Re: Club Population non-existent

yup. I've never once seen the population read anything other than "low"

they really need to sort out cross-play. At the very least, let PS5/XSX and XBO/PS4 users play each other assuming the game engines are closer?

We'll most likely get proper cross-play next year (at least, I hope we do). As soon as they announced we'd be splitting up four ways, it was clear things were gonna be rough

I tried giving NHL another shot on next gen for eashl but sad to say the situation with eashl is no better than when I left after nhl15. I don't play offline or hut, me and 4-5 friends used to enjoy the hell out of eashl/OTP/club until EA decided to weed us out in favour of their loyal hut players who they can milk all year for card packs and money. The biggest aspect of community in this game has been dead for years, it is sad that micro transactions prop up this game model simply because studios profit more that way. I tried doing my part not buying their titles over the years but I'm sure they made more money without us eashl players anyways.

@BabyPuncher525 

EASHL received some of the biggest changes in years based on community feedback. It's an extremely popular mode and receives a lot of attention. What did you like better about NHL 15 over 22?

It's really too bad that the only response from EA to this thread doesn't even touch on the issue that this topic is supposed to discuss...

Still feel like this issue is being avoided.

It is pretty bad.  We are a NA West club and we have to play way too many laggy games on east servers just to find a game.  Even when relaxing location it is a struggle to find games.  Falling back to drop-in (terrible) doesn't always get us a game either.  Sadly, we are all top 100 players in EASHL/Drop-in PS5 and we are not that good and don't even play that much.  So, that just shows that there are not many people that play this game.  This game desperately needs cross-play.

Hey, everyone.

We're not aware of any plans for adding cross-play for NHL 22, however I am anticipating once the new consoles are purchased this holiday season we'll see the player base increase. With the timing of this launch, players tend to hold out until Black Friday deals and general holiday shopping. When I was a kid I always got the flat out no from my parents around this time of the year when asking for a new game because they waited until mid November. ☹️ 

We're not seeing any major issue with population right now. It could be specific to region and time of the day when queuing up. In general, the weekends will always have more players online because of no school and work. If you are having some trouble matchmaking let us know what day, time, and region you're queuing up from. Those will be important details to be aware of. 

Drop-in an club populations on NA West are always "Low" every day including weekends, All evenings after 7pm.

Drop in games rarely fill up 6v6, even having forward slots not filling.  

Is there any reason why crossplay has not been considered for what is obviously a game that needs it?

(When we talk about playing NHL we ask each other if they want to play NHL 22The Search)

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@SparkOfSanity wrote:

Is there any reason why crossplay has not been considered for what is obviously a game that needs it?

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It was already a huge enough undertaking to port this to Frostbite. Doing crossplay on top of that seems unimaginably foolish. Also, for a game (franchise) that has the syncing/desyncing issues that this has, quality of life improvements like crossplay or join/rejoin game in progress I suspect are pretty non-trivial from a technical standpoint. I would not be surprised if it required a complete rewrite of their netcode, which - though, IMO, has been desperately needed for some time - is probably not on the immediate horizon.

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@RouleauAuFruit wrote:
@EA_Aljosorry aljo but hes right your moto as been HUT HUT HUT and DIVIDE DIVIDE DIVIDE . you guys will have to put the game free next week if we hope to have enough players. its frustrating , we cant find a full lobby anymore , we start a game a few players missing already and after 5min half the lobby quits and you play against LGENDARY TYPE CPU. by the way you guys could tune them down a lot .

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Ugh, you're so right.   I get that porting to Frostbite was a large undertaking...but cross platform play is something that's been around now for a couple years and should have been worked on already.   This is probably the EA game that needs it the most.   Imagine the population if it wasn't divided

@EA_AljoThe problem isn’t the gameplay. I think the Frostbite engine has introduced many improvements to overall gameplay. The issue is being able to consistently find other clubs to be actually be able to play this game. You spend 75% of your time in the club lobby waiting for the Search to fail, even when using Relaxed matchmaker settings.

CHEL needs to get off of this platform as being a side kick to the game.  If EA had the smarts, they'd move CHEL and make it it's own game, and truly make a "World of CHEL" online using a version that is compatible with all platforms; cross play across the boards.  Get rid of the drop in outdoor clown gear absurdity, and build an online hockey world of 6's and 3's.  "Drop in" can have an entire story mode around it, ranking leaders, etc....treat it like Sea of Theives, where you pay once, and then they have seasons and season passes, etc, along with gear, custom stadiums, team logo's, as microtransactions.  Host leagues where all game stats are recorded for the season, allow leagues to link their websites to stat databases, again, monetary compensation as microtransactions, but affordable, again, like Sea of Thieves.  

This game is dying, and it's self inflicted.

Been playing at 9-10PM PST daily for over since 2012 and without fail have found games within 5 minutes.... This year we are lucky if we find 1 every 30-40 mins these past 3 weeks. we have actually just stopped playing after waiting. 

This is the time we always play and any other time doesn't really work for us. Our club will not buy another game unless the population is fixed. Maybe if Chel supported quick resume (Series X) so we could play something else while we waited it wouldn't be so bad... good upgrades to gameplay just no players to play it seems. The teams we de play are Div 8-10 and leave after a period. I guess I paid the next gen price to enjoy the enhanced look in the waiting room except our custom jerseys are still broken for the 6th straight week......!

@EA_Blueberry 

"We're not seeing any major issue with population right now."

Do you not play your own game? 

It's a niche game to start with that isn't cross platform,  so the player base is already pretty small.

Then you get rid of the server browser style lobbies which made it super easy to find EASHL games during low population. (I can still find full 6v6 games on PS3 with less than 100 players online).

Then this year the player base gets split into 4.

How are you not seeing major issues with population right now?  It's the worst it's ever been.

Not to mention all the new online modes that have been added the last few years (ones, threes, 3v3) which further take population away from actual Hockey (6v6).

I don't remember the last time I played a full 6v6 drop-in game, it's usually 4v3, 5v3, 5v4.

Club searches are usually very long now.  And being on the west coast it's usually a 90+ ping game on an East server.

If no cross gen or cross platform is planned for NHL23, then you need to get the old lobby system back or something similar.

6:30, Saturday, EST in Ontario. We have three people and are unable to find a game, even with +1 and best location off. It's been 10 minutes and two hosts trying to locate anyone to play.

Average search time is listed as 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

wholly agree, well said

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@Fadetoblack021 wrote:

6:30, Saturday, EST in Ontario. We have three people and are unable to find a game, even with +1 and best location off. It's been 10 minutes and two hosts trying to locate anyone to play.

Average search time is listed as 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

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I remember you could play NHL 14, at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon and have zero issues finding a club game.    Now with the player base divided 16 ways come playoff time...you can't find a game at 9:00pm on a friday night within 10 minutes.   Of all the games that desperately need cross platform play...this is one of them, and I hope it comes next year.

I'm going to assume for NHL 23 there will be PS4 & XB1 versions of the game again.

If that is the case, online connectivity cannot remain the same as it is right now.

EA has to either implement cross gen and/or cross platform play, or add a server browser style lobby system along side the matchmaker, like we had on PS3/360.

@Moxrox84Ya it's not looking good