EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerNHL 25 Holiday Update Coming Nov 15th
Forum Discussion
EA_AljoCommunity Manager
Community ManagerAgain, this update has been in development for a long time. It has not taken away from working to improve matchmaking.
Why was it in development? I understand the PWHL but why in the world would any resources be put towards another game mode when the game isn't even working correctly? It isn't even a major game mode people have been asking for people have been BEGGING for connected franchise. This is so random and shows how absurdly disconnected this company is from the community
- EA_Aljo
Why? Because it's a fun mode. Maybe it's not for everyone, just like connected franchise wasn't for everyone. It's easy to feel a feature was more popular than it was when your friends enjoyed it too. I never played GM Connected and neither did my friends. We sure played 3v3 Arcade in NHL 09 though. It was a lot of fun for us. I'm only using this as an example because you call us disconnected because we don't have your favorite mode from the past, but we brought back a mode you didn't play. However, we brought back a mode that was significantly more popular. And that's not because my friends and I played it. It just was and you can see the reactions we've gotten from this announcement back that up. I don't see how that is being disconnected.
Connected Franchise/GM Connected is a very big undertaking. It's very possible that will mean other, more popular modes will get less attention that year so we can divert resources to it. I don't know if/when this will happen. I know it's something we very much want to do though.
I mean, that whole first paragraph could be viewed as pure speculation. Where is all of this positive feedback from this announcement that you say backs this up? You enjoyed this mode, others enjoyed GM Connected. Where is the data that shows the popularity of any of this? Who is making these decisions at EA? Where are these ideas coming from?
I get that different teams work on different things, and that one team may be working on something that has no bearing on what another team is doing. However, why release it now? It could have waited, no? This is disconnected thinking on EA's part and most of the responses to this post seem to agree with that fact.
There have been issues for years with this game that EA has yet to address. I think KidShowtime gave a terse list of the ones I've seen mentioned over and over ad nauseum. There are bugs that are in the game year after year. Common responses are in some form of "We are aware," "We have no updates," "If there is more information I'll tell more," "We need to prioritize what we work on," etc.
So, the proverbial can just keeps getting kicked down the road. The issue with this is that bugs never get the attention they need, and subsequently, never get fixed. New bugs are then added on top of existing, and the cycle repeats. Older bugs get pushed further from the surface. As a result, the product as a whole suffers.
This whole issue with matching room size and such is self-inflicted. Never once, that I have seen anyway, was the community integrated into this decision. I don't remember seeing anything being discussed about this. Further, the lack of a beta this year drives people to lack trust in the NHL series as some may speculate this was due to the feature being removed. It's like your team is trying to hide bad decisions from the people who play your game. See the presentation fiasco from years past.
Per the changes to matchmaking. It's not our fault it's not an easy fix. It's not our fault what has been in development previously. It's not our fault it isn't fixed yet. It's not our fault that the change may be a large change to the code. EA brought this on themselves by changing functionality, refusing to acknowledge any posts about it, refusing to release any information about it, and then dumping a new game mode on us before any of this is addressed. If this isn't the definition of "tone-deaf", well, I don't know what is.
- EA_Aljo
When I say something along the lines of "we have no details, we are aware", etc. that means exactly that. I don't have anything I can relay at the time. In most cases, we put out a patch that addresses those issues. I'm not going to post speculative details that could be inaccurate. I need to wait until we have an update that is officially confirmed. Which means, I have to wait until it's announced on a blog or Twitter. There are times when an update could be pulled at the last minute when an issue is found. If we announce something and pull it back, it obviously upsets the community. So, we need to wait until we're sure.
GM Connected was last in the game about 10 years ago. I don't have data from that time when it was discussed. If you want to believe that's speculation, that's fine. So far though, returning this mode has been met with a lot of praise. I imagine GM Connected would be as well. However, that's a huge project that is going to take time.
When we have news on matchmaking, we'll announce it.
