Face off glitches are an issue in NHL 18. These things are not permitted in this league and are covered under the rule book under the disciplinary section.
E) using or abusing game glitches that are clearly not a desired effect by the game designer will result in suspensions.
There are certain faceoffs that trigger a glitch effect they are:
-auto wins: The player wins all draws, the ones he loses are teleported back to his stick regardless of it going back to the D on a clean win.
-loop: the player can manually create a loop effect off the draws resetting the game back to a faceoff position. please note this can also happen without a player glitching so no witch hunts lol.
these were already banned from league play based on the rule stated up above. However a new form of faceoff trickery has come to my attention. The R1 holding trick. This action creates a poke check off the face off. This itself is not a glitch. numerous actions can be done right after a draw, body check, poke check, stick lift, shot block, dive, you name it. This is not a glitch this is just holding a button and its action activates the second the game starts moving. However this is where it gets odd. the animation takes effect during a faceoff animation so it can look strange and “suspicious” i ran a test to see its actual effectiveness, we did roughly 40 maybe more faceoffs and discovered it had 0 impact on the actual faceoffs. i attempted the poke check function while the other c used regular faceoffs. while using just r1 to poke i lost 100% of the draws. Then the next test we did was i held R1 and then used normal faceoff controls. i lost 80% roughly of the draws. (turns out i suck at C) sucky or not it gave me absolutely no edge. I am very convinced if you lose a draw to a player poking, then you lost that draw anyway.
Now with that said. This action will be banned from league play for the following reasons.
-the sweeping poke check motion has a very low chance of making contact with a loose puck but it does have a chance. although rare, it can have an impact on a potential important faceoff.
-although the poke is not entirely a “cheat” glitch it is still a glitch to the animation where it shouldnt be.
-most importantly is that this R1 button does not cheat effectively to call it a cheat but it is used in combo with other things to do the actual glitch faceoffs that allow for auto wins. the auto win draw glitch uses the R1 poke to work.
I feel that even though this poke check faceoff is ineffective and pointless to do it is still a key part of the big glitches. There is no reason to do this unless you intend to cheat with it. From this day until fixed any caught using R1 on draws whether intending to glitch or just look silly you will be considered in violation of this rule and suspended minimum 3 games.