@EA_Aljo wrote:
I absolutely understand the importance of presentation for you, but there are also people, such as myself, where it's not as important. My concern is gameplay. I need the game to play well and it does for me. I've been loving how gameplay feels with 23. All the players could look the same, there could be no crowd, no ads on the boards, no songs, etc. That stuff, to me, is not what I'm here for. That's just personal preference. However, we of course want the game to be as immersive as possible. We want you all to feel like you're playing in a real game or watching one. I know we've let many of you down because presentation isn't up to your standards. All I can say at this time is that we are extremely well aware of the feedback you've all shared with us. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can talk about regarding presentation changes at this time.
Please understand that I'm not aiming at you personally, as I (and many of us, I'm sure) do appreciate the time you're spending answering all of this.
That being said, and while I agree that each gamer have their own priorities...presentation has been on the forefront of the marketing campaign for this game. It's what THEY told us to look out for. To the point where 'presentation' had its very own deep-dive trailer. So to be told: "Well, many value gameplay more than presentation" sounds a bit...weird for many of us.
Also, if 'immersion' is the goal...presentation is not only an important aspect of it, it's kind of a key point. And unfortunately, I can't say the last couple of changes hinted to us that 'immersion' is what EA is really striving for. I mean take a look at the score/clock overlay for instance. It used to be immersive, as in presented the same way it's been on TV. EA opted to change that, and put it at the bottom of the screen. Which is something I've never seen anywhere else. We used to have other in-game things like broken glasses, full pre-game presentations, on-ice three stars selections...or stuff like All-Star games during franchise mode. Those things were all taken out at some point, some with a promise to return (like the All-Star Game, which was suppose to return at some point after a rough early transition to PS4) only to never make it back. These changes are doing absolutely nothing for 'immersion'. It's a very 'gamey' approach.
So I get that a game like NHL has many different aspects, many different modes, many different dev teams. But it always feels like we're losing more than we gain. It feels less and less like the hockey game we're all watching on TV, and more and more like a arcadey ping-pong game where 'highlight reels' is the priority. Feels like we're losing immersion on a yearly basis in favor of HUT cards and trivial things we can't really appreciate, like ice texture near the boards, or sun reflection in a player's eyes.
I hope you get where I'm coming from with this.
