Proper Company Ettiquette

The cool thing about the communication strategy is that the customers don’t have to be super annoying to the company up until the day the issue is actually fixed/feature is actually added. 

They might have to be annoying to get their item on the list, but once it’s one there and regular updates are provided, everything is cool. 

Unlike here where multiple people have to post multiple times a day to hopefully annoy EA enough into actually making a statement. 

I can respect not wanting to talk about future fixes or additions to the game. EA is extremely tight lipped and protective of their games and to a degree I can understand that as things change all the time, especially when things go unexpectedly sideways. I can even see why members of the dev team wouldn’t want to be involved directly with the community.

What I personally find frustrating is how they don’t have any constructive, healthy conversation from all perspectives of the game. I think we can all agree @EA_Aljo  does a really good job here with what he knows. But how can EA just throw him to the wolves giving bonehead excuses about features/aspects of the game that a large number of the community find very important?

A company the size of EA and they have one person (who mostly plays online EASHL I believe) to answer all questions and give them such limited information it almost makes things worse. 

Whether it’s more EA community managers, gamechangers or even more heroes, I think having better discussions with people that have the necessary information on different aspects of the game is very important. 

@Beauts90Adding more people doesn't do anything if the devs still aren't/can't answer the certain questions.

I mean let's look a the topic of people wanting to remove helmets on their created skaters not in the WoC mode. There is no way in hell it would even be hard to implement into the game. It's been heard by the dev team but an answer is not something they are willing to give for whatever reason. It's not even a controversial type thing either like balancing the game.

They must just have to be tight lipped about everything from the higher-ups who boss them around.

They gave a reason - because they're focusing on the modern NHL.  However, that explanation ceased to be valid once they advertised the custom leagues as a way to recreate leagues from the past all the way back to the original 6 when no one wore helmets.

@VeronicatheCD 

Thank you for posting this.  I been playing one of Paradox's other games (Crusader Kings 3) a lot lately and I read their forums as much as I read NHL's forums.  I've been meaning to make a post about the how amazing Paradox's communication is on their forums in contrast to EA's NHL forums.

CK3 is more mature at this point than Vicky3, but they are still releasing new DLC and patches for it regularly, and likely will continue for a few years yet.  They've stopped doing Dev Diaries every week, but still post them when a new patch or DLC is approaching.  They explain all the major changes that are coming, and even explain why a change is being made if it might be controversial.  Outside of the the Dev Diaries, some of the developers actively participate in threads when good suggestions are made, or to answer questions about why something behaves as it does.  Sometimes a dev will even start a thread, asking for people's thoughts on improving an aspect of the game they know needs work.  If a dev says they like idea X, or if they say they'd like to add feature Y, nobody assumes that that is a promise that idea X or feature Y will actually be implemented or implemented soon, it's just that particular dev's opinion.  I feel like the NHL team fears talking about potential features/changes publicly because they don't want people to assume that something is coming soon or at all, but it doesn't have to be that way... acknowledging a good idea or mentioning a feature being considered doesn't have to be construed as a promise that idea/feature will actually be implemented.  CK3 also (like NHL) has a sub-forum for bug reports.  They mark bug reports as "Confirmed" if they can actually reproduce the bug, as opposed to EA's vague "we're aware of it" statements.  When a bug is marked Confirmed, that doesn't necessary mean a fix is forthcoming, just that they know about it and reproduced it and hopefully someday will fix, maybe next patch, maybe not for a year or more if it's minor and/or difficult to fix.  EA seems to fear saying anything more than "we're aware of it" or "it's been passed on to the devs", as if we'll assume the bug will be fixed immediately... again it doesn't have to be that way.

EA's other big fear regarding communicating on forums seems to be toxicity.  On CK3's forums, threads rarely get toxic, but when they do the thread just gets closed, end of story.

Paradox shows it's possible for a game developer to have great communication with their player base.  I really wish EA's NHL team would/could try to communicate 10% as well with us.