I’m not going to go as far to bash the entire game itself but more so give some reasoning behind the desire for offline content, which I think is something the community often leaves out. It’s simple for me, there is very little competitiveness in online play. Players are either much better than you or you’re much better than other players. There is no more joy in winning 10-0 than there is losing 0-10. It’s not just this way in NHL, it’s across most of the gaming world as a whole. So, for me, offline mode gives me a nice challenge without the frustration of long game times in which I get wrecked or in which I get bored because there’s no challenge.
My career is in product-related stuff, so the language we usually speak is “why”. Not necessarily “what”. So the optimist in me says: maybe if we flood the boards with details what the absence of a feature or game mode means for our experience specifically, it’ll help us drive the product backlog a little more accurately. Saying what the presence of a mode or feature will mean for your experience instead of just generally complaining about the game as a whole. Idk just my hope/opinion. I’m sure somebody will come roast me for being somewhat level-headed but whatever.
As far as feedback for EA: I used to watch streamers play NHL all the time but most of them just complain about the game the entire time or just don’t play it anymore which is obnoxious so I stopped. Might be time to start making bigger strides. I haven’t yet booted up the play test (I just got the email today) but my full expectation is that it will be the same game with the same commentary and concepts. I think that’s something you should take to heart as you may be making record profits from these games but there is potential to make even more by making bigger strides in development. And tbh, adding a few of these features or game modes…it’ll probably shut people up for about 4 or 5 years.
@goaliestriker63 wrote:I’m not going to go as far to bash the entire game itself but more so give some reasoning behind the desire for offline content, which I think is something the community often leaves out.
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A few of us tried this for a couple years. Rarely got responses from anyone other than Blueberry, who’s moved on. A couple of times they (more than just blueberry) would ask a question about the post. Almost never saw results from the asks and more often than not felt like a collection of us just typing into the abyss and agreeing with each other.
After so long of being ignored (via requests not being implemented, not necessarily through post engagement) you just end up coming here to vent with likeminded people and hope that maybe someone who matters will see it, have something click, and finally understand.
By all means, post however you like and with however you feel you’ll best get your point across. I just wanted to spell out to you why so many of us have simply resorted to complaining at this point.
I know for sure they increased the creation slots available for players and teams, so we are able to create way more players and teams this year. Creation zone in WoC got an update because they decided to charge money for cosmetics, although I would be shocked if some of it doesn’t carry over offline. I also personally think there is 0 chance that transactions in WoC remain for cosmetics only in the next few years to come.
While I know the dev team and resources are nowhere near the size for FC or Madden and offline is nowhere near as popular as online, at the end of the day this is still a billion dollar company making an officially licensed game for a billion dollar sports league.
It’s not like this is a skipped patch (like so many in the last few years) where we might only have to wait a few more weeks, this is a full priced AAA game that put “updates on hold” for an entire year. I’m pretty sure that’s the exact definition for “not caring about offline players” and could further diminish a dying player base for offline modes further regardless of what’s planned in the next few years.
@goaliestriker63, I will echo exactly as @kyl_35 said. There’s never been anybody from EA on here that actually plays the offline modes, so it’s extremely hard to bounce ideas off them and have any meaningful engagement.
Community ManagerI mentioned the reasoning behind focusing on online modes in my post on the previous page. TL:DR, we needed to prioritize this due to the majority of the playerbase being in online modes. There are plans to improve offline modes in the future.
