Chel (mostly EASHL) Feedback Time...
Devil's advocate here - I get that all forms of 'Ice Tilt' don't officially exist but I'm sure you can agree when my club can start the season at 20-1 and is now a nasty 38-13-2, with people just flicking the puck at our goalie from wherever they choose, netting goals left right and centre, it's like your soul just gets kicked in the nuts.
Team Customization
Unfortunately, none of my suggestions from last year (https://forums.ea.com/en/nhl/discussion/236671/eashl-customization-streamlining) were used and it's just as much of a pain in the bum to create your jerseys and edit equipment colours as ever. Please get rid of that awful equipment rotating and allow us to properly see what parts we are actually changing with zooms and better descriptions.
Surely it can't be that to add a simple copy/paste and multi-selection feature? Giving us a little eye-dropper tool and the ability to auto change those circles with the press of a single button would speed the process up tremendously ( yes you have a last used feature but doimg it this other way saves even more time).Personally, I'd like to see our team colours have a 4th slot since many teams add an off-white or lighter shade of black to their equipment.
Allow us to change how our AI idiot teammates look; they currently all just use the same sticks and gloves while my buddies and I are the only ones who look different - not a huge deal but it's nice being able to further customize your team's identity.
Specialities and Builds
These make absolutely no sense - like, why would having a high hockey IQ mean I'm weaker or great passing means I have less strength on shots when you need to use basically the same form as a snap/wrist shot?
What's the point of dumping points into wrist shot and slappers when you can't hit the net? My slapshot-sniper build with the one-timer trait with 89 accuracy and my 94 wrist shot accuracy build could barely hit the net; that's totally bonkers you guys. I don't expect to get it in the net every time but wow, at least make it close. I completely understand the whole pros and co ns thing you need for balance, I'm just asking for it to make a little more sense.
The main builds I've seen are Two-Ways, Snipers, and the odd Dangler in 3v3 - Aside from Grinders, all the other builds have been nerfed to oblivion and serve no real purpose. I would love to go back to the days of default builds you could create your own players with but I know you don't want that so I urge you to take another look at all the builds to make something work; trapping people into specific roles they don't want isn't all that fun ]...
AI Logic
I understand the whole sim/fun game balance and stuff but the AI just doesn't gel well in a swtting where humans and all their faults/genius are added to the mix. I try to bite my tongue as much as I can but seriously, we all need to get together and really hammer down a general idea of how they should work. I don't know what happened to them in the last week but (and there is no time to be PC about this so sorry if I offend someone) the computer teammates we currently have are straight-up edit: severely mentally challenged, full stop.
These turkeys constantly pass backwards when they get to the blue line causing offsides, they seemingly on purpose will enter the offensive zone early, launch the puck down the middle of the damn ice when trying to clear, causing so many turnovers and goals, they refuse to pass to you when you hammer the pass button, and 80% of the time they completely shut down on a breakaway or when they take a penalty shot (though I will admit when they do end up scoring it's extravagently beautiful).
Goalies can NOT handle one-hand tucks. guaranteed goals EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. ffs I'm angry about this - fix it. It makes 3v3 a mode you want to absolutely steer clear from since most teams just get your computer to take penalties on them. What's even worse is the simple backhand-forehand-backhand deke goal - HOW IS THIS STILL A PROBLEM!? *^#*&^$*(&*($&()*#>>"?{{+)*&^ - please get together and address how the goalies freak right out when someone does the simplest of dekes. They go absolutely freaking nuts you guys, I doubt you haven't noticed. It's not fun for higher calibre players to be given goals and it's certainly not fun to see your own goalie completely collapse on you. Noobs/Vets/Comp players/Winners/Losers alike do NOT want this in EASHL and HUT.
It appears rebound goals are back; You seem to have only fixed half the problem since they can't be started stick-side which is good but you bet your sweet tuckus you can pull it off by just flubbing it near their glove-side. I'm not mad you guys, I'm just very, very, VERY extremely disappointed since that was in the top two of biggest goalie complaints
Computers are still getting stuck on the net causing me to nearly have a jammer when the puck is just sitting on the goal line.
My own personal problem/grudge, what have you, is the AI defencemen. I am a Right D. I am NOT a left D, that's his job. I do NOT want to see this stupid piece of garbage zooming over to MY AREA, and refusing to leave until I basically have to break the glass along the boards with my entire body. I don't even get halfway to center ice before the other D man tries to cover me and it leaves the entire left side open - this happens in HUT as well; I don't know why they can't get it through their thick skulls. I'm begging you guys, please add a territory prioritize slider or something to keep players in their wanted zones.
All players probably have the same base stats but i's clear as day there are smarter turkey AI's than others. Clearly Kong is an absolute beastly unit of a player while people like Murphy need to go throw themselves under a moving Zamboni. Please either make them all the same or allow us to customize their logic to how we want them to play. (No dumping, stay on their own side, no stick lift options etc.).
Replays/Cutscenes
I just saw patch notes saying you've fixed certain camera angles so *thumbs up* that's great, I love it and will have to see for myself later. That said, I find it annoying how we can't outright skip all this - time is money, some teams get absolutely trounced and just want the madness to end, and other people just don't care, so pretty please allow all that stuff to be skipped if the majority of players agree to it.
Why would you show game tieing goals as the highlight when that was just the first goal of the period and both teams scored another 6 or 7 since then? I think you need to tweak the importance of some stats
Animations
New animations look great, all 200 or whatever of them, a pure delight... BUT, I want to point out how seriously annoying it is to see my player just stand there like an idiot for 3 seconds waiting for his animation to end when my cross pass was intercepted and the other team is going for a breakaway. You guys still haven't learned how to start/stop certain animations from taking place and it's quite worrisome. Most hockey players don't follow through with their actions and neither should pixel ones; I wouldn't mind if you lost stamina and momentum when whiffing on a shot and/or a stumble would be nice. Stretch passes up towards the blue, these idiot computers just keeeeeeeep skating up to accept it; this just leaves you shaking your head.
Chel Bags
*exits game - oo press r1 to check bags* Once you leave that menu you can't simply press R1 again to go back, ooooh no that would be too easy - you need to go allllll the way back to the main menu pretty much. Always allow us to check our bags whenever please... and combine player and team categories together so we can do a mass check of our stuff, yeah? Streamlining this isn't a huge priority but I believe it's a quality of life fix that everyone can get behind.
Why are these bags still such a hodge-podge of random stuff? You even added another 200+ items which is pure torture for players like me since most of it is objectively ugly and useless. I don't wear pom-pom toques in real life, why would I want my player to wear it? Allow us to choose categories instead of bombarding us with random stuff.
Instead of random jerseys for teams I've never heard of, give us the option --- Do you want a pack of random music, socks, or sticks? etc. etc. You could reduce the number of items we get with each bag, I wouldn't care. Allow us to create our personal player first so we can skip past the stuff we don't want and it will be a great way to show us you care.
Connection/Lag
Yup, I wanted to bring this up too. ONES, and EASHL Clubs has been a total nightmare when it comes to ping spikes. I have done all the troubleshooting I could - I reset the router, my PS4, tried wired, hard boots, soft boots, UO traces, opened all ports, spoke to my ISP, and even made this stupid looking antenna out of tinfoil I was out of ideas and nothing has stopped my ping from randomly spiking while playing; It doesn't last long, but of course, all my input lag happens when the other team is coming down for a rush or I absolutely cannot afford to be scored on.
ONES is completely random when it wants to cooperate which is a shame. I've gotten to rank 5 and have since had to basically retire from the mode since I can barely manage a win at 130ms let alone when it spikes to 3-400+. My normal is around 20ms and this problem only persists on NHL - I have absolutely ZERO problems with any other game.
When I play EASHL it's almost like my buddy and I just constantly switch who lags throughout the entire game. Our best ranking in the franchise is #17 overall with a few 1st for the week and even a couple 1st for the month - We aren't bad and can overcome some lag but this is constant, literally every single game has at least 1 instance of 3-4 seconds worth of input lag (at the absolute worst time) which is completely unacceptable. I don't know if servers are is desperate need of repair or whatever, but what I do know is there needs to be a better matchmaking system where either the game decides or you can personally choose the type of connections you will ONLY allow to play against.
I'm sure there is a ton more stuff I'm forgetting but I'll leave it at this for now. In closing, I just want to say I honestly, truly thought 20 was the best in the franchise by far, but with more and more players learning the new meta, it gets harder to distinguish this from past titles. You're on a verge of greatness here, don't let it slip away.
