EA's Priorities

Rather than taking the True Broadcast thread off topic, I thought it best to create a new thread for this.

@EA_Aljoyou were talking about different teams within the NHL team working on different aspects.  The presentation team was working on completely changing the True Broadcast mode based on feedback no one else was aware of and just irritated a bunch of other people who may have been fine up to that point.  They said that they are no longer going to buy the game because what made it playable for them is now gone.  EA could easily fix this - and it is far from uncommon for a quick fix to be posted soon after a patch because it causes problems, but they won't.  Meanwhile, there is a debacle going on because of all the presentation that was intentionally removed from the game.  Presumably that would fall under the presentation team's tasks.  Rather than restore the same functionality as was there in NHL 22 where you could turn on full presentation, a literal copy and paste job, the team decided to ignore the very significant uproar to create more uproar.

You stated that you, yourself, are unconcerned with presentation.  You only care about the gameplay being authentic - and I am guessing that the majority of the dev team feels just like you do.  They don't care about presentation - they probably don't care about offline play.  They are creating a game that simply fits their needs and they don't have the perspective that a lot of your customers have.

Well, let me tell you about why I play games.  I have steadily worked a 40 hour job for the past 17 years, ever since I got my bachelor's.  I also am going back to grad school, getting my master's and PhD while working full time.  My life is stress.  I play games to escape that stress, to escape my life.  I don't play looking for a challenge, I play to feel accomplished and I create false illusions of grandeur.  If' I'm playing a strategy game I'm cheating, if I'm playing a RPG I'm save editing, if I'm playing this game I'm making super powered players to see success.  Why?  To escape the stress of the real world.  I am not every customer, but I am part of that patchwork and I'm sure there are others out there who play just the same.  It's also part of why I have no interest in online play; I don't want to deal with people who have nothing else to do but play this game and I don't want to have to learn all the little ways to game the system - and even if I could cheat I wouldn't want to do it where it harms someone else.  I just want a nice, relaxing game experience.  I want immersion with a feeling of grandeur.

For that purpose, presentation is extremely important.  I want the stuff that helps me forget the real world and instead think that this game world is the real world.  That means that I want to immersed and see the long pregame discussion and see the players actually take the ice.  I want to see that the grandeur is recognized.  I want to see all those little bumpers and I want to see the full goal presentation.  Now, if I'm scoring 50 goals in a game to escape the real world, I may skip some of the replay, especially if I'm on a run, but I want it to be there for me when I want to see it.  How did they score on me, how was that penalty drawn.  Was I controlling that player when it happened or was that the CPU that messed up?  Oh, look at how beautiful that goal was.  These help me escape the real world.

But the EA devs don't feel that way and they don't interact with people that feel that way.  They don't bother to do basic studies to figure out what that variety is that makes up their customer base.  They don't even recognize that the variety exists.  They didn't notice it when some players wanted that true broadcast mode and just replaced it rather than creating a hybrid one for those that didn't like it.  They didn't notice it when they took away full presentation to make online play faster without offering it for those who want that presentation.  They didn't notice it when they made it so that blocking the puck became likely to cause tripping penalties because online players were abusing it.  They didn't notice it when they made it so that if you accidentally twitch during a faceoff you lost that faceoff because online players were spamming the draw.  They didn't notice it when every poke check took a player to the ground because online players were spamming the poke check.  It always has to be a one size fits all solution with EA despite there being a great diversity amongst the customer base.

I don't like other sports.  I played hockey as a kid and it creates a bit of a zen feeling.  I played goal - but between the limited controls and that my play style (fall down) isn't supported, I never ended up playing goalie in this game, instead adapting to play other positions.  The specifics of it were foreign to me so I never cared about realistic deking or that poke checks are perfectly aligned - it was just creating an illusion.  I'm also a trans woman, so it was a big deal when female skaters became a thing you could create, and when they became customizeable that was also big.  I wrote about it back then, just over five years ago.

https://yttribune.com/2017/09/19/nhl-18-review-improvements-flaws-and-room-to-grow/

I noted that it was a big step up, though it was odd that the hairstyles weren't very feminine, but it was too fresh then to push for more.  Then we had the trailers this year and there was the hair I had been waiting for those five years.  Finally.  I was disappointed with NHL 22 and swore I would wait before buying the next one but I saw that hair and that would have been enough to justify the expense for me alone.  I was giddy.  You also promised a bunch of new face meshes - also not delivered upon as all the face meshes appear to be the exact same that were in NHL 22 before the promotional videos ever came out.  There was expressed focus on all the graphical improvements.  I thought it was going to be a jubilation.

However, it wasn't there.  Despite the fact that the presentation team could work on that presentation in create-a-player, EA couldn't take the time to make that available.  I actually cried at one point and I didn't understand why - I wasn't even conscious of how much that meant to me only to be taken away.  EA built my hopes up and then let me fall down to the hard ice, unprepared.  Actually, I asked about that after the pre-release and you had stated that you couldn't comment on it, it would have to wait until release.  It wasn't there and it caused emotional harm.  EA didn't just fail to deliver, EA caused emotional harm.

And here is where I'm going to get myself banned again, because I'm going to talk about moderation.  This is you from here on out.

So as I'm sitting there, upset and dejected, trying to play through Be a Pro, it not only stands out that we lost the minors that we wanted, it really stuck in the lack of attention given to female players.  I posted a thread about it - EA had made all of these female players you create for Be A Pro and without exception they give off a masculine vibe.  Everything about the presentation of female players in Be A Pro is masculine.  It is misgendering to trans women like me who want to feel like our true selves when playing to give us that constant nudge that we're really just men through that presentation.  There is nothing wrong with trans men being represented in the game, but it ought not to be the only representation.

You ignore those who are upset that the game is leaving them behind and making itself unplayable tot hem, but the moderation team chose to actively antagonize me, as a dissatisfied customer who has bought thousands of dollars of EA products over the years.

If EA wants to prioritize online players and bigots and do away with the rest of us, then it has the obligation to make that clear.  What is the team working on - what do they intend to have fixed in this title?  You clearly weren't listening when there are 900 posts in a thread complaining about presentation if you thought making a subpar intro apply to all teams and trigger merely "more often" rather than always was the gist of those complaints.  Most of it had to do with full presentation.  Why is EA refusing to genuinely interact with its customers.

And if that presentation team had taken a fraction of the time they spent driving away customers with true broadcast being taken away making the hair meshes available, I probably would have been silent.  I would have been playing the game instead of spending time on these forums complaining, even without the presentation, even without the promised face meshes, even without the new franchise mode feature working properly.  But I just keep getting the sense that EA doesn't want my money; my money is dirty somehow.  They want the 13 year old kids making racist stereotypes online's money, not mine.  You just want me to go away, because I am not part of whatever uniculture you have going on in that dev team.