Community ManagerHey Franchise fans,
If you haven't already, be sure to check out the NHL 23 Game Modes Deep Dive for more info on the updates to Franchise mode in this year's game.
We'd love to hear your thoughts in this thread. How do you feel about Custom Leagues? What are your thoughts on dynamic schedules and playoff customization? What are you most looking forward to in Franchise mode this year?
Let us know in the thread below!
@EA_AljoWhat I’m frustrated is the dodging of my question every time, asking you if you could please get an answer as to why we are locked out of editing players mid career, and now locked out of strategies
I used to be constructive and polite, but when I’m ignored every time, frustration boils up and patience wears thin, and it’s hard to be polite when a year of civility has yielded no results..
Like I said, you do communicate often with gameplay issues, but offline game modes? Huge broken features/removal/locking of features etc, you and Kent are invisible and it’s very hard to stay positive when that happens
and it’s not just the last few days I’ve asked about the locking of editing players… it’s been a question since NHL 21, and it’s frequently asked… and there’s still no answer from you so it’s not like I just started asking this question… the strategies one is new yes because EA removed another thing from us.. but that other question is two years old now
Community ManagerI'm not dodging your questions. I don't have the answers so I'm not responding. I don't know why the development team made those decisions. All I can do is let you know if anything changes. I relay the constructive feedback to them so it's always possible something could change, but I don't see being able to get a detailed answer on why they decide on what they do.
I understand you've run out of patience, but keep in mind that the constructive posts are going to get more attention than posting the same complaint repeatedly.
*Edit* - I was able to find out that strategies can't be edited because this is up to the coach. You're not the coach so it would be unrealistic to be able to edit those strategies. The same goes for players. A GM can't just change whatever qualities about a player they want to on a whim. Players have their own natural skills that are developed over time.
I don't think this is a good decision from the Dev team to remove the ability to change coach strategies. In offline modes, people value freedom above everything else. That's why Custom Leagues was a great idea this year. Taking away freedom from the players is never a good idea. The offline modes are not competitive, there is no need to place an emphasis on "realism" when it comes to limiting what the player can or cannot do. Limiting a player's customization options will always result in decreasing the replayability.
@EA_Aljo wrote:I have done a very high amount of back and forth communication over the years here. However, the more constructive posts are the ones that stand a much better chance at a response. As far as the 23 forums go, I just got back yesterday after being gone for several days. There would have been more conversation had I been here.
This is all understandable and you deserve time off. My frustration in this thread goes to our boy Kent, who created the thread and then vanished.
I get that a lot of times you guys don’t have a response that you would think could get us to shut-up, but I promise you do. You did it last year for me when I whined about the offline AI opponents not shooting enough… you paraphrased my feedback to ensure you understood the complaint and said you’d pass it along. That is all I (or any reasonable person) needs.
In this case, what I expected from our missing friend, was a quick summary of how he understands our feedback. We’re a week and a couple pages into the thread without having any idea whether or not you guys understand what we don’t like and why we don’t like it. Very frustrating.
The impression I get is that EA thinks the complaints are just noise, and puts little care into figuring out what’s causing the noise.
Thank you for the explanation @EA_Aljo. The logic behind the answer actually makes a lot of sense theoretically, but does not even come close to how the game is setup.
I'm not really sure where to start and I want to keep this short, like @heavydutyrammer said, this isn't GM mode, its Franchise Mode. A GM is not responsible for upgrading facilities, but we can do that in the game as well as some other very unrealistic things.
I'm fine not being able to change my coaches strategies, actually agree with it, but as the GM if I don't like how my coach is handling the team, I need to have more options on what to do. If this is the dev's response and they are sticking to it, then we need way more NHL head coaches available to be signed because right now there are none in the first season. We would actually need the ability to pick our coach when we start a new franchise instead of being assigned a random one and having to keep restarting the mode until we find one we like.
Also, see what @Caliboy6262_714 said in another post about strategies not changing with a new coach, I did not know this was a thing and haven't tested it myself, but I do believe it.
As far as editing players, we can edit X-Factors which have more impact than player type/position, so that logic goes right out the window. (Note: Do Not take this as a statement that I want the ability to edit X-Factors removed)
Again, editing players wouldn't be as big of a problem if the game was programmed properly where player types actually match attributes and weren't randomly assigned.
@heavydutyrammer wrote:
@EA_AljoAlright, thanks for that information.
Can you please pass along this feedback:
Coaches IRL adapt their coaching strategies when they go 3-15, or even when they have certain players… look at Phil Kessel, he’s a great player but known for not being super coachable, and if you just let him do his thing, he’ll score you the goals, back in the PIT days.
So now we have stonecold coaches that don’t have any adaptability, so our only choice is to fire a coach every time? I get during a coach happens but so often because they don’t adapt to our players? Players also have to adapt too. Same thing as coaches.
Also, though, it’s not a GM mode.. it’s a Franchise Mode. So really, we should be able to edit things so we can play how we want, and how we like. What’s wrong with being able to play how we want? It doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s offline. Doesn’t affect anyone else.
So many of us are so unhappy with these changes, it pushes us away from the game. I’m not buying it this year because of the removal of these features. Lots of people on Reddit aren’t, as are many on these forums, because they are removing the things that we enjoyed, and found fun. So if you can let them know that, that they are pushing so many fans away with these choices, it would be appreciated.
Editing players was also a huge loss because let’s face it, it’s the truth, the CPU generated prospects very often do not make logical sense, such as a 6’5 240lbs LW SNP with awful accuracy, bad skating, bad puck skills, and good face off, good physical, good power.. we can’t change it to what it should be. A PWF centre. And we can’t change the CPU generated PWF Centre 5’8 165lbs speedy, good accurate shooting, good puck handling, poor face off, poor physical, poor defensive to a RW SNP like he should be. That ruins the game. A lot. We all know you and the other CM’s have seen this, and seen our frustration with not being able to fix it. And even then, it just makes the game more fun. That’s what it boils down to.. making the game fun. Look how unhappy we all are. I know I’ve been difficult, and annoying, but it’s out of passion for hockey and fun video games and frustration of receiving an unfun, buggy game. So I do apologize for being difficult, but I will continue to be vocal and ask for change, good change that we want and have been asking for, for years. I’ll try and increase my civility in the meantime
What I think needs to be stressed is that it is paternalistic when you limit what players do that only affects them. You are saying you know what they would enjoy better than they do. They cannot be trusted to provide for their own decisions.
Moreover, it would make much more sense if we were talking about an artist. If this was like a fancy 5 star chef who refuses substitutions because you must experience his vision that he bleeds, that is one thing. However, the devs are not being artists here. They don't have a vision. The sheer lack of attention to detail shows that they don't care about these modes. They are fine if the modes don't work - because they don't care. They are not asking us to try something they lost sleep over - they don't care about the product they offer offline. There are numerous things they would be doing to make sure things worked properly if they cared about offline. We might tolerate it if we thought it would lead to prompt fixes to that which we wanted to edit for - aside from those who just want to escape the world by playing God. I cannot change my player's hairstyle or facial growth because it wouldn't be realistic? I cannot change their hair color because hair dye doesn't exist in this alternate universe? They can't grow old? 50 year old players cannot go gray because that's unrealistic?
@EA_Aljo ask them why players online are playing the coach but players offline are not? EA advertised that they were saving their chosen strategies to save them time - but we somehow are not playing the coach.
Why was it renamed Franchise Mode anyway if not to get away from the concept that you are just the GM and toward the concept that you are in charge of the franchise?
BASIC editing features like changing hairstyles on prospects/ game made characters, player type and position need to come into the game for me to even want to consider buying these again, even on sale (bad enough you cant even change presentation to full anymore)
Older games let you at least change position and style but not even being able to change a players hair from grey, which has NEVER been an option I swear, that's just sad because IT"S HAIR... players grow, cut their hair all the damn time (not to mention how many grey/ silver hair kids do you know) by 15 or so years your franchise mode is consisted of grey hair generic faced clones who are like 80%-90% snipers.
Who cares if we can make a team full of snipers rocking Jagr's mullet, go 82-0-0, win the cup, have them all tie Gretzky for points, only to turn them all into enforcers and never win a single game the next season. ITS AN OFFLINE GAME MODE let us play it the way we want too.
Community Manager
@kyl_35 wrote:
@EA_Aljo wrote:
I have done a very high amount of back and forth communication over the years here. However, the more constructive posts are the ones that stand a much better chance at a response. As far as the 23 forums go, I just got back yesterday after being gone for several days. There would have been more conversation had I been here.
This is all understandable and you deserve time off. My frustration in this thread goes to our boy Kent, who created the thread and then vanished.
I get that a lot of times you guys don’t have a response that you would think could get us to shut-up, but I promise you do. You did it last year for me when I whined about the offline AI opponents not shooting enough… you paraphrased my feedback to ensure you understood the complaint and said you’d pass it along. That is all I (or any reasonable person) needs.
In this case, what I expected from our missing friend, was a quick summary of how he understands our feedback. We’re a week and a couple pages into the thread without having any idea whether or not you guys understand what we don’t like and why we don’t like it. Very frustrating.
The impression I get is that EA thinks the complaints are just noise, and puts little care into figuring out what’s causing the noise.
EA_Kent and I work together, but he also doesn't have any more answers than I do. He's aware of all the feedback here. I've also reported this feedback to the team. If anything changes, it's not going to be overnight or within a few days. If/when we have an update on this, we'll relay it on Answers HQ.
One of the big reasons we don't respond as often as you'd all like is that we usually just generate more anger and toxic posts because we're not giving you the answers you want. Repeating ourselves also just upsets people more. So, we try to keep things more informational. Which, is unfortunate because I used to love talking to this community. We all definitely understand your feedback even if we're not frequently commenting. I can assure you the dev team is very well aware of the sentiment here due to their own monitoring as well as our reports. It's not just noise.
