Forum Discussion

Seasoned Newcomer

4 months ago

NHL 26 WOC is now pay to win

To start off, I have loved playing NHL for years on xbox. I've taken a break from playing since NHL 24, which was an absolutely great time. My favorite game mode was WOC since it was so much fun to c...

Community Manager

3 months ago

As mentioned previously, nobody is debating the definition. Paying for an advantage is commonly known as P2W. When it comes to NHL 26 in particular, skill is going to get you wins rather than a pre-made loadout. However, I recognize the pre-made loadouts fall into that P2W definition.

Yes skilled players with team cohesion who are using custom loadouts can easily smash unskilled players with pay to win stuff playing hero hockey. But with two comparable teams, the team with the pay to win aspects are much more favored to win. Think of a match in play now between team USA and team Japan between two equal skill players.

If you have 2 teams made up of players with the same skill, the better builds have an advantage. I wouldn't call them favored to win. Especially with the nature of the sport of hockey. Which also has a high amount of unpredictability with puck bounces.

We're going in circles here. There is very little good feedback coming out of this. So, I'd like to find out what you all would do to make things more fair. Making these loadouts free is most likely not going to happen. Just like allowing custom builds the same attributes as pre-made loadouts is unlikely. Otherwise, what's the point of them? What would you do to ensure everyone has an equal chance at winning whether using custom or pre-made loadouts?

Also, how often are you all running into players with these builds and are struggling to beat them? How much are they actually taking away from your enjoyment of the game?

TTZ_Dipsy

Legend

3 months ago

Well first off, Kid is very deliberately debating the definition by claiming it's "pay for advantage" and keeps trying to derail the topic by saying the builds don't guarantee wins when that's not at all what anyone else is saying.

"If you have 2 teams made up of players with the same skill, the better builds have an advantage. I wouldn't call them favored to win." ???

We're going in circles because of insane and irrational logic like this. A team has a clear advantage; they should, therefore have, even if slightly, better odds to win out the gate.

The only way to remove the P2W stain from the game is to make any EA curated builds free (with at least 1 catchup event if tied to a battlepass), and to have cosmetics be the ONLY thing that can be purchased via the store.

All I saw in Div 1 was people using those builds but who cares at the end of the day? The amount of times you see those players shouldn't matter at all - it's the fact they exist AT ALL that is the problem and it's so sad seeing a bunch of you trying to defend such scummy practices. Again, it doesn't matter one ounce how negligible the advantage CAN be or if you're so full of yourself you think you're just naturally better at stopping any build they throw at you, EA is attempting to milk even more money out of the consumer by utilizing immoral practice I'm pretty sure the vast majority of "regular" users don't want/care for.

KidShowtime1867
Hero
3 months ago
TTZ_Dipsy wrote:
Well first off, Kid is very deliberately debating the definition by claiming it's "pay for advantage" and keeps trying to derail the topic by saying the builds don't guarantee wins when that's not at all what anyone else is saying.
Please stop attacking me. I am offering my opinion without attacking anyone. Please, I'm begging you to stop reducing these debates into mindless baseless attacks.
TTZ_Dipsy wrote:
"If you have 2 teams made up of players with the same skill, the better builds have an advantage. I wouldn't call them favored to win." ???
Equal skill level doesn't mean exact same decision making. The issue with this example is that you're still making the assumption that builds are the one and only factor in determining who is 'favored' to win.
TTZ_Dipsy wrote:
A team has a clear advantage; they should, therefore have, even if slightly, better odds to win out the gate.
You're once again incorrectly assuming builds are the only factor in determining game outcomes.