Feedback + Wishlist

After another couple seriously-frustrating days of dealing with AI idiocy, two more additions to the wishlist, from me:

• Ability to set what your AI goalie should do (strategy) when a puck is cleared into his end
• Sliders to work as-advertised/have actual meaning, or a point to them

Rarely does the AI goalie ever leave the crease anyway (contrast to NHL goalies that basically come out and stop every puck sent into their zone for their D men to pick up, or that actually play the puck), and I'd say a good 75% of the time when they do, they get whistled for playing the puck outside the trapezoid (when all they're even doing during this animation is stopping the puck behind their net as it's flying around the boards, as they should be doing).  Why isn't this animation directly behind the net, instead of out in this danger zone?  Stupid.  Sure, you could say "turn off the trapezoid rule"... but then we're not playing a simulation of NHL hockey.  My answer would be a choice list of like "play the puck", "stop the puck", and "don't leave the crease".  Maybe allow for a different setting when on the PP vs. other times.

On sliders, the ones that disgust me (and is why I opened a largely-ignored thread a while back) are the individual penalty sliders.  Boarding = 0 needs to mean "do not call this penalty ever again".  I have it set to zero because this game doesn't know WTF boarding is, and calls a game misconduct if a player gets hit by a stiff breeze when you glide past him, let alone when hitting the guy legally.

Most of the penalty sliders are completely meaningless.  Why is there a Delay of Game slider?  If the puck goes out of play from your end without being deflected (glass or person), it's a penalty.  Call that.  The game never calls Too Many Men (when players jump off the bench and onto the puck or into your skating player, nothing is called).  Contrast that with the general "Fights" slider (though, why is this one just 0, 1, 2??)... you put that on zero, there is absolutely no fighting in your game.  On "1", the AI will pick a fight for any reason it feels like (NHL games don't have 4 fights per game, especially in the playoffs)... at least some are skippable.  I'm afraid to put this on "2"... maybe doing that unlocks one of EA's abandoned fight franchises instead of playing hockey anymore.

I agree, the sliders need work especially the penalty ones. I have lowered mine to between 10-20 depending on the penalty but yet end up with 5-8 power plays per game. I would like a more realistic number like 4-5. 

For goaltenders, I would love to have an option to choose the % of games that my goaltenders play. Say I have an 88 ovr goalie and want him to start  just 60-70% of the season or even maybe 55/45 split with my backup. Would love the option to choose instead of just rotate goalies on. 

I think the goalie splits work the way they do to keep them healthy more than anything; not really an issue when you have pairings of equal OVR but there are times the difference is just too high and the scrub is called in.

I don't like to play offline so I just max out all the sliders - I'm probably just too dumb but some of the descriptions can be interpreted in different ways, leading me to question if I actually want something at 100 or 0.

To piggyback off the point above, it would be nice for trait descriptions and levelling to get a bit of an overhaul in EASHL.
For many years there have been debates about whether or not snapshot traits actually affected wristers or how much of a difference something like the "Crash the Net" speciality added to which stats for example.
A clearer picture of your stats before/after choosing certain traits would be great for players who constantly change their minds on new builds -- I believe 14 had this where it'd just show positives/negatives compared to what the build would look like without anything at all; Currently, the game keeps changing what your base stats are each trait (hopefully this makes sense).

Edit: oh, and please remove the whippy free cam during cutscenes/intermissions. I understand I can just not press the sticks but it's ingrained in my nature. 

Made sense in MGSV for example since you could zoom and create a dynamic shot but it just isn't useful for NHL (without extra details to focus on)

Edit 2: Was it NHL 2001 or maybe HITZ that had it? More than enough time has passed, let's bring back Powerman 5000's "Bombshell" as the main theme 👿

Hi i would love NHL back on PC i had been playing since NHL 94 and until NHL 09 been looking for PC versions of the lastest games but cannot find any would love to have these games on pc :D

I would love to be able to create players without helmets for offline mode. 

Also Roster Sharing is a MUST

Being able to create a coach would be fun too.

Have the "Bids Won" actually show the bids that you won not just be an inbox for the items that you've yet to send to collection. I mean this alone may make me quit the game for good because of how misleading and useless it is. I want to see the bids that I won and for what price I won the item so I know in the future when I go to sell them.

Also make it so you can search the auction house from the watch list. 

Also a way to change who takes your faceoffs so you can move your center to a wing but have them still take the faceoff.

Hi there, @BillCarmody.

Only the player you have as your center will take faceoffs. Unless that player is serving a penalty or has been removed from the game due to injury.