Community Manageryou know EA_Aljo when they are doing deep dives and such this is something that is probably very important. example people complaining about not being able to intercept pucks but were putting most in Def Awareness as that was the main stat last year but now Puck Control: influences how well a player can receive or intercept passes, maintain possession, and recover the puck after a turnover.
in WCHEL in NHL26 tooltip reads: Puck Control: helps with receiving the puck and getting into a settled state faster for more accuracy in shots and passes"
so this is where some of the frustration comes. You all used to show a model of deviation for accuracy for example, showing how a player with wrist shot 80 acc vs 85, 90 and so on you all should probably bring those back in shorts videos by the dev team maybe in the game akin to how 2K does their weekly video for NBA. educate your player base better. Yes, leave some more detailed (high skill) things for discovery, but the general stuff engages with the community in showing them via shorts in game.
Community ManagerAppreciate all the feedback here. I agree it would be good to have these noted better in game and highlighting the differences between various levels. Thank you!
EA_Aljo Xfactors are garbage this year. You guys are going to be battling And tinkering them all year because of how OP some of them are. XFactors also Ruin Attributes so it really doesn't matter.
If youre going to Keep Xfactors atleast do it a better way because right now its awful. The different levels of Xfactor should only be unlocked by How many points you put towards the maint attribute. As see on NHL 25
Example. Hitting/Truculence. 80 points opens the yellow attribute 85 opens up purple or 90 opens up red Xfactors.
Ive tested Hitting with and without truculence and its very noticeable which is good it means the Xfactor is working. The bad part about it is. If you set An attribute such as Hitting at a high level 90+ without the Truculence it feels like an absolute waste of points. Again ive used this analogy On another thread but With Truculence it feels like im hitting with a baseball bat without and with High points 90+ it feels like im hitting with a pillow. This is a huge problem. What if id like to Use another Xfactor so i decided to Raise Hitting super high thinking that will still give me good hitting ability but it doesn't only Truculence gives me the feel it should.
Truculence is also huge when it comes to an opponent Using warrior or whatever Xfactor gives you the ability to resist hits. With Truculence I feel i can still hit the guy using Warrior effectively but just using a high attribute in hitting i just bounce off.
Now im sure you'll ask for video evidence please just try yourself.
Again I believe Xfactors should only be available By the amount of attribute points you put towards the main Attribute in the Xfactor see on NHL 25.
But I Still think the best Idea wouldve just Been to go back to Boost packs seen on NHL 09-14. Its way simpler and only affects the one attribute instead of giving you boost on a few different ones. .
Xfactors will be a huge Problem this year if they dont change the way they work and also how effective Higher Attribute levels will be.
Also Im starting to Feel like theyre trying to faze attribute out because of the amount of garbage prebuilds they continue to add for absolutely no reason. There are probably more prebuilds than custom builds at this point. Prebuilds once again fast track you to certain Xfactors. Total garbage.
I definitely agree about leaving a little mystery, it starts to drag when you can see the numbers behind the gameplay like you're in the Matrix.
I mostly just want to know that everything works. I remember as far back as NHL '13, I think it was, when they were selling +3/5/7 boosts for attributes and it came out that Acceleration was tuned so low that it essentially did nothing. Maybe it was '14, the year of 99 Strength on every build. Right now, for instance, I can play a whole (effective) game with all available points drained out of durability, shot blocking, deking, fighting skill, one shot or the other, etc etc. 80-85 power and accuracy are more than enough, so there's no incentive for me to ever be slow or sacrifice agility. The overarching point is the same as it was back then: experienced players find out what works and what doesn't, and new players have a tremendous disadvantage that they likely won't ever overcome. They'll just stop playing.
And hey, while I'm on my attributes soapbox: everyone should just have 90 faceoffs, it's never made sense to me that I have to sacrifice attribute points to play center, even though that category (save deking) is pretty negligible.
MostlyHubris BoostPacks are a far better Option than Xfactors as the Boost pack only affected the attribute it was put towards where Xfactors are Op in several ways. You are correct though EA did Mess up and had Acceleration turned down to far where it didnt matter how high you had it didnt work on one of the earlier games. There have been a few games where certain Attributes didnt work properly. EA really does have to get all attributes to function correctly you should be able to feel the difference between higher and lower attributes even when the Difference is small. Xfactors Ruins Attributes especially the way its set up now. You could have 80 hitting with red truc and throw people around like ragdolls. If you have red warrior you can basically skate through anything. If they were to keep Xfactors which I dont think they should. They should make it the way they had it on NHL 25 where you needed a certain amount of Attributes to use the different tiered Xfactors. Example. 80 hitting unlocks the first tier 85 the second tier and 90 unlocks the 3rd. But even with this way shows the flaws of Xfactors and attributes. Because if you can unlock the third tier Xfactor with 90 Attribute points there is no reason to place your attributes any higher than 90. So I think The best way to do it would be have your 3 tiers but you need have a certain level of attributes to unlock the tier. But its also based off of player build type. So lets say a Powerforward has 90 hitting he can unlock the 3rd tier truc but a dangler should need 93 hitting to unlock it or a dangler has 90 he can unlock 3rd tier ankle breaker where it takes 95 for a Powerforward to use. That way there is some distinction between players plus it would force players to use more attributes to unlock the higher Xfactor.
As for faceoffs Defensive builds shouldn't have the same points as a forward. Can a Dman win a draw sure but its unlikely hes going to win more than a center who takes thousands of them a year. I Think the only change they should make to face off is allow us to add attributes to it. Instead of it being capped at 90.
Community Manager
