I guess this tells you how great the beta is...
It's a weekend, 5 days after the beta was released and there are a grand total of 49 people online in drop-ins.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't even have much of a desire to play it anymore.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't even have much of a desire to play it anymore.
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This.
Making my return to Madden this year. Done with NHL.
I may be able to understand a little if I wasn't hard-wired all around (wired to router, wired to modem, wired to pole outside the house, etc..), but being that I AM hard-wired everywhere there should be no reason for this game to be so inept online, especially when EVERYTHING ELSE works like a charm.
That's what happens when you have a BETA for a game to test new features and you give an entry code to pretty much everyone from the get go. Almost every other game that has a "BETA" will go through a selection of people to play a CLOSED version of it first, people the devs know they can trust to put the game through it's paces and help in finding the bugs and glitches and problems in the game. Then in the last few days, they will open the BETA, after they had a chance to update the code and polish up the experience a bit.
Not NHL though... Everyone's welcome. Too bad a huge portion of the population in the BETA are trolls or absolute scrubs.
And yeah, making the BETA basically NHL 17 ver.1.08.01 doesn't help. How can we see all the cool new improvements to the game when we have to deal with the same dumb glitches, bugs and exploits from THREE previous versions of this game??
Last year I had completed the badges in 2 days. This BETA though... I'm about half way to the limit and there's only ONE day left. No interest in playing Goalie, because no one plays defense. And even if they do, I have to deal with a gajillion exploits and bugs and it's just not fun. I had to deal with this nonsense in NHL 17. I barely have an interest in playing Defense, even though the new DSS is one of the best additions to the game since NHL 14's "Net Battles".
There's just no interest. Not from me and not from a heck of a whole lotta people either. Not even the big time streamers are interested in playing the BETA. What a disappointment.
1 out of maybe 4 games are fun and I feel like I mostly have control, but the other 3 out of 4 games are nothing but constant frustration where I feel like I'm constantly fighting the controller and the excessive animations makes me want to throw it out the window.
Less than a week into an open beta. I don't care what time it is, I used to play past that regularly in EASHL rarely replaying the same teams. This was effectively a free week of NHL 18, and people are already feeling like they've had enough. If it were 2010, we all know that beta would be packed all week.
DSS and new dekes, $60.
giving everyone a pass to beta is more helpful than you can imagine but you obviously do not have a business background or way of thinking.
An opinion as simple as mine, its work, not fun....is incredibly valuable if you are looking to see where to improve as a business and why your customer base is dwindling down. it may not say very specifically which part of the game is the cause but it gives you a pretty obvious clue. When others start repeating the same message everywhere you know you have an issue and you know to try to understand what makes the game more fun to people,...maybe via survey maybe via stuff that we preached on these forums for years such as go back to closer to NHL 10 style and further away from today's style. TPS is cancer. Defense with tps / bad control vision is cancer and nobody cares to play it. etc.
Now, getting back to EA's BETA practices, it doesn't make sense to allow everyone and sundry to play in this "test", because they're not trying to gauge interest (which is what a DEMO would do), a BETA is used to try and find problems in the code or if it's an online game, how gameplay is affected by server load (low, moderate or heavy). A beta can also be used to find the initial "balancing" in the gameplay under various game modes (single, multiplayer, online) before the game is released.
That's why it's important to have the RIGHT people play in a BETA rather than just ANYONE. Which is how probably 99% of the rest of the industry handles a BETA.
I'm not saying it should be only 5 people playing. But they could've gotten much more streamlined information by letting say 1000 users try out the game after a selection process rather than let 10 000 users just pile in all hodge-podge and ruin the experience for everyone involved.
I got on last night when my old club buddies ask if I wanted to play. I was happily playing Street Fighter online. We played 1 game, and then everyone got off. I tried to find another game, it took me almost 30 minutes to find one and then as soon as we started the game, 3 players on my side dropped and 2 players on the other team did likewise.
I turned the game off and went back to Street Fighter, which is a 9 year old game now, but it's infinitely more fun and there's ton of people still playing it and had no problem finding a match online.
This BETA is more of the same from last year, with a few new features tacked on like NHL Threes and DSS. No one wants to play this in a "limited BETA". They'd rather wait for the full game which (HOPEFULLY) won't be as bad as this test is.
limited beta = SOME people who test, because you have no way to know that everyone will actually test and you have a smaller sample.
People can surprise you. If the game was actually fun, id be the kind of guy to list issues and how to reproduce them. But im stopped before that...at an unfun product I have no intent on buying. This does not prevent you or others who like and plan to buy the game to test and provide extensive technical feedback.
That is just flat out wrong on so many levels. I have always been more heavily defensive focused when it comes to my skills playing as a skater, even if i pick forward. Could that potentially mean i have benefitted from a low skilled player pool that has found it's way into the Beta?
One thing is for certain. DSS is a nice addition and awards patience instead of who flings their hockeystick around more assertively. Thats all i could have asked for from that gameplay mechanic.
I don't like or unlike it. To me this "BETA" is just NHL 17 with THREES and DSS. I'm not interested in THREES, though I did try it. Fun little time killer, IMO. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it, though it would be much more than I'd play HUT, which would be never.
I like DSS. I think it's a great tool to have as a defenseman. But there are too many issues that still plague the gameplay from last year (and years before), on top of the forwards gaining all these fancy new dekes, while still retaining all the B S they've always had. Especially the insane amount of lateral acceleration with the puck which they shouldn't need anymore.
The goalies got a few subtle tweaks for the BETA, but it's nothing that couldn't have been done in a tuner/patch in NHL 17. I don't see any evidence of "new code" having been added to correct the most pressing issues with human goalies, like the puck covers, the bubbles around the post and the god awful save animations that are chosen for you.
So aside from DSS, this BETA is pretty much a bust for me. I'll wait for the full game to really see if anything's improved. If not, well I have EA Access, so I guess I'll play with everyone come March or April when the game makes it into the Vault.
I have played with Venom multiple times in drops and many times I aid him on LD with him in net with near shutouts.There are other games where RD plays so ridiculously bad that there is nothing I can do to help him.
Currently in the beta I am ranked #2 enforcer D with #1 spot in plus/minus (it means squat I know) but there was a time where a good G and one good D could turn the tide.Heck I remember where one good D could shut down transparent players.
Good game vision and skill used to beat bad vision and skill.
I don't have the answers to whats changed but it has.Its like Kezz has said before,its a chore to win now.
I used to know 5 mins into a game of 6's not only within 50 points of a teams rank but how bad we would win/loose against said team.Now its a complete crap shoot.
The skill gap is gone and its what has killed the game for me.
I played 13 games in net total. I finished only half of them and that during the first two days of the BETA. There's just no point in torturing myself further.
There's one day left in the BETA. I might play if my old club buddies ask me too. If not, I don't really care. I was done with this BETA on Friday... There's nothing left for me to experience.
Day one purchase?
I said the same thing countless times before. The skill gap is gone. in nhl 10-11-12 etc, if you played a team that didnt have solid defense and overall skill level, you would win by 10-20+ goals (basically as many as you could put in before they quit). Now days, you would play the same matchup and maybe lose 3-2 or maybe win 4-2...who the heck knows. You'd likely still win but it would be a battle till the end. Why? not because they were good but because there are too many elements lowering skill gap. How often do people quit not? almost never. Before? all the time. Sounds like a good thing right? its not.
Thats the main reason my club quit. We still had solid records but it just wasnt fun and meaningful anymore. When you win and you are still pissed. When you win and you cant wait for the game to end (out of boredom).....there is a huge issue. When you win and you dont know its because you were better or because you were more lucky with bounces and AI goalie than the other team......there is an issue.
of course all this applies to non-6s because we cant find enough players to be 6 now that EA killed the multiple dressing rooms which is yet another terrible design choice.
I slightly disagree about the bolded
Everyone knows who the better team is when the AI goalies start acting up. Your team got 15 uncontested cross crease passes? You might score twice, or three times. In NHL 11-12 you got at least 7 or 8 goals that way, if you were very unlucky.