I would very much appreciate and blog/video where developers goes through the feedback from technical test from us the testers. What did people say/ask to change/improve/fix, what will EA do/try to do with answering to that?
We pay the full game and played the game on beta, so would be nice to have something in return, some sort of assurance of better release/first patch and just for the feeling, that our voice really matters. Thank you!
I don't think it works that way. EA writes right at the beginning of the questionnaire that feedback is respected, but it can be used or not. And almost certainly not in the currently released version of hockey. What bothers me the most is another thing: why is something that was added and no one criticized it here on the forums being removed? And conversely, who decides what gets added to the game even though it doesn't exist in real hockey or isn't on TV? Sometimes the ideas are so stupid that I don't think the person who came up with it has ever seen hockey. In EA's NHL hockey, a snowmobile appeared once, and that was the first time it was 3D hockey. It was a completely non-functional thing that just appeared in the background of the scoreboard, but it was the most hockey thing that is as old as the oldest hockey hall.... And EA can put 1000 of such hockey things into the game. Yes, we have new boards, but for example, I liked the statistics on the ice 2024/25/26 and now they are going to disappear again. What bothered me about them? That there were incredibly few of them: % of face-offs, number of clashes, number of power plays... In hockey where there are hundreds of statistics, I expected that every face-off would bring different information.... But EA would rather cancel it and throw it in the trash. In the NHL 27 trailer I noticed the new player screens and it doesn't look bad, but why don't the players who are full screen and take up 100% of the screen have their stats displayed? They only show 10 things: age, height, total goals, goals in the season, favorite food, etc. Why add something that looks too graphically simple and takes up 100% of the screen? Does it make sense to ask about it in Q/A? It doesn't make sense because the game is already gold.
Dev team does care and feedback is listened to but let's remember just because it's asked doesn't mean it will happen. You should watch the video of NoSleeves and the Devs where they talk about doing some exploit fixes. Overall the changes from 26 to 27 are noticeable in defense being so much better in tuning. And the LT situation greatly toned down for the better. Updated presentation. WoC shockingly got changes to builds that definitely make you need to play now. Which the community had said there was nothing to play for in WoC well now there is.
Changes happen but at the end all the sports games will feel similar each year unless you actually look for the changes.
This team has proven every year that they are not willing to patch much of anything unless it is EXTREMELY bad, i think they patched the passing icons once this year? Every year people are asking for bugs to be patched or certain gameplay problems and unless it's an extreme problem they ignore it, EA Aljo says he will tell the dev team and that's it. They took their time this year to make McDavid a 99. Pay your $70 this year in hopes the things you want fixed next year are fixed that is what we are told. They will not release anything detailing what they are working on. They function like a major AAA company when that is convenient and expect the same money for their game, but behave like a small indi company in terms of output. They get $70 from millions of people every year, and complain about their budget. Only sports games are taking advantage of these yearly releases, these UT modes bringing in lots of extra cash.. yet online season mode took years to make the most barebones mode I've ever seen in any game since maybe ps1 days? These devs have experience making mobile games and Mario strikers. At this point we can only hope EA decides to drop a bit of money to actually develop this game and get AAA quality devs or hope 2K is making a hockey game because this franchise is in full regression and going toward arcade/ micro transactions. Just watching gameplay of before this team took over and now.. the game looks so much less like real hockey. The hits alone look absolutely ridiculous.
Hockey is my favorite sport but this is far and away the least developed game among all AAA sports titles. Them saying this online season mode is a complete mode... CRAZY. I can't understand how you would even think to call it "franchise mode" and say it's "complete" call it season mode.. then... fine. Remember guys.. they took the first two years, and gave us almost nothing because they were working on multi-year projects... if this is an example, what were they doing this whole time? I feel like even if it was only 1 individual working on it... and you have an offline mode to pull code from.. and several other games under the EA umbrella.... how is this the completed product? I would like to know how many people were working on this and their salary. I feel I could accomplish more given all of EA assets in a few years and I've never coded anything in my life.. but just out of sheer drive for wanting a good hockey game. However, that's another problem.. I don't think these devs are even really hockey fans at all. Hence why this game is becoming the Mario strikers/ mobile games that they created before getting hired, it is the game they enjoy making/ playing.
TLDR: The dev team doesn't care, they only come out to push sales, and they're not skilled or driven enough to produce the game we want.
