Depch

Ok so that adds to the situation that majority of the old players switched the platform from Xbox to PS when the consoles were upgraded from PS3->PS4 and Xbox360->Xbox One. This I heard out from Kenu. There seems to be no oldschool following for xbox anymore and those sales statistics won't surely help, things used to be quite even. Add to that the topic that you can use a xbox style gamepad on PS effectively there really is no question what system you should go for if you plan to play EASHL. Xbox is out of the question for me.

I am able to write there now so might as well use this one. I have deleted the one I had made. This is the one that should be improved upon. We're continuing this discussion there.

My take on this is that forums as a platform for majority of people are getting outdated. People do want to discuss and share things they have interest in. This happens in other communities, so why not here as well. What might explain this is that the PS players have a group of their own that is active, I was not aware of this. Anyone coming to the site outside of the PS community probably agree with my viewpoints. Having a united active XBOX & PS community might be stronger as a core. As of current the forums/chatbox does not provide this sensation of a "community". English works out in any other community just fine so this should not be a factor. Yes I agree that such a service should not be used solely because of VoIP. Even the old Xbox voice chat we used in EASHL before was perfect for it and nothing else was required. I can't see why things would have been downgraded during the years with that so it's not the reason for it. Perhaps this is the reason why PSN community fourishes. For an outsider of PS community things look quiet and scattered here. Part of why this discussion exists. I don't think anyone expects a full participation. Just something more of a sensation of a community, but I was not aware of that PS is having a party of their own elsewhere. Great to know that the scheduling is easy as it is.

I appreciate your comments and feedback. Discussion is always required to make improvements to any community. The old NHLGamer server will work out even better as it most likely has more members as a basis, I just did not know about it and did find a link, nor did I find any discussion about it in the forums (tried the search function for word discord). That is why this thread exists. What I am trying to be vocal here about is that as a newcomer to the revamped NHLGamer site and being experienced in other competitive gaming communities how things could be improved. This is not because of ego or trying to get a position of foothold in it. This is merely for the good for all. I just wanted to clear this out. I think you are getting me wrong. Discord would not be rivaling the forums, for they can feed off from eachother. If to begin with not everyone uses this site then how will it be fragmenting things more. To be honest the forums don't look very active at all for the player base it has minus for the chatbox and I think there is a reason behind it. Forums are getting outdated slowly and younger generations require more interactivity. That's why it's a step forward I think. So if anything a positive success on creating a good service of such kind would enhance the sensation of community. If there is no web page / forums, there cannot be any links to the chat service either, they are both required. At best a more interactive service would replace majority of the stuff from forums though. Obviously I am not in a position to make any decisions, but I am in a position to raise discussion and give insights as well as is everyone else. Those separate channels are very common for any other competitive gaming scenes and they work out well because of the large user base they have, actually they are required to keep things under control. Danger here is that things stay so scattered that things just fall a part little by little. Hop in or stay scattered, sounds harsh but that is my two cents as things do look quite scattered now. There is nothing personal here and I hope no one takes it so, just stuff for positive constructive feedback. [edit] ps. I just checked the server out and it's with the name PS4 for it, I would not separate the servers between Xbox/PS but rather create roles for PS/Xbox players accordingly. I also cannot write anything there currently. Roles for admins, team captains etc. When captains have their own roles they are easy to be approached and you see who is online etc. for arranging games etc. pps. Perhaps there is the reason why that server did not kick off last time as even I could not find anything with the search word discord for info of that, if people did not know about it or could not find there on their own?

I have a server that I reserved with the NHLGamer name for Kenu or any other of the admins. Any NHLGamer admin joins and I'll toss them the admins for the server. If people like the chatbox and it works well enough then a discord does not have to be official, but it can work for people who use discord already to talk about the games / ECL etc. If a critical mass should take over at one point then it can work out well for arranging games, freeagency etc. Below is a pic of the current channels I have created for it as a reserve. And below is the invite link for the server that I set as never to expire. https://discord.gg/cTu4YqP

Allright, fair enough. I could see that happen if it does not spring enough activity from the beginning or it would just require resilient people to keep it on in team captains and the staff at least to eventually create buzz around it. It might be still good investment for the future. Great to know that the chatbox is doing that service here.

Oh yes. I will add that if you guys run an IRC channel already, which server is it / and what channel? I will also add why as a service I think IRC can do everything something like Discord does why Discord is better. -Better to unify as many competitive gamers under one platform so you don't have to create new logins and run many different programs. I think Quakenet used to serve this best. Finnish scene ran some leagues for years in IRCnet, but it was separated from the stock of gamers as majority were in Quakenet. This made marketing leagues much harder. -I do not want to underestimate people, but I think for younger people who have never heard of IRC a service like this is a better solution. -You don't have to find out about all the different channels yourself and add them to a modified join list or startup commands, instead you just have to join the server once and you have all the relevant channels opened up there. It's newbie friendly. I'm also interested in other options and open discussions / opinions.

A lot of the online competitive scenes have their own chat service somewhere. In the past this was done via different IRC servers and to have a channel there used to be pretty common, but many gaming communities have moved away from IRC to new services like Discord etc. I am not to promote Discord solely here, but I can only speak of it as an example as I have experience of it from the past few months. Overwatch & Rocket league and have their members at Discord at least and the rocket league server for example has over 4000 online members at the moment. This seems to be the new direction, IRC is dying out and new services taking that place. It might be good to make a jump to a such a service where a lot of the gaming communities already exists. This makes the jump for new players easier to get in to. I know there are many similar services like Curse etc. but have no clue which one is the most popular, but I know Overwatch competitive scene & Rocket league use discord. We made a jump from AIM to Discord just recently with our tiny NHL94 community (Yes, lael AIM. :)). I tried to look for one in the nhlgamer forums but could not find any centralized chat for it, maybe I just missed it? Or perhaps one could be impelemented if there is enough interest. The Overwatch Finnish community in Discord has several sub channels created to that server of their own. You can have a core channel for general chat, then something for like league chat, a chat for looking for games, chat looking for players/promoting yourself/if you're able to sub etc etc. Everyone joining that server can see all those channels so it's like having your own IRC server where you see all the channels. Teams can create their own servers to Discord as well and to have a publi chat and private ones for the members only. Discord also comes up with a VoIP, but I know the Overwatch players tend to use something different like Mumble for VoIP as it's much lighter. The con is that Discord is quite heavy to use. I'll import a picture from Discord Rocket league server as an example here below. If something like this already exists I just missed out on it from the forums and if not perhaps it could be of an open discussion. I have reserved the server NHLGamer in Discord for the admins and will release it for Kenu or Lurkins if something should come out of it. Of course there are other services as well that might be better, but I know a lot of competitive gamers already use Discord. In summary it's good for text based chat and something that that's taken IRC over for gaming sevices, but I would not use the VoIP in this service. Even bots can be used in the service. Open for discussion. You can use it by web browser or download apps to desktop/laptop/mobile.

That looks perfect. The left stick closer up to there where my thumb rests more naturally. This will surely work out well. Thank you very much for the suggestion and confirmation from AF liking it as well. I'm sure the controller preferation will not be an issue deciding this.

Hello. I'm an oldschool player to NHL series but new to the revamped site of nhlgamer and it's EASHL approach. Played a lot of EA NHL since NHL Hockey on PC and we ran some online leagues in the Finnish scene from NHL98 untill NHL07 on PC. A lot of the leagues were actually run at nhlgamer.com at that time (can find some of them from wayback machine from example, hehe). EA stopped doing NHL games for PC around that time or soon after and part of that hockey community made a jump to EASHL hockey since NHL08 on NG consoles (xbox360) and we played for those for a couple of seasons. After NHL11 our team died down and people moved to play other games as did I. My experience from NHL games from recent years is only from NHL94 which we play on NA leagues, but player base is decreasing there and I'm thirsting for competition in hockey games. EASHL has been the most fun I have ever had playing hockey games. I can recognize some familiar team names from the turn of the decade still in HC Sika & Northern Stars at least for example. Our team name was HC Einari, few might still recall that. I have not decided on which console to come back to. I remember liking the gamepad for Xbox a lot more than PS, but player base seems to be a lot bigger in PS and that will most likely sway the decision to that side unless there are some familiar oldschoolers out there in Xbox that need help with their team and can ice a full team and even that depends on how well the possible versus mode works between the consoles? I'm most familiar with the position of LW, but play a responsible C as well and enjoy it a lot. I'm a teamplayer above all and used to play EASHL at a very high level. I will probably be rusty for starters, but I am confident that I am able to shake that off fairly soon. Quick with decisions, patience and high game sense, we'll just have to see how my motorical functions are with the gamepads after some years of absence. I also know that like in real sports team chemistry will play a big part and no matter what if players don't think a like or play a different game it will not work, have a lot to catch up and expect the level of EASHL to have risen a lot. Just looking to bond with some people and get to know the community during the summer times and we'll be in action by fall.