Quote:
Originally Posted by Russic
I'm somebody that uses it incessantly. Not sure how it's spamming... it's a feature. You do get penalties if you use it foolishly. Hits are about as effective as they are in real life and you can't push a player off the puck as easily, so I'm not sure what you'd prefer people use. I'm not trying to be an ass... is there actually a better way?
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Yeah there is - make the defensive play situational. I.e., in each situation, a hit, poke check, stick lift, pin-to-boards, block the passing lane, whatever should be the most effective play, and they should be pretty close to balanced. I.e., when defending, you should find yourself using each of those plays regularly. They should be more or less equal in effectiveness depending on how the other team attacks - i.e., if they try to blow by you, maybe a poke check (or hit) is the way to go, if they try to stickhandle around you, hit them, if they try to cycle along the boards, pin them, if they're doing tic-tac-toe passing, put your stick down and block it.
That is not how it is right now. Right now there is basically no reason to use ANYTHING other than the poke check. I use it all the time too - I try to use the other things because I like to play the game intuitively, but the pokecheck is so overpowered that you're basically nerfing yourself if you don't make it your primary defensive tool. And that's really lame.
Spamming means getting in roughly the vicinity of the opponent and then just button mashing the R1 button until the puck flies away. That should be penalized - slowing down the poke check recovery (so it takes longer to do your second one, in between which the offensive player can just skate right around you) is one way of doing it. Penalties are another. But the game should be tuned in such a way as to encourage people to wait until the right moment and press the poke check button ONCE, because if it doesn't work the first time, you're going to be out of position, or because you know if you hit it more than that you're probably going to the box. It should not, as it currently does, permit people to mash that button over and over and over again on faith that no one can skate by you as long as you keep hitting that button. That's spamming.