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 a...
Forum Discussion
@EA_Aljo Again, the preferences of the dev team are pretty obvious. They reflect in the game. If the dev team or whoever is making the decisions would care about presentation they wouldn't have removed full presentation, for example.
Literally every single NHL game from the last 20 years have superior presentation to NHL 23. The presentation in the NHL 2k games from the early 2000's are so much better than EA's NHL games of today it's laughable. The people who made those games cared about presentation. EA clearly don't.
Literally every single NHL game from the last 20 years have superior presentation to NHL 23. The presentation in the NHL 2k games from the early 2000's are so much better than EA's NHL games of today it's laughable. The people who made those games cared about presentation. EA clearly don't.
Howdy all. Friendly reminder that you're free to point out issues with the game (and there are definitely many), but I wanna say Aljo is relaying your feedback with the team and to maybe redirect your frustrations to the higher ups calling the shots.
- @TTZ_Dipsy How are we supposed to redirect our frustrations to the higher ups if they don’t show their faces on the forums or social media?
- @heavydutyrammer By talking about them rather than Aljo
- @VeronicatheCD We definitely do constantly voice our frustrations about them… in every single thread it’s almost always “EA made this stupid decision, EA made that stupid decision, why is EA removing all offline features and not fixing anything and charging full price” etc etc so I mean if we call out EA 97 times out of 100, that’s a decent track record
Exactly! Aljo has nothing to do with the direction of this game. Yet the community managers are being blamed for it. Even Ben Ross is just as frustrated since EA HQ won’t provide the financial stability to hire more staff nor give a reasonable timeline for the deadlines. Instead he is being told to push production of 24 ahead. The burnout is getting real for the EA NHL series team but the product is treated like it’s not as of important compared to games like FIFA. I feel sorry for Aljo at this point despite my own frustrations which I took out on this forums where I got a 3 day ban. Wasn’t directed towards the EA NHL series team but EA HQ.
Everything is being relayed to the devs who do care. Presentation was condensed because of design issues. The money to hire enough staff to deal with the bugs on top of bugs is limited.
That is why EA HQ needs to step in a put more financial stability and hands on deck to fix this mess. Even the Gamechangers which I know a few of them know what’s going on and are just as upset.
@BIGRlTCHY wrote:Exactly! Aljo has nothing to do with the direction of this game. Yet the community managers are being blamed for it. Even Ben Ross is just as frustrated since EA HQ won’t provide the financial stability to hire more staff nor give a reasonable timeline for the deadlines. Instead he is being told to push production of 24 ahead. The burnout is getting real for the EA NHL series team but the product is treated like it’s not as of important compared to games like FIFA. I feel sorry for Aljo at this point despite my own frustrations which I took out on this forums where I got a 3 day ban. Wasn’t directed towards the EA NHL series team but EA HQ.
Everything is being relayed to the devs who do care. Presentation was condensed because of design issues. The money to hire enough staff to deal with the bugs on top of bugs is limited.
That is why EA HQ needs to step in a put more financial stability and hands on deck to fix this mess. Even the Gamechangers which I know a few of them know what’s going on and are just as upset.
So EA, with its billions in profits, decided to disregard the laws of nature to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the game. Long term this harms EA's reputation, weakens its workforce that is familiar with the EA IP in a way that could take years to recover, and potentially forcing EA to abandon IP it spent millions of dollars developing over the years. It is short term thinking that illustrates how capitalism casually makes things worse. NHL 23 is the pinnacle of capitalist game development.
These game developers should unionize across studios. It is the only hope.
I would be willing to bet the largest proportion of the community would say the same thing as @EA_Aljo in that gameplay is priority 1. I actually had no idea presentation was so high on people’s list until it was removed this year. For some reason, EA obviously had no reason it was such a priority as well, even though that is something they should know.
The thing with prioritizing gameplay is that there are so many different views on what gameplay should be prioritized. Between offline/online, WOC/HUT, defence/offence, human/AI, that splits gameplay priorities into many possibilities. Based on where the gameplay has gone recently, it seems EA has put all of their eggs into one basket which is the online offensive forward that wants to score highlight reel goals and the core of the gameplay is based around that.
I’ve heard many say this years gameplay is the best it’s ever been, but the majority of gameplay changes online players see each year are just tuners. Offline players are usually adjusting sliders to their liking and very rarely even notice the changes made to gameplay like online would. So while I completely understand the statement and idea that gameplay should be prioritized, to many users that doesn’t even appear to be accomplished. Combine that with features being removed, ignored, not working or poorly implemented and it’s easy to see why many are disappointed with not only this game, but the direction of the franchise as well.
- @Beauts90 yeah they try to cater for offensive highlight reel stuff for sure (which make gameplay very hollow), but same time remove presentation to the point you can’t even see those highlight reels. It’s so nice to have that 3sec goal replay showing quality paint job of arena ceiling with some xfactor icons hovering on air…
I'm sure that there is a lot more the actual EA NHL team could do to improve the game and react to the feedback people are giving them, but at the end of the day the team is limited to whatever EA as a company let's them do. I can assure you the company doesn't give a damn about offline players and how they feel about stuff like presentation etc. All they care about is HUT and microtransactions, things that print money for them. So whatever you do do not give them your money. Stop buying HUT coins and special edition versions of the game. Never pay full price for the game, you can always find the game on sale somewhere almost immediately after launch. Vote with your wallet. I play multiple other EA titles and it's the same in every game. @EA_Aljo keep up the great work sharing the community's feedback with the team. While i don't agree with your personal opinions about the presentation stuff etc (i'm sure there are very passionate people in the NHL team who do care about the different aspects of the game) i just wanted to let you know many of us do appreciate your work here.
@TTZ_DipsyThe higher ups calling the shots aren't openly available to listen to these complaints. This board is made for people to sound the overwhelming number of complaints that come from a video game release. For the most part it's an echo chamber of issues that don't get acknowledged or resolved.
I've opened numerous tickets with technical support. They close them and send an auto-generated response email suggesting that 'they're working on it'.
I'd be more than willing to go through the methods you're suggesting if you offered up the personal emails of the key decision makers. Filing a complaint through EA's site on the otherhand is a complete waste of time.
