Feedback

This feedback is mostly for World of Chel but i have some other feedback as well outside of it

- When the pass rating is high enough and also because of the perks Tape To Tape and the Send It your player will sometimes automatically sauce pass for other players when they are at a very close distance from you, even though you are just trying to send a "normal" pass to them. The automated sauce pass will be slow, and it can easily cause a turnover because of it, and the worst thing is that you have no control over it when it happens.

- You can auto sauce passes without aiming with your stick and just hold icons to whoever you want to sauce the pass to. I think it would be better if this ability were locked behind Tape To Tape and Send It. Granted, I would prefer we would not have the ability to auto-sauce passes at all, but I don't see it getting removed.

- Truculence needs rework. Remove the increased stamina loss and the stick loss while keeping the improved hit power and shortened slow time if we actually have to keep this trait in the game. 

- Slightly shorter the time when you are allowed to hit a puckless player, so there are actually penalties for hits that are clearly late. This change would obviously mean players need to time their hits better. 

- Unstoppable: It's broken with how permissive it is with reverse hits, it should only be allowed to activate when people are using body check animations and you need to time it right.

- Game speed needs to be toned down, and I am not talking about skating speed. When comparing the current CHEL game speed from NHL 20 to 26 to something like NHL 16, it is night and day; the games after 2020 sometimes feel like they are comparable to the old movies with sped-up scenes. It just feels way too arcadey (I recall reading this is what EA wants?). Game speed reduction would help create more room for variety in 6v6 games (Less hitting? More cycle plays? More constructed gameplay?) instead of the very common gameplay tactic we see below. 

1. Get puck.
2. Skate to neutral zone.
3. Maybe pass to a teammate.
4. Teammate enters offensive zone.
5. Skates forward.
6. Tries forcing pass to the slot or backdoor.
7. No goal?
8. Opponents turn to try it.

- Increase the puck hang time when you flip it in the air to encourage players to try dump and chase hockey. Instead of seeing it just a free puck giveaway.

- The net front battle needs complete rework. Stick tie-ups and player holding are nearly pointless because of how unresponsive they are. Holding X or Triangle (PS5) does not work the vast majority of the time, and also opponents just have to move very slightly to make you unable to use them.

- Penalties given when trying to clear front of the net with shoves needs to be reworked. Allow defensive players to push opponent players from the crease/low slot without the end results always just being 2 min penalty for interference.

- Stick physics needs to be tuned more. I don't want to see opponents sticks going through my knee/skate or any other body parts and watch how opponent is still able to shoot the puck because of it. Same applies for stick lifts going through the opponents stick or sometimes even puck clearly going through my stick blade when intercepting the puck (i think ping sometimes plays a part in this).

- Defending the opponents offensive rush.

4. Opponent enters offensive zone.
5. Skate forward.
6. Force pass to the slot or backdoor.

When that play happens as a D man, and especially if you are in a neck-and-neck race with your opponent to defend against the forced backdoor play, the issue comes down to the unresponsive commands of the stick tie-up animation, but if you are trying to do the regular stick lift it also has the problem with your stick ending up going through your opponent's stick. In this case it would have to be completely new animation to be able to tie the opponent's stick on the rush when you are in the crease/low slot.

(Unless you are hoping to take the lucky path with the pass interception from the cross feed from the opponent player <--- (I usually just do this), or you try to do a dive block attempt and hope it does not deflect from you to the net, then the above does not matter too much to you, but personally I think the best way to prevent those plays would be with a stick tie-up.)

- Crouch block and Dive block need to have the gaps where the puck can go through you removed. The Dive block is more guilty of this with gaps under the stick, under the player's stomach, and on the shin (maybe missing more?).

- Weird panic reactions (Yellow D Opponents POV) that you have zero control over. https://streamable.com/wk7x5q In this case it was not caused by Ankle Breaker (Not many people are using this, but i don't see any place or a need for that RNG reaction on a perk it's just BS that you can't control.)

- I don't play much at all as a goalie, but from what I can see, playing as a goalie has never been easier (take a look at the clip above; it also covers what I mean). Some slight adjustment should take place in there. It does not bother me that much, and I am not even sure it really affects the overall 6v6 scores in the game compared to previous NHL games. But if a goalie is clearly out of position, those kinds of shots need to go in with a slightly higher percentage than they currently are.

- Pinning someone against the boards should be more responsive and remove the wait time when you can release them. This still causes dumb penalties to happen, for example, if the puck is behind the net and it's a race for it with your opponent. If your opponent is clearly getting to the puck first but they somehow missed the puck, and you have already decided to tie them against the boards before that, and even if the puck is basically at the feet of both players, the game will call that as a penalty.

- L2 back skating has been an issue for years now. It does help a lot with puck protection and create plays that are not normally possible, and I have been using it all the time over the years because it is in there, so why would I not use it? But the issue here is that those animations are not part of hockey. But at the same time you can't completely remove back skating from players who are in the offensive zone; you need to be able to back skate to some degree with a puck without making it completely obsolete. No idea how to fix it.

- Poke checks need some work; I would imagine some of the problems with regular poke checks with R1 are because of the online ping. But there are also some weird, random, inaccurate R1 pokes that happen every now and then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mskP5jG2zpI (Stick check rating at 93 + Elite Stick Em Up in free skates to prove what I mean). Also in that video i noticed how my player is looking at the puck, but when i am pressing the R1 my player suddenly turns his head away from the puck while he tries to poke it. There are also some rare occasions when you are actually poking through the puck with your stick blade (online/offline). 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXExbyoASiE <--- Another video this time 99 stick checking and Elite Stick Em Up. Something is definitely not working with the regular R1 pokes if your player is trying to poke completely different direction after looking directly at the puck.

- Puck interceptions are, in my opinion, the best they ever have been, but there is still the frequent "Just leave it to the RNG and hope for the best" situation. Even if you are perfectly positioned and even if you have your stick blade nearly perfectly matching the opponent's stick blade you are covering. It just won't matter; the pass will still sometimes reach to your opponent, who you are covering. Even if you played that situation 100% correctly. And sometimes your guy does not care at all when the pass is going between your legs; there is 0 reaction even if you have 99 def awareness + Quick Pick. (I have not tried the Elite version to know if that is the magical thing that will fix it). Ping will most likely also play a part with this.

But what would qualify as a realistic behaviour or a scenario where it's fair to say that "My guy should have had that"? Let's say you are standing at stick length from your opponent who has the puck, and then he makes a full-powered pass between your legs. Is it fair to say your guy should have been able to react to that? I myself would not really have an issue with my player not reacting to it at such a close distance. My issue is more about not being able to intercept some passes at slightly longer distances than just your stick length. For example, the classic backdoor plays from the rush—even if I am basically being conjoined twins with the opponent player I am covering at that moment who is heading to the backdoor, and the pass is coming from 3-4 meters away from the other side—I think my guy at that distance should be able to give at least some sort of reaction to it. Now on top of that, there are times when you guy actually do react to the pass coming and is clearly going to intercept the pass, but all of a sudden, he decides to change his opinion about it and just let the puck go past him. This has to be fixed. Then there are issues like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSgJB_8tgdc where  your player is not putting the stick blade on the ice.

- Meaningful updates to Chel's side. It has honestly been ctrl + c and ctrl + v for a very long time now. With the same exact bugs when trying to start a game. The typical "unexpected errors," room size suddenly not matching when both sides clearly have 6 players on each, or getting locked without being able to press "Ready" if you start messing with loadouts. On top of that, it still feels very much like a bare-bones beta test that has been happening for years now. Why? Because most of the focus in Chel has been on the visual elements. Now what is considered "Meaningful" updates in my opinion?

This is just seven examples what i would consider "Meaningful" updates in my opinion.


1. Removing Drop-Ins. The reason being that it separates the player population for no good reason. If you want to play with a PUG group in 3v3 or 6v6, you will be placed in club games instead. The match search should prioritize the other PUG groups. If no match is found in 1-2 minutes, you will be matched against Club teams (Club teams have option in match search to filter PUG groups out). Some players will often quit these games during a middle of match, but that's nothing new, even in club games. Therefore I don't think there's any good reason to keep these player bases separate from each other.

2.  Give club teams option in settings to allow players who were disconnected in a 3v3 or 6v6 to come back in the game. When player gets disconnected, give them 3-4 minutes to jump back in the game. During this time the game itself will be paused for everyone. (Some sort of prevention method would need to be put in place to stop possible abuse with players disconnecting on purpose)

3. After the match in CHEL, give players ratings in different categories based on their defensive plays, offensive plays, passes that lead to scoring changes and the quality of that scoring chance, hits, passing percentage, takeaways, giveaways, blocks, penalties drawn, penalties taken, etc., and then give the combined rating from the match.

4. Club games with each team having 20-30 players.

- Backup goalie in case of starting goalie disconnection.
- 5 - 10 extra players as a "viewer" backup if F/D players get disconnected.
- Give club teams the option to wait for the player who lost connection to jump back in the game.
- To compensate for more players in the game, you would need to make games slightly longer to give everyone at least some ice time.
- Allow games to be constantly joinable for "viewer" positions from the settings.
- The team captain or assistant captain can manually change lines or leave it to AI.
- Plenty of options in the settings for club teams. For example, how the players who lost connection will be handled. Allow selection of who is taking that player's spot if the player is not coming back.

5. Give us the "Match the room size option back". There are times when i am playing with just 1 friend some 3v3 and we are constantly getting 3v2 games because of it.

6. Should forward classes be allowed to slot into defensive player slots in CHEL? And vice versa. Not that it really bothers me, but at the same time this is something to keep in mind. But if that is what we want, then make defensive player classes on equal level with faceoff stats with forward classes.

7. Should the current stamina system in CHEL be replaced by a new one where you need to go for a line change in 6v6 and 3v3 to get a copy of your character out to the ice who has full stamina? Correct timing with line changes are important part of hockey after all.

- Skating "engine" needs complete overhaul. You especially see it flaws when doing quick turning, it just takes the "realism" out from it, if that makes any sense? And obviously it is easier said than done, but why not seek help from other dev teams (EA Sports FC)?

Or are they already doing that? At least for me it would be weird if the different dev branches located in Vancouver are not at least somehow working together in technology, animation, mo-cap in their sports game.

- Give players full access to customize any gameplay-related sliders. Be it over 100 or under 0.

- R2 + Right stick wrist shot passes are really slow and useless compared to the previous years.

- Wheels is basically the new marathon. Majority of the people will end up using this because of the benefit of having more speed, and you need to use it on defence to counter the opponent team player using it with equal speed (Unless you play very passive D man). And it definitely limits on the people using different builds because of it.

- Allow players to make custom cameras. Give players POV camera. I don't know how well it would work out, but I would like to see it. And then we could at least figure out can we actually make it work somehow.

- Increase CPU difficulty past the superstar. I would prefer to crank it as high as possible so at least there is an option in there for players who feel like even the superstar difficulty is too easy.

- Bring in more analytical stats.

- If you want to test your loadout in Chel at the free skate. The first time you load in, player stats will be bugged (I think that is the reason?) and you have to leave and restart it again for them to apply properly.

- AI do not know how to use "hustle". This is one of those forever problems we have had in these games.

- AI being stupid aggressive when they are on PK, this will nearly always ends up AI giving free odd-man rushes because you have 1 or 2 of them chasing after the puck in their opponents zone.

- AI need to react faster in their own end. They struggle badly with breakouts leading to turnovers, the main issue being that they hold the puck too long and do not pass it even when there is a clear passing lane open.

- Getting stuck on "Connecting" screen when starting NHL game. 

- AI teammates in Be A Pro are also turnover machines when you are on PP.

- Allow players to choose in Be A Pro what spot they want to play on PP and what kind of strategy to use.

- Talking about how the EA NHL series is going to use generative AI, limited memory AI, discriminative AI, and agentic AI, or any other variations in the future.  For example, if we consider how fast the AI has been developed in the last couple of years, I would imagine at some point we do have the capabilities to have a real-time generative AI doing all the commentary in the game.  But there are A LOT of other things that can be done as well.

- Improving the physics engine.

- VR mode some year?

- Too many post shots


- Slow menus and loading in Chel.