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Hey NHL Gamers! On Monday, the 28th of August, EA SPORTS hosted a press event in Stockholm ahead of the release of NHL 18. NHLGamer was invited to this event and this time I got the opportunity to keep you guys updated on everything that happened. Regular staff member @The_Alpha_Furyan also attended the event, however this time in his role as eSports ambassador for the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). Among the guests we also saw other NHLGamer members, such as "Synergy Hockey" defenseman @Supremski, "Unknown" defensemen @Pontus T (aka "Terasniska") and "Lavetten" forward and captain @Zalaz as well as many other top players from the Swedish community and plenty of journalists. The day started off with an introduction to new game features by EA SPORTS NHL producers Clement Kwong and Evan Dexter, before it was time to get some hands-on experience ourselves. What we got to see was an impressive gaming lounge setup with a total of 12 PlayStation 4 consoles, six on each side, all running a final build of NHL 18. Imagine playing the 6 vs. 6 ECL Elite finals in here? That honestly sounds like a dream come true. One of my personal highlights of the day was playing the new THREES game mode, when Clement and Evan also decided to jump in on the action - it was so much fun! We also used the opportunity to talk to Clement Kwong and Evan Dexter for a short interview, addressing some of the questions and feedback that were submitted to NHLGamer via the website and social media channels. We will also release a second interview from the event which took place in Helsinki the day after shortly, so make sure you stay tuned for that as well! Here's what we have been talking about: Q: You have lowered the overall player ratings in Versus for NHL18. What about Hockey Ultimate Team? Towards the end of a game's life cycle, we usually got a lot of players with a 99 rating. Will we see a similar result at the end of NHL 18, or will the best players be rated lower there as well? A: We haven't released all of the HUT ratings yet, only a few ones. In terms of player items and ratings it will work pretty much similar to last year's game from launch onwards, e.g. when it comes to valuable card types like Movember and Team Of The Year. Though we do understand that people think there are too many 99 rated player items in the game, the reality is there aren't that many. They are meant for the elite tier of players that can either buy them from the auction house or obtain them from playing plenty of games, so not a lot of players can actually get their hands on a card like that. When you take a step back and look at the impact of lowering some of the overall ratings, you will find greater separation between low-tier and mid-tier players. Compared to this, higher tier players do not make as much of a difference. Q: A controversial topic for us NHLGamers lately has been spamming the L1 button instead of using poke checks or hits to create takeaways. Are you aware of this technique and are you planning to do anything about it? A: That is where the defensive skillstick is a big gamechanger, because you can start angling people off and extend your stick or sweep it to cover passing and shooting lanes. Hopefully what that will do is add another toolset to properly defend instead of spamming shotblock (L1). One of the biggest reasons that you see this spam is the limited defensive toolset in previous games: You could poke check, shotblock or dive shotblock. The goal with the defensive skillstick is to be able to have independent control of your stick from your lower and upper body separation, so if you have stronger fidelity in terms of being able to guide an attacker in one direction while also not leaving an open lane because now you can actually control your stick, then I think you probably will see less of the shotblock spam just because the toolset now is wider. That is the goal at least. Q: Did you consider adding additional counter-measures to this technique, such as a one second cooldown for the L1 animation? A: We have not considered it at this time but we will see if there is any community-based feedback in this matter when we launch the game. I think it will be too heavy-handed to make all shot block attempts having a one second cooldown. Point being, we will take a look at all gameplay feedback we can get. (Don't worry, we still talked to them about the L1-spam in Helsinki the day after.) Q: Personally, I have been affected quite a bit by players "de-syncing", also known as "looping" Hockey Ultimate Team games, so they are quit without showing up on any leaderboards. Are you aware of this issue and how does the team deal with these cheaters? A: One of the things we even have done this year is really ramp up the security effort. Obviously having game live service is very important for us, and as a part of that we have been monitoring Competitive Seasons cheating. We actually have a team that has been enforcing measures like sending reminders and handing out temporary bans, just to name a few examples. I think it has provided a healthier Competitive Seasons experience for all our players, and in NHL 18 that will continue to be our focus. Q: You added a couple new leagues to NHL 18. How does the process of adding European leagues generally work? Does the dev team usually take the first steps, or is it the league's representatives that are looking for ways to be part of the game? A: Every year we are looking into new partners and new leagues to add to the game. A big part of it is obviously the authenticity of the sport, as there are many hockey leagues in the world, not only the ones in North America. Staying authentic to the sport is a very important consideration for us. We are also listening to what content our core fans want and what leagues they want to see in the game. It's more of a partnership with us and the league than them coming to us or we coming to them. Good example of that is Champions Hockey League this year. We are very exited to have all the licenses for all these team ready, in order for us to support a new tournament that people are watching across Europe. Having CHL in the game is a big opportunity for us. There are a lot of community requests that we have to evaluate in terms of what our fans want the most and in terms of which opportunities for new partnerships we have. We try to add new experiences and new leagues to play with every year. Luckily this time we got HockeyAllsvenskan and Champions Hockey League. Q: How did you come up with the idea of adding a 3 vs. 3 arcade mode with NHL THREES? A: One of the things we looked at early on was research of what our players want. Not only what they think about our game, but also what they think about hockey as a sport in general. When we asked our players about their most memorable video game experiences, they talked about things like NHL 94, NFL Street or NBA Jam. Those types of games were easy to pick up and to play with your friends. Those are the kind of experiences that people still talk about. Some of the guys in our development team still play games like the ones I just mentioned. Combining our goal of bringing new experiences as well as understanding how our players approach sports video games is the way we came up with adding NHL THREES. Q: Can you talk about the new HUT Challenges feature in Hockey Ultimate Team? Will they be an integral part of the game mode's experience? A: I believe the challenges will be a big thing in HUT this year. In NHL 17, we started to introduce post launch features, and combining that with sets everything is now themed from a week to week basis. HUT challenges just adds another layer and dimension to that so a lot of the rewards you will see coming out of the challenges will help you to complete sets. HUT as it is right now is very geared towards online competition, so having challenges come in gives fans that like to play HUT but don't necessarily want to play in an online competitive arena more ways to engange with that mode and allows them to be able to enjoy the dynamic content throughout the year outside of a competitive environment. Q: A lot of fans playing the game want to see the return of GM Connected. What is the reason it did not make its way into NHL 18? A: We get that question a lot. It's funny, because when we had that mode in the game it was not a very commonly played mode. Since it got removed from the game we have had lots of requests of bringing it back into the game so it's something we talk about pretty heavily every year. It has never been off our table completely. We still look at it, but we always want to prioritize what we think is best for the development of the game. We will take it sort of year by year to continue looking at it. For NHL 18, our focus was on 3 vs. 3 and to bring more of the new NHL into the game. Talking to different fans, obviously one part is managing a virtual league with your teams. But another big part is actually the social piece like we have in EASHL. So this year we were adding to that with all the 3 vs. 3 modes across the game. In terms of taking the best pieces of GM Connected and what people appreciate, that's where we need to spend more time with research. Q: What is the EA SPORTS NHL team doing in terms of trying to make the game more attractive as an eSport? A: FIFA has sort of gone first in terms of what EA wants to achieve in competitive gaming. I think they are trying out really interesting things that our fans are into, like FUT Champions for example. It has been really successful and the fans are really enjoying it, so I think from our perspective we are trying to learn from FIFA as in how to apply it to NHL in a way that fits the product. There are different directions that we could take. We could look into it as an EASHL team based experience or 1 vs. 1 HUT based experience, and I think we need to figure out which direction is right for this franchise. We need to evaluate how FIFA and other franchises are doing before we pick a direction. Q: After FIFA, Madden NFL has been adopting the Frostbite engine this year. Why has NHL not made the switch yet? A: The answer to that question is very similar to the eSport question. Frostbite is something that we will look at in FIFA and Madden to learn from, also keeping community feedback in mind. We will continue to evaluate the engine and when it makes sense we will figure out what it actually would mean to the NHL franchise. Is it just better graphics? Or is it enabling us to make brand new experiences in both offline and online modes? We need to figure out where we want to take it. Q: What is the reason you allow players to lock their position in 1 vs. 1 modes such as Hockey Ultimate Team? A: We want players to be able to play the game the way they want, and a lot of people do enjoy the player locked experience. In terms of the way it affects the overall balance of competitive gaming: For more casual games it's OK to position lock, but not for Competitive Season games - that is where we have seen feedback indicating it's not the best solution. It's something the team and I have started to talk about and we will look at it this year. That's it, we hope you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for the second interview which will be released on our YouTube channel. @esdor for NHLGamer.com Follow us on social media! Facebook (NHLGamer) Twitter (NHLGamerCOM) YouTube (NHLGamer Official) Instagram (NHLGamerOfficial) Twitch (NHLGamerTwitch)