Sports games should be live service games
I truly believe that all sports games should adopt a live service model, spanning 3 to 5 years. With each new release, we often encounter discussions on forums lamenting the repetition and lack of in...
Forum Discussion
@ericdan12You left out the solution to the biggest elephant in the sports games. Ultimate Teams. How would you handle that? Also the removal of players who retire which might affect saved files.
Also just because a game might do a release then season passes as you suggest doesn't mean that EA would keep a full team working on the game until the year before it releases. Because they going to be making way less money and going to need to cut costs somewhere which I don't think you would want new people working on the game knowing job stability isn't there.
Modulater83 You can't use Rocket League as a model. They don't have to spend $4-5mil a year on the license for their game. They don't have to remove assets from the game due to retiring. It's the same boring Fennec and Octane used over and over. A fake sport can't be compared with a real sport because they don't have to pay extra costs.
@KlariskraysNHL wrote:You can't use Rocket League as a model. They don't have to spend $4-5mil a year on the license for their game. They don't have to remove assets from the game due to retiring. It's the same boring Fennec and Octane used over and over. A fake sport can't be compared with a real sport because they don't have to pay extra costs.
I agree that the NHL series can't be exactly like Rocket League, they have different factors at play and monetization--which you touched on by mentioning licensing--is a big one. While RL does have a good amount of licensed content (each season brings new cars from various other media), the cost of the game is low enough that it works as a free-to-play model. That jumps a giant monetization hurdle that is required to have only one version across all platforms and generations. As an outside observer, it doesn't seem likely EA could do the same with its sports titles.
However, should there be some way to work it out where there is only one version of NHL you can purchase and play across Playstation, Xbox, (and PC!), I don't think the issues you mentioned are deal breakers. I think it could open the door to some positive improvements, player base being one of them.
@Modulater83Trust me I have brought it up several times about adding just HUT to PC as a free to play thing with all the mtx stuff that is normally in it. With that part being free it could potentially have more people, but I would also expect the mtx to become more wild if HUT was a standalone to make up for potential loss of sales because they are always factoring in things like that.
I'll be honest I have never played ultimate team. I am online ranked, be a pro, and have offline tournament parties with friends. However, there are probably creative ways to handle the player status that we don't need to dive deep into now but the first thing that comes to mind is either just keep them OR offer the player credits or a replacement of equal level.
Secondly, I would not expect a "full team" to continue support NHL via the season pass system. I mentioned before I am not in game development, but I would think they in the follow-on years it doesn't take a massive team to continue doing roster updates, adding an occasional jersey to a team, and tweaking some tuners. The full team will be off making the new full priced NHL game for 3-4 years later.
I’d like to see this for an EASHL only mode. It’s the only thing I’ve played since it was introduced. Yet I have to pay for the full version every year.
I would also love to be able to start up my game and not see any of those other modes.
Stop shoving Battle Pass in our faces too. I don’t need to see it pop up all the time to have to dismiss it again and again. If someone is interested in it then the BP tab is easy found.
@thebrazenhead75 wrote:I’d like to see this for an EASHL only mode. It’s the only thing I’ve played since it was introduced. Yet I have to pay for the full version every year.
I would also love to be able to start up my game and not see any of those other modes.
Stop shoving Battle Pass in our faces too. I don’t need to see it pop up all the time to have to dismiss it again and again. If someone is interested in it then the BP tab is easy found.
Seriously. I hate that these battle pass screens and all the other garbage actually works on most users - otherwise EA wouldn't be implementing it.
The flow of getting into an EASHL game is atrocious.
