They added more faces because they were able to scan the players in person and then do touch ups probably. I'm not 100% certain why we don't get freedom but I'm going with licensing and how they can't add player faces without scanning them.
From what I have seen in game and read, they now use a tool that makes an AI generated face from a player photo, then they assign an EA generic hairstyle. A lot of these AI faces look similar and sometimes have big heads or a claymation look, but they are still way better than the old generic faces that looked nothing like the players.
The community manager mentioned the full scan rig is hard to travel with, so the real bottleneck is getting players to Vancouver or to big scan events. That explains last season’s rollout. My concern now is this season: will they actually keep building on it, or let it stall?
I made the list above so the devs can see who is missing and should be added. None of those players are blocked by college rights. They are licensed NHL players with photos and stats and appear on every preseason depth chart. Last year I understood a few late college signings only making it in at the end of the season. But this year there’s no excuse — with the AI tool, they should be able to process each player’s photo, generate the face, assign a close hairstyle, and have them in the game at launch.
Playing cards such as Upper Deck. Have no problem acquiring the actual photo of players. So why is it this game can't generate face plates from the pics that are readily available. Instead we get AI face plates. And in some cases. No pic at all. You would think that a franchise that has been given exclusive rights by the NHLPA, would be able to have every player with their actual pic.
Community Manager
