NHL 23 summed up in this video
A buddy made this video. Aljo keeps asking for video of stuff. Here's a great one for you 🙂 [Video removed for immediate profanity - Admin.] EDIT: Video was removed for profanity, wow. Speechless...
Forum Discussion
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerThere 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 wrote: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.
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.
"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."."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."
It would seem that the push to have a cinematic experience in sports games is the major reason behind the push to Frostbite:
"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. "
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
"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?
