MartindalexC

It has come to our attention that teams are attempting to make transfers beyond the first stage of the qualifiers, as such we would like to issue a clarification of the rules regarding transfers during the qualifiers - to issue this we will be using rule 7.2. “League Administration can add further clarification to existing rules if deemed necessary. If League Administration is required to process a case that is not covered by any of the existing rules, it can add new rules throughout a league/tournament to cover these scenarios. Once a decision has been made by LA, they must supply both parties involved in the case with an explanation showing how they came to their decision, as well what rules were invoked.” Ultimately, the reason why the regular season (and by extension the playoffs) have a transfer deadline is to stop teams progressing to the playoffs, then cannibalising another team to load up and bolster their chances of going on an extended playoff run. It’s unfair to other teams that finalised their roster well in advance, and so we have had a transfer deadline for as long as tournaments have been run here. Qualifiers are relatively new and as a quirk of them being categorised as part of the season (and regular season at that), they haven’t had a clearly communicated transfer deadline – until now. Going forward, teams will only be able to make player acquisitions in stage 1 of the qualifiers (with the usual transfer restrictions remaining in place), meaning that a team may bring players in early-on to boost their chances, but once they progress to the next stage – whether that be a secondary group stage (see: Pro Qualifiers going on at the moment), or an outright playoff style series (see: Elite qualifiers) – they will no longer be able to add players. This clarification maintains the competitive integrity of the qualifiers and we believe that the vast majority of teams have been sticking to it unofficially, we just wanted to codify it and make sure that the structure of the qualifiers cannot be gamed or abused in this way.

1) Server Selection Issues Recently there has been discussion regarding LA and server selection between central European teams, EU North East based teams, and the idea of ‘home-ice / server advantage’.To be concise, we have been aware for a while now that sometimes central European teams (specifically German-based ones) have issues connecting to the EU North East server, resulting in higher than expected pings and packet loss. This came to a head a few days ago where multiple series had to be played with the EU North East team treating the EU North server (located in Stockholm, Sweden) as their ‘home’ server, as opposed to the EU North East one. We decided at the time to go with this compromise as we felt it unfair to force German teams to play with legitimately unplayable connections. Additionally, we also felt that the idea of swapping players out from the affected team so that no-one had the ping issue was a wholly unfair proposal. Ultimately in our eyes, this comes down to a couple of important points. One, while we understand the advantage of playing on a server that is located closer to the majority of your team, vs the other team. Teams also have to realise that there is a difference between server advantage based on geographical location, and server advantage by way of the server itself not working as intended. German players getting 60ms+ with 20% packet loss is so incredibly obvious that the server not working as intended, and any players that even attempt to say otherwise are in our eyes being unsportsmanlike, because I think we all know for a fact that if the roles were reversed and these EU North East teams had the same issue connecting to the German server, they would balk at the thought of ‘just playing’, or being told to ‘just swap out players’ – so please, can these players in question get some much-needed perspective and think ahead for just a slight amount. Two, in this case, the difference in ping between the EU North, and EU North East server is functionally minimal. We appreciate that it is frustrating having to move away from your preferred server but can we please be frank here. If you have a good to great connection ping-wise to the EU North East server, chances are you’re going to have a good connection to the EU North server, Stockholm and Helsinki are not ‘that’ far away from each other. Furthermore, please consider the fact that a central European team’s ping is not going to differ wildly between the two servers either, so it’s not like they are gaining a meaningful upside in connection quality by having the server switch from EU North East to EU North. Furthermore, LA has not decided on a whim to tell teams to play on the EU North server. Again, we’ve been made aware about the issue that central Europeans have in connecting to the EU North East server a while back, and we verified that the players in question were having legitimate issues that lined up with what we have previously seen – in other words, we can confidently say that these cases were not manufactured in an attempt by the central European teams to ever so slightly gain back some ‘server advantage’. Finally, to set the record straight. LA did not come to this decision because another LA member was involved. We arrived at this conclusion and suggested the process well before an LA member’s team happened to be impacted by the server issue – as can be evidenced if need be. To be clear, the LA member in question was not a participant in the LA discussion about what should happen in the series where they were involved. Additionally, we will not tolerate lies being spread by individuals on ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter) or other social media simply because they are upset that they lost and want to blame someone else instead of their on-ice performance. Hopefully, this post makes it abundantly clear that all we are trying to accomplish is to make it so that teams aren’t punished for clear and obvious server-related issues that are far from simply being explained as server advantage. To end this portion of the text, please find below the procedure to follow in the event that this or other connection issues presents themselves: Start on ‘home’ server Check in-game connection (note: not the lobby screen before the game begins, as that can sometimes give unreliable ping that turns out to be fine in game) If substantially higher than expected ping or packet loss is present, the player impacted should record evidence of this Please record video clearly showing the problem is in the game you are supposed to play to remove any doubt of tampering The player should then restart their router and console in an attempt to see if the issue is their own connection, or the server itself Both teams should change lobby host / captain Attempt to restart the game, taking video evidence of the ping and / or packet loss If the issue is still present, then the team affected should start a support ticket detailing the issue and attach the aforementioned video clips as evidence At which point LA will decide whether the server switch should go ahead or not Edit: Please use this form to provide information to League Administration about all the server issues you or your team are experiencing: https://forms.gle/iVbP4tak6aDysqAR7 The information provided through the form will be shared with EA SPORTS in an effort to assist them to tackle the issue(s).

Hello SportsGamers,  The wait is almost over and in under a week (for the x-factor pre-orderers amongst us) we will have our hands on the new NHL 24. If the technical test was anything to go off, this new NHL will bring with a breath of fresh air to online gameplay that has gotten a little stale over the past few years. In the run up to this release, and with your feedback from the technical test, EA have released a change list that will be immediately active once you load up the game. You can of course find the full list of changes here, in essence though this post looks to provide an overview of what are the most interesting changes made by EA, as well as the impact I think that they will have, as such this is an opinion piece and so our views may differ.      Above: NoSleeves sits down with Lead Design Director Mike Inglehart to discuss the changes Hybrid Controls and Goalie Controls Whether it was previously planned and this announcement was an attempt at garnering good will from the community or not, NHL 24 will have the hybrid control scheme as an option for skaters, and goalies will be able to toggle whether they want the auto-positioning feature that was present in the technical test.   Gameplay changes Pressure system Based on feedback from players during the technical test, EA have decided to tweak how much of an impact simply possessing the puck in the offensive zone has regarding building pressure by 30%. Meanwhile shots on net and big hits are now the “best way to build pressure”. In addition to this, teams must stay within the offensive zone more consistently too to maintain their pressure as the rate in which the meter decreases when the offensive team is not in the zone has been increased by 100%. Overall, these two changes when paired together mean that getting ‘full pressure’ will take more time, and / or require the offensive team to be more proactive about it, as opposed to simply pinging it around the boards and playing keep away. Personally, these are a great set of changes and should reward teams for being more clinical at managing their offensive opportunities than their opponents.   Goalie fatigue system Personally, I only really tried goalie in club open practice so cannot really comment on the potential ups and downs on the tweaks mentioned. That said however, being able to see the current energy level of a goalie is a nice addition.   Physics-based contact (hitting) Hitting has the potential to be a worrying change depending on how strong the general standard of hits are once everyone figures out the controls as big hits now deal slightly more stamina damage. One area that is a welcome change is that reverse hits will now result in an animation slow down from the player throwing the hit, additionally player size will have more of an impact, with smaller players being less likely to throw an effective reverse hit against bigger and stronger players. This change might incentivise players to trend towards larger players in order to account for this ‘mismatch’ on the ice, but it remains to be seen how effective reverse hits will be in actual competitive gameplay. Additionally, hip checks have received a nerf in low-speed situations, so you’ll be less likely to see someone getting absolutely rocked a hip check unless they are carrying some decent amount of speed with them. Lacrosse Deke Mercifully, the lacrosse deke has been reduced in its effectiveness – somewhat. It will now be tied to a player’s deking attribute, with higher ratings resulting in a faster execution, this however does not say whether it impacts the success rate of the deke so while someone with 60 deking will be slower than 99, they’ll both end up completing it – which in my opinion kind of misses a major part of the issue with it.   X-Factor Tuning This is where the juicy changes are in my opinion. Close quarters has been nerfed (no this is not a drill keep calm) so that you now have to be within 20ft of the net for it to activate (how on earth it was originally 30ft and how anyone thought that was a good idea I’ll never know). In addition to this, the bonus accuracy when activated is reduced by 50%, with the superstar version by hit by a 75% decrease. All in all, a nerf to close quarters was needed and despite it taking a while for EA to get around to it, they at least have and hopefully means that it is in a good enough place to return to the competitive trait pool.   Human goalies tuning Again, I have very (read: none-existent) experience playing goalie in the technical test, however one thing that immediately pops out and is quite frankly borderline crazy for EA to change in the way they have is the way the instinct system works. As a rough rundown for people who aren’t aware, one feature that has been added to goalies for NHL 24 is the ability to hold the right stick in a direction and loosely anticipate where a shot is going to go, anticipate correctly and they receive a bonus to their stats and a higher chance of saving a shot in that direction, anticipate incorrectly however and they would find themselves on the receiving end of an attribute reduction and thusly a reduction in the likelihood of saving the shot. In short, this gave goalies a risk-reward system to leverage against skaters and give them an edge based on in game knowledge and skill. Well, the risk part of the risk-reward system has been completely cut away with the reward part being buffed (to an unknown amount). Now, if a goalie anticipates incorrectly, they receive no penalty, while if they get it right, they get all of the upside. On it’s own removing the risk part probably isn’t the worst idea, goalies have a rough job at the best of times, however buffing the result of a correct anticipation is sketching me out and makes the system way too forgiving (well, completely forgiving let’s be honest). It’s fine to buff it, but keep the negative. On the flip side, it’s fine to remove the negative, but keep the reward at the same level. Doing both just seems like an overreaction and makes it ripe for it to be incredibly overpowered on release, then resulting in either a year of ridiculous stone wall goalies, or an overcorrection from EA about a month into release.   Pokecheck During the technical test if you tried to poke check and then move off, you’d find that your player would take an age to start skating and consequently get blasted past by the puck carried like you were a pylon. To counter this EA have now reverted the speed loss to NHL 23’s level. Per EA’s own words, the recovery will still be lower (I presume they mean animation recovery), so while your player will still be slow out of the blocks if you mistime a poke and a pivot, you won’t lose that much speed if you do the poke while already skating.   General Gameplay Tuning As anyone that played the technical will have noticed, the nets had a slight tendency to become knocked loose and be taken for a walk by passing skaters. To remedy this, the rate at which nets can become dislodged has been reduced for NHL 24. Additionally, the glass is less likely to break so random stoppages have been cut down on. One thing that has not been mentioned are the broken sticks that they added, as well as penalties like cross checking and elbowing. While these are good quality of life additions for offline play and add a bit of immersion, they are wholly inappropriate for online play and it is hoped that they don’t actually ship WOC with these additions activated as they are things that are random, and completely out of the player’s ability to control – which is for obvious reasons are not great in an esport situation. ------ What do you think of the changes? Are you happy with what you’ve seen or would you like to see further changes for the release of NHL 24?

Hey SportsGamers, EA have just announced that once again we will have the opportunity to play an early build of the game in the run up to the release of NHL 23 - to sign up please click here! Typically these technical tests are fairly bare bones and feature a stripped back version of the game that will release down the line, that said however they offer a great insight into how the game is shaping up, as well as the opportunity to provide EA with our own feedback and suggestions regarding the state of play of the game.  In terms of modes and features to expect, we are fairly confident that EASHL will be the main attraction as this always offers up a lot of feedback due to the sheer number of players that are involved in a single game. As for features, this is the first news of any kind for NHL 23, so we really have no inkling as to what EA has focussed on for the next iteration of the series - should be noted as well that it was recently announced that FIFA will make use of crossplay so that players are not segregated based on their console of choice, perhaps EA has extended this ability to the NHL developers? As always, spots in the technical test are limited and offered on a first come first serve basis, of course providing that you sign up for the test you will undoubtedly receive a code once it is available, which EA is scheduling for late August. The code to gain access to the game will be provided in the inbox for the email of the EA account that you signed up with - we encourage all players to quickly check their EA account settings and see if it is paired with the PSN account that you think it is to avoid confusion and possible aggravation on the day. Furthermore, let it be known for our European members that our upcoming ECL season will be moving to PS5 and so we encourage all players that are signing up to try to make as much use of the technical test as possible by choosing the PS5 version.    What are you most looking forward to see? More offensive weapons? Easier ways to defend? Improved goaltending? No matter what, please feel free to share below!