NHL 24 Feature Suggestions

@Juhani_91_91 Great OP. Figured I’d add mine since I am desperately hoping some of it will be seen and catch on.

This is a long read, but I promise it is worth it and I genuinely believe that these things would dramatically improve the quality of the game, which has many playing (only hockey offering on the market) but also many grumbling about a stagnation in quality and effort the past few years running.

The first thought I always have firing up
an NHL game in 2023 is that you STILL can’t move your feet and stick handle at the same time. When the skill stick first came out I understood that limitation, but in 2024 that’s pretty inexcusable. I understand that’s likely an engine upgrade and may be difficult to integrate, but eventually hockey is going to need that if it’s ever going to take a step forward. Sticking with gameplay, in general neutral zone play and dump in/cycle games are not present, and again, I understand that it’s tough to implement accurately but it can certainly be improved.

Give the AI and human controlled players a lot more situational animations. If you’re going around the net, make them pull the puck in tighter automatically. Make them jump at the blueline to hold in pucks or reach with their skate. Make a little cushion on the blueline when you are controlling the point man so that he’s aware of going offside accidentally and you can more effectively walk the line and make those slick little drags right on the line without accidentally going offside. When you have control of that player the game should understand where you are on the ice so that you don’t try to step to the left and the game turns the player left and sticks the puck over the line. That would be a really helpful add. Let the D make hand passes when knocked down in their own end as well. Have pucks occasionally blown dead for a high stick, not only on goals.

Skating stances was a good idea and a step in the right direction, but 99% of players are set to the default and manually creating a variety of skating stances is a huge pain in the butt. My solution; instead of the set of sliders we have now, give us 20 preset skating stances like we have with goalie stance and shot style so that not everyone looks the same. Player differentiation on the ice would be the most low effort way to drastically improve presentation. Also, just like having every player set to the default skating style, don’t give everyone the same default lame goal celebration. Who celebrates goals like that in the NHL in 2023 with the little foot kick and weak arms up celebration? There’s some good ones available, like the “fired up” and “swipe and pump” but I don’t want to go and edit every player in the league to have various animations. Also, please add some additional realistic celebrations and less silly junk like spinning on their head or doing push-ups. Or keep that stuff for the online crowd but just give the NHL realistic celebrations. We have Ovie dropping the too hot stick that he did once but no one jumps into the glass? Finally, we’ve had jersey tucks forever, we can chew a mouth guard, choose how the pants fit, adjust the angle/color of the visor, etc. Can we get elbow pad tucks, laces on the pants, an actual flopped tongue on the skates? Please?

Oh, and let us edit player heights, weights and hair. If I can make Sidney Crosby a 60 overall and give him a giant beard, why can’t I give Karlsson long or short hair, since he changes it year to year. Why can’t I make Jack Hughes a little heavier if the game still has him at his draft weight? He’s also a good example of a character model that would be much improved if I could simply go in myself and change his hairstyle to something long. Likewise, Panarin has had long hair for several years in real life but short hair in the game due to an outdated model. I wouldn’t be surprised if this year EA finally updates his hair to be long… except he just shaved his head. We should be able to adjust hair styles, plain and simple.


This next one is a big one for me:

Can we improve the attributes and what they do? Is checking how good they are at checking or how often they hit? Is aggressiveness how often they hit or how overall aggressive they are on the ice - you can have a really high motor and be tenacious on the forecheck and backcheck without being very physical. If aggressiveness influences how aggressively you’re pressuring on offense and defense than what I dictates how much a player hits? You can be very good at delivering a hit but not someone who is going to lay 2+ hits a game. You can also not be the biggest hitter but a real feisty pest who averages 3 hits per game. You also can be really tenacious and all hustle without being physical. Which one is aggressiveness? Which one is checking? Can we just have a hustle attribute? Isn’t poise kind of awareness? Is poise like composure to not fan/miss an open net and awareness is getting open or anticipating plays? How do all of these attributes interact?

Can we have a backhand attribute? How about an attribute for release quickness? Some guys have a great, wicked wrist shot but they don’t score with it a lot because they don’t have a great release. Some guys have an insane release on a medium power shot and nice accuracy. Can we work that into the game? How about an overall effort slider? You have guys like Semin who are super talented but not the hardest working and you have guys like Crosby who are both super talented and hard working and you have guys like Fast who aren’t that talented but very hard working. Like a guy Like Panarin and a guy like Zibanejad, regardless of their speed attributes, one of them should be a lot less likely to backcheck hard and catch up to me on a rush, based on an effort or hustle attribute.

And - or, at a minimum - just publish an in depth article not only explaining what each attribute does but how they interact with each other. I know this was done once, but it should be re-done in greater depth. How much does strength impact shot power or checking? Does it influence balance? If you have high balance and low strength what happens? What about low strength but 99 shot power? 99 checking? What does strength do? Don’t just tell us it effects the other traits - tell us how and to what degree.

Finally, PLEASE improve the BAP experience.

The interviews and teammate interactions are so repetitive and the answers are pretty boring and poorly written. A half talented writer and genuine hockey fan could script BAP a lot better and better dialogue with more realistic options and branches alone would vastly improve the experience. Hell, I will do it for free as a passion project. Don’t lock answers behind silly categories like charisma that you have to pour attribute points into - just allow your character to have a personality. There’s too few dialogue branches as is and having to use attribute points to give the game any semblance of variety is a bad decision. Also, if we want to go through the draft route but with custom rosters, we should be able to. No one wants to play BAP in January with the default roster from opening night. There’s been changes. Let us use the current up-to-date roster if we want. It’s our game - right now if you choose to go the draft route instead of choosing your NHL team, you start with default rosters (I get the logic, those were the rosters at the draft, but no one cares - we want to play with accurate rosters). This mode has potential to be really fun but it needs a big infusion of TLC to actually create some type of story and make the interactions more robust and meaningful.