@BIGRlTCHY I'm also almost exclusively offline playing franchise as a way to just relax at the end of my day. Play a game or two each day.
For a few years I have been hoping and waiting and wondering (and I hope an admin sees this post and makes a point of mentioning it to the dev team).
EA's slogan was, might not be anymore, "If it's in the game, it's in the game;" however, there are so many small things that should have been part of this game long ago that are not even thoughts im sure, a few of them are below:
NHL Rules:
In game line changes - NHL rules state that the home team shall have 5 seconds beyond what the visiting team has to make their line changes. Never once seen this in an EA game but I know for a fact that NHL2K7 had this feature. Would love to see this as it adds an element of strategy to the game.
Shootout first team shooting - home team gets to choose whether to go first or second. This should be part of the game, again, not even a thought probably.
Choosing face-off location after an icing - centers are able to choose which side of the ice they want the face off on after an opposing team's icing.
Gameplay:
Tipping a hard pass into the zone to initiate a line change - teams do this multiple times a period and there is no way to do this in the game that I know of.
Intentionally not touching a puck (trying to skate past it when your offsides to get back onside) - if you don't go around the puck and out of position you can't avoid picking up the puck for an offsides call
Intentional offsides - should be able to have the face off go to the defensive zone for an offsides that is clearly done intentionally (someone is way offsides and they go in anyways) I do realize this could be difficult to do, how is the game programmed for intentional vs not.
Blue line awareness for defenseman - good lord, I can't count how many times a defenseman spins around at the blue line and seemingly has no clue their stick goes out of the zone.
AI puck moving - the offline game this year is like playing a game online in versus...the AI goes to the slot with barely a pass around the zone, shot, goal. I have yet to see a one timer from the point against me offline (I play superstar hard-core with all my slider shifted to make the AI harder to play against but all it does is make them shoot more accurate somehow) the AI doesn't play actual hockey and hasn't for years. It's honestly just the same game no matter which team you play and it's every game.
Actual board battles - the tie up (Y button on Xbox) along the boards is just holding called something different, I have never seen an actual board battle in the game. Proof, look at the ice at the end of a period on the game, hardly any ice is disturbed along the boards. Sure, you added snow this year, but it's artificially added to make it look like there were board battles (and also the puck isn't effected by the snow ever either). Make players actually dig and battle for the puck. A quarter to a third of a real game is nothing but board battles, especially in the playoffs.
Presentation:
At least they added something new this year, but I get it, it's a cut scene that lasts 10 seconds maybe, if it even shows up, don't need to harp on it.
Goal horns - could we finally get Dallas, Vegas, etc that count the goals with the horn be added in, please? Add some realism to that part at least? There are many horns that aren't even close to sounding right, aren't the right sequence of blasts, aren't the right length, etc. This stuff matters to people who have been playing for years and want to "feel" like they're in the arena. Same with goal songs, I get that it costs money to have them right but at least let us bring in our own horns and songs like before.
Basically, if anyone at EA ever actually sees this, put some effort into small details for once. People want these small things, especially us offline players. I'm sure that I have forgotten some stuff if anyone wants to add to the list but these adds would make the game a bit better.
