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 with...

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.

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.
johum2886
3 years ago
@EA_Aljo wrote:
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.
From my perspective, continued and consistent transparency is better medicine for this issue than staying quiet.
I'll admit that my experience on this forum has been limited to the offline areas, but the frustration mentioned only comes after days or weeks (even worse, months) of silence. If you or another EA representative were to respond to issues when they are brought up, I don't think this would be as big of an issue. Again, I can't speak for the online components; just my experiences. I've lost count of how many issues and suggestions that I have submitted that have (possibly) gone unheard of because of this. Also, updates are not consistently given to threads without request, but given the amount of threads on here, this is understandable.
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.
Again, just my experience and what I have seen - you clearly have much more experience on the forum than I do and can speak to much larger issues at hand. Personally, I would suggest a 'Developer Informed' button that serves as means to tell us which issues/suggestions have been passed along to the developers and which have not. I think this feature could be beneficial to everyone and ease some of the frustration you mention

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