Community ManagerI get changes happen throughout the year. The problem is in the marketing strategy itself. When very little is shown about the game prior to release, there is 0 hype or excitement. Its why the yearly release model does not work for games anymore. Releasing a new game every four-five years is smarter. You focus your attention on the updates/upgrades, releasing them often. No wasted energy on launching a whole new product (that is pretty much the same, with a few minor tweaks), energy and time goes into improvements. Do videos on those updates. Sell a season's pass for updates and upgrades. That way, there is always a buzz around the game. As a company you are releasing videos at least every month. Devs speaking about the changes, and what to look forward to, addressing fans, both concerns and requests. These days, marketing in the video game industry is all about communication and making sure that your game continues to be talked about. If you barely release any information, it shows a disconnect. A short video every week for a month before launch, that is not a marketing strategy, that is video game destruction. I have a experience with this stuff, I have also been a gamer, streamer, and Youtuber, for a long time. I only gave it up as my health went south, and my focus shifted to enjoying more time with my family. If EA wants a successful product launch and good reviews, they need to fix their marketing, and change with the industry. Video gaming is a fickle industry, you move with it, or get left behind. Its not meant to be completely negative, it just trying to see a game that I loved back from Sega Genesis days through to the present, not continue to falter and lose sales.
All of their sports titles pretty much don't start showcasing the upcoming game until a month or so before launch. It's not just an NHL thing it's an EA Sports thing. May 29th is when College Football 26 was shown. It launched officially on July 10th.
Fun fact is that NHL used to promote the upcoming game almost 2 months ahead of the release and then guess what happened? People got bored they had to wait after having the information. So there really is no point in announcing it more than a month early with some deep dives to keep things going. Anyone who has followed their sports games knows the routine by now.
Honestly people just want a video telling them that full presentation is coming back, GMC is coming back, authentic hockey is going to become more of a thing, and that PC is getting a launch. But they don't appear to be getting those things so they aren't going to be happy this year. You pretty much know when you see the reveal trailer what all is gonna be different. The deep dives just further go into detail about the changes that are made. Some people will be happy with what is given and others not so much. I've passed on many of your concerns you have had for the future of the series, but it's not up to me if things get added/changed/or whatever.
Me personally from the news today I'm super happy that hipchecks and LT-ing has been addressed.
Me personally from the news today I'm super happy that hipchecks and LT-ing has been addressed.
That's the best news of the day for me too. Strange that it wasn't part of the video though. I didn't even find out about it until just now.
I told them those are the types of things that need to be said in these types of videos instead of just on their website or having NoSleeves talk about it.
That is all that I can ask for. I just feel that EA could use some help in ways to generate hype and make people feel heard and listened to. As a fan, its my hard earned money going into the game. If the devs/EA don't want to implement changes that people have been requesting for many years, it shows some disconnect. Disconnect leads to sales dropping. I don't want to wind up with the only NHL game, disappearing. Especially when it is so preventable. I also, won't sink my money into something that feels almost identical to the previous years, when I have done that far too long. Hoping, that this year will be different.
Thank you for passing it along. I also am happy about the hipchecks and LT issues being addressed. I only play offline, but I like that to feel as realistic as possible.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm tired of playing a game that feels like it's just barely put together by an indie team, while KNOWING there is a company as big as EA backing it. I WANT to like this game. So much so that I'm very willing to cut these guys a bunch of slack. It's just a huge lack of communication and lack of acknowledgement about some issues from the devs themselves. It's increasingly frustrating for these guys to be as silent as they are. What's worse is I don't see any regular attempt from the dev team to get community feedback. Where's the polls for most desired features? Where's the timelines for bug fixes? A roadmap for planned features, even if those features are planned for future games? There's so little transparency.
Community Managerlack of acknowledgement about some issues from the devs themselves.
Which issues were you looking for acknowledgment on?
We send out surveys in email. These forums are where we gather regular feedback. As well as other sites. I don't see how doing polls is going to generate more accurate feedback. Regardless, I'm certainly not against them.
We can't really do a timeline for bug fixes. Nobody knows when an issue is going to be fixed because it has to be fixed in order for that to happen. They have to track down what's causing the issue, get a fix for it and add it to a patch. That is, if it requires code changes. Tuners don't need a patch, but the majority of issues aren't tuner related.
I would love to see more communication from the devs. I don't blame them for not interacting though as they would be met with a ton of toxicity. The amount of messages here alone that removed due to toxic comments is pretty high. So, there's a fair amount of feedback they don't get due to the hate. It's fine to be critical, but it needs to be constructive. Which, sadly, often isn't the case.
