State of EASHL / WoC

Not a community manager but I'm 90% sure this is because queue times would suffer significantly if they didn't do this for the early access week. When the full release happens tomorrow, the feature will come back. (Don't quote me but I think this happened in the early access week in 24 as well)

This would make sense, and I’d completely understand this.

my concern however is posts about this have been made pretty frequently over the last few weeks and there’s been silence…

That could be EA's rationale, but it doesn't make sense to me.  Quickly finding match-ups that one team or the other is going to back out of isn't really finding games any faster.  

The silence on this is baffling to me.  If it's intentional, say so.  Ditto if it's just for the early release period.  If there are issues with matchmaking, then tell us that.  Not saying anything is just fostering needless speculation.

The problem with removing the goalie/room match option is precisely what OP pointed out - queue dodging. 

So now teams who want to play against another goalie have to queue up and quit until they find a team that has one. 

I don't think this had the intended effect on Matchmaking, with the exception of clubs who got tired of looking for a team with a goalie and capitulated. One has to wonder that's not the best way to introduce a new game to your most hardcore fanbase (early release users), but it is what it is. 

PlayoffError wrote:

The silence on this is baffling to me.  If it's intentional, say so.  Ditto if it's just for the early release period. 

Exactly. It's weird, but par for the course here. I think we all understand that things can't be promised, but when it comes to foundational features being removed (even temporarily) with zero explanation, you're right - it just fosters speculation and stirs up negativity which is the last thing this franchise needs. 

Exactly this… the logic of “if we remove x feature players will find a game quicker” doesn’t factor into play when they instead continuously leave until they find their ideal matchup..

hopefully the settings come back tomorrow.

It was the same last year (enabled on official launch) but the community manager at least recognized it as something they were looking into when it blew up on the forms for 24 early access.  The silence this year is weird.  

fair enough. I don't really get their silence either. 

Unreal.   Absolutely embarrassing that they didn't add "Match my club size".  

When EA is silent on things it usually means they know it's going to be a wildly unpopular move.

We just, you know... play whoever we match up with. Dodging teams because they have 2 and you have 4, goalies, etc is lame.