Re: NHL Feedback & Future Recommendations
by AliceRabbit1101Original Post
Thanks very much for taking the time to put this post together. I particularly like the ideas of more jerseys and Classic teams.
Thank you for your loyalty for all these years.
What else do you guys want to see if future games?
Hi Gavin and EA SPORTS,
I just want to give EA SPORTS my thoughts just like you in this post and encourage them to make an outdoor games in the next installment and also give them some more thoughts on the next game. It would be very cool to play Winter classic games on next gen with different times of day, like night, day, snowing, cloudy and so on. I have to admit that your wishlist is a nice one 
but what I didn't like about it was that there are really many things which are not in the game because of these troubling licenses 
and that makes me think that the most of your wishlist things are not as real as they might be, so personally I would put more realistic things in my own wishlist and also more important things that might get fixed you know, for example it's very comic if you watch the bench, how they act, what mimics they have, how they move when the line changes, it's very unrealistic and bad looking and it also breaks a little bit the feeling of the game when you see it in a cutscene durring your play. So I'll write my wishlist here and hopefully others will do aswell just so this topic becomes hot and guys working on next installment will take a look on this and take it more seriously.
Wishlist:
Gameplay: The biggest trouble at the gameplay right now in my opinion is (from biggest to smallest): a) bodychecking, b) gameplay near the boards, c) Positioning of AI d) puck pick ups (when there are two opposition players)
So Let's talk about A): So what's bad about bodychecking right now. I don't like it because in most of the times it's almost impossible to hit someone (It was way more fun in nhl 14). In real hockey you push or hit someone all the time, however in the NHL 17 you can hit someone only if you have a speed and it will be a heavy hit. Off course you can hit someone when you don't have a speed but I'll explain what will happen. You are going to do hitting animation but what happens is that you get pushed away from that player, instead of him getting pushed away from you and the puck. It's like if there was some barrier. After some time I figured out that you put that barrier in the game on next gen because you wanted to prevent players from getting too many bad penalties for forbidden types of bodychecking but I still think that there shouldn't be any barrier. You should be able to hit when you want (off course if you got right speed and if he's in front of you turned against you with his face etc.). I played NHL 14 when I was not doing well in NHL 17 and I realized how you could hit anyone back then. But you also got a lot of penalties for careless hitting. However I believe that this would add to the skill you need to have to hit someone at the right time or position instead of making the game think for yourself by adding the barrier to players to prevent players taking penalties for forbidden types of hits. I don't like these barriers. There are also barriers arround the goalies which there weren't in NHL 15. It was very good to be able to hit a goalie if you are pissed or push a goalie if you are too careless to slow down or stop right in front of the goalie if you are on breakaway. If you want to become skilled player, you should learn to avoid being too careless with skating to the goalie and getting the penalties. Again there shouldn't be barriers and the game shouldn't think for yourself.
B): Gameplay near the boards. The issue is that if you are trying to get in the zone and you are just too close to the boards, the player will not hit the puck if you want to dump it in or quickly shoot it to the net because there is some collision, or barrier next to the boards. It just plays very bad unfortunately. You have to be very carefull if you want to dump in the puck.
C): Positioning of AI. Alot of players are complaining about the AI that the defensemen are rushing the players instead of holding their position when the puck is yet in the neutral zone. This happens mostly when someone leaves the zone and then immediately enters it again. It feels like the AI is just slowly reacting to that kind of play and it will all end up with the breakaway most of the time. There are also situations when you don't have anyone to pass the puck because they are not getting into free spots, they just stay next to oppositing players and you can't pass the puck to them because the oppositing players will immediately intercept it and make a turnover which gets me to the problem that it's too easy to intercept the pass in the NHL right now . In real life the passes are almost as fast as shots and if the pass is sent the right way you don't have a big chance of stopping it unless you are in a good position or you get down on your knee and cover the most of the space with your knee and the stick on the ground as well. I don't like when I pass the puck and someone 2-3 meters away from a player that should receive the pass intercepts the pass and does an animation where he almost dives with his stick while the pass is simply as fast as shot. No chance in real life to have such reflexes and it happens too often. When someone isn't in a good position while keeping up with the player that he should hold on then that defending player should get punished and not get a present from the game and intercept the pass that is further than the player receiving the pass. (I'm talking about that automatic interception that triggers automatically if you are not doing anything, not pokechecks). I think pokechecks are alright, it's fun to play and pokecheck.You can feel awesome as a defensman when you know how and when to use them and make some good turnovers.
D): Puck pick ups (when there are two or more oppositing players). I'll be complaining here about the issue when someone stops playing and you can't take his puck. You are going to pokecheck which doesn't work when he's standing still or you are going to stick lift but he will still keep the puck and that's a heavy issue to the game. When there are two or more oppositing players trying to get the puck there is going to be one out of them all who will cleanly pick it up just like if you weren't there, there won't be any stick collision or puck collision. It feels sometimes that your stick went through the puck and the puck didn't even move.
Cutscenes: The biggest problem with cutscenes is probably the same old stanley cup celebration with many stupid, unrealistic or dumb mimics that players will do and the fact that you can't hold the stanley cup and enjoy your time on the ice with it after you win the playoffs. But there are also other issues.
A) Stanley Cup celebration.
B) Player's teeth protector: I think that NHL 18 might be the right time to bring the teeth protectors to the game. You had this in NBA Live 16 so why not NHL too. Players would play with them when they would be waiting for the face off to start or when they are on the bench as well. This would be neccessary to combine with addition of new more reasonable player mimics. For example when there is a player on the bench, he might be shaking his head really like *. I don't want to be offensive here but It really looks to me like that the player isn't even in the game or he doesn't even watch the game on the bench. Or when someone scores they are immediately smilling but in real life hockey not everyone is immediately smilling, some are even screaming but in NHL 17 yet they will do their celebration and then just start smilling with the other guy hugging them.
C) Players skating into boards or immediately stopping and turning away durring the short face off intermissions: When there is an offside or goalie covers the puck, the cutscene starts and the camera is on the players. The player movement, their focus on which way to head seems very glitchy and buggy. They are skating into boards, they start skating and then immediately stop and it looks all comic, their animations are not clean. There are a lot of times when they immediately change the dirrection they are facing. It just feels unrealistic and draws the great feeling of the game away. One of the most unrealistic things in the game is player bench. When the line changes they immediately hump on different spot on the bench and it's very bad looking.
D) Player interactions: I would like to see more player interactions with each other on the bench or on the ice. To see them talking to each other, maybe even pointing with their hand on something just so you feel like they are really talking and you would feel they are really there. They would talk together abit when the face off is coming for example.
Other small but important things:
A) Tipping the goal in: There should be specific control button for tipping the puck in the net. Players should be looking on the puck carrier and try to tip it in the net instead of letting it be all automatic. That the game decides when the player is going to tip the shot.
B) Commentators: We could get rid of some stupid speech Mike Emrick says durring the play however the things they say with Eddie before the game launches are very well made and I rarely get a feeling of repetitiveness. That's a plus and it shouldn't be changed except being even better.
C) Rebounds: When there is a player who shot the puck to the goalie's pad and the puck stays close to it there is going to be an issue for a player to hit the puck. Simply when the puck is too close to the goalie, players won't hit the puck and shoot it which is because of again that goalie barrier I believe.
D) Winter Classic stadiums
E) Some new EASHL reasons to play: Like sticks with their own stats, gloves that would add to your fighting skill. Skates that could improve your speed but descrease your agility. It would be up to you what would you build from the equipment available. It wouldn't be pay to win. But players could choose what stat they want to push which would be reasonable for their specific kind of play. Like the defenseman would get more defense stats from the equipment and so on. There might be some system with packs like there is one in HUT to get all the equipment. But the differences would be still minor. Just like synergies in HUT.
F) Player interactions with players: Players getting on the ice durring the begining of each period would be putting hands with the fans at the entrance to the rink just like they do in real life.
G) HUT players being rare again: I don't like how it is easy in NHL 17 to get the best players and I was very dissapointed that such an awesome and fun thing to do like Team Collection was put away. It was so much fun to collect the real copy of teams in HUT, get rewarded and then win the division 1 title against AI with the real copy of any team. It was way more fun than playing playoff mode for example because you had those divisions where you could get rewarded with something (coins) and play for the real team against real nhl teams. It was also very hard sometimes to win so it was nicely challenging. This year I almost haven't even touched single player seasons.
H) HUT Seasons: They are great adition to game but they should be more rare and happen only once per month in my opinion.
I) HUT Divisions: There should be salary cap restrictions on different types of divisions. This would balance teams and you would build the team that fits you for the maximum salary you could use instead of building 94 overall team and then destroy every opponent with it. In this case you would have to use also weaker players with lower salaries and I believe this would be a lot of fun. There would never happen again that someone would have full 94 overall team and play against some casual who didn't spend so much on game. Except* I think making a "Division Platinum" for no restriction brawl which the game would ask you if you want to continue to Division Platinum after you win Division 1 would make it better. In Division Platinum there would be bigger rewards (coins) than in division 1 but there could happen that you would face someone with 94 overall team and you would have your 88 overall for example. I would really like to see salary caps in online divisions. I don't like when the game wants you to have at least 3 bronze,3 silver players. I don't like that. You should choose by your self if you are going to buy best players and then buy bronze 4th line. Or make a team consisting of pretty much balanced all golden players. This would totally make everyone happy I believe. Just think about how many people do complain on your social media sites that they hate when they meet someone who bought their team for xy$$$. I don't believe that anyone wouldn't like this.
J) 5-man celebrations
So thank you EA SPORTS for putting your time reading my wishlist which really isn't a wishlist. I just wanted to show you which way I think you guys should head, which way I believe that NHL series might get back to it's glory like it was before next gen. I love hockey and I know you do too. But you just don't know what to do when hundreds of people all complain about different things and damn everyone from your small studio like bunch of selfish people and I believe it's pretty much chaos before each year. I don't want you to put all these things in next installment. I just wanted to show you what priorities I believe you might have in next installment and I'm going to be very happy if some things from this list are really going to be in next NHL 18 )))). Thank you one more time really really much for reading this and I really really much hope that you liked it and that you are going to agree with my opinions.
Hey @RacerLukey, did you see this:
https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2017/nhl-17-gameplay-series-be-a-ref
