Matchmaking In WoC
There are a lot of unbalanced matchmaking going on this year and it’s really putting a damper on the game. I understand that the game will have a larger pool of players to match make with in the coming months but it’s currently wrecked. Very rarely will you be placed in a match with players that are near you in skill level. Meaning the discrepancy between your team and your opponents teams ranking points are MASSSIVE. This forces teammates to often quit the game because they can’t keep up with that play style. The largest gap I’ve seen so far was 13,000 RP. That’s totally unrealistic and unreasonable. I’ve never even had one game where everyone was within the same rank.
Will this franchise survive
Yes, but not for the right reason without going into specific details om why this game and previous years are not any better, from audio track resampled gameplay replays digitally enhanced to match new engine and consoles. Let's not mention the problems with AI goalies are unable to make a save, with most average player are shooting above 40% over 500 games. IF an NHL goalie let 4 goals in on every 10 shots they would never make it there. With more updates and bugfix then games that have 10 times the amount of details, not to mention that offline be a pro mode has no audio files for the players game interactions and basically we have a 2015 recycled game for the last 10 years and if you were a player in 2010 or prior you probably remember having games 6 on 6 everyone had mics and there was rarely a wait time to start a game. We had lobbies and people even formed their own leagues. Now at peak times we can wait between 4 to 8 minutes and any other times we might wait up to 10 or 15 minutes just to find enough players for a 6V6 game with most times only ending up having 2 or 3 human players on each teams with AI players to fill the open positions. So why is the franchise going to survive you might say, well the same reason that teams like the Canadiens or leafs and other teams from diehard cities in North America who never seem to want to spend money on expensive yet demanded players because owners would be wasting money on them when the arenas can fit more people they sale out whether they win or lose so why spend more if you only make the profits go down well the answer is because the players and fans of this game will keep on buying it even if the change the colors and pictures on the box and call it NHL 26.
Editing Players Appearance/ Stats Within Rosters/Franchise mode
Can you finally edit players appearance/ stats? I've asked this every year, not one real answer why it's never been added. It's such a simple feature for sports games, I swear for franchise/ rosters we've never been able to simply edit a players hair, EVER. We've had - UI changes to franchise mode/ creation zone, roster sharing, new hair added, no new beards since playoff beards back in NHL 16, boring old standard goalie helmets that are even older, the ability to edit player stats removed. WHY DO ALL THIS AND NOT EVENTUALLY DECIDE "let's open up all those basic, unnecessarily greyed out options that all other sports games have (are there other sports games with EA NHLs lack of customization?) I do love what has been done to franchise mode this year, for full price tho? All of this is just waaay way to long overdue, who's ever heard of a hockey player growing their hair out? $90CAD or $50CAD on sale to either sim multiple seasons so I can get drafts of normal looking players/I just create tons of players again .For a franchise player like me, so far these are missing basic quality of life updates not a full price upgrade. Please prove me wrong EA.
AI Decision Making/Logic
Playing with an ai teammate puts your team at an extreme disadvantage. Despite setting the ai to be the most defensive/stay back play style, the ai continues to put himself in extremely disadvantageous scenarios. It is as though the ai is constantly switching its strategies/decisions and simply doesn’t act on any. The clip I have attached shows an example of this where a clear 3 on 1 is developing and despite this he plants his feet and does not move, this is one of many instances this has happened. It has gotten to the point where my team and I refuse to play any 3s games unless we are a complete team due to the colossal disadvantage of playing with an ai. Please make them better.
Drop-in club games
Since you cannot start a club search with one person (why?? even if you wanted to make sure there’s two people for whatever reason, you can just enforce drop-ins allowed until player count >= 2), when I do drop-ins as a D-man, I typically only play club matches. It’s miserable playing defense in drop ins, the only chance you have to get involved is club games, so why not at least add a “Only allow club games” option to drop ins?Can’t Find A Game 60+ Minutes
EA_Aljowhat is going on with the matchmaker? I’ve tried quick play and dropin 3’s there are no matches. We just sit there and it times out 3 times after 3+ minutes. But after waiting 10 minutes with no matches I can leave while that team is still searching and instantly find another group of people. Then I can leave them while they are still searching and find anther one. And another. It takes less than 30 seconds to find another group of people and I can hop rooms like crazy finding more people searching. But none of those groups are getting matched up because then I’ll wait another 10 minutes with one of them and same thing despite me being able to bounce at any time and find a new group. Why are all these people sitting in lobbies not playing each other? There’s no reason I should be waiting 10 minutes then leave and find a new group of people to wait with in 15 seconds . That makes no sense.
No best game location makes matchmaking annoying.
Best game location as an option for matchmaking makes it so the game always finds games that are suitable in terms of ping. Without this, it’s very common to get into games with high ping; which you have two ways of approaching. Either you stick through it, while this puts you at a huge competitive disadvantage as you are playing with high ping, but at least you get to play a game. Or, you can keep leaving games before they start to reset matchmaking to roll the dice and potentially find a game with suitable ping, which is rare at certain times. Please add this option back to matchmaking, not only for WOC, but for every online mode, as it greatly improves the overall experience players have.
Fix the matchmaking in WoC
Hi, feels nice to pay 60% more for a game that is actually broken. Our team has played the whole week and everyday its hours sitting in the dressing room as we are connected to North America opponents while we are based in Europe. Matchmaking fix needs to happen fast. Just bring back the same options as you did have in the 24.. Please react fast as ppl are really getting angry inside the community because you cannot play decent games in EASHL/WoC. Also add the match my room size in there. Thanks bye.