Please Adjust EASHL Drop-In Games

I think rewarding continuous game completion would actually hurt more than help. The reason I say this is because if people are simply staying in the game, just to complete it, they could have adverse actions on the ice that could ruin the game for others. The best step forward would be to implement a sliding punishment scale for those who exit the game early. Something to the tune of the following:

1st offense - Warning message that pops up after player gets back to dashboard

2nd offense - 5 minute cool down period, not allowing any access to EASHL

3rd offense - 15 minute cool down period, not allowing any access to EASHL

4th offense - 30 minute cool down period, not allowing any access to EASHL

5th offense - 1 hour cool down period, not allowing any access to EASHL

6th offense - 3 hour cool down period, not allowing any access to EASHL

etc. etc.

This would significantly curb the quitting factor. However, along with those, to prevent the continuous game completion scenario from bleeding over into this system, you would need to implement team grades and automatically kick those who fall below a certain threshold, as to not punish the other team. 

@K1ng0fHartsTTV 

Thank you for the breakdown! This was a popular discussion on our NHL 21 forums last year. We're always interested in getting more feedback from others, if anyone is lurking this post feel free to pop in with your suggestions.

I think the cooldowns you're suggesting are fair and not over the top, @K1ng0fHartsTTV 

I officially gave up on Drop Ins this year.  Played one, that was one too many.  It isn/t EA's fault, but rather, the player base.  Players sitting in dressing room jockeying for best team, then jumping out at the last second.  Spend more time in dressing room than in actual game play.  With today's player, as soon as they go down couple of goals (if you are lucky), they quit, no fortitude.  Human goalies are the worst.  This is on top of the fact that the mode is often a selfish goal scorefest which isn't real hockey anyway.  My advice to you, find friends and play with people in EASL, experience is so much better and closer to real hockey.  I wish drops didn't exist because this is never going to get better and it just fractures the player base.

What might help is if players couldn't see details from opponents, like the playoffs in EASL.  I think people see LV experience and assume this correlates with better players, and if their team has the lower levels, they drop.  

Seeing the other team's stats is a great way to adopt a proper strategy. If someone has 3,000 goals in 3v3 for example, you know they are just meta scrubs and know to hang back, if they just show as having a ton of hits you know you can bait them into penalties, that sort of thing. I absolutely hate having teams constantly drop out of the dressing room over and over. If matchmaking was good, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this since both teams would be relatively balanced.

There should most definitely be a penalty for quitting early but EA needs to step up to the plate and start fixing matchmaking/connectivity issues that honestly seem to only happen in EA titles -- Legit connection losses are absolutely infuriating. Yes, a 10,000,000 gigajoules per nanosecond connection doesn't guarantee you'll see no lag, but when the servers themselves cause bottlenecks, we're gonna have a bad time.

I don't want to see a vote kick option because I think it can be abused but I can totally see why players would opt to just leave in a drop-in game; they basically mean nothing and sometimes teammates can REALLY suck.

Wow, so many valid points and wonderful feedback. However, for me, my biggest issue is with being able to actually drop in to a game. More often than not this year, I have had several sessions of searching with no avail. It is an absolute waste of time and corrupting my feelings towards the game. I am all about teaming up with friends to drop, but sometimes this is not feasible (schedules don’t align) which means spending 20 minutes at minimum to join a game (generally closer to an hour). At this point I play something else. I have never enjoyed any NHL title for the offline mode, I purchase this title straight up for the online game play. However, this is the first year I have struggled to even see a dressing room, let alone experience players backing out at the last minute. Obviously the system is broken and has been, I really don’t care about stats, RP, or any other metric, I’d much rather prefer to enjoy a game. I don’t expect to recreate a legit hockey experience, but would love the opportunity to be apart of a live game on consistent basis. Listen to your audience, if it’s important to them, I believe as a company you should make important to you.

Agreed. People judge level to determine whether or not your any good but don’t always know how to play as a team themselves. Also about human goalies yes, it is bad cause they get lit up too often and makes them quit and it’s not always their fault, they can just feel the judgment. I only play drop in’s with a/as a human goalie as long as there is a another one on the opposition’s side. Which leads to the other problem. If my one gets lit up or even gets scored on once they quit which then can give a huge advantage to the other team. A.I. goalies still have a better advantage than (most) human goalies. I would like to see a toggle option on whether or not you want human goalies on your team as to avoid these situations. You can even expand it to how many human skaters as well. Clubs has these options why not drop in’s? That way if one of the human goalies quit the game ends and no one can complain about anything related to that game. 

This really only benefits those low level players.  

If I get put into a lobby with low level players against a team with all mid to high level players of course I’m going to back out.  Odds are it’s not going to be a fair matchup especially for example if I have a LV 5 Centre and/or a LV 5 Goalie up against a P5 in either of those positions.  

Or too many times I’ve seen low level Dman that pick the Enforcer build because most likely I know they’re not going to try to play any hockey and just goon it up.  This would be a waste of my time so I back out of a lobby when I see players as such. 

Other times I’ve been put into a lobby where one team has all P4 & 5 players which in most times they’re a stacked club team.  I only stick around for those if I’m confident in my teammates but that’s rare and usually results in a unfair matchup anyway.  

Not disclosing such details in EASHL playoffs works because the matchmaking system is more accurate due to divisions etc. For drop ins I notice EA’s matchmaking system isn’t really effective.