Changes for NHL 26 you want to see

Hey Aljo, me again, I’m on the side of wanting the developers to have time to work on making meaningful updates/changes to the game, so if that means no winter classic, that’s fine by me. However, if an issue is having the arena and assets being under-utilized, why not put those assets in other parts of the game? Even from a business perspective, you could have that rink be a paid rink for people to use as their home rink for HUT and EASHL games. Letting players pay real money (and in game currency) for rinks (or other cosmetics that aren’t obnoxious and don’t effect gameplay) would be a great in my opinion.

EA Sports. It’s in the game! (Unless of course it’s too expensive and time consuming for us to add it to the game 🤑)

Half joking, I get the NHL team might not have the financial and staffing resources and support some of the other titles get. That’s not the team’s fault, hockey just isn’t as big a universe and finances go towards making Madden worse (half kidding, I actually really liked last year’s Madden) and College Football (deservingly so, that team killed it. That game is what all sports fans want of their sport game title.) 

I’ve been playing NHL since the very first version way back in the day. I think we just need you guys to combine all of the best from previous versions and improve the gameplay a lot. I’ll break it down for you:

Starting with the simple stuff. Graphics are good but feel like there’s still lots of room for improvement here. Players look odd, no real discrepancy in size amongst most of them. And players faces look terrible on a ton of players. I’m sure this has everything to do with budget limitations and time and the sheer number of players there are. Bring on the AI and speed it up! 

Gameplay: Game is fun right now. I actually do enjoy it. I’m more of a franchise player now but used to play online a lot. You guys destroyed that mode. Go back to building guys how you want. I’ll spend $10 on boost packs again hahaha. I just loved being able to build a fast tank of a player with a monster shot who was great at faceoffs. And I still think it would be awesome to have teams with more than 5 and they could change lines themselves. Nobody needs to get left out in this scenario if your club has a lot of players.

Got off track, gameplay, every single game feels exactly the same. Every team you play is almost feels exactly the same. Some of the star guys feel faster and that’s fine, but a lot of games just aren’t different (not a unique experience for sports titles honestly a lot of other sports games struggle with this IMO, college football being the exception). And the game plays way too arcade like. There’s no battles in the corners. There’s no chippiness that defines hockey and rivalries. Whistle blows, you might get one tie up and that’s that. That sucks. Watch a hockey game and see players battling in corners. Guys taking shots at others, scrums after whistles. Adding that stuff to the game would be amazing and fans would eat that sh*t up in a trailer! 

Playoff games don’t feel any different than preseason games. That’s so sad. I’m playing through a franchise now and I’m in the ECF and there’s like zero energy to it. Seriously?

Skating kind of stinks and the control stick and all the special moves feel broken anymore. Players don’t really glide, they sort of just stop dead in their tracks. Whatever you did, go back a few years and restore that stick control system. 

Change up the fighting again. Need something fresh and different. Bring back blood!! Let’s see Gretzky's bleed again. 

Some ways of scoring feel a little glitchy. You probably already know this so I’ll leave it at that.

 Goalies kind of blow. Make it tougher to score for both the human and computer. I feel like the computer team doesn’t shoot enough and when they actually do, they score. I’m constantly playing games (on superstar with AI tuned up to 6/6), and they get like 1-2 shots per period sometimes. I mean I play decent defense but it seems too easy at times. There’s brief times or certain games where it feels difficult, like the computer just takes over no matter what and while frustrating because it feels like predetermined sometimes, it’s realistic. You’re not going to steamroll every team every game. I feel like as the life cycle of the game went on and patches came out, it got easier? 

Checking is not that good. Too arcade like. Too many big hits each game. I get big games or rivalry games or games between teams that play a physical style can be filled with big hits, but it seems like every game is insane with the total number of hits and big hits. Guys should be avoiding these most of the time. It’s pretty rare an NHL player gets blindsided. They’re pretty aware of what’s going on. Not to say it doesn’t happen but I feel like I’m seeing multiple Scott Steven’s murders each game. Make players more aware and able to avoid these, add a hit avoid button for humans and make the AI smart enough not to just stand there and take a bone shattering hit.

And bring back X as shield the puck! Make square reverse hit on offense. I hate the press down on R3 because that’s the stick control button and I have a tendency to push those is automatically while I play any game. 

Realness, being back real goalie masks. You used to have authentic masks in the game. I’m old enough remember. That was awesome. If you can’t because of licensing, add a feature for custom mask creation and allow sharing within the community. Watch how fast people create a roster of accurate masks. It’ll be cool and add to the realism. 

Real authentic stadium goal songs. Again, another really great feature you guys took out. As sports games are trying to get closer and closer to authentic presentation for their fans, you guys are heading in the opposite direction. 

Add back the training mode that helped show you and tested your ability to pull off the controls and dekes and faceoffs. Why take that out in the first place?? Dumb move.

The All Star game. Make it cool in a franchise mode. Do something special, cut scenes or something. Add in the skills competition!! How fun would that be to play those mini games? I don’t think it was EA, it might have been 2K that had them in their version, if they could do it years ago, you can do it now. 

Player entrances! What happened to them!? I used to love the old versions when you’d show the special team entrances. The Sharks coming through the Shark mouth, the octopus in Detroit. Imagine how cool to see the spectacle of a Vegas game before a game there. The short thing you do now is a nice try but come on, you guys can do better. I’m watching VTech enter through a light show to Enter Sandman in CFB26. Let’s get NHL that level of love. 

I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff but baby steps 😂.

Again I know it’s about budget and profitability of this franchise. But as the famous saying goes, “If you build it, they will come”.

Make a truly great hockey game (even if it means taking a year or two off, letting fans know that, and just patching at a discount over the next two years while you work on overhauling and making the best **bleep** hockey game ever) and more and more people will buy it. 

Hope somebody reads this 🤣

EA_Aljo​ 

1 Remove all Skins/PreBuilds.

2 Put the Hitting controls back to what it was. Wind up hitting is Awful and Unrealistic.

Stop Removing Features that people actually enjoy. Add Stick Flex and Blade curve,Skate Radius. Bring back the The skills Course for Free skate. Agility course shot power and target shooting for accuracy.

Make a EASHL Team Store. This way we dont need to wait for Logos Jerseys ect...... We can pick the logos we want instead of the Hockey Bag crap shoot.

Eashl Allow User to Put the winger at the top of the faceoff circle in the offensive zone. That was in previous years and removed for no reason.

Bring Back Match Club size/ goalie. This was another Huge mistake in 25 . Zero reason to remove it.

In 3v3 bring back PowerPlays. 

Make Attributes better Ive brought this up in other Post. 

Thanks