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As a former captain I can feel your pain. Scheduling is literally the worst part about organizing a team to play in this league. Although in my experience, communication with opponents has never really been the biggest issue, I'm sure any proposal to improve the system would be welcome by everyone 👍

My ideal is just eliminating as much of the randomness as possible. Of course, the randomness isn't exactly random under the hood, but various competing factors coming together to produce each outcome. This is reflected to players as perceived randomness. Regardless, puck receptions are a good example. I don't see it as a dichotomy between what we have now and making them fully manual, whatever that would entail. The outcome of puck receptions could be far more straightforward. It currently involves too many variables that contribute to the perceived randomness, and the interaction of some of those variables is poorly designed. As a player, you can still account for a lot of them, but all of them put together lead to gameplay that's far less predictable than it could be. This is why the outcomes often feel somewhat out of control for the player. Taking a page out of Psyonix's book doesn't mean upending the whole game and having to figure out impossible mechanics for each action, such as making pass receptions fully manual. It means a departure from EA's current design philosophy where the various mechanics are confused by too many factors that don't play together so well. The Abilities are a good example of this, by the way. They clash with the game's core mechanics by overpowering them, which makes the core mechanics less reliable and thus seemingly more random. This is reflected to everyone on the ice from goalies (as an example, think of perfect positioning not always leading to the expected outcome due to Close Quarters) to defensemen (being in position for an interception or disruption that gets overrided by the abrupt speed boost and physics-defying phantom stick afforded by some of the shooting traits) and forwards (beating a defenseman only to have Stick 'Em Up cleanly dislodge the puck at an impossible angle).

The problem with that comparison is that RL lends itself to be 'purely skill based' by virtue of the game itself. You control everything about the car and don't have to rely on any assistance from the game. Meanwhile in NHL, you have to rely on the game for quite a lot because how do you for instance make puck receptions fully manual? I think it was mentioned earlier by someone but tbh, one of the issues we have right now is that people are straight up allergic to trying anything different in the game and figuring out the mechanics that underpin things. EA may actually change something by quite a substantial amount, but it takes an absolute age for a new trait / build to gain any traction because there's this weird zeitgeist that unless the absolute top players use it then it's pointless, and then conversely if they do use something then it MUST be good. It's a shame because I think there's a lot to be gained by people if they embraced the jank in the game and fiddled around with builds to get something that works for them. Like, not to burst people's bubbles but you ain't beating FILA / Tunnel / Hreds by playing their game with their builds, if you could then you'd be a top 3/4 team as well, but you're not so try different stuff pls tyvm.

I'd like to reiterate a couple of points I made earlier. This was way back in early September: We got that definitive, non-reversible decision when @Kenu & LA on October 15th announced the following: This was later adjusted, albeit slightly, when Kenu & LA on October 22nd announced that, based on community feedback Big Tipper (Gold and Silver) would be banned. The discussion continued at a brisk pace, and some good points were raised. Two ideas seemed to take off, both quite radical; the banning of all traits and the "one player type for each skater"-suggestion. The banning of all traits seemed to be the more popular one, and it is a suggestion I'd probably support myself (under the right conditions). However, I once again highlighted the importance of foresight and consistency: With just days to go until the first official tournament of NHL 25 (Qualifiers), I would like to emphasize foresight, consistency and structure one final time. LA laid out the proposed structure of the upcoming tournament back in early September. They confirmed the prerequisites and structure for the upcoming tournament in mid-October. They confirmed the tournament structure a second time about a week later (with one small adjustment, that had about a 99 percent approval rating). To completely rip up everything and start over from scratch at this point would be a disservice to SportsGamer, the League Administration and to the competitive structure of the ECL as we know it. Knowing that we can trust what is said in official statements and rulings from LA and SportsGamer, should (and must) be a core tenet of this league. If we don't have that core tenet, if every decision made and communicated is up for suggestion and is subject to change with the proper lobbying, then the rules, trust and structure built over the years are essentially worth nothing. Not to mention the fact that for a radical change like the one suggested - and let's be frank here, it IS a radical change when compared to every other tournament ever played on the website - there should be: - a proper period of time for the topic to be discussed, - a proper period of time for various different official suggestions (on competitive structure) to be drafted, - a proper period of time for these official suggestions to be voted on by the community, - a massive effort made to make sure that as many people in the community as possible get involved and get to have their voices heard (perhaps by way of an official news story, social media posts and emails sent out to all members) We're talking about a process here that could, and honestly probably should, take months. And a process that should be completely transparent all the way, allowing all members - regardless of how active they are on these forums or the website in general - to understand what is going on and to have their voice heard. My personal philosophy has always been that change and innovation works best when applied by the proper amount, with the proper support, over a proper period of time - so yeah, I might be biased. But on this topic, based on the points I've argued, I really believe that it is the only reasonable way to move forward.

Im casting my vote for team BanThemAll. However, that means that the grudge matchup needs to get fixed asap. Banning all traits but still having one player (most often the center) with all offensive or defensive traits would mean that all teams exploited that one player, because why not? Im hoping that if we come to a conclusion to ban all traits, we start seeing even more diversity with different builds.

The traits exacerbate the randomness of the gameplay that's pretty random to begin with, so I'm all for banning everything. The boosts can stay. I've disliked the traits since they were introduced.

After giving it some thought and reading others' takes on this... I'm also team BanThemAll. And here's the reasoning why: The whole X-Factor ability shenanigans were added to the game in order to highlight superstar players with their superstar abilities. I totally understand that concept from an offline mode or online versus point of view, it's a great addition and does what it's supposed to do: recognize greatness. But in WOC game modes, we don't need that at all - everybody can already spend their XP however they see fit under the ruleset of preset builds and be the superstar they want (even though I'd love to see the return of the old custom build system). In WOC the X-Factors don't make anyone a superstar in the way they were intended in the first place if evvvveryone on the ice has them. What the X-Factors bring in 6s especially is instead lower skill gap RNG to a vast variety of in-game scenarios an even stronger meta for each wingers, centers, defencedudes & goalies where everyone exploits weaknesses in the game Therefore a competitive setting with no superpower abilities would balance not only the meta but also the dreadful RNG. EA made the decision on our behalf to remove EE from WOC, which, if you think about it for a second, is actually is a huge step towards the direction I'm suggesting here. And absolutely nobody is complaining about it. Now it's all about finishing what EA started this year and play without the honestly quite unnecessary X-Factor abilities in 6s.

It would be nice to know how exactly the game determines a one on one situation where Shutdown is activated. It's never been clear to me. There are theories floating around, but they're all based on conjecture, such as what a one on one should mean or a perceived consistency in how the trait works.

First of all, I think it's great that you - and by extension the gameplay producer in question - are able to supply us with this type of information. Even though one might argue they should've just released all of this information by themselves (like, years ago....), they haven't and probably never will. So, kudos to you for getting to a position where you can get a 1-on-1 with the gameplay producer on our behalf. Anyway, the traits I'd like to know about are not the obvious ones. The eye-test already tells me/us certain abilities work reasonably well. I'm probably in the minority, but I'd like to know more about the abilities that aren't as popular. Mostly to see if we've been overlooking them, for whatever reason. So, I'd like to know about: - Shutdown (does three things; accuracy for pokes against momentum or at speed in 1 on 1's, buffs shot blocking and buffs hitting strength in 1on1s' - but I'd like to know by how much?) - Quick Pick (what's the buff for interceptions and range of interceptions?) - No Contest (what's the buff for likelihood of winning puck battles?) - Unstoppable Force (what's the buff for strength with the puck and holding on to the puck when off balance?) - Thunder Clap (what's the buff for power and accuracy for point slap shots - does it include one-timers?) - ...and my personal favorite: Spin-O-Rama (what's the buff for speed and puck control in the spin, and whats the buff for shot and pass accuracy coming out of it, and for how long does that buff last?)

I love everything about this message - you basically cleared the table. I’ve bolded my favorites. Also, @FINSeRe is spot on. There have been many great posts overall - kudos to everyone. While I agree that the BT ban was probably the right call since it's such an automatic skill, I also think SG shouldn’t go any further and should let the situation settle. Banning X-Factors one by one isn’t the way to go. People will always start chasing the next "worst" ability, and it becomes an endless cycle. I repeat myself, but every trait has its own issues, so it doesn't make sense to remove some XFs while leaving others. We know some of them are more powerful than others, but in general, it's not fair in my opinion. Sopuli explained why quite well. It's easy to be hindsight-driven, but I think when the first-ever XF bans took place, it was a mistake. While it did make a somewhat shitty game a little more enjoyable, we should have just banned them all. So, I’m not criticizing the end result, just the approach. But as I said, it's easy to look back with hindsight, and I was also advocating for individual trait bans back in the day. This brings us to the point where I think BT is the only one that should be put in "jail" at the moment. The next step is either to ban them all or let the game run as EA intended, with XFs included - even though I don’t like the latter option. For me, the Sauna Cup was easily the best and most enjoyable gaming experience I’ve had since the X-Factors were introduced to the game. It just felt natural, in a good way. I'm sure many of you would have enjoyed it as well. I remember counting the GF and GA per game, which were almost identical to ECL. I know it was a different NHL game then, but when it comes to hockey, creativity never dies. There will always be different ways to generate scoring chances; you just need to adjust. If we ban all traits, the start could be frustrating because we have gotten used to building our style around those X-Factors. However, after some time, I believe most of us would come to love it. As for the goalies, they aren’t overpowered; they’re just broken. EA's game mechanics are so RNG overall that goalies will save empty nets and let in soft goals, regardless of whether there are XFs or not.