Re-installed this game a week ago and already feel like leaving it behind since the gameplay is too much of a painful experience to commit to. The gameplay has so many unresolved issues that are too unbearable to wait until NHL 24 since it's a long wait until then. I paid full price for this game so it is unacceptable for EA to shrug it off and leave it the way it is. I really hope sometime soon we have an actual gameplay update that will fix certain issues reported by many. Last one we had that did anything decent was during last November. You can't just ignore something or make excuses for it and move on to the next thing. Things will catch up in the long run and more problems will pile on. Either fix it or explain why it isn't being dealt with! That needs to be on the leadership end of things from EA!

@EA_Aljo wrote:@KidShowtime1867 It wasn't just a small, vocal part of the community. There were also complaints that we changed things when we didn't. I'm not saying we'll never go back to having tuners. It's possible that could happen, but we've avoided this for the last couple of years due to the community feedback. You're absolutely right that a meta develops and that is what causes the complaints that the game was better during the beta/launch. People are gonna believe what they wanna believe though regardless of what the patch notes say. Or don't say, in this case.I believe this is a case of the team not seeing the forest for the trees. The issue was not in the tuner updates. The issue here, and I hate to keep harping on this, is total lack of communication. When you make changes to a game, followed by a minimal amount of information as to what has changed, why it has changed, and how it has impacted the game, will generate a ton of speculation from your community. Leaving people to guess at what has changed causes these speculative posts about those changes, e.g., "my guy is faster now", "my guy is slower now", "it's harder to score", "it's easier to score", "defense is harder", "defense is easier", etc.This speculation is eventually going to turn into truth from the community, especially when there is a lack of any qualitative rebuttal from the those who make the game. The selective secrecy around this game, and the total blackout of information about features, and how they work, is the main cause of this. It is not because tuners changed. It's unfathomable that in today's day and age, a game that is almost a year old, has received little in terms of gameplay adjustments.I'll take your word about the team being aware of the communication issue, but actions speak louder than words, so I guess we wait and see.

@EA_Aljo wrote:@smugxb I agree that our communication can be better. It's also something that not only I am aware of so hopefully, we'll see this improve with future games. However, I'm not sure that we'll see the devs posting here again. Their participation here was something they did outside of their normal duties of creating the game. Often, in off hours. Ben would spend a huge amount of his personal time responding here and going very in depth with game mechanics, but was also regularly told he was wrong. I definitely understand when there are going to be disagreements. That's fine, but the way some people responded just made it feel like all the time and effort they put in just wasn't worth the backlash. Yes, today's age of anonymity means this is going to happen, but that doesn't mean it's ok to be rude to someone trying to be helpful and giving very detailed answers on game mechanics.I'm more inclined to respond to those with constructive posts. If someone is doing a lot of trash talk, but keeping within the rules, their chances of being taken seriously, having their feedback noted and getting a response are significantly reduced. I look at conversations here as if I were meeting someone in the real world. I'm going to want to engage with someone if they're being cool. Just having a good conversation about a shared interest. If they're complaining, at least it's constructive. Engaging with someone throwing out insults is just rewarding bad behavior. That and they usually don't have anything constructive to say. Constructive feedback is input we can actually use. As opposed to comments like, fix your game or your game sucks, you don't know anything about hockey, etc. I'd rather focus on the ones that actually care enough about improving this game through quality feedback.@EA_Aljo I don't really expect devs to be posting on the forums. If the PM is acting in the interest of the customer, I would expect part of that job would be checking in with the customers, or, providing the community managers with information they can share.All we seem to get here is a flurry of information before a new game launches, a few cryptic notes on the odd patch, or a bunch of "we are aware" or "we have nothing to share at this point", of which I don't really consider any of this as great interaction with the community.There are measures to provide info to the community without worrying about trolls. First, a post could be made on a locked thread. Second, blog posts could be written, and locked for comment. Third, a monthly newsletter could be sent out. All of these would mitigate a lot of the issues with open forum posts.Right now it seems like the team is just creating a game without any interaction with the people they are creating the game for, which is us, the paying customer. This needs drastic improvement, and I really hope this will change going forward.

@KlariskraysNHL Lmao all the game modes work? How many times a night you play WoC because you HAVE to be closing app a few times a night (if you can get into a game due to the community being dead) I hear roster stuff is messed up, franchise messes up after so long.Gameplay.. puck on a string seems to be working as intended I'm sure 🤣Goalies.. beleive it or not both camps can be right. Goalies are extremely good at stopping shots that SHOULD have a chance to score. They are EXTREMELY bad at stopping a handful of goals. Far side wraps, LT goals, some dekes, etc. What EA needs to implement to combat this is some RNG or team controlled (in clubs) tendency modifiers. When I can get the same goal 5 times in a game it's a problem with the game. It's better to ALWAYS be selfish in this game and get the easy goal than to go for a 1T. Bad programming.Hitting is stronger than it should be when it activates and trash when it doesn't. The problem is you can curl away from a hit and it won't register any desired animation. Your player (trying to hit) will have more trouble regaining his footing."One thing that doesn't change is the best players stay the best because they play the game given to them instead of wanting to live some real life fantasy of how it should be played. The game is forever gonna be like 80% realism with 20% arcade sprinkled in."Bahahaha really? 80% realism??? 🤣One thing that doesn't change is the best players will find whatever cheap tactics they can to gain an advantage over their opponent to win a game instead of wanting to play hockey the way it plays in real life. The game made by EA will always have 20% realism and 80% ea canned animations.How often do you see NHL players skating backward through the defense? How often do you see NHL players scared to poke or stick lift? How often do you see NHL players hiding behind their net and running around it? How often do you see NHL players doing Datsyuk dekes? Passing behind their back? Never dumping? Being scared to use defensive moves for fear of a bad animation? These are things that don't just happen every few games.. it's EVERY game. That's 80% realism? You either never watch any real hockey or you work for EA 🤣

@smugxb"Instead of hiding in the corner with your ball, your team should be engaged with the community as well as providing gameplay updates that are sorely needed. All you are doing is pissing off your customers. You are losing trust, not only because of the lack of any sort of meaningful updates, but also because of features (specifically around presentation) that were promised and never delivered."You see we actually had that until people on these forums attacked the devs because the explanation wasn't what they wanted to hear. The higher ups probably put an end to direct communication and for good reason as things they could say might make them liable or whatever. The FIFA team doesn't bother replying on forums or other places to people.Amazon Games recently is shifting away from forums and instead making a discord server. This supposedly allows them to have better communication but in reality it just allows for topics to get swept by faster because no real conversation can be read. If people want to act up there it's much easier to just ban people without worry because it isn't on their stuff.

So safe to say EA doesn't care at all about their customers feedback and is okay will leaving a full priced game in a terrible state to the point longtime consumers are leaving the series since the company sorely relies on microtransactions? Got it! Great! I'm out! Maybe EA NHL should wake up before moving onto the next thing and fix what is currently broken before more of their own devs/gamechangers leave also. We get it's May! But come on at least fix something for NHL 23 instead of ignore it!!

Any Chance We Consumers Can Expect A Gameplay Update For NHL 23?

47 Replies

RatedxPGxEnigma
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@KIJHLPhenom14 It's actually wild we're about to go a full game cycle where the only gameplay update took place after the beta 💀
KlariskraysNHL
Hero
3 years ago
@RatedxPGxEnigma It didn't happen in NHL 22 either. All because the beta in 21 felt so amazing and then they changed stuff and people lost their minds and thus they decided to no longer make changes from the betas if people felt OK with things.
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
3 years ago
@KlariskraysNHL wrote:
@RatedxPGxEnigma It didn't happen in NHL 22 either. All because the beta in 21 felt so amazing and then they changed stuff and people lost their minds and thus they decided to no longer make changes from the betas if people felt OK with things.

We also reverted the beta changes and then were told the game felt the same still. Every year the claim was that the beta was great and we shouldn't change anything. When an update was released, minimal changes were made after that didn't affect what was being claimed. This has led us to not have gameplay updates. It's possible they could return in the future though.
KidShowtime1867
Hero
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
@KlariskraysNHL wrote:
@RatedxPGxEnigmaIt didn't happen in NHL 22 either. All because the beta in 21 felt so amazing and then they changed stuff and people lost their minds and thus they decided to no longer make changes from the betas if people felt OK with things.
We also reverted the beta changes and then were told the game felt the same still. Every year the claim was that the beta was great and we shouldn't change anything. When an update was released, minimal changes were made after that didn't affect what was being claimed. This has led us to not have gameplay updates. It's possible they could return in the future though.
The reason why people think the beta is great is because in the short time period that the beta is available, there isn't sufficient time for a proper META to develop. So during that time, people are actually trying new things, and making mistakes along the way, which makes the game feel incredibly open for those who are patient and skilled.
Then what happens - the game is released to the public - a META develops and then those on the losing-end of that META demand that it be changed back because they've romanticized beta-gameplay due to the lack of a META.
The problem with not releasing gameplay updates is that the META becomes incredibly stale after 2-3 months. No significant updates to gameplay means that the same tired BS like LTing just becomes more and more prolific across all gameplay modes.
Such an unrealistic yet effective way of playing ruins the experience for those players who are tired of defending the same unrealistic BS over-and-over ad infinitum.
We used to get tuners every now and then to combat unrealistic methods of scoring, skating, hitting, etc - a nice little refreshing change to the gameplay that resulted in people trying new things and thus - opening the gameplay up until a new META comes along.
Sure, it's a cat and mouse game that runs all year long, but the previous dedication to taking part in that cat&mouse game with exploitative mechanics by the developers showed everyone that EA was, in fact, agreeing that these things are unrealistic and ruining the experience for some players. That alone showed the team was empathetic to most users' issues.
Not saying the team isn't now - but whoever made the decision not to rock-the-boat of the fanbase with new tuners and gamepaly adjustments just because you'd get some heat from people who simply didn't 'like' things (and never took time to adjust).. it just kinda deflates the passion you used to see here.
smugxb
New Scout
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo do you realize how ridiculous that sounds from a professional software development team? You are basically stating that you are intentionally punishing the community because you didn't like the feedback you guys received with previous gameplay updates. This is childish. Maybe you guys need to do better job of explaining the changes and stop being so cryptic in the update messages. A huge part of the problem is the complete lack of transparency and communication. Nobody knows what is going on, how attributes work, etc. which just fuels speculation.
Instead of hiding in the corner with your ball, your team should be engaged with the community as well as providing gameplay updates that are sorely needed. All you are doing is pissing off your customers. You are losing trust, not only because of the lack of any sort of meaningful updates, but also because of features (specifically around presentation) that were promised and never delivered.
You can't keep treating your customers this way. Holding updates back because the team's feelings are hurt is just absurd. Really, this is a business, not a popularity contest. I don't know who is running the team over there, but they need to reassess their position on this matter. I've ran software teams over a broad spectrum of products for almost 30 years, and never have we held back updates because of past criticism. I can't believe this is what has come of the NHL team over there at EA.
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
3 years ago
@smugxb

Thanks for the input. It's absolutely appreciated.

For multiple years in a row, the community specifically told us not to touch the game after the beta. I definitely get what you're saying, but this was a big request. I agree though that we need to communicate changes better and I hope to see that with future games. Again, I'm not saying there will be no more post-beta updates. I'm just explaining how this contributed to the lack of updates for 23.

We have gathered a ton of feedback since launch. While I don't have anything to share about what's coming, that input and sentiment we've received is very much taken in to consideration. Hopefully, we'll be seeing changes more in line with what the community wants in the future as a result of it.
KlariskraysNHL
Hero
3 years ago
@smugxb"Instead of hiding in the corner with your ball, your team should be engaged with the community as well as providing gameplay updates that are sorely needed. All you are doing is pissing off your customers. You are losing trust, not only because of the lack of any sort of meaningful updates, but also because of features (specifically around presentation) that were promised and never delivered."

You see we actually had that until people on these forums attacked the devs because the explanation wasn't what they wanted to hear. The higher ups probably put an end to direct communication and for good reason as things they could say might make them liable or whatever. The FIFA team doesn't bother replying on forums or other places to people.

Amazon Games recently is shifting away from forums and instead making a discord server. This supposedly allows them to have better communication but in reality it just allows for topics to get swept by faster because no real conversation can be read. If people want to act up there it's much easier to just ban people without worry because it isn't on their stuff.
KidShowtime1867
Hero
3 years ago
@KlariskraysNHL wrote:

You see we actually had that until people on these forums attacked the devs because the explanation wasn't what they wanted to hear. .
We had a really good thing going on those old forums. There was a time when it wasn't just Ben providing an insane level of detail about how their mechanics worked; we had presentation guys (I think Dave Pritchet) and a few other producers names who escape me at the moment.. as well as the man himself, Rammer - all chiming in at one point or another on big topics that would have hundreds of replies.
It was around NHL15, NHL16 that things took a turn. Ben continued the good fight, but he was met with countless members who refused to believe what he was saying in some topics just because it ran against what they "believed" to be true about the game. It was absurd. Insanity on full display. I couldn't believe it sometimes and of course those of us who simply tried to explain to those people that they were incorrect were called 'shills' and berated for not 'knowing hockey'.
My favorites were the usual suspects who would pop into some random discussion about whatever issue showed up in the game and they'd be all "Well I've played hockey for 200 years at every level and I've coached the sport for 400 years and I'm ex Military", "I'm a software engineer in my spare time" yadda yadda yadda and "you guys don't know hockey", "Hockey IQ", on and on it went.
Just imagine telling the people who make the game (and some of them had been working on the franchise for 20+ years) that they were wrong about what they were trying to explain and that they didn't even understand fundamental aspects of the sport ( a sport they've spent decades virtualizing on a myriad of platforms) - all because they took an L during a HUT game on a goal they can't defend but always get scored on with.
BIGRlTCHY
3 years ago
Communication on the forums have been quite responsive, especially from Aljo which is awesome. I think majority of us in the community are talking about social media communication from Twitter, Facebook social media. Many including the top players in the game had no idea we even had a forum directed for the EA NHL series. Often there is no communication outside of the forums about changes going on to the current game unless it has to do with HUT events or Roster upgrades.
Once in awhile we get the occasional patch or WOC update but offline changes hardly have any interaction. BAP most people had no idea they added more contracts rather than picking from 2 teams. I have 2 EA NHL team members who follow me on Twitter. I'm sure they have seen the numerous 50+ videos I have uploaded of broken gameplay issues that haven't been fixed and not a peak of response. Found out Ben Ross is no longer part of the dev team for NHL after I sent him the video of my opponents players arms wrapping through the body doing a behind the back self sauce LT move. He said that was removed in NHL 21 around that year. Sadly it has returned in NHL 23 for some reason.
This sentiment of leaving the game the way it is at the closed technical test is damaging in the long run. It is difficult to go by that until weeks of playing the game. If it feels like it needs to be brought to the BETA tuners than yes do it! But if the feedbacks negative like with NHL 23 then they need to fix it and do a proper tuner update.
Most of the time it's the same top exploiters in the game who want the game unchanged when they know the broken gameplay mechanics. I have played HUT for 3 years now and because I was playing against them in GWC or playing with them in LG or other E-sport leagues I knew. Many of them told me how to do these things and sadly because to W you have to play dirty, I used this to my advantage. It sounds toxic but the gameplay doesn't simulate realistic hockey play so therefore be it.
I used to play more offline BAP/Franchise mode and EASHL OTP but the content is so stale and out of touch with the communities wants I don't bother anymore.
PlayoffError
Hero
3 years ago
@KidShowtime1867 I never understood why that kind of negative interaction with the devs was allowed to fester on the old forums. It's not like it was some third-party board where EA had no authority. They could have done a better job at moderating and even banning people who didn't have the capability of disagreeing with someone while still being respectful.

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Any Chance We Consumers Can Expect A Gameplay Update For NHL 23?

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