So for years I’ve been a believer in sports games needing more than a 9 month dev cycle. This year though, with the smaller dev team for nhl, it’s obvious there just isn’t enough time to actually make the changes they envisioned efficiently. Every year the game releases in a state that takes months to fix, cutting into the dev time and efforts on the next game. I think NHL in particular could benefit from a multi year dev cycle. Release like a 10 dollar uniform, roster, and equipment update in the off years. That would be a good 6 months of support and updates to make the current version of the game the best possible, then the next 18 months focused on the next release with a small group keeping an eye on the current version. The reason this will never happen? The money they make with HUT. That mode dies down a few months after release and the only way to get more money coming into it is starting the new year cycle.

@DominickB3 I think everyone probably agrees with you..but ea wants Money and people continue buying games lol. This year EA put women in NHL 22 and called it NHL 23 . They also made scoring cross crease harder and Made the back hand for hand goal the Glitch of the year. The past 10 years it's basically been a copy and paste game without many changes or what theyll do is take changes out of the game and then bring them back as if they were a new idea. Attributes were the best thing jn the game because it made it feel like you could build your player to your style they took that system out of the game and brought it back 5-6 years later.They brought back animations that have were removed as well. As long as EA continues to make a mediocre product and people continue to buy theyll do the bare minimum to make the largest profit. Its unfortunate but true.

@DeMiGoD1988 well they don’t. Sales are steadily declining every year since NHL 15.

@DeMiGoD1988 Would be no different than fortnite or other free to play online models. You sell the single player/offline stuff separately. This would force EA to make those modes actually good for a change and spend more than 5 minutes making it.The problem is a free to play with a season pass style of play benefits the consumers too much and EA isn’t about that. It would hold the devs too accountable to where if they weren’t delivering, people wouldn’t be spending the money on it. EA would much rather the business model they have now, where they can release bug filled messes, with no accountability because they already have your money. Then proceed to copy and paste the next game, and have the same bugs plus more in it and cash in again.Our community is honestly one of the worst in gaming for allowing this stuff, so unfortunately we will just continue to get taken advantage of. No accountability needed with EA on this series

@17ZxxzxxZ17 wrote:@DominickB3I think everyone probably agrees with you..but ea wants Money and people continue buying games lol. This year EA put women in NHL 22 and called it NHL 23 . They also made scoring cross crease harder and Made the back hand for hand goal the Glitch of the year. The past 10 years it's basically been a copy and paste game without many changes or what theyll do is take changes out of the game and then bring them back as if they were a new idea. Attributes were the best thing jn the game because it made it feel like you could build your player to your style they took that system out of the game and brought it back 5-6 years later.They brought back animations that have were removed as well. As long as EA continues to make a mediocre product and people continue to buy theyll do the bare minimum to make the largest profit. Its unfortunate but true.Has nothing to do with that, strangely this is on NHL side of things as apart of EA making the games its on an annual cycle, not just that but they also need to appease the shareholders. So for them its a double end sword, dammed if you do and dammed if you don't. We as players would survive if they took a year off but we ultimately don't have contractual obligations to uphold or shareholders to please. They unfortunately do.The reason the dev teams are smaller is because EA is trying to cut back to make it look like EA is making hand over fist in profits so its more desirable for someone to purchase EA as EA is on the market, not just that but out of all the EA sports games NHL has the lowest revenue, so therefore it gets less resources. This also happened between DICE and Respawn, Battlefield wasn't making expected profit margins where as Apex Legends was exceeding them, so naturally they'll give Respawn more responsibilities which would be the IP to the starwars franchise.

Game should go Free to Play / Season Pass model. It’s already built like F2P mobile game with constant connection to servers, but ridled with bugs. Even the offline modes need connection to server...Let’s say they make Drop-In&ProAm in CHEL and some modes in HUT free, and everything else is behind Season Pass. That way they could get 2-3 times more ppl online, more sold packs (sadly) and maybe even some quality to game with longer dev cycles.

Maybe it’s time to rethink yearly releases

19 Replies

DeMiGoD1988
3 years ago
@TITAN_NHL wrote:
@DeMiGoD1988
It is good for the consumer. I don’t get how it would even make sense that a free to play game where you’re given the option to make the decision whether it’s worth your money to sub for the season, could ever be a bad thing.
You think they have gotten complacent? Don’t pay for the season then, it’s no loss to you. If they want your money they have to at least put enough of an effort in that the playerbase is willing to pay for it
That’s like saying when you go to a restaurant, it would be better to be forced to give a tip regardless of the service you have received. I think we can all agree that would lead to less service from the waiter/waitress, as opposed to them working for it
With apex they have one thing and sometimes its pay to win.
Either way if they made a secondary game where all the offline modes separate they'll make it then leave it, it'll get less attention then it does now
TITAN_NHL
3 years ago
@DeMiGoD1988
Well if that’s the case then it’s a 1 time buy for the offline modes anyways which works out cheaper for offline players when compared to them spending $80+ a year for a mode that doesn’t change for 5+ years at a time.
If EA wants to sell their offline modes each year, then they would have no choice but to put time and effort into it, or why would you pay it again?
Like common, if EA released Be a Pro, next year, the exact same as it’s been the previous 2-3 years, would you buy it? No there would be no point, because it’s literally identical
a1xFREAKx13
Rising Rookie
3 years ago
Pretty bad when the 360 games were better then this new gen for gameplay, get rid of these stupid prebuilt crappy build and traits are great but most are over powered, 23 was great out of the box and the pings were great, now the pings are terrible like 22 .. the game feels heavy more often then not, why not put up more servers to accomodate all the connections? other then the constant error messages the first 2 weeks of 23 the game was good and now feels terrible since this new patch came out.. best thing they could do is get littman back he built the best games.. 09-14..
DeMiGoD1988
3 years ago
@TITAN_NHL wrote:
@DeMiGoD1988
Well if that’s the case then it’s a 1 time buy for the offline modes anyways which works out cheaper for offline players when compared to them spending $80+ a year for a mode that doesn’t change for 5+ years at a time.
If EA wants to sell their offline modes each year, then they would have no choice but to put time and effort into it, or why would you pay it again?
Like common, if EA released Be a Pro, next year, the exact same as it’s been the previous 2-3 years, would you buy it? No there would be no point, because it’s literally identical
Going by that theory why do people buy it now? The subtractions and additions each year doesn't balance the books at all.
Greyinsi
Seasoned Veteran
3 years ago
@DeMiGoD1988 well they don’t. Sales are steadily declining every year since NHL 15.
DeMiGoD1988
3 years ago
@Greyinsi wrote:
@DeMiGoD1988well they don’t. Sales are steadily declining every year since NHL 15.
And unfortunately there's a direct correlation to the subtractions to the game. If it makes less money and less revenue then there will be less resources are given to the development team and therefore the product won't stand up to expectations every year as a result.
Greyinsi
Seasoned Veteran
3 years ago
@DeMiGoD1988 yes that’s true. But you can also look it other way around; less focus on delivering quality game = smaller sales. The lazy copy-paste cycle started after horrible release of next gen NHL 15.
PaulReubens
New Traveler
3 years ago
@a1xFREAKx13 You can thank microtransactions for ruining gaming. They don’t even try anymore. Just to make sure the consumer has things to buy once in the game.
DeMiGoD1988
3 years ago
@Greyinsi wrote:
@DeMiGoD1988yes that’s true. But you can also look it other way around; less focus on delivering quality game = smaller sales. The lazy copy-paste cycle started after horrible release of next gen NHL 15.
Well NHL 15 was a legacy edition of NHL 14, on ps3 and xbox 360 it was literally called NHL Legacy but it was the same game as 15 just leas graphics and such. If any game was a copy/paste it was 14 to 15. They literally didn't upgrade a thing.
The rest have had subtractions and additions done to them so although similar they're not a copy/paste

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Maybe it’s time to rethink yearly releases

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