NHL 23 summed up in this video

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@CleanHeart wrote:

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@EA_Aljo wrote

We have released patches. There hasn't been a new tuner though. I'm not saying we will never have one, but the stance on it has been that they shouldn't change due to all the backlash we get for releasing them.

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 So essentially giving feedback is talking into the void and getting nothing or getting a monkey paw version of what you wanted. It's really sad that we can't even get a one sided state of the game address to the community from the dev team. I'm not even asking for an open conversation because it's not gone well in the past and it definitely would be extremely bad for everyone now but someone has to address all the problems with the current game and talk about the future of the series. It feels like the community and the dev team are in a war and everyone is doing everything out of spite(i'm not saying they literally are, just the vibe).

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I agree. I would love to get a state of the game update. It's something I really hope we can do sometime. Regardless, feedback never goes in to a void. People give feedback and expect it to be addressed immediately. That's not normally how it works though. In most cases, when feedback is used, it doesn't happen until a future game.

@EA_Aljo I have some sense of how difficult it can be to be a community manager; so please take what I'm about to write in the spirit of feedback to the larger EA NHL team and not in any way, shape or form aimed at you personally.

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

In most cases, when feedback is used, it doesn't happen until a future game.

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This has become increasingly obvious to anyone paying attention, but to hear it stated so bluntly is... well.. a bit shocking, to put it mildly. 

I have 27 years of experience in software development, 15 of which are in senior management and executive positions. This screams of an organization that doesn't understand what customer focus means. We may be gamers, but are first and foremost your customers. We pay for the product you ship - both in purchasing the core game, as well as the EA subscriptions required for online play; as as well as for the (hugely overpriced) micro transactions. Imagine if  I was running a team, and I was shipping a product to customers at premium prices; and then charging them MULTIPLES of that premium price in sale addons. And let's further imagine that my customer base was upset with the quality of the product they were getting; and being quite vocal to my support team. And then imagine that I authorized my front-line support staff to say "feedback noted, why don't you  buy our product again in a year, at the same price, and we will have incorporated some of your "feedback" into next years product'. 

You know what would happen? I would get FIRED. And so would the entire management team. And we would deserve it.

Saying that it takes a year to fix bugs and broken gameplay is nonsense. It takes a year because the team simply doesn't care about the state of the product they're shipping. I've been in similar situations multiple times where customers expressed anger and frustration over a software product; and we had instilled a culture in the various companies where I had worked where this was not acceptable; and the entire team, from leadership to development to qa to support  would do whatever it took to make sure these issues were addressed; dropping whatever we were working on; and doing whatever it took, no matter how long it took, to get it fixed. And that was on software systems and teams MUCH larger and complicated than what NHL is. So please - if the team really wanted to and the management team cared enough, it absolutely does not take a year to fix broken stick-lifts, AI that freezes, black out screens, dropped connections, consistent input lag and the myriad of problems people have been reporting for MONTHS. Yes, code isn't fixed in a few hours. But several months? Ab-so-lu-tely.

I understand the team is fronting a lot of anger from the community - about the countless bugs, about the (perceived or real) broken gameplay. I understand it's not fun to be in that situation. I also understand that the lowly developers and community managers are not the ones making decisions and are paid (poorly) to just be a shield for this anger. But, for the love of all that's holy, the current state of NHL 23 is NOT acceptable and telling your customers it will take a year to address is even less so.


Please convey to your management and leadership team that we're tired of getting treated like suckers and that we will no longer accept EA shipping a broken product while the company rakes in millions of dollars in pre- and post-sales. I can tell you that I will NOT be buying NHL24 until the culture at EA NHL changes. Because until that happens, were just going to get more of the same.

Well that just killed my motivation to continue playing this game! We paid full price for this after all. NHL 23 needs a much needed tuner update for the online portion. With the world gaming championship and the state of this game, the current issues could possibly be a deciding factor on a competitors win or loss...It will be a huge upset if that happens. I just bought the game last week and I'm very disappointed in how things are. The game is already becoming a ghost town, and games get tougher to get each and everyday. I'm D5 matching D3/D2 opponents! How is that fair by any standard? This isn't right to the customer who has to experience this disaster with no obligation from EA to fix these problems that have been reported by the community. 

I really don't know if I want to support this anymore! My 7 year old son has already been done with the game after matching a top HUT player who literally played the most toxic game by using exploits.. Like really? He is back on NHL 21 since it was more enjoyable compared to now! Waiting for a future game to fix these issues is in bad taste! It's a complete slap in our consumers faces! EA should make a statement of the state of this game asap! Let us know what is going on... This is pathetic to leave this such a disaster! 

Wholeheartedly agree with this! I work as a technician/sales associate in electronics. Say someone buys a PC or electronic device for a hefty price. They go home to find it not working properly and bring it back. It is then my job to find a solution to the problem and fix it... If it has to get sent to a higher end I let them know! Am I going to give it back to them unfixed? Nope! That customer paid for it, and it wasn't their own fault why that product was broken. 

NHL 23 is a product charged at full price! Leaving it at its current state is unreasonable and poor customer service! Any other business that did this would cease to exist or get any support from the public. Making excuses just fuels the fire, and makes the customer upset even more... If EA wants to have support and increase sales, they need to do something! I get pushing ahead NHL 24! Although that is a future product, not current! It's like re-calling a vehicle without fixing, and then being like oh well you have no wheels, and will have to wait until next year! Not a great look tbh

@Mordecus 

The reason why a lot of changes are saved for a future game are due to the side effects they often create. You being experienced in software development most likely understand how fixing one issue can cause more. That's especially apparent with the complexities of a game that is extremely physics heavy. There are multiple systems involved so often, when something is fixed, there's a lot more work to do in other areas of the game as a result. This takes time to properly develop and test. 

Also, when patches are released, they normally have multiple issues addressed. The team works on a bunch of them at once and then releases an update. They don't just address one issue and release an update. They have to work through all the issues in a planned update. That means development time plus testing as well as waiting for certification from the Xbox/PlayStation. It would be different if we were releasing the game on our own online platform, but when going through 1st party providers, there's much more involved process. So, instead of waiting for this approval for every individual bug that gets fixed, they are all included in one batch and then submitted for certification. 

I get that a lot of people think game development and QA is an easy process and we can basically do whatever we want, but that's really not even remotely the case.

So let me get this right! We aren't getting a fix to the numerous issues that have been submitted with video to fix the state of this game? EA should give us half our money back then since this was charged at full price for a broken product that isn't going to be fixed! Even a statement from the company at this point would show at least some compassion towards us customers... In Canada many of us paid over $100 for this! How by any standard is this acceptable? Maybe the company needs to provide some focus on 23 instead of the current production which is NHL 24? Guess my time supporting EA NHL has come to an end until something changes! What happened to the time where previous games had the team working on the clock to fix these reported problems? They would take servers offline for maintenance! Now we hardly see it and it's showing! Not cool! 

In-game issues that need adjusting aside, what about quality of life issue fixes? Especially issues that have been going on for years? Menu navigation continues to be a chore. The dressing room can easily glitch out. This year more than others. How about fixing the end of game replay glitch? How about fixing the end of game loss glitch? How about fixing the loadout menu glitch? Etc..

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@KIJHLPhenom14 wrote:

So let me get this right! We aren't getting a fix to the numerous issues that have been submitted with video to fix the state of this game? EA should give us half our money back then since this was charged at full price for a broken product that isn't going to be fixed! Even a statement from the company at this point would show at least some compassion towards us customers... In Canada many of us paid over $100 for this! How by any standard is this acceptable? Maybe the company needs to provide some focus on 23 instead of the current production which is NHL 24? Guess my time supporting EA NHL has come to an end until something changes! What happened to the time where previous games had the team working on the clock to fix these reported problems? They would take servers offline for maintenance! Now we hardly see it and it's showing! Not cool! 

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We have released 4 patches so far. I'm not saying we're done. I'm just saying that it's possible some things will have to wait for a future game.

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@Mordecus 

Also, when patches are released, they normally have multiple issues addressed. The team works on a bunch of them at once and then releases an update. They don't just address one issue and release an update. They have to work through all the issues in a planned update. That means development time plus testing as well as waiting for certification from the Xbox/PlayStation. It would be different if we were releasing the game on our own online platform, but when going through 1st party providers, there's much more involved process. So, instead of waiting for this approval for every individual bug that gets fixed, they are all included in one batch and then submitted for certification. 

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This makes the decision to omit tuner updates (thus, bypassing Microsoft/Sony certification for core gameplay changes) even more questionable.

I understand not all gameplay changes can be done via tuner, but surely there are steps that can be taken via tuners to address some issues, specifically puck retention while LTing like a ballerina, adjustments to poke check effectiveness on player speed, etc. 

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@KidShowtime1867 wrote:

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@Mordecus 

Also, when patches are released, they normally have multiple issues addressed. The team works on a bunch of them at once and then releases an update. They don't just address one issue and release an update. They have to work through all the issues in a planned update. That means development time plus testing as well as waiting for certification from the Xbox/PlayStation. It would be different if we were releasing the game on our own online platform, but when going through 1st party providers, there's much more involved process. So, instead of waiting for this approval for every individual bug that gets fixed, they are all included in one batch and then submitted for certification. 

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This makes the decision to omit tuner updates (thus, bypassing Microsoft/Sony certification for core gameplay changes) even more questionable.

I understand not all gameplay changes can be done via tuner, but surely there are steps that can be taken via tuners to address some issues, specifically puck retention while LTing like a ballerina, adjustments to poke check effectiveness on player speed, etc. 

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The reason for not having tuner updates is a different issue. That was based on community feedback.

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

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@KidShowtime1867 wrote:

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@Mordecus 

Also, when patches are released, they normally have multiple issues addressed. The team works on a bunch of them at once and then releases an update. They don't just address one issue and release an update. They have to work through all the issues in a planned update. That means development time plus testing as well as waiting for certification from the Xbox/PlayStation. It would be different if we were releasing the game on our own online platform, but when going through 1st party providers, there's much more involved process. So, instead of waiting for this approval for every individual bug that gets fixed, they are all included in one batch and then submitted for certification. 

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This makes the decision to omit tuner updates (thus, bypassing Microsoft/Sony certification for core gameplay changes) even more questionable.

I understand not all gameplay changes can be done via tuner, but surely there are steps that can be taken via tuners to address some issues, specifically puck retention while LTing like a ballerina, adjustments to poke check effectiveness on player speed, etc. 

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The reason for not having tuner updates is a different issue. That was based on community feedback.

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Oh right. The META adored by HUT bunnies and "influencers" cannot be messed with. I forgot ☹️ 

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@KidShowtime1867 wrote:

Oh right. The META adored by HUT bunnies and "influencers" cannot be messed with. I forgot ☹️ 

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The influencers have been quite vocal about their dislike of the current state of the game. Regardless, changes are made based on community feedback. Not a select few.

I'm loving all the replies and feedback that this video has brought to this thread. The current state of the game is definitely not in a good place. I really hope that things get addressed ASAP and that we don't have to wait until NHL 24 for things to be addressed because A LOT of people aren't happy right now, myself included. I hope whoever makes the decisions to get things fixed in this game sees this video and thread, knows that the majority of the people aren't happy right now. We pay full price for this product and expect support when we're asking for it. You ask for videos, we give it to you. If it's left in the state that it's in right now, you're going to lose A LOT of customers.

@TheUnusedCrayon 

This was stated after betas in previous games. Not NHL 23.

So the feedback is going based off NHL 22? This is NHL 23 last time I checked and it's a different game where the coding isn't the exact same! Mind boggling to think this product was charged at full price when it's simply hardly even a game. Heck it feels more like a technical test at this point! Majority of the streamers/E-sports gamers, gamechangers, along the rest of the community has issued their feedback and are pretty upset with the state of this game! GWC is upcoming and for EA to leave this game in shambles is going to ruin some competitors chance, since we still have a bunch of bugs and broken gameplay issues that numerous members have published! It's January! NHL 24 is a longtime away from release and the current product is making people play less and less more everyday.

This is pretty upsetting to be frankly honest! EA has really upset a ton of customers and I don't see much support for the future unless this game is fixed! We already get if fixing something, breaks another thing! I work with technology so I get it! Although that still isn't an excuse to not put focus on finding a reasonable solution to fixing the problem!

one gaming company big and small other than EA NHL will leave a product as broken as this! Why? Because their customers paid full price for that product and it's unprofessional to leave it a complete mess.

This thread shows justice of how backwards the company is going! At least when Ben Ross was in charge he got things fixed! Heck NHL 21 it was him and 3 people! I remember seeing that where he mentioned it, while the Devs worked on production for NHL 22 around January 2022. Now it's just excuse after excuse! We are tired of it! 

@EA_Aljo 

There is a huge difference between

"Beta was great, don't change anything!" (Few days later) "Oh no, here comes the patch that will revert everything making this game just an expensive stat wipe ☹️"

And

"OMG this beta is terrible, everything sucks - I can't wait for them to revert this back!"

The team deciding to literally do nothing to tune online (and these changes eventually trickling down into offline) is baffling. Even for a yearly title you guys should have the ability to make tweaks here and there.

I helped with a bunch of CTE stuff in BF1 and that game was way more complicated than NHL, in my opinion, so I know certification and stuff could be worked around (at least faster than every few months like NHL). Even if NHL was to go F2P next year with some sort of battlepass system, I still have no confidence tuners and stuff could/would happen.

@TTZ_Dipsy 

There were times we changed nothing and people still wouldn't believe that was the case. We rolled back to the beta and were accused of not actually doing that. So, no matter what we do, people are going to hold fast to their assumptions.

I absolutely agree the game needs improvements. Patches have been released to help, but obviously there are bigger issues the community wants resolved. However, the more time spent on 23 means less time for what's coming down the road. You all want big changes. You want it to not feel like the same game with a roster update. In order for that to happen, work on the current game needs to halt at some point.

@EA_Aljo 

Are there any specifics you can share about what people thought were/weren't rolled back?

When you say patches, what do you mean? My personal gripes are mostly about changes to the tuners for online play.

You already said there was no intention of doing anything with the beta feedback so I think we can all agree the rest of 23 is a lost cause, at least for online. Obviously we'd all love to have instant fixes but let's be real - any meaningful changes will always happen in the next title at the earliest - Best we can do is all learn from this and push forward.


What big changes are you referring to, exactly? Feedback on offline modes like Franchise and BaP are because the team has shown an extreme lack of care and support for those modes over the years and it has snowballed something fierce. I don't personally care about offline stuff and my main gripes are mostly related to Clubs but I don't believe anything people have been asking for have been unreasonable.

Me not wanting the puck to blast off like it was fired out of a railgun is a huge ask? Me not wanting my mascot to phase in and out of existence, melding bodies with horror icon Chuckie in the crowd is asking way too much? Me thinking it'd be a great idea to give clubs even just one extra colour to use for alternate jerseys is some devastating ask for the dev team? I could literally fill an entire post worth of space with these little asks (that I've been providing feedback for for years). I think the only things I have suggest that was added, probably by pure coincidence, was the "Chef" emotes in clubs.

It's clear to me that the team has exhausted, absolutely maxed out their NHL code - The only way anyone is going to eventually be happy is if the team takes at least a year off (sure seems like you've started with 23) and to work on making things correct right out of the gate for the next title. I wouldn't care if a game was bad st the start but you took the time to make it even slightly better towards the end - Just look at something like Battlefield 4.

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@TTZ_Dipsy 

There were times we changed nothing and people still wouldn't believe that was the case. We rolled back to the beta and were accused of not actually doing that. So, no matter what we do, people are going to hold fast to their assumptions.

I absolutely agree the game needs improvements. Patches have been released to help, but obviously there are bigger issues the community wants resolved. However, the more time spent on 23 means less time for what's coming down the road. You all want big changes. You want it to not feel like the same game with a roster update. In order for that to happen, work on the current game needs to halt at some point.

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That's not right, or fair.   You want us to be ok with a half cooked game this year so you can focus on next year?   Cool, stop telling us to contact our retailer and have EA give us our money.  It's EA telling us you're not doing crap, not that retailer.  Also, the support ended day of release this year.  The patches you e released fixed none of our complaints (You attempted with presentation and still fell way short of what was originally promised) and you want us to just have faith that if we give you a pass this year, next year will be better?  We've all heard that like 5 times now.  When does the back and forth blaming end, and real accountability begin?  Do you all want to be jobless in a few years?  Because with how you're handling this series, I give it 5 years max before EA calls it quits.  Maybe that's the intention?  Milk it until profits dry up then close up shop?   Obviously above your head aljo but it seems apparent from the outside looking in.

Maybe this has to do with the engine change. We've seen reporting that Frostbite hasn't been an easy transition for any of the EA games utilizing it.

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"Frostbite is easily the worst, *$*#*#, most pain in the $!@ engine I've ever used in my career, and I shipped Wolfenstein off the Doom 3 tech," said Heir on Twitter. "The exact same game design in Unreal vs. Frostbite will take dozens more engineers, money, and time on FB because of the way its architected and how far behind it is from Unreal (unless you are making BF). There is a reason I chose Unreal Engine 4 as my engine for my next project.".

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"We obviously had to take the Frostbite Engine, because there was the internal initiative to make sure that everybody was on the same technology, but it was an engine that was made to do first-person shooters."

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It would seem that the push to have a cinematic experience in sports games is the major reason behind the push to Frostbite:

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"I had met with their people and actually pitched this idea to all of the EA Sports teams this crazy idea of Longshot, and I had been pitching a campaign mode for sports. I'm pretty sure without Frostbite we really couldn't do it, and that's one of the things that held us back from trying to execute this thing, and they were getting Frostbite first. In the meantime, I think they were seeing some of the other sports franchises go down this path and have some success. "

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It's actually a really good article on the impact changing to Frostbite has had at EA: https://www.vg247.com/how-the-frostbite-engine-became-a-nightmare-for-ea-in-general-and-bioware-in-particular

@TTZ_Dipsy 

I'm talking about the 4 patches that were released already. I'm talking about the reasoning behind tuners not being released. We had a lot of feedback in previous years that tuners ruined the game. They may return. There's no hard rule against them, but we have avoided them due to the idea the game is always better during the beta. The reality of that is that it takes time for peope to adjust to the new game each year. This happens within a few weeks and then we get completes that we changed something. Even when there were no changes to gameplay or at least not the kinds of changes that were being assumed.

As far as what people assumed was rolled back goes, that would mean going through years of posts on previous forums as well as the old enthusiast forums. Mainly, people felt the gameplay had somehow changed. We would get comments about how the game felt so good during the beta, but the first tuner would ruin it. Then we'd say there weren't changes to what they were assuming was changed and we wouldn't be believed. So, the decision was made to make as few changes to gameplay as possible since year after year we were told not to change it.

The railgun issue you mentioned is one that I haven't seen much in 23. I saw a lot more in 22, but I haven't had issues with it this year. Once in a while it happens though. Hopefully, it'll be fully addressed in the future.

The lack of tuner updates are the only issue with 23 though! We have bugs such as players skating through bodies, stick lift being completely broken! Goalies are horrible unless it's a cross-crease. Offline we can adjust tuners but the games broken to the fact even setting them on a realistic setting doesn't help! This is why the community is upset! 4 patches were very moderate ones and it hasn't fixed a bunch of issues regarding this game! We can provide so many videos until enough is enough! It's a full priced game which makes it unfair to leave it at its current state! It would be more reasonable if it wasn't a costly full priced game, although in this case it isn't! 

"The patch for NHL X is called NHL X+1 and will come out  in October".  This used to be a stupid, unfunny joke people would make, now it's essentially the official development strategy for the EA NHL franchise.  Releasing a game and then expecting your customers to pay full price again next year for the chance at seeing any gameplay fixes isn't acceptable and won't be successful long-term .  They've only got away with it in recent years because while there were issues with the the last couple of NHL games they were more or less solid out of the gate.  But when an unpolished, unfinished, unbalanced mess like NHL 23 is put out there the "fire and forget" model of software maintenance is exposed.

The real kicker for NHL 23 is that all of the major gameplay issues people are complaining about now were pointed out during the beta.  It's not like they just became apparent after people adjusted to a new meta months after release.  There was plenty of opportunity early on to address the problems and polish the game.  Instead EA expects us to pony up more money next fall in the hopes that MAYBE some of our feedback will have resulted in a better game.  And of course there will be a whole new suite of problems in that game that won't be fixed until some future release ( if at all ).

I've tried for years to do what's been asked of the community.  I've provided feedback for specific problems with video evidence.  I've been reasonable in accepting that not everything can be fixed for every game.  But at this point it feels like there's no real point.  Feedback is irrelevant for the current game ( you know, the one people have actually paid for and are trying to play right now ) and any changes are years away at best.  And what changes are made seem to be made to cater to some "community" out there that thinks that NHL 23 is good as-is.  What's the point?