeim is looking for a new #1 LW. We will play in the FCL and enter the ECL Pro Qualifiers for the ECL 24 Spring season. Please contact either Janikka-, Pakjiz, or Sanezh. Contact any of us either here or on PSN.

I've now been in five Burst games in HUT on the Helsinki servers (three games before the new patch and two games since the servers went back online). None of these games had any packet loss. Looks very promising so far.

Typically, those affected by the common packet loss problem on the Helsinki servers have packet loss with a stable ping. Do you also only encounter this problem on the Helsinki servers?

I played a few games on the Helsinki servers last night, and the one game where I had packet loss it was at 7%. Looks like the problem has gotten worse, perhaps not in frequency but we're certainly seeing higher figures of packet loss across the board.

Thank you very much, @Kenu and the other SportsGamer admins as well as everyone else who helped find a quick solution to this problem. A shout-out to @FlyerKungen and @pakjiz who both also have DNA, are affected by this problem, and were active in bringing it to people's attention (FlyerKungen even made DNA and EA aware of it). Also thank you to everyone who participated in the relevant threads and polls as you all helped keep this issue on the front burner. Sorry for the corny acceptance speech there, I'm just really happy we got a quick ruling to work around this problem before the season started. I know there are dozens of players like me who can now start their season without having to worry about playing some of their games with packet loss. Here's hoping EA can fix it as soon as possible so the Finnish and Russian players can play their home games with the lowest ping.

I support this sentiment because I think you're right. Naturally, I would hope for a favorable decision as someone with the issue, but the opposite would still provide clarity on this and determine conclusively that it's up to each affected team to decide amongst themselves how they deal with the problem (whether through roster adjustments or something else) while being obligated to honor their opponent's home server selection.

I am currently not playing NHL but Pakjiz is as he said.

Excellent work! Great to know both of the relevant parties who may actually be able to do something about this are now aware of it.

This is an offshoot of my previous thread where I polled people about the problem with packet loss connecting to the Helsinki (Europe North East) servers on DNA, the Finnish ISP. Based on that poll, most players who are on DNA are indeed affected by the problem where their connection to the Finnish servers is weakened by packet loss hovering somewhere between 1 and 3 percent. I feel like the results warrant further steps, and the next obvious step is polling the community about their willingness to honor affected opponents' requests to play both games (home and away) on the Swedish server. This of course excludes the home games of Central European teams who have the right to play their home games on their nearest server. I feel confident that we have pinned the problem down to the North East servers and it does not appear on either the Europe North or Europe Central servers. I understand some teams may have an affected player and still feel like the lower ping tilts the team's preference in favor of playing on the Finnish servers. For this reason, I'm including it as an option in the poll so those teams can also make themselves heard. The packet loss problem is likely not getting fixed in the very near future, and speaking on behalf of everyone I contacted about the topic, we feel like reverting to the Swedish server would be the best workaround until the Finnish servers work smoothly for all players. Obviously, as someone affected by the problem myself, my perspective is perhaps narrow as to the pros and cons of this solution. I just don't see a better one for now unless the community as a whole demands that those affected tough it out and play at least a great number of their games on the Finnish server where they may always encounter the problem. Note that in the poll, "is/is not affected" means whether your team has at least one player in your regular roster who gets frequent packet loss on the Helsinki/North East servers. If you have a player who has the problem but doesn't feel like it affects their game at all, that would still count toward "is affected" in the poll.

Johtaja's legendary Magic Sonera soars high above the fiber connections of mere mortals.

I don't think the problem is getting fixed by Monday. It might be a good idea to poll the community about whether the Finnish teams (who are not affected by this problem) are willing to compromise and play both games on the Swedish server despite the slightly higher ping. Maybe I'll start a poll about that today.