Community ManagerAll 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.
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.
In recent memory, and I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any mention of plans to fix the slow/stuttery menus in the game.
I can sympathize the reasoning for not reaching out to the communication more. No one deserves to be treated the way some people choose to do so.
However, I will say in my experience browsing other forums and talks among my friends that play, that the overall sentiment surrounding the game is negative as a whole. And that's because the issues/bugs that has been plaguing the game for years just has not been resolved. No one feels like they're being listened to. Or at least, no one is certain that's happening because we don't really receive any kind of information from the development side of things outside of marketing for the next game, patch notes, or a source outside of the dev team tells us something is being fixed/changed.
I understand why the devs want to avoid opening themselves up to the community, I do. It's just an incredibly frustrating thing to see new features being added to the game while the core experience suffers.
There seems to be poor prioritization of changes and additions the game needs. We didn't need ICE-Q in 25. I can almost guarantee that newer, faster menus would have been celebrated and generated much more excitement than a new core element to the game. Same case for NHL 26. The team could have solely focused on improving the menus and improving BAP, and that would have been celebrated way more than the new EDGE data interactions in game. The poor prioritization of issues is the number one reason why people are going to be angry.
If the devs are firm on not interacting with the community, they need to find a much better way to receive and give importance to feedback.
