Following a closed technical test for NHL 21, EA Sports has outlined a list of improvements based on direct community feedback. Check out the details below.
NHL 21 Launch Gameplay Update
The optimizations and improvements have been split into specific categories for clarity.
General Improvements:
- Penalty shot logic improvements
- Tuned human controlled offensive zone dump ins to keep the puck in more consistently
- Decreased difficulty of Lacrosse move in all offline modes. (This tuning lives under tuner 1.01. Players that want to use the unchanged online tuner in offline modes can still roll back and select tuner 1.00)
NHL 21 Physics:
- Fixed various cases where hugs and pairups were not exiting properly
- Stick height tuning for various player heights for the lacrosse move
- Lacrosse move tuning for small rink variants
- Fixed a few phantom collision cases
- Fixed cases where physics was interrupting faceoffs from actually being won back to their teammates
- Tuned puck velocity after incidental puck on blade collision to help prevent pucks being launched down the ice at unrealistic speeds
- Fixed an issue that caused one-timer shots to be affected by stick on leg contact prior to the shot animation starting
Goalies:
- Additional save animations for set, butterfly and spread V
- Animation improvements to the old school stand up goalie stances
- Various upper body puck tracking improvements
- Improvements to spread V locomotion and save selection
- Improved responsiveness to attempt new covers when a puck is deflected or has already hit the goalie
- Various other user goalie cover improvements
- Improved AI goalie behavior to fake and lacrosse dekes
- Various user goalie right stick responsiveness and consistency improvements
- Goalies no longer get stuck in a sweep animation when hit by another player
- AI goalie tuning around 5 hole shots
- Improved AI goalie ability on long unscreened shots that were scoring too often
- Fixed cases where goalies were unable to abort out of long covers if the puck gets deflected or picked up leaving them vulnerable
- Improvements to AI post play behavior to defend against wraparounds
- AI goalie pokecheck tuning
- Goalie poke check tracking improvements
- AI goalie improvements on wraparounds
- Fixed a case where the user goalie could get stuck not taking a new right stick direction if they were shuffling in set
- Various goalie blending improvements from in and out of Spread V
- Controlled save tuning on reaching shots
Skating:
- Various stick blending improvements when transitioning between skating styles
- Various offplay skating improvements
- Fixed cases where players were pivoting the wrong direction while coming out of a pickup
- Fixed some situations where auto back skate doesn’t trigger early enough
Shooting:
- Fixed a case where one-timers would aim at the ice if a pickup was requested at the same time as a shot
- Resolved a case where spin shots were playing in unintended situations
- Fixed cases where the puck would frequently collide with the players skate while performing a between the legs one-timers
- Improved cases where one-timers were not triggering when intended
- Various shot release point fixes
Pickups:
- Various pickup animation improvements
- Various pickup improvements for picking up pucks around the crease, goalie and goal line
- Logic on the offensive side is intended to prevent pickups that pull the puck back from the goal line when a tap in is all that is wanted
- Logic on the defensive side is to help the defensive player pick up pucks on/around the goal line to avoid weak own goals
- Reduced the distance for successful skate pickups around the net to reduce kicked in goals offensively and defensively
- Fixed cases when picking up pucks while backskating would sometimes pivot players unintentionally
- Various glove pickup fixes
- Fixed some pickup animations where taller players would unintentionally miss the puck
- Improved bat-down collisions that were missing pucks that should have been knocked down
- Addressed an issue where players could solve pickups while in shot block
- Fixed various cases where pickups would fail when the stick goes through a teammate player
- Fixed an issue where stick on stick collisions during skate pick ups would cause the pickup to fail
Passing:
- Animation improvements when passing out of a backhand toe drag
- Fixed some cases where passes out of boardplay were not respecting the requested direction
- Pass lead and location tuning
Stick Checking:
- Fixed a case where players were getting unintended trips while blending out of a poke check or DSS
- Addressed a case where stick on stick collisions were not forcing the puck carrier to drop the puck
- Fixed some cases where players were getting tripped unintentionally from the front
- Various poke check accuracy improvements
- Fixed an issue where players were able to be tripped at the very first frame of the poke check
NHL 21 AI Optimizations:
- Improved teammate support when in boardplay
- Fixed cases in 3 on 3 breakouts and rush plays where the defender was too aggressive on more conservative strategies (Standard and Passive)
- Improved cases where strong side wingers during breakouts either left too early or did not support the puck carrier
- AI defenders received improvements to help avoid getting stuck in gap control for too long
- Improved various cases where AI defenders were getting caught flat footed on the rush
- Various additional rush defense AI and gap control improvements
- Improved F1 logic where they would overcommit to the weak side in the 1-2-2 neutral zone strategies
- Fixed some cases where AI puck carriers would back track with the puck into their own zone
- Fixed some cases where players stopping near the blueline were getting pushed offside by AI players
- Improvements to AI dump retrieval logic
- Improved some cases where weak side defenders would abandon positioning goal side to pressure the puck carrier
- Fixed a case to the 1-3-1 where the AI would break down when the offense transitioned from one side of the ice to the other
- AI tuning in setup and powerplay to be more aggressive at getting the puck to the net
- Tuning for AI pass lane and pass attempt logic
- Tuning for AI shot lane and shot attempt logic
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