Forum Discussion

Seasoned Scout

3 years ago

Solved

Complete disregard to the community

Dear EA,

Again, here we are with a lack of engagement. Every time we bring issues about your game in its entirety, you come up with another reason you need to remove it.

So let’s start again without hurting your feelings.

Fix your game, fix your servers, stop wasting our money and our time with your complete lack of effort and ability. There is not a single developer out there as dismissive as EA.

Things that need attention on your end as listed:

Janky menu issues stemming as far back as NHL16: getting locked in menu trying to edit your build, players not loading in customization menu, leaving people behind when connecting to matches

Connection: It’s 2023, literally any other game I play which are usually played globally (not just in a North American market) and up to 4x the amount of users on much larger, more detailed maps can run smoothly with no lack of connection outside your own personal internet. Why for the love of Gretzky can you not offer a smooth running online experience for 2-12 players on a slab of ice??!?!

it’s absolutely baffling…

In Game Swag: It’s always the same. Alwaaaaays the same! Why am I paying you 100 dollars a year to have zero creativity???

Yearly Release: You hardly achieve releasing a full product, why not take some time and develops a quality game?! 💰

Bans/Suspensions: You are not clear when explaining your reasonings for suspensions or bans when asked by the individual accused, in fact you don’t actually even give the person an opportunity to talk to anyone, and the customer service on the phone have no ability to help you even just understand your ban… keeping toxicity out of the game is important, but let me tell you, 5 minutes scrolling through hut,chel, and player names and you’ll see this is a huge fail on your end as it’s looted with toxic behaviour.

You can lock out my comment rather than engage or provide any feedback on the above. I’d much rather discuss and debate rather than aimlessly rant at a non engaged forum.

Of course my expectations are very low.

EA_Aljo
3 years ago
@southpaw86

We don't automatically action everyone though. There are times I've submitted a report through my personal account and I get a response back saying it wasn't actually worth actioning someone over. Like I said, every report is reviewed by humans. That doesn't mean they're overwhelmed and making bad decisions because of their workload.

I understand how you feel and I'm pretty much in agreement. There really isn't anything I can do about it though. I hope we can see a better system put in place someday as we are all aware of these reports.

Edit: I missed your other response. Sorry about that.

We may hold the throne, as you say, but we're not stopping anyone from creating a hockey game. Anyone can do that. They can also seek out the NHL rights.

I definitely know the community is unhappy with the game. I share a lot of those same sentiments. I also relay the feedback here to the team regularly so they are well aware of the sentiment. We'll have to wait and see what comes out of it though. I know, everyone hates that answer, but we all know how unhappy people are and absolutely want to turn that around. Discussions like this are ones I can use as an example of how we need to do better with our communication with you all. Thank you again.

@johum2886
Even a "hey, we see this, it has been passed on to the team" is appreciated and more than sufficient, but that almost never happens, at least, in my experience. In my opinion, I should not have to tag you three times in a bug report or game suggestion just to get confirmation that it has been seen.

I very frequently say this. I may not do it for every suggestion that's made, but I say it pretty often.

34 Replies

EA_Aljo
Community Manager
3 years ago
@southpaw86

I am going to leave this up for now so I can be very clear because this accusation has come up recently. Posts are only removed when they break the rules. We always encourage feedback. Even the negative kind. It just has to be constructive. Someone going on a rant making rude comments is not considered constructive feedback. If you truly want to be heard, the best way to do that is to provide detailed feedback that isn't lashing out at the mods, devs or the company as a whole. This doesn't mean an immediate fix is coming. It means you've been heard and your issue is getting in front of the dev team as opposed to having it removed for breaking the rules and not getting relayed to the team.

We should all try to consider treating others how we want to be treated. Chances are good someone would rather be told what their issues are so they can make changes rather than just throw insults and blanket statements their way. Which is someone most likely going to take to heart? Rude comments or someone clearly laying out what their issues are? I'm betting it would be the later. So, keep this in mind when posting, along with the Answers HQ rules, and chances are excellent the post won't be removed.

As far as responding to issues goes, I do that very frequently. However, I'm not going to keep responding on a regular basis just to say there's no news. That just causes more frustration from the community. I have done that in the past and it quickly generates more rude comments so I normally wait there is something worthwhile to report. Updates are typically provided on Twitter and are then relayed on these boards right about the same time.

Hopefully, that helps clear this up. If you have any questions, let me know. However, this thread will get locked if it turns into non-constructive complaints, rude comments and overall toxicity.
southpaw86
Seasoned Scout
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo Awesome!

I’m sorry that at this point it feels we need to antagonize you into engaging us, but the tension is there for a reason.

So let’s do this reasonably and engage.

My first point game menu and performance issues.

You’re saying you don’t want to waste our time posting when there is no news. That’s totally reasonable. What’s not reasonable is the fact a lot of these issues stem from game to game, giving the “copy paste” of each yearly release the rep it has. No news because there’s no improvement 🤷🏻‍♂️

Games have issues, I don’t think there’s ever been a game released that hasn’t needed a performance update. The expectation here is not perfection, it’s attention.

The most recent update, spite EAs post on what it has actually “fixed”. All I noticed was ping rates went from 0-60 good 60-100 fair 100+ poor. Now it has jumped by 20 ping, which only suckers more people into poor connected games. This isn’t the first time neither, this exact same “update” happened back in 19 changing my the ping rate performance meter. The connection itself has not gotten better, you still can’t have one member of your team in the east, and one in the west, without one of you taking a performance drop. Doesn’t that come across a bit sneaky?

You say treat others how we want to be treated. I agree. EA has not shown an example of this when it comes to all issues stated and the money were throwing at this game.

I’m not some angry child, I’ve been playing these games since they were first being developed and there was 2 games on the market. Ever since there has been just EA, there has been a huge lack of progress. We feel ripped off and taken advantage of. The support of my prior posts, posts on Reddit, social media outlets, all agree with the frustration I am expressing.

If you want us to come in to these forums constructively, then constructively assist the community in resolving these problems. As previously stated, NHL is not the only online community I participate in. But this community is hands down the most disgruntled on what they’re getting vs the money we pay each and every year for a repetitive cycle.

This is not a bad game. I don’t think anyone would say it is. We love it so much that we want you to participate in the progress of this game and community. We don’t care half as much about the name you put on the front of the cover as we just want to play some good hockey!! We want to feel not ripped off. You used to actually show love for return buyers, NHL15 had the best community layout where we actually felt like part of a community. Goalies haven’t received an ounce of love since 2016, and honestly the controls for goalie in 15 imo were the most immersive. What happened since NHL15 that’s made this game all about the mighty dollar?

We don’t want to insult or harass EA or its team. But we deserve better than this as we have been supporting you blindly as we continue to get nothing in return but the same old.

What’s the deal???
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
3 years ago
@southpaw86

Thank you for the feedback. I absolutely mean that it's appreciated.

I know this community is disgruntled and everyday it's a disappointment. I've been playing this series for close to 30 years now. It's a very big part of me. So much so that it was the reason for my seeking employment here. So, when I say I understand, I truly do. However, my role is pretty limited. I don't decide what we can/can't communicate. I'd love for us to be more open and I'm regularly providing my own feedback on that. However, there is a big hesitancy because if we don't tell the community what they want to hear, it just makes things worse. We're not going to have all the answers and that's going to upset people more. We can't talk about what is coming, but I'm hoping we can give more insight in the future. I would like to see us at least try and if it does generate more toxicity, we'd probably pull back from doing that again.

Connections are never going to be perfect. Your neighbor could have an amazing connection while yours could be wildly different. I have said this more times than I know, but our servers are just one part of the equation that makes up a good connection. For example, my connection is great. I live in a home where there are many devices connected and there's either someone else gaming or streaming media while I play. I also stream music while I play. I regularly am in WoC games with friends on Northern servers when I'm in the US SW. Why is my connection so good when there are others with a much better proximity to those servers? It could be any number of reasons that we have no control over. It could be their equipment, the bandwidth being used in your home or neighborhood, your ISP's equipment, how your data is routed, etc. We don't have a way to test for this. The best we can do is monitor our servers for issues. When we get an influx of sudden reports about connections, it could be us. When it is, we see what's happening and get to work on it. However, when all is well and we have what essentially becomes a small part of the playerbase reporting connection problems, it makes it very difficult to find out what's causing that. We want you all to be able to play and we are constantly monitoring for issues. We can really only be responsible for what's happening on our end and when there's a problem, we know about it quickly.

Goalies have received a lot of attention since 2016. It hasn't been as well received though. It's a very difficult position to play. The more complex it gets, which should result in more authenticity, seems to cause more dissention. We hear of people wanting a more sim style game, but then say the game was better when it was more arcade-y. A lot has been added over the last several years. People say it's a copy and paste and nothing changes, but then they say NHL 14 was the best, which had a lot less, gameplay-wise, than we do now. I'm talking about game mechanics. Not modes and features. Gaming is in a different place than it was back then. We also need to change with the times. Player customization is a big part of that and many of the veteran players don't care for it, but we also can't build a game for a group that makes up a fraction of the community. That game really wouldn't sell. Without sales, there is no game. We need to try to make as many people as happy as possible so we're going to try to have a game that can be enjoyed by both hardcore and casual alike.
KIJHLPhenom14
3 years ago
When it comes down to game modes! That is the main reason NHL 14 was known as one of the best. Last decade our offline community has suffered the most with quality content removed that should have never been taken away. I would love to play BAP without the cutscenes and the option to go into a full junior career before the NHL draft. Get to pre-season and if I have to develop my skill in the AHL so be it! Prospects/Allstar game being removed was another downfall to Franchise mode, along the 25 season gap limitation and not being able to full edit players.
EASHL drop-in which I frequent more than club since I can't commit to a club due to the fact I work way too much and trying to find players isn't easy the way drop-in 6's is more casual. I wish we could select our jersey's again instead of the 2 hoodies, along play in an indoor arena. The game is luring the longtime community members away! The only ones that play are the known toxic competitors who ruin the experience for others by their toxicity by exploiting the games broken mechanics. X Factors also have ruined the gameplay since goalies hardly have any chance at saving close quarters while they can be in perfect position but the puck sneaks an inch underneath their armpit or glove for a goal.
When I see most known community members asking for a refund or moving to other games it really shows how bland the content and broken the game actually is. The hardcore is being left out to dry for the most part, which includes the offline community also. They are what makes the sales go up! HUT microtransactions can't always be the bread and butter...
We community members pay a AAA price for this full priced product! It at this point doesn't feel like our money isn't adding up to what we have to unfortunately deal with.
southpaw86
Seasoned Scout
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo It actually means a lot to see you’re on the same level gameplay wise. I’ve watched this game develop since the very beginning.

The connection issue: it really is a nightmare to play so fluidly let’s say in your squad battle matches or whatever offline mode you’re into, then hit the streets of the online world, hit that sweet 20 ping match, but for whatever reason you’re slow, clunky, and it’s just not reading the same. Makes it impossible to feel competitive. Especially, myself for example, who will hop over to let’s say Rocket League which is give and take very comparable on a complexly competitive level, and see this issue almost never.

The community: Honestly, as again I’ve been a part of it a long time now, know more people a part of it than for my own good. We just want fairness. We don’t need to necessarily hear what we want to hear, we want action. We’re all aware that the age of subscriptions is outweighing the classic yearly release system. If the needs of the community cannot be met, there’s no reason for a yearly release just because a new NHL season is underway. You know as well as I do I’m just buying or unlocking the same HUT cards, emotes and customizations (which the majority can only be used in 3’s) with little addition. For example my chel player name is So Sorry Eh. The name is loosely based off the emote Sorry About That. Haha I haven’t seen that emote in 2 seasons although it’s there. Do I seriously care? No, not really. But it is a bit pathetic I unlock it, just to unlock it, and probably means a lot more to the younger crowd. A minor example of a bigger problem for sure.

Only being able to use certain customizations in arcade modes also kills the desire to care about anything you get out of bags that isn’t emotes. People like myself you will never find in arcade modes as I’m there for the competitive realness.
My point is that this is all fine and acceptable, but have a subscription rather than a yearly release it’s just a major burn on us loyal customers. And let’s be real, EA has shown a lot less thanks to return buyers in regards to hut over these past few years and we notice.

Goalies: I know in a literal sense there’s been many changes to goalie since 16. But the problem with goalie is less is more. The less you actually do, the better you perform. Your job is simply positioning and the auto reactions do the work, meh.

Goalie is tough for sure, but I also used to be the guy in the top 50s at the end of the year when I had more time spent when I was younger. 15 was super engaging. You could almost play like you were Hasek on the breakaways, you could predict shots with your right stick, it rocked. Has never been that good since. It looks sweet, the automations are off the chain, but with all this new synergy nonsense builds are far more important than skill. I don’t enjoy playing net nearly as much as I used to.

Chel: I have to add this. There’s a huge lack of competitive nature within chel. If people want to run 5 enforcers with truculence or 5 close quarter offensive players, take it to drop-in. How bad is it that if I truly want to play in a competitive league I’ve got to deal with the jaded guys in third party leagues?

I understand you could simply say well back out, or build a team to counter it. The amount of time wasted backing out of games you know are going to be a joke, poor connection, or only 2s because you can’t set to your size to exact or more. I spend more time in the DR sometimes than games.

Limit ability points in club just like you do hut. It’s meant to be the more competitive team gameplay. Leave all the antics in drop in and make it so teams need to be more strategic in club. That’s the idea of it right? Build strategically together to beat your opponent. Close quarters and truculence are overpowered for club and gives the inexperienced an edge they really don’t deserve to have. Having one on a wing or defence is useful totally, an entire team of it is just a waste of time.

Honestly this recent synergy style gameplay imo is where 2k lost their edge back in the day. I was a 2k over EA until I realized EA had a more realistic and even playing field. Now we’re headed back to powerups and arcade hockey.
southpaw86
Seasoned Scout
3 years ago
I would like to also add the community layout difference from 15 to now.
15 you had lobbies. This is where we all met back in the day. I know so many people from this community thanks to it. We used to throw real drop in games where 12 entered a room, everyone sat in the middle, 2 took goalie, they chose teams 1 by 1 at random. Way way waaaaaay more competitive. You knew who you were playing just like you knew your team. It eliminated people like bolt upright showing up and ruining your games. Literally what created a community for us. I tried to keep this alive after it was dropped to include the people getting left out because nobody wanted to play with them, but at the time you could only have 8 in a chat and it utterly failed.
Since then, there really isn’t any sense of community outside us that kept in touch and streaming which is more the younger kids. This absolutely destroyed the community. Man, drop in had never been so awesome. I’m here today because of those days and that’s where my club of the past 9 years all met.
now it’s all toxic teams, there’s hardly any real rivalry’s out there, and like this guy said, the exploiters are running us long time experienced players to stuff like rocket league where we don’t experience any of this stuff.
DannytheTemp
New Veteran
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo It is going to take YEARS of things consistently moving in the right direction to restore user faith in this franchise.
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
3 years ago
@southpaw86

Thanks again for taking the time to be constructive and detailed with your feedback 👍

I can't really help with a connection that feels sluggish. I get what you're saying, but it's near impossible to troubleshoot currently. The best I can say is that we're constantly monitoring our servers for issues.

That younger crowd is pretty huge. A lot of people love those animations. Personally, they aren't for me, but when I go in to a game and see almost everyone using them, that's a sign they're pretty popular. I'd also support a subscription service instead of buying the game annually. There have been a lot of requests for it, but I really have no idea if it will ever happen. I can't think of another sports game that does it, but I also don't follow every single sports game out there.

I know the team works on goalies every year and community feedback is always a part of that process. I'd love to get them to a place where the community is happy with them again.

I really don't like the gooning in this game. That was there well before Truculence though. It's always been there. I've been going up against teams of goons for years. I hate that style of play, but thankfully they're not too tough to beat. Still, it doesn't make for a fun game and I'd be fine if that ability was removed. That doesn't mean people won't stop hitting. As long as hitting is fun, it's going to be popular. If we make hitting less fun, we'll get complaints that we taken away something else from defense. There are a lot of complaints that offense is overpowered, but then there's a lot of complaints that hitting is overpowered. Defense was made a lot more challenging this year with the change to losing speed when poking. As much as I don't like Truculence, players that aren't actually just trying to destroy everyone on the ice and are hitting when they should be are fine with me. It's more that it encourages a style of play that isn't fun for me. However, it is fun for them and should we take away an ability because it hurts the enjoyment of the game for some? I'd rather see it balanced better personally.

There is a limit to ability points in EASHL. Boosts and Superstar Abilities have a cost associated with them so you can't just max everything out. I think it would be good to limit how many players on a team can have an ability though.

I'm still not sold on lobbies. Personally, I like it better now, but I also rarely play drop-ins. When I did, I didn't care of those lobbies. It was a race to position and chat was just full of people spamming nonsense. The race to position was the worst though. If someone couldn't get a forward position, they'd often take goalie and proceed to troll. I also don't really see a difference in the level of toxicity. It was really bad back then as well. I know there were also good experiences with lobbies, but I feel like it's more based on nostalgia than providing an actual better experience. However, we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm probably in the minority when it comes to feeling this way. That said, my club met in drop-ins shortly after NHL 09 released and we've played together every year since.
southpaw86
Seasoned Scout
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo I’m actually agreeing that to these kids the emotes and customizations are more important. Which is also why I think it’s nonsense that when purchasing a new season drop, that all those emotes and customizations are 90% the same, and no guarantee you’ll see the ones you enjoyed before unless you seriously grind. Hence my prior statement in regards to my chel name. Even with hut, it pretty much just promotes underage gambling with the cards. You get provided a potential outcome, but no promises unless you pay for the promise. I’m surprised it still exists as I’ve seen other games tagged for this system.

There’s nothing wrong with hitting, or a strong offensive line. Some of these guys can turn all that off and still wipe you across the ice. None of us like to lose games, but im not complaining about losing games. Im complaining about a lack of an actual competitive mode for teams. My guys love a secondary truculence on their builds, and I love watching them demolish the other players. That’s besides the point. It’s the fact you can excessively build your club team, where even in hut EA acknowledges hey maybe we shouldn’t let them have everything all unlocked and we will set a limit. Chel clubs is anything but competitive, and the leader boards are stacked with two man teams and that’s who you’re repping as we load in is promote playing like these goons.

I wouldn’t touch drop in with a 10 foot pole. Not even for practice. What a toxic playground of a show that is. Lobbies helped us self govern. We can’t even report a player now for trolling us as they’re considered equal paying customers. Sure, but they’re killing your game.

Open Lobbies we found out who was who, we all met. Sure first to position sucked, but hey someone of us actually learned how to play defence. This new style hasn’t stopped people from picking D and building snipers, or Goalies intentionally taking penalties causing the RW to have a terrible day. This new system is much worse.

At least with lobbies we could create our own, this is how we created true drop in games. Not this BS we call drop in now. Toxicity will be around as long as humans are. Taking away our ability to self govern the trolls, that truly hurt this game more than you guys seriously realize. As I’ve mentioned, now we pretty much need them to come on mic and say something terrible for you to consider it unacceptable behaviour, but totally allowed to drop in and ruin it for everyone without consequences.

Again, hate to reference Rocket league, but they’ve solved this issue even though toxicity still exists. You ruin everyone’s gameplay experience, you get yourself closer to suspension. 5 minutes suspension can grow to worse every time you ruin the game for people.

EA, come one come all. Stand behind the net alll game, run out to the blue, whatever.

Maybe when EA does their next round of hiring, they should look on here for people who actually want to see them accomplish something for the better of its community. It’s hard to see that even someone within the company sees no foreseeable changes to what this community truly wants out of this game.

Maybe someone will just have to actually do it right and the expectation for EA to change is just a bit of a pipe dream.

It really is a shame
CapeBretonIslndr
Seasoned Adventurer
3 years ago
Ultimately, and unfortunately for this series, its come down to what you're paying for isn't what you're playing for: a gameplay experience that's worth recurring play time, on top of a bug-filled mess that's not being fully addressed at all.
Personally, this is not why I pay for video games. It's absolutely appalling.