Whitewashing
Disappointed not much is being said about the whitewashing in Kingdom of both skintones and specific characters (Rosalyn, Yuki, etc.) It's 2024 and I find this inexcusable. Additionally, a bug I noticed in the cozy bundle is several clothing items in CAS have skintones far far paler than the actual skintones creating an odd effect as the clothing shading does not match the faces.
Found Bugs/Suggest Additions
Hi there, I wanted to start a discussion on features the community would like to see in the Cozy Bundle or bugs the community has found and we can all make posts towards this on here if that’s ok! :) I wanted to start off by saying that the controls, while working great, feel a little off for me as I’m left handed, and I think it would be a nice addition if we could get an option to swap the controls for the Left and Right Stick for those who would prefer that, and vice versa. :)
[Discussion] Dragon Age The Veilguard - Share Your Rooks!
Hey Rooks, Now that Dragon Age The Veilguard is out 🐲 I’m curious about what unique and fun characters everyone has made (if you're not stuck perfecting them in character creator!) Once you've finished creating them, let everyone else see them below!
The State of EANHL
As a staple elite rank player in WOC for about 5 years now & a big user of the offline modes I have a good understanding of how genuinely bad this game is. Offline modes are shoved to the side so EA can prioritize HUT. All gaming companies focus on what makes them additional money, understood, but there are bugs in these offline modes that are game breaking. There’s a bug in BAP for the past 3 games now where the entire game freezes during a coach interaction. And that’s it. Your be a pro is officially ended. I discovered this bug in both NHL 23 and 24. Reported it to the EA forums with video evidence. The reply I received was “this will continue to happen and hopefully we can fix it next game but for now, make sure to avoid quick closing/resuming your game” and when I told them that simply wasn’t good enough for the price point & people agreed, the community managers locked the post to stop further dialogue between the players. EANHL absolutely loves to take features out of games then add it back a few years later. Not only does this distract from other issues that need to be talked about, they commonly promote these things as being new, which is false advertisement, as is the promotion of the conversation system in be a pro, as when it first came out they marketed it as creating a way more diverse experience. Instead, my coach is telling me to go out there and swing momentum. After the game is done and I’m walking down the tunnel… There has been a cosmetic bug in the game for 4 (maybe 5) years now, where in WOC dressing room you will have on the teams uniform that you just played or are about to play. This is not a big deal but also shows the genuine carelessness and “doesn’t matter, they’ll give us their money anyways” attitude that is very readable. Repeated face off bug in WOC has also been in the game for 4-5 years now, where the game starts, resets to the faceoff seconds later, and does that 5 times before ending the game. Similar to the cosmetic bug (but obviously worse as it affects the playing of the game directly) this shows how EANHL really does not care about the product they’re putting in the store. Name a sports game that wouldn’t have this bug removed by the next game update, or AT LEAST the next game. I’ll wait… The menu is OVERWHELMINGLY slow for a game released in 2024. The loading times have improved. But navigating the menu itself, ESPECIALLY in franchise mode I’ve noticed is VERY slow and buggy. I click on a player to see their stats and have to wait 5 seconds before I can even start to move to the stats tab. They only change the menu & general game layout every 3 years when they release annually. Don’t need to elaborate there. The gameplay itself is below average. And it’s very easy to tell why as someone that’s played at a high level for a very long time - this game is aiming to be casual friendly, which is a HORRIBLE direction for almost any game to take as the dedicated players are usually the really good players. This argument is easily supported by the release of total control, as it makes moves that are supposed to take SKILL and IQ to set up & execute & makes it easy and accessible for anyone to do, even if you just loaded up an EANHL game for the first time. You dumb down the ceiling for skill, which means you allow luck to play more of a factor in the game. I have read a study that hockey is indeed the luckiest sport, but how many times in real life do you see teams out shoot their opponents by 15-20 shots and spend the entire game in the offensive zone and still lose by 2-3 goals? There are simple things that can be implemented to stop major issues. Picking up pucks requires skill IRL, especially when contested. You don’t have some magnet in your blade. Yet, in EANHL it seems like one game you do and the next game you wouldn’t be able to pick up a soccer ball with your blade if you tried. A dead by daylight styled skill check to all players within reach of the puck would be an amazing add. It doesn’t take a genius to know that just putting your player in position and HOPING that the game gets the puck for you isn’t sustainable and simply isn’t good enough. Again, price point. Franchise mode power play roles are still bugged after multiple years NEW BUGS: Player can’t line change in BAP and just skates into the boards & is penalized for a poor line change. Shot clock commonly reads the incorrect shots in all modes. The game commonly fully crashes in BAP mid game after simming to your next shift. I will add more new bugs to this post in the comments as I discover them, that’s if community managers don’t lock my post to stop meaningful dialogue between the players who have been ripped off. I’m sure there are a lot more problems in HUT as well even though they prioritize it so heavily, but I refuse to play that mode as it only encourages the company to not care about the rest of the game WHILE promoting gambling to children in a very cruel way (having them buy packs in hopes of drawing idols). In conclusion, if you genuinely support EANHL and their products, you’re either a HUT main with not much experience in other modes, or a mid/below mid player that benefits from EA’s constant pursuit of a casual friendly game. Thanks for the read!
X-factor booster packs
So about a month ago when the first booster pack came out I had bought one and of course I got the 81 Marcel Noebels card. The first time I bought it so I figured it was fine and I need it on for the set. So today I saw that they had put another booster pack in the store so I bought one. Of course I rip another pack that has a Marcel Noebels card in it. So with a few curse words I swallowed hard and said whatever I will need him for the next pack. I said what the heck and ripped another pack, and guess what I got another 81 Marcel Nobles card. For as much time as I put in this game grinding it to make the coins that I earn and then get the same card three times is just plain stupid. They need to fix this game or I won't buy it again. I'm disgusted that I spend as many hours as I do on this game to begin with. But then to get rewarded for that by getting the same card three times in a row is just playing dumb. I've bought almost all the nhl games from 94. Sad day when I'm ready to call it quits.
Veilguard Romances and Companion Interactions Feel Shallow
So far, I have about 100 hours in this game, I have completed the primary and side questlines, and have found that even when your Rook does engage in a locked in romance, you can completely forget about it. This is an opinion, but I do feel like Veilguard has the weakest romance aspect in any of the DA games, and that even some of the romances in Mass Effect: Andromeda seem more thought out than these, which is something I'd never thought I would say. I have heard of people being incredibly disappointed with how little thought is apparently put into the companions interactions with Rook, and not just the romantic ones, but how Rook feels like a Fly on the Wall for a lot of the game. And I hate that I somewhat have to agree. I like that the companions seek each other out and have unique conversations and dialogue, I find that very enjoyable, but what it lacks for me, is any depth or proper emotion given to the romances, or even to companion interactions with individual Rooks. I romanced Davrin, and have seen on forums that a lot of people think he has one of the better romances, and after watching the Lucanis and other romances, I would have to agree. I think this is because he tends to offer and at least somewhat reciprocate your advances through a lot of the interactions Rook and he have together, whereas with some of the others, you completely forget that you started romancing them. I was glad to see how romance could happen organically outside of Rook's choices, the Lucanis/Neve, Taash/Harding and Emmerich/Strife pairings I feel all progressed well. However, they feel as if they were given more time and effort than a single one of Rook's pairings, as they have more depth than Rook's. One of the things that I found most damaging to the romance in this game, is that you can't really interact with your romance outside of the missions that they give, like at all. In other Dragon Age games and Mass Effect games, you could typically walk up to a companion and talk to them, enter into dialogue trees, learn more about their characters and backstories and their thoughts and feelings in regards to you, other companions, or the present circumstances, and that is almost entirely missing from Veilguard. Not only this, but the reactions that the romanced character would have to certain things, such as Rook being in extreme danger, are nearly completely missing. The dialogue, and the way the romanced companion regards you outside of their missions where you can occasionally pick the Heart option, is incredibly lacking. It feels as if there is a massive chunk of the game missing just from that alone, that Rook can barely talk or interact with the companions outside of the missions they give you, and I feel like that is one of the main problems this game has. If feels like they kind of slapped and wrote a lot of the dialogue and romances together 3 months before the game release, and that is detracting from romance as a whole. Rook could romance no one, and there wouldn't really be a remarkable change or shift in hardly any of the dialogue or scenes that are given, which is a travesty for a game series that engages in player choices, both big and small. I remember in Inquisition, that I could literally just spend an hour of my time going through a couple of character's dialogue trees in Haven or Skyhold, and learn so much about them and what their experiences and thoughts were. This is not present at all in Veilguard, and has, in my opinion, done the game a great disservice.
Potential patches for romance?
Given the responses here and on Reddit, I don’t think it’s controversial to say the romances are not living up to what we were advertised. “The most romantic Dragon Age” this is most certainly not. The entirety of each romance arc is roughly twenty minutes, with characters like Lucanis spending most of that not responding to flirts at all. Not “responding awkwardly”, like Cullen rubbing his neck or shuffling before continuing to speak, I mean not responding AT ALL. Is there any chance patches could come in and save this? BG3 and Cyberpunk both had multiple patches that fleshed out their romantic interactions. It’s already been said we’re not getting DLC, but what kind of patches can we expect going forward? On the off chance the patches will be more substantial than bug fixes, I’d like to offer a few that could help turn the game aroundfor me, at least. I’ll be upfront that I’m mostly talking from the perspective of someone who has only gone through Lucanis’ romance and has been jaded by the time sink required for a really lackluster experience. The “missives” system is right there for some low-effort lore drops. Maybe an interactive love note to carry through the game? Lucanis’ commitment scene is genuinely awful. It felt like the equivalent of putting on the marriage amulet in Skyrim. It was literally just hitting the “committed—on” switch. It is the least satisfying “romance” scene I have ever experienced. They don’t touch. They hardly even gesture. They just stand there staring at each other and cycling through what looks to be idle animations. Was there cut content meant to be here, or is this genuinely the effort put into the “most romantic game ever”? Is it possible to fiddle with some scenes to make them the smallest bit dynamic? And finally, could we get a patch to allow the players to turn off the flirting between companions? It’s a real kick in the head to hear the effort put into two companions getting together, knowing how little romantic content Rook gets to experience themselves. Especially in the case of Neve and Lucanis, where Lucanis is seemingly the one companion that can be locked out of a romance entirely—and then he immediately hooks up with the person who made the exact. same. call. There’s even a line in his Inner Demons quest about being into Neve, it’s relentless and it’s insulting. I’d rather just not even hear it. Obviously there’s bigger gripes about the romances—why only twenty minutes of content? why can’t we talk to them between missions? why no kiss button?—but I feel like this is a few relatively small adjustments that could help ease some of the ick. Maybe others have more, better ideas, I don’t want to write a whole book and a half. Additional: Adding an option to object to Rook being referred to as “young” in Emmerich’s romance to allow for more RP potential.
