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After a month of planning Kenu came up with that pun.

Hello everyone ! I wonder how long will we have to endure the incompetence and inability of EA Sports to produce a finished game? The matchmaking is completely bugged to such an extent that it can take almost one hour to get to face an opponent. I do not even talk about server lags.... Last night we (Team France) needed more than two hours to play just two games against Stayhard Stallions cause of matchmaking errors. It's completely unacceptable! ECL's friends commissioners, you are now close from the publishers of this game, tell them to stop taking us for shitheads with a game sold and not completed, updating tuners that completely pollute the experience of play... And ask them why the hell did they change the matchmaking process?? Evenings like the one you experienced last night make you want only one thing: sell the game Still sorry to Stayhard Stallions team for this amazing evening, but we unfortunately suffered as you suffered. Yann, Team France alternate C

I agree completely. It's not about the fact that we get shoved with yearly release with full price tag point. It's about the competence of the developer team. I think they have the heart and passion but unfortunately not the developer skills to get it done in a year. This however doesn't matter since NHL series sales have been stagnant for years no matter the end product. What screams the good old f-you, at least for me as a consumer, is the fact that they re-did the whole 'World of CHEL' mode from ground up, including netcode for the game, released a beta, received the complaints about the Dressing Room Errors and matchmaking issues from players and still the didn't make a public note about the issue even being acknowledged. Now here we sit a month later and all I've read on the official forums is "We have identified the issue and are working on it". After that it's been tumbleweed and silence with vague promises of maybe deploying a patch in the coming weeks. We are living the prime time of annual EASHL games (ECL included) up until new years and it's been a month of uphill climb for the player base. It's just disgusting how we are being treated. Dear god, some of us even paid extra money to get to try play this game three days early.

End global poverty once and for all or fix a game for young wealthy white males!? Easy decision. Let's build an ark and sail to Canada!

I sympathize with your discontent. Two hours to get two games going is not acceptable. I wouldn't spend a dime nor play the game if it wasn't for club games / ECL, so it certainly sucks to have that kind of issues in the game. That being said, I haven't experienced that much problems with the matchmaking since the patch. A dressing room error once in a while but but I can't even remember when was the last time we would've had it happen twice in a row. Can you specify what kind of problems you experienced last night? Was it related to challenge club (private) games specifically? I would be happy to help if possible. As for the discussion on recycling the game yearly with a 70€ fee, well, it sucks big time but such is the world we live in. I assume EA has to pay the license fee for the NHL yearly and it probably makes up a major part of their expenses for making the game. They have a monopoly on this niche market; they know it and they exploit it. While the player base could, if it wanted to, for example boycott the new game and play one version for two years at a time, it is not a very realistic scenario. The only solution with real and possibly permanent implications would be that another game studio started developing another hockey game. The NHL license would probably stick with EA since it is the richest game publisher in the world and thus they'd hold an advantage on the market for casual players. I don't think the EASHL player base much cares for official licenses, but it would still need to grow a lot to become sufficient in size to be able to make it viable economically.

I wholeheartedly agree these issues are unacceptable. One thing I want to point out in general is the importance of learning to differentiate between developers, producers and those who sit on the money. To me it's quite obvious why the game is released once a year. Patches and tuners come out and people complain - how is DLC different? A patch is just a downloadable instalment of improvements (arguable) - why couldn't the DLC do the same amount of damage? Well, sure, it could theoretically speaking make a change to the development cycle and the time being available for development, but how realistic is that? The NHL (the league) is a season based business that gets hyped up for the new season. As a business, wouldn't you want a big push of feature updates just in time for that - even if it was in the form of DLC? If anything, I'd be worried that a DLC that could basically be maintaining the game rather than developing it can actually make the available resources even smaller. The dilemma I see is: Make big changes, break stuff = get complaints about things being better before and why did they have to do anything except for update the rosters Update rosters, make minimal adjustments = get complaints about why we're being charged for just a roster update. I love the passion of our community and I can tell you that we have together helped in fixing a lot of bugs just in NHL 19. Just know that the devs are just as eager as you to have a good product and the best way we can help is to provide as constructive feedback as possible. If there is an issue, try to record it on video/screenshots and send it to me with as detailed explanations - perhaps you have a theory of why it doesn't work or what steps need to be taken to cause the error or not cause an error. All of these bits and pieces of information help. The other approach is to go to the barricades, which is also sometimes necessary. Just think about how you articulate that feedback if you do. If you say you'd rather play the beta, the people in charge of the budgets may say "ok, so we can have the game done by July then and not spend extra resources on beta feedback and polishing". 😄 To conclude, I want to underline that I am definitely not perfectly happy with the game and there's a lot of issues that grind my gears. I also don't want to say that complaining is a bad idea - let's face it, that's the only way for a company to know that people think they are doing something wrong. All I'm saying is let's do our best to be constructive with our feedback so it's clear what we want, as simplifying things into saying stuff like "Ehy would they waste a whole year on the new skating - could have kept the NHL 18 skating just as well" may actually make some decision-maker say "Yeah, why did we spend all that money? Let's put that effort into something else".

It is fun how EA Sports releases a new game every year, even though the previous game was not finished. They should focus more to make the game stable instead of releasing a new game every year. Fun when Rammer told Kenu in the interview that the only had 1 year to complete the game? Why make a whole new game every year?

As long as the casual gamer will buy the game, Electronic Arts won't notice any drastic sales decrease and they will continue to please their shareholders with decent sales. The casual gamer isn't really into EASHL. We are a small minority, and as long as there is no competitor like the NHL 2k-series that the casual gamers will turn to we can't really put any real pressure on EA. They will probably fix some bugs here and there in EASHL and have a decent game around next summer, but who cares when NHL 20 is around the corner?

Careful planning, if I might add. 😉

The matchmaking has been much worse in years past and the 6s tournaments at the time carried on just fine, so there's no need for the hot take that the 'community' as we know it is going to suddenly croak because EA screwed the pooch yet again.

I get your point Kenu, really... But you guys are doing an amazing job to help us having a crazy entertaining way of playing. You spent hours, days, weeks and monthes to create, tjink, create again and so on to release what is probably the most dynamic league in the world. But all the job you do men gets just killed by this shitty matchmaking (and it goes like this since the early beta). I'm not even talking about the gameplay actualy, some will like it, some others not, that's the deal. But damned, this matchmaking issue is a 1st grade year matter for a dev....... This kind of fact could (i say COULD) kill the ECL

Solid LD/RD looking for club to play in ecl. If interrested invite to tryouts and send msg psn id Lambu89

Better late than ever Looking for a new club for the upcoming ECL, Pro or Elite. Position: LD PSN: Terasniska Swedish/English

32 old experienced offensive player looking for team! Played eashl since 2012-13. Mostly in murohoki. Looking: lite/pro team Postion: lw/rw Language: Finnish/ENG Psn: HOLYDIVERS https://nhlgamer.com/player.php?playerID=375 http://consolehockey.com/profile/kaakeli/teamplay

Speedy Bros Hockey brothers are ready for ecl7 #stormiscoming#whereispuck! 😂

Moro. HC Finlandia laiturin paikka vapaana maalitykille (LW). Laitoin kutsua. Tosiaan tänään alkaa ECL Lite pelit ottelulla HC Red Devilsia vastaan klo. 21 ja tarvitaan lisävahvistuksia. Lämmittelypelit alkaen klo. 20.

Team name: The Black Jacks Team Abkürzung: TBJ Team captains (PSN IDs): Original-SnuS, Freeman7187, Afc_Tschitsch Team roster (PSN IDs): Afc_Tschitsch NHLDennis86 Bille1990 Cami__7 Burban__ Tornado-HR Freeman7187 Krinke Tron1x90 Rudy-51_ Original-SnuS EA SPORTS club overview: https://www.easports.com/nhl/clubs/ps4/The Black Jacks

Early as always

Good Old Times with @Playmaker , @Nr-0847, @devilfish333, @exrelax, @AssA, @Asche , @RoyceRoyal