I think you are trying to justify slickness as a positive quality? I certainly wouldn't want beer that felt oily in my mouth!Interesting. A common ingredient in New England IPAs is oat malt (or flaked oats) which "slickness" may be the primary descriptive. As a rather hard core "hazy" brewer I would say that is by design.
And, fwiw, I use a 50/50 blend of Golden Promise and Weyermann Pilsner base malts for all of my neipas. Base malts that are not lacking in character or pedigree. And I don't think that's novel - I bet many home brew hazy aficionados don't skimp on base malt quality
Cheers!
It's true that base malt has it's own character, I believe the point that was being made is that it's not very much when you compare it to some more robust specialty malts that would be used to make a traditional IPA. For most all things that one would put across their tongue, more flavor is better.
Just in case you didn't look at the subject of this thread, it's about down with the NEIPA!