What do you want from future NHL-titles?

[Kenu]

Hey Everyone,

This is a bit short notice, but I'm currently visiting EA Vancouver as a member of the Game Changer programme and I have a chance to talk to the developers in person. I would like to give you the chance to get your voices heard through me, so please feel free to send your constructive feedback about what things you would like changed in the game and how.

 

Some categories that you could think about:

• World of Chel
• HUT
• VS
• Franchise mode
• Gameplay
• Menus/User experience
• Other

Don't feel like you have to write an essay about every category - it might be best if you focus on the things that you feel most passionate about changing/fixing/adding. What would make your experience better?

[Maggre]

I want smooth menus with few steps to my most played game mode (6v6 club EASHL).

[ramseyy2]

world of chel: all the errors during the whole nhl of the year is too much. too much tuners which change the gameplay completely. Also the practice mode would be amazing to have back. when penalty coming and goalie going to bench, the goalie can come in as a 6th player

Hut: same with the tuners. also I think the player amount is ridiculous, how easy it is to get a good team. maybe competive seasons should have player prices more often than packs.

Vs: same servers like in hut and chel pls. saving lines and strategies so u dont have to change them everytime

franchise mode: -

gameplay: puckpickups, random bumbs (animations), server problems (still sometimes)

menus: The menu is not as smooth as is was like in old gen😄 doesn't matter how simple the menu is imo if it works good

other: spectator mode to 1v1 and eashl. there would be more but these are what comes first to my mind:)

Edited April 24, 2019 by ramseyy2

[Oliverigood]

World of Chel
- Best game mode, should be prioritized
- Imo no need for pond hockey or clothing. Make more custom hockey gear, like sticks and blades in this years version (awesome!).
- More customization options for team logos, shirts etc would be awesome. Ability to add your own team logo in game (I know copyrights yeye...should be possible somehow).
- Let the dressing room error be history that NHL19 was remembered from.

HUT and VS
- Maybe more options to make the bots to go the way you want? Individual tactics for every player like in FIFA or detailed custom tactics.

Gameplay
- Less randomness in puck and player collisions, more laws of physics.
- Improved animations. For example puckpicking near attacking blueline or in front of the goal (too many own goals). Also some of the tripping animations have been in the game for atleast 10 years.
- Deke succesrate should be higher. Puck covering and defending with stick movement/body positioning should be more effective and rewarding not semi-auto-invisible stick collision that happens too often when in 1vs1 atm.
- Shot blocking with using L1 should be fixed that you can actually block the shot when facing the shooter.
- Some new tools for keepers. Also when goalie goes to the bench he/she should be able to come back to the ice as the 6th player. 

Menus/User experience
- Spectator cam/mode in Chel and VS is a must.
- Keep menus simple, fast, working. Don’t want to spend too much time in there. More shortcuts, less clicks.

Other
- New game engine in PS5.
- More closed/open beta testing atleast 6 months before launch of the new game -> time to fix bugs and errors. Tuning based on community feedback.

Enjoy your trip. Sorry for long post. 

[Jnmxxx]

1 tunti sitten, Oopee91 kirjoitti:

- Shot blocking with using L1 should be fixed that you can actually block the shot when facing the shooter.

But it isnt even meant to be shot block but pass block?

There is also ”right” way to shot block you know?

[Oliverigood]

9 minuuttia sitten, Jnmxxx kirjoitti:

But it isnt even meant to be shot block but pass block?

There is also ”right” way to shot block you know?

Yes sir, but it's still weird that the puck goes always through. 

[PlaymakerSJ]

World of Chel and presentation in general

• actual replays would be nice instead of just showing random fans looking bored af or my personal favourite --> the random arrows directing to the right (WTF?) Just want to point out that there are NO REPLAYS whatsoever except for goals, what about the individual player highlights of goals, hits, saves?
• according to the point above, the club games take way too long. Not talking about the atrocious matchmaking system, but in a club game, just quickly move on to the next faceoff after an offside or whatever. I don't want to see a player slashing a goalie and then run around while the camera suddenly follows him. I don't want to see a swinging camera with an overview of the arena or a totally random H2O water machine (WHICH hockey arena has water machines ? WHY?) The breaks in between plays are too long and unnecessary.
• I have the commentators turned off and the fans sound like a bunch of drunks in a bar fight. They seem pretty upset when you have lots of zone time - granted that's pretty funny, so that's not a major issue.
• I don't know why the creepy looking mascots can just go through the glass sometimes. That just distracts me on faceoffs!

I will probably add some more "serious" flaws in the future, but that's it for now.

 

Edited April 24, 2019 by Playmaker

[TTERO]

- Now you can choose 3 favorite things like (HUT, CHEL, Settings) your ”start screen”. I hope NHL20 you can skip whole menu jungle and choose your starting screen link to Club 6v6 dressingroom. 

- Onlinen practice mode to Eashl & clubs. So you can use your own player. 

 

[Mikka]

There’s a lot of things, some are more minor than the others but with these improvements the game would be much better well-rounded and I know I myself would play a lot more of the different modes. Many of the suggested features should be considered more in a situation like ”hey the game is perfect now, what other cool shit can we add in?” There’s also some repetition in stuff that affects multiple gamemodes.

 

World Of Chel:

• Allow user goalie to play as the extra player when pulled from the net
• Upgrade player stats by at least +3, not too much tho (most builds are 75-78 ovr when created offline, highest I’ve been able to get with limited testing was I believe a 83 ovr grinder through traits like hockey iq 2)
• Club practice and the ability to be in there while searching for a game
• You should be able to earn hockey bags after max lvl more easily than now. I believe right now the only way to get them after reaching max lvl and playing through pro-am is grinding ones, which is far from ideal for someone like me who doesn’t really play anything else than club in WOC
• A player dropping in 6v6 should be treated the same way as a goalie, —> team whose player got disconnected gets awarded with a loss. Should probably also add a minute or two to rejoin in case of a disconnect at least in private games, this would of course need the implementation of rejoining
• Saw a suggestion for an equipment store in twitter; maybe instead of hockey bags you should be able to buy the customization you want with some kind of points (tied to xp? Would also solve the problem of getting new equipment after max lvl). I wouldn’t cry if you would be able to buy the things there with real money as well, EA could monetize WOC this way and you would still be able to grind for the stuff. I understand hockey bags are a good way to keep people playing longer as they may need to open a ton of bags to get what they want, so EA could just give us the ability to buy them with the xp points and real money or something.

Hockey Ultimate Team:

• Nothing much to say, gameplay is way too fast and broken for my liking (player stats are too high) but that’s really the point of the gamemode so should be done in regards to that
• Add an AFK timer, if you afk too long you’ll be kicked from the game and awarded with a loss.

Versus:

• Ability to save strategies and lines
• Add an AFK timer, if you afk too long you’ll be kicked from the game and awarded with a loss.

Franchise Mode:

• Three-way trades
• NMCs and NTCs. Ability to give them to players, request them to waive them etc
• Make trade deadline an event, to feel like it means something
• International tournaments (ability to be a national team’s GM)
• A playable All-Star event
• A playable Winter(/Heritage and so on) Classic event
• Ability to let signed players remain in their European/Russian/ROW/US team
• ECHL Affiliation, ability to assign your players to ECHL
• Ability to sign and fire coaches. Preferably even real-life ones.

Be A Pro:

• Bring back a ”Live the life” -style experience, I haven’t played BAP at all for for the last few years as it’s really boring in it’s current state
• Make the draft and other events real events, to feel like they mean something
• Ability to play in Europe
• Ability to play in world juniors and other international tournaments (this might even already be there, but as I said I haven’t played in years)
• A playable All-Star event
• A playable Winter(/Heritage and so on) Classic event.

Gameplay:

• The ”tie” face-off animation should have something done to it, there’s no good way for anyone to get the puck from it. Could even remove it, there’s a higher change for my team to get my puck if I lose to a clean tie-up but no-one can get the puck when it’s a tie
• Different tuners for different gamemodes. Player stats, playstyles and so on are so different in EASHL/Versus/HUT that different things should be addressed.
• Nerf stick lift a bit, right now it’s just a tad too op but still a lot better than earlier in the year (it was both useless and too op at some points)
• There’s some (especially pickup) animations that are completely useless and ruin plays, —> cut the animations to a minimum, let us control our players as much as possible
• Player switching is sometimes pretty horrible. I know you’re able to choose which player you switch to and I should learn to use it, but still
• Add a button you have to press for tip-ins or something, —> find a way to make it at least somewhat skill based
• Improve puck pickups near your own net, there’s way too many own goals coming from dumb pickup animations
• Incidental contacts from behind resulting in losing the puck need to go.

Menus/User experience:

• Make the menus smooth.. Old gen menus were fluid and enjoyable, meanwhile in NHL 15-19 you have to wait every time you press something. If I’d rather join the dressing room in EASHL via PS Party Chat than through the game itself, you’re doing something wrong big time
• The menus are way too complex, it wouldn’t be much of a problem if they were fluid as explained above though^^.

Other:

• Roster sharing
• Spectating in online modes, with the ability to choose whichever camera angle you want
• Custom camera angles
• Ability to create set plays, like on old gen
• Ability to create custom face-off formations (could be useful in 6s too)
• Ability to move draft picks between teams similar to players (don’t have to wait for a roster update every time a trade happens)
• All-Star event -gamemode
• Winter Classic -gamemode
• Generate player pictures in the place of black silhouettes (we know it can be done, your Be A Pro player has a generated picture)
• When you’re going to change a major tournament format (GWC) completely, inform players about it early enough to be able to prepare without being at a huge disadvantage
• If GWC is going to be in HUT again, consider introducing an ovr cap
• Properly address reoccurring bugs, like the dressing room error. Can’t have the same bug ”fixed” multiple times and then reappearing just for a specific internet provider etc..
• Custom logos in EASHL, HUT, create a team etc (add a logo creator similar to other games if being able to upload your own ones is too ”risky”)
• Similar to the logo creator, add a customizer for all goalie equipment (custom graphics in masks, pads etc). Again, if possible add the option to upload designs that you’ve made yourself on a pc
• Why do people keep getting their controller and camera settings reset? Fix pls
• Add back the skate blade customization from old gen (I think there was some other stuff you could choose too?).

 

A lot of stuff, but that's how it is.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Mikka
formatting

[minokin]

- Overhauled menus. Too slow to move around and the logic when for example a player is forcibly moved to the start menu of World of Chel in case of a game crashing/someone losing connection is bad. Also would like to see separated functions, meaning that path is no longer World of Chel --> Play ---> EASHL and so on but instead have it laid out on the launch menu where you could choose drop-in, EASHL (maybe even a shortcut to dressing room?) or whatever

- Spectator mode for all of the modes but mainly EASHL

- Practice mode for EASHL

- HUT really needs to slow down on it's micro-transactions and the easiness of acquiring a good team. I get that this is probably EAs main source of income when it comes to the NHL-series but it's depressing to see that it has basically become a pay-to-win model. Not always true though, but you get what I mean

- Goalie becoming the 6th skater when skating to the bench on a delayed penalty

 

[Lionite]

6v6:

• Realistic faceoffs: if center moves too soon in faceoff you should get changed away and have a winger take the faceoff instead. 2 min penalty from second jump in the same faceoff
• Give goalie player control of 6th skater on the ice
• Remove random penalties (elbowing, cross checking, charging). They are so inconsistent of the way you actually check that it doesn't make any sense to have them in 0 bots game mode.
• Remove automated fight challenge after big hits.
• Overall i'd like to see get rid of as much of random stuff in the game as possible that you have no real control over but that have major impact on the game.
• Add in some sort of spectator mode to watch ongoing live games

 

Edit: Oh yeah, and bring in the god damn Frostbite engine already!

Edited April 25, 2019 by Lionite

[Tauri]

Stop making new games when the games before not have been finished... Releasing half done games, and then start to working with new game 

[FlyerKungen]

Menus suck. Something like in pic below pls. (from Twitter)

Deking should be more comfortable with 6v6 builds, at the moment backskate is kinda only weapon to use in 1v1 situations bc of sticklift spam. Yeah, not going to use "tuzio" or "teppotime" builds either.

[Saviinainen]

And maybe you can nerf backskating little bit, its better than earlier but still sometimes cant tackle the player who backskate and cover the puck... Thats so ridiculous. And yes this is console game not real hockey but it would be nice if game would looks and feels like real hockey, it looks so silly when people backskating all the time/too much but thats only my opinion, everyone have their own playing style

[vizka13]

Pretty long answer, but there is so much to change, fix and develop that it could be much much longer.

Chel:

- Hockey bags should unlock everything by the time that player gets to 3.50 level. Nobody should have to play ones to achieve that.

- Currently traits give benefit on other categories and punish on some others. Traits should only give a little extra and take nothing away

- In example snipers height shouldn’t be limited so tightly to 1,83 cm. If there needs to be different height and weight limitations between builds, let every build grow atleast 1,88 or something. 

- Adding weight to a player at the moment doesn’t seem to really give any benefits in my opinion. It just makes the player slower. I just make my player in every build as long and light as possible, because hitting and balance doesn’t seem to suffer noticeably from lack of weight.

- practice mode

- give goalie control of the sixth man

Hut

- giving players as rewards for certain accomplishments like 10000 shots and the monthly players did create lot more interest for me to play hut. Still it if that system stays it needs to be improved

- reward players should become more support level players. In this version almost every time I have had a free reward player it has become immediately one of my best players, when I think it should be immediately more like 2nd/3rd line kind of player. I don’t want my best players to be automatically given players, I want to choose my best players.

- Reward players shouldn’t be just one same player for everybody. Create like 5 options for every reward and then everyone won’t have the same lineups which is so boring. 

- Make an alltime leaderboard based on hutchamps. Who cares anyway about ”leaderboard” that I could propably top by playing 10 000 games with record 1500-8000-500 or something. Also current alltime leadeboard doesn’t show the relevant stats like goals, shots, hits, powerplays and so on. Yet it shows how many times I have won the bottom divisions.

- Player stats from the players in your own team currently counts games against totw bots. That can ruin the player stats completely for a player. Instead it could count friendly games. Also if you can boost stats that give you reward players by playing against rookie bots then maybe friendly games should be counted as well even though some people would use it as a boosting method. Wouldn’t really differ from rookie challenges though.

- Injuries and contracts are pointless.

- Stop releasing player cards for single great performances, whatever those cards are called in english.

 

Gameplay/menus/other

- menus need to be better and faster. Currently there is just an unnecessary amount of clicking. 

- versus on hut is way too fast. Too often just coasttocoasttocoast because of that. 

- Normal versus is like the opposite. Things happen too slow, it feels like skating on a swamp. I’m pretty used to the hutspeed atleast but if I sometimes choose to play versus instead it gives me antimotion sickness.

- Goalies in hut atleast are pretty useless if opponent knows how to score

-I should of course learn how to control goalie myself but still the bots should be less effective in defending if opponent takes control of their own goalie. Currently some people take control of their goalies because bots defend better than they can instead to actually use the goalie.

- NHL18 was like virtual pingpong sometimes and NHL19 is like virtual swordfighting. I bought it to play virtual hockey though. Sticklifting is too good sometimes and I shouldn’t be able to take the puck from my opponents by just skating close to them.

- Remove randomness like injuries, kick-in goal replays, random hitting penalties.

-Remove ”initiating” fight with a big hit.

 

[ReDMisTi]

World of Chel

Practice mode 🙏

[farssine]

World of chel

- Practice mode to test builds for example and also team practice dress room where teams could level up powerplay tactics and so on!

- Fix all errors and bugs

- You can decide and change the division who you want to play against

- able to check which teams are online and in dressing room

 

Sorry my english skills

[Sakkem]

Add all relevant data to API, so NHLgamer staff can make game reporting tool fully automatic.

[NyambI4]

Specator mode and Practice mode in CheL

[lycki10]

KHL please 🙏🙏🃏

Edited April 24, 2019 by lycki10

[SibeIius]

5 minuuttia sitten, lycki10 kirjoitti:

KHL please 🙏🙏🃏

Two biggest leagues in world and rivalries.. I really don't think that it is never going to happen

But much have been already said I didn't read all comments but 1. Goalie gets to control a player when going to bench (delayed penalty, empty net situation)

and 2. Ability to save the changes you make to lines in Versus, please.

[ahonaattorii]

Remove 3vs3 and maybe also 1vs1vs1. There is not enough EASHL players for many game modes... So focus on 6vs6.

Remove outdoor hockey mode... And replace it whit drop-in mode where gameplay is same as it is in club games.

Pring in practice mode in eashl...for 1-12 players cpu or human.

[Burk]

Change the penaltyshot in eashl 3v3 to 4v3 powerplay. And goaltender interference is too sensitive.

[Oicteppotulppu]

To be short. 😁

As a defender point of view

Eashl

- take random penalties away, and I don`t mean boarding etc. Mainly charging, elbowing

- sticklift from behind away. Spamming of sticklift overall away

- remove randomly succesful poke from behind

- since when in real hockey you can backskate from your own area to off area without being destroyed? Ridiculous. Make f ex limit to that. Or make backskater with the puck even more slower. Or then make dekes more effective, without losing the puck as random half of the time.

- picking up the puck close to goalie...too much of random goals as an animation

- add eashl practise mode

- passes are going randomly through the opponent, maybe because of the ”momentum”, but hey, c`moon

- overall randomness, you pass 5m easy pass, your teammate does not receive that without any opponents effort, puck bouncing, irritating animations time to time...the list is long

- dressing room errors should be over

- fix menus to 20th century

 

I like the fact skilfull players (not me) could use their skills. Backskating through the whole arena...now it seems to be the most used way as a personal skill to be able to build something in the game or going throughthe neutral zone. I realize this is not real hockey, but it could atleast partly look like it. 

I could care less of hockeybags, clothing customization and all that shit. If EA is planning to charge money from custom items, be my guest. Otherwise it is useless. 

Edited April 24, 2019 by Oicteppotulppu

[swagx88]

Atleast give practise room where u can go with friends ty!

And if possible make goalie sometimes save easy pucks on the corners instead front of the goal.