Proper Replay System
Time for the yearly plea to EA to provide us with a functional replay system. I figure if I do it earlier this year maybe we'll see some improvements for NHL 25.
I see a lot of people on this forum working hard to provide video feedback for issues they're running into. But console-recorded clips of raw gameplay are rarely sufficient and leave far too much to interpretation when all we have is real-time clips of overhead camera gameplay. And this isn't the fault of the player posting the clip, it's the lack of a proper replay system in the game. The current state of the in-game replay system is pretty sad and leaves 95% of any given game completely inaccessible one the game is done.
A better replay system leads to better understanding of what's happening in-game for players and better feedback for the developers. It's a win all around
What needs to change?
- We need access to a replay of the entire game. There's no reason not to have this, especially with the current generation of consoles. The current one to two minutes of footage available is useless unless the play you want to look at happens right at the end of the game.
- We should be able to store and review replays of previous games. Often there are plays I'd like to take a better look at ( if they're even available ) but I don't want to keep my club mates waiting for several minutes while I futz around with the replay system. The ability to store a few games worth of replays to look at later would be incredibly useful.
- Every action tracker event should have a replay associated with it. As it is now most events don't have a replay at all by the time you get to the end of the game.
- We should be able to easily skip back and forth between events while in the full-game replay.
- It should also be noted that in club 3s games there are no action tracker events at all for penalties. This has been going on since club 3s was introduced ( presumably tied to penalty shots replacing power plays). It's ridiculous that it hasn't been fixed yet.
- The control overlay for replays needs to come back. The fact that it was lost due to the move to EA's own Frostbite engine is just terrible from an optics view. Using the in-house engine should make development easier right?
- Pie-in-the-sky request for overlays: It would be nice to be able to see the inputs for any given human-controlled player on the ice, not just your player.
- Another long-shot request: The ability to see the stamina level of any given player(s) on the ice at any point. it would go a long way towards resolving those "why is this guy faster than this other guy" issues if we could see each player's stamina.
- The ability to step through a replay frame-by-fame. Right now moving the clip forwards and backwards via the trigger buttons is finicky and awkward when you're trying to get to a particular spot ( ie trying to get a frame of a puck going through an object, etc ).