Note: I spend the vast majority of my time playing online with my EASHL team.  If you’re an offline player, you may not have noticed many of the issues I bring up. Similarly, I may have missed many issues you’ve run into.

Alright – we’ve all had a bit more time to play NHL ‘10 now and give it a more fair assessment.  Regretfully, I must say that while there are some major improvements, overall I’m extremely disappointed.

I’d like to preface the following by saying this: I complain as passionately as I do because I feel that EA Sports is close to having the best sports game ever made if they’d just live up to their promises and fix the issues that people consistently complain about.  They have a potentially amazing thing going, I just feel they keep coming up short.  Unfortunately, game review sites primarily play the games offline, and can’t give games the full deep dive that customers end up giving it over the course of a few weeks.  Therefore, EA keeps winning awards and praise for its NHL series before it has been out in the wild long enough to truly be tested.  As a result, it’s my assumption that EA execs feel that the status quo is acceptable.  The game keeps winning awards and selling, so why bother spending time fixing old issues?

Despite that, the producers and developers at EA claimed repeatedly that they would.

Throughout the summer, EA published developer / producer blogs – often in video form – which were a fantastic way to get us excited about the newest iteration of the NHL series.  Even more exciting was the acknowledgment of all of the bugs, shortcomings and frustrations run into by paying customers.  We were promised an offseason that consisted more of fixing bugs and gameplay issues than of trying to cram in new features.  Perfect!  Exactly the kind of response the community wanted to see from EA.

Unfortunately, reality has painted a radically different picture from the product we were promised over the summer.  A large number of issues remain unaddressed, and as seems to be the case with every EA game release, server issues were a major, major problem during the first days of release.  The issues reared their heads again upon the release of FIFA ‘10 – with both the EA Sports World site and EA game server suffering serious slowdown and/or crash issues.

Let’s be fair, however, and first address some of the biggest positives:

• The new passing engine, while frustrating at times, is an improvement.  It’s great that passes aren’t so ridiculously tape to tape anymore.
• Puck physics are generally much better – with odd and usually more realistic bounces happening all the time.  This makes for a significantly more “chaotic” (in a good way) gameplay experience.  As frustrating as it is to miss that loose puck in front of a gaping half of the net – that’s a part of what gives hockey the edge-of-the-seat excitement that gets 20,000 people yelling “oooohhhhh” simultaneously, and there’s a good bit more of this in ‘10.
• Board play, while it has some shortcomings, is a pretty cool addition to the game.  The concept is at least a step in the right direction.
• The increased detail / information on the EA Sports World site is fantastic.  I have suggestions for more content to add, but what’s there is great.
• The ridiculous over-effectiveness of stick lifts in ‘09 has been at least somewhat improved.
• While there are rumblings that the 3-0 glitch from ‘09 is back, I have not seen any confirmation on this – just pure speculation.  My EASHL team hasn’t experienced it thus far, which is good.  Update: I may stand corrected on this, here’s another recent account, without corroboration yet.  The 3-0 glitch may be back, but I’ll reserve judgment until more evidence surfaces.
• Locking position indicators / colors helps immensely, thanks for listening to our feedback.
• The new presentation of jerseys in the selection screen is much better – although I would love to see it show the full uniform, as there are still some occasional color differentiation problems when teams pants match very well, etc.
• The ability to one-time loose pucks has helped a lot in terms of tapping in rebounds (though it does have its shortcomings as well, it’s a huge improvement over ‘09)
• We are definitely more consistently matched up against teams with the same (or similar) number of human players.  It’s not perfect (probably in the name of finding a matchup quickly), but it’s clearly improved.
• The addition of Be a Pro “Grades” after every period is great, and the tweaks to make it a little more reasonable to earn good grades are a welcome addition.

That sounds like a whole lot of positive, and it is.  Unfortunately, some of the negatives are so big — and worse yet, so completely inexcusable — that I feel they actually outweigh the positives.

So, on with the criticism… it isn’t pretty…  I’ve broken it into categories for the tl;dr crowd:

Unpreparedness on EA’s part:

EA has simply been around too long for the following issues to have occurred.  It’s not like they’ve never released a big new sports title…

• As seems to be the case with every EA Sports release, the first several days were mired with server issues.  The servers were down for extended periods of time, making online play impossible.
• As those issues were ironed out, there were still horrendous lag issues for EASHL and OTP games – making the game pretty much unplayable online.
• Next, with the recent release of FIFA, lag issues were re-introduced, and the EA Sports World site experienced extended downtime and/or very slow performance.
• There have also been a number of issues with the game freezing / locking up Xboxes completely, or just locking user interaction so that the only escape is exiting to the dashboard.  The quantity of reports of freezing on the forums is rather alarming.
• Finally, there have been reports of people’s “Be a Pro” seasons being corrupted, and having to start all over again.  These kinds of occurrences are just not acceptable in a mature product such as the NHL series.

Unwelcome additions:

• The “boost equipment” has been widely complained about on message boards as ridiculous, and it is.  The fact that the only way to have 3 boost slots in your equipment is to wear something that looks ridiculous is an annoyance.
• Despite a blog post explaining how the boosts work, there is strong suspicion amongst the EA community that they don’t work at all.  I’m starting to agree with this sentiment, given the fact that my Be a Pro defenseman has 98 speed (8 of which comes from unlocked boosts) and is still being outrun and/or matched in speed down the ice, even by computer players.
• Worse yet, the idea that you can pay for these boosts is frankly offensive.  EA responded to this by saying they were able to unlock most of the boosts in a week.  This assertion is absolutely ridiculous.  Some of the tasks include “playing a complete game with every swiss league team”, etc.  These sorts of menial tasks do not come as a part of natural gameplay, are not enjoyable, and are ridiculous to have to go through in lieu of paying for upgrades.
• The menu system is even more complex this year, instead of simpler.  The hierarchies of menus often make no sense, and have far too many levels of depth.  Navigating around this game’s menu structure is a nightmare.
• The ability to challenge someone to a fight at any time has become a problem. It’s mapped to the same button as board play, which means it’s triggered on accident with some frequency.  Furthermore, it’s being abused intentionally to stop a player on a breakaway, etc.  Basically, when you challenge someone to a fight, they’re locked into a “challenge / response” animation that they can’t get out of without mashing on a button or two to break out of that animation.  A terrible design flaw in my opinion.
• Board play, while nifty at times, is also being abused.  The “lock in” or “magnet” area as some people call it is too great.  You can stand near the boards and hold Y as a forward is flying full speed down the wing and magnet him to the boards without him breaking through.  This is unrealistic, and is abused by the craftier teams out there.
• While the addition of multiple dressing rooms for EASHL teams this year is a neat idea, especially for bigger teams who may have more than 6 people online a lot, it has added yet another level of depth to an already too-deep menu system.  Furthermore, when an opposing team backs out of a game without letting it start, you’re kicked all the way out to the “home room”, where all of your teammates must again select and re-enter a dressing room.  Poor user interface choice.
• The ability for players to reach up and snatch a puck out of the air seemed awesome at first.  How cool is it to see your D-man keep a puck in ahead of the blue line by doing this?  Awesome!  Unfortunately, no thought was put into realism here.  It looks and functions great for particular situations, but it’s also maddening.  A rocket slapshot from behind the blue line, intended to get dumped into the zone or just cleared on a penalty kill, is often stopped with no effort whatsoever by this automatic animation – thwarting dump-ins and clearing attempts with frustrating frequency.  Again – this is an example of a new feature that EA crams into the game without thoroughly testing the negative effects it may have.
• I’m very sorry to the EA developers who worked on this, as I’m sure it was a lot of work – but the new fighting engine is awful.  It’s unrealistic and frankly “button-mashy” at best.  Honestly, I don’t care too much about the quality of a fighting engine in any NHL game – it’s just not a priority to me.  However, a lot of work clearly went into a brand new fight engine when that time would have been better spent on bug fixes and gameplay issues.
• The “Goalie Tutorial” this year was so insanely light on content that I actually thought there was a bug in the game.  There is one drill that teaches you to use the left stick to position your goalie – that’s it.  3 shots are taken, and that’s it – you’re done.  You’re never taught any of the other controls nor is it explained when you should be using them.

Broken Promises (also known as “stuff we didn’t fix from ‘09″) – This is the part of the article where smoke spews out of my ears, because we were promised an offseason of bug fixes and gameplay improvements before loads of new features were added:

• Glitch goals – The man himself, David Littman, promised on video “no more ‘always goals’” [1] [2]… this is unfortunately far from what was actually delivered.Here’s the thing… As a developer myself, I know that it’s pretty much impossible to make perfect AI for games like these.  People will always find exploits.  However, if you can’t deliver it, don’t promise it.  EA has claimed that they’ll be able to patch up glitch goal issues faster through the use of “tuner sets” – so they don’t have to wait for Microsoft’s 3 week testing/approval process of an actual game patch.  This seemed like a great idea when it was described to us, but so far we’re 3 weeks past NHL 10’s launch, and there have been glitch goals reported since the demo was out that haven’t been addressed yet.EA just doesn’t seem to get it yet.  Massively multiplayer online competitive games cannot be treated like other games.  They require consistent monitoring, and prompt response to exploits and issues.  It has been argued that it’s not technically feasible for EA to update tuner sets as quickly as customers are clamoring for them.  I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that’s a failure on EA’s part.  If a developer can’t solve that technical challenge, that’s a failure.  Online games of this nature require monitoring and fixes to exploits in a timely manner – period.  If you’re incapable of doing it, you need to build the technical infrastructure to become capable of doing it.
• Faceoffs were a complaint last year – they were too lopsided (not to mention too “perfect” when you win one).  EA tried to address this in a patch to ‘09 by making the faceoff stat count a bit less, but it wasn’t much of an improvement.  The story is even worse in ‘10.  Online, it’s virtually impossible, even with a 99 faceoff stat, to win faceoffs consistently against a computer opponent.  Due to network latency, it’s often extremely difficult for one human or the other to win any faceoffs in a human vs. human center matchup.  In the real NHL, the best faceoff guys are about 60.5% each year – not 90% like they often are in the NHL series.  This makes for some really lopsided EASHL games because good teams are so good with puck possession – winning the vast majority of faceoffs is actually a really big deal.
• Defensemen still occasionally freeze, even when skating backwards, as a puck passes them.  This allows breakaways too often.
• There still seems to be an “untouchable area” right near the goalie where if he stupidly plays the puck, it’s pretty much impossible to steal it or try and tap it in for a goal.  It seems smaller this year, but it’s still an issue.
• The “Slap Pass” from ‘09 is alive and well in ‘10, and seems to be abused far more often.  This is basically an exploit on deflections – since the programmers did not restrict the angle you can make deflections at, players can make ridiculous 90 degree deflections by standing in the low corner, holding RB and aiming  a “dump” at one of their forwards standing in front of the net.  These deflections clearly go in with some frequency, or teams wouldn’t try it so often.
• A huge complaint in ‘09 was the mapping of buttons to two different functions causing problems.  They addressed this in one area (changing the puck push to be the “Vision” button), but introduced new problems in others – specifically the “Board Play” / “Fight” button.  It’s also an issue with “poke check” / “call for shot” – why, if I’m in the offensive zone without the puck and I call for a shot from my teammate who does have it, does my player poke check (and occasionally get a tripping call?)..  Furthermore, why do both RB and the right analog stick call for a shot?  I can’t check someone without calling for a shot now – a major annoyance.
• Tripping calls from odd / slow poke check animations are very frustrating – this was an issue in ‘09 that was widely complained about and not fixed.  Basically, when a player poke checks, he can often trip a player while pulling his stick back from the poke check, even if the physics of this act make absolutely no sense.
• The inability for human goalies to move before the puck is dropped for a faceoff has made an ‘09 glitch even worse in ‘10.  Basically, a far side shot right off the faceoff (when won to a forward) is virtually impossible for a human goalie to stop.  Winning a faceoff in this spot is nearly a guaranteed goal.
• Just like in ‘09, changing team pressure / strategies only works during gameplay.  Changes you make during cutscenes are not saved – not even if you pause the game to do so.  If you pause right before a faceoff, however, it does seem to save them.  This should not be necessary, though, especially since the number of pauses allowed in EASHL games has been reduced.
• Another ‘09 complaint related to strategies: Since EASHL games don’t involve line changes, those buttons are disabled.  However, those buttons are the only way to access strategies such as “Crash the Net”, “Overload”, etc.  The only way to change these in an EASHL game is to pause it – but be sure to pause it at the right time, or it won’t save.  Again, the number of pauses this year has been reduced (a generally good idea), so this is an even more inexcusable oversight.
• Yet another ‘09 complaint related to strategies: Why, when the game is paused by the opposing team, am I unable to change strategies / pressure in the menu?  It’s grayed out.  This makes no sense.  The captain of each team ought to be able to change these any time the game is paused, or between periods.
• Oops, yet one more:  EASHL teams ought to be able to set default strategies for their team, so that the game needn’t always be paused at the start to set them.
• “Remembered actions” are as much a problem in ‘10 as they were in ‘09, with unintended player actions (such as executing a saucer pass due to a “remembered poke check”, etc)… I’m not so sure there’s an easy technical solution to this one, though.
• Just like ‘09 – AI players pass the puck back to the human who passed to them far too often.  If I’m passing to the CPU, I probably don’t want the puck right back, I’m probably under pressure.  However, they have an over-weighted tendency to do this.
• Also just like ‘09, AI players pass backward at the most absurd of times – even when they look like they’ve got a relatively clean skate across the opposing team’s blue line — presto, random pass back to a D-man.
• Also in the AI issue category – players often do not pursue the puck even when they’re the closest to it on open ice.  This was an issue in ‘09 as well.
• As in ‘09, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to why teams line up in a given faceoff formation, nor any way to control it.
• In ‘09, checking was a serious issue – it was far too effective and heavy hitting.  It seems ‘10 did try to address that issue, but now it’s all too often ineffective.  I think EA did right by toning down the quantity of “huge hits” – however, there’s far too many instances of squaring someone up or hitting them from the side without them so much as bobbling the puck, let alone losing possession of it.  This makes checking a very ineffective (high risk, low reward) means of playing defense.
• Another issue EA addressed in ‘09 was rampant abuse of interference (checking players who did not have the puck).  Upon fixing it (Patch 1.02), some players complained it was too touchy – calling too many penalties.  I’m not sure I agreed with those players, but EA did capitulate, and ‘10 allows a bit more checking away from the puck.  In my opinion, a good bit too much – especially when shorthanded.
• While the matchup system is improved for EASHL games, our team is still consistently matched up against teams ranked in the top 500 or so, despite the fact that we’re ranked closer to 1500-2000.  We seem to play an inordinate amount of games against teams that are absolutely phenomenal.  We don’t mind playing a challenging game, but spending an evening playing over 1/2 of your games against teams in the top 500 when you’re ranked 2,000 seems excessive.
• Camera preferences, just like in ‘09, are still not saved properly.  More than half the time I go into practice mode, “Always Down” is selected, no matter how many times I switch it to “Always Up.”  This is another issue that was addressed on video by a developer as being fixed this year.  Clearly it has not.
• Just like in ‘09, AI-controlled centers almost always win faceoffs to the right defenseman.  It is extremely, extremely rare to see an AI controlled center win a faceoff to any other player (with the exception of one particular faceoff formation that puts the right wing down and to the right of the AI center – in which case the faceoff is won to him instead).

The superficial, but still flawed (things that don’t matter all that much, but I’m still surprised exist in a “released product”):

• Player models often have clipping issues – particularly on helmets and hair.  Especially visible during the 3-stars presentation, you’ll see players whose hair is inappropriately mapped to their skull, so the polygons either flicker on/off, or the players have some of the most hilarious/absurd balding patterns ever witnessed.  Goalie masks often show portions of bald skull bulging out because they’re improperly aligned over the player model, etc.
• It seems the development process is just often lazy over at EA.  There are loads of instances where they simply didn’t do the work to account for some of the “less common” occurrences in any way.  One such example: As in years past, multiple penalties are not called out graphically or by announcers, you only see a penalty graphic come up for the first one called.  One exception is coincidental minors, which announcers do mention, but they’re still not called out graphically.
• Cut scenes often show the wrong player(s) in the penalty box, the wrong player(s) taking faceoffs, etc.  I don’t really care so much about these sorts of bugs as their effect on gameplay is zero.  However, it’s just another testament to what I feel is a lackadaisical quality assurance process at EA Sports Vancouver.

Reasonable things the vocal among us asked for, but didn’t get:

• EASHL practice mode was not added this year despite being by far the most popular request.
• Another popular request was a FIFA-style “call for pass / shot” indicator – basically a thought bubble that shows who it is calling for a pass.  This is not only just generally informative, but also useful on an all-human team.  From a development standpoint, this is extremely easy to add in, but it wasn’t done.
• People were also vocal about the “call for pass” button’s general functionality.  It’s a call for a pass, not a demand or an order.  Therefore, an AI player ought to be smart enough to refuse to pass when, for example, their own goalie is between him and the guy calling for the pass.  The same goes for the goalie himself – he shouldn’t be passing the puck downward into his own net because some yahoo hit the right trigger while standing behind the net.  He also shouldn’t be passing into a clogged slot, no matter how many times I call for the puck.  No real goalie is that stupid.
• In the year 2009, hard drive space isn’t exactly expensive.  The limit of 5 slots for uploaded videos seems excessively low, especially when forum moderators are basically saying it’s our (paying customers mind you, not beta testers) obligation to upload videos to “prove” glitch goals / report bugs to EA.  People asked last year for more slots, but ‘10 has the same limitation.  On this note – since you can’t save a video during an EASHL game, it’s pretty hard to report exploits.  You can save highlights, if they make the reel, but there’s so few highlights that often glitch goals don’t make the reel.

There’s more than the bullets above, but that’s a plenty exhaustive list.

Conclusion:

EA has disappointed greatly this year in a few ways.  First and foremost, the team made promises that they didn’t keep.  The summer was spent on a combination of reassurance and bragging about gameplay fixes, AI improvements, and making ‘10 more of a “fixed version of ‘09″ release.  Aside from those who obsess over accurate goal horns and goalie equipment being perfect – nobody complained about this concept.  In fact, everyone loved it.  Just or not, they expressed a willingness to shell out $60 more plus tax for what would basically be a massive bug fix / patch to NHL ‘09.

Instead, a few ‘09 issues were patched, but a lot of important ones weren’t.  In addition, a number of new features were introduced – each with bugs or gameplay issues of their own.  A perfect example, though EA did fix it before final release, was the leg-kick fake.  People found by playing the demo that they could zip across the ice faster by repeatedly using it.  While I’m thankful that this was reported and fixed prior to final release, demos are not supposed to be open beta testing sessions.

Overall, I feel a bit cheated.  There were specific promises made, even on video, that were broken.  There were general promises made that were clearly broken – spending loads of time on new features that would’ve been better spent fixing problems from ‘09 that carried over into ‘10.  I’ve made a solid but incomplete list of those issues above, and as you can tell it’s already quite long.

While my one vote is pretty meaningless to EA, I don’t plan on making the same mistake for NHL ‘11.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice…

Steve Uncategorized

NHL ‘10 has been released to much fanfare, and with a great deal of chest-puffing over at EA.   They’ve insisted that they’ve been listening to the online community much more this go-around, and it shows.  They even responded directly to feedback in a video blog.

Kudos must be given to EA for listening to the community and taking their complaints and criticism seriously.

They also deserve credit for fixing (or, at the very least, attempting to fix) a number of huge complaints, including but not limited to:

• Glitch goals (time will tell on this one…)
• EASHL game setup problems, such as jersey selection, the number of players on each team, etc.
• Player color indicator confusion due to similar (near identical) colors
• Unrealistic, tape to tape passing
• A veritable cornucopia of control issues, such as:
  • check/shoot being mapped to the same control, causing loads of inadvertent penalties when trying to slap in rebounds / loose pucks in the offensive zone
  • saucer pass / “puck push” being mapped to the same control, causing issues if you didn’t tap the button just right when performing a puck push
• Thanks to feedback on the demo, they did eliminate a couple of glitch goals as well as a major glitch in their new “shot fake” animation that allowed you to skate faster by repeatedly doing it

There’s a great deal more than EA has addressed, and for that they deserve credit.  NHL ‘10 delivers on a good number of the promises that EA has made.  There are also some really cool and surprising new features.  The puck physics are vastly improved, and the gameplay seems a lot more “random” (in a good way).

They’ve even improved the web experience with a pretty cool site where you can see a decent amount of statistics and information on each team in the EASHL.  Definitely a welcome improvement.

… However …

There are some glaring oversights that leave this particular EA customer very disappointed – and not in that “he’ll never, ever be satisfied” sort of way, either.

NHL ‘10 is basically NHL ‘09 v 2.0.  It adds some new features which likely took a considerable amount of work to implement, but none of them are totally groundbreaking, and some of them raise new issues and problems that didn’t previously exist.

Consoles freezing: This is the biggest one.  EA has already said they’re aware of it and working on a patch.  I hope that’s true, but it’s inexcusable in my book.  I knew from experience with NHL 09 that EA’s code for handling network inconsistency was unstable at best, and horrible at worst.  When EA’s servers were having their oft-fabled “bad nights”, the game would often freeze up – either a real console freeze, or the game would just never return to a state that allowed the user to press a button and get out of what they were doing – forcing them to quit to the dashboard.   This year the same issues are present.  To add insult to injury, sometimes people’s consoles are freezing up entirely.  In fact, while my EASHL team was trying to get into a game last night, all 5 of our consoles locked up simultaneously, requiring a hard reboot.

Board play: Board play is a cool new addition to the NHL series, but in practice, it’s not necessarily the most useful tool.  It has a few problems, not the least of which is the sort of “magnet effect” the board play button has.  It’s far too easy to stop a speedy winger dead in his tracks if he’s anywhere near the boards.  There’s also no accounting for massive size/strength differences between the players involved in board play – there’s no escaping being pinned, etc.  All you can do is kick the puck one way or another before it’s poke checked out of your control.

Boosts: Already the subject of great controversy, NHL 10’s new equipment and boost packs are a huge blemish on an improved product.  First and foremost, the ability to buy boost points  (as in, with cold hard real world cash) for your online player in a competitive league takes away from the spirit of fair competition.  It’s just a bad idea and an obvious “all of the other EA franchises are doing this money grab, so we must as well” situation.

Equally as annoying as the ability to pay extra money to gain an edge on online players (who haven’t yet earned the boosts through achievements) is the massive complexity of the boost system.  I can’t even think of a simple way to explain it, but I’ll try:

• Like NHL 09, you can still earn “player cards” in NHL 10 that give you additional attribute points
• However, there is now a new array of equipment that opens up something called a “boost slot” – some equipment opens only one “boost slot”, some will open more than that.
• You use your “boost slots” to activate a “boost” – which you earn by performing various achievements / tasks ranging from very easy to absurdly time consuming.   A “boost” bumps up a specific attribute (i.e. slapshot power) by a specific number of points.
• Completely separate from these boosts are “boost packs”, which are basically a grab bag of boosts tailored to specific player types.  These are purchased with real world cash as a shortcut, and give your online and offline “Be a Pro” player an advantage.  These cannot be used in conjunction with boosts that are “earned.”  It’s one or the other.

If that wasn’t confusing enough – just dig in to the menu!  After entering in my code for the Kane 88 Boost Pack that I got for preordering the game, I had a pretty hard time figuring out just what the heck to do with it.  The menus are incredibly confusing and poorly laid out.  Just finding which gloves were the “Kane gloves” was a hassle.  I had to move the controller over each set of gloves to see if it was the right one, because it’s just an array of pictures laid out with no text until you select the item.

But wait – activating Kane’s gloves (and skates, and stick) didn’t even do anything for my attributes just yet.  You then have to go to the “boost slot” menu, which is equally confusing, and add a boost into your slot.

To make matters worse, EA made the decision that the “best” equipment (the equipment with the most boost slots / capability) would not be authentic gear.  That doesn’t sound too bad on its face, but once you look at the “best” gear, you’ll understand:  It’s ridiculous.  If you want the most points possible for your skater, you’ll be wearing absurd camouflage helmets, carrying neon-colored sticks, etc.  It’s a distracting eyesore.  Ultimately, you have a decision to make: dignity, or attribute points?

“Hardcore mode” issues: The new hardcore gameplay mode has been met with very mixed reviews.  There seems to be overwhelming sentiment that the passing is just too hard / unrealistic now.  The main gripe people have is that you must “charge up” your pass to send a harder pass.  In real hockey, snapping a crisp, sharp pass doesn’t require time to “charge up”.  You may sacrifice accuracy, but you don’t have to delay for a half a second to get a full “charge” on your pass.   Because of the speed of the game, this requirement is detrimental to the gameplay experience.  Perhaps EA has already thought of it and tried it only to find it didn’t work – but my suggestion would have been to measure how hard/fast someone pulls in the pass button (Right trigger on the Xbox 360, which is analog, so this is possible).  Alternatively, holding in the right trigger and flicking the right stick to pass in any direction would be great – allowing you to skate in one direction and pass in another.  Again – maybe these avenues were explored and scrapped for technical reasons, or maybe they don’t work in practice as well as they work in theory.  Just tossing them out there.

Server issues: Day 1 was an utter nightmare once people started getting off of work.  Getting into EASHL games was virtually impossible, and the EA Sports forums were littered with new threads about it.  Given how many years of experience EA has had launching new games with online capabilities, this sort of crash and burn on day 1 is inexcusable.  “We didn’t anticipate that many players” is just not a reasonable excuse.  NHL 09 had all sorts of server issues as well, with people getting connected / disconnected from EA’s servers sporadically, etc.

Other big misses: There are some other areas where I just don’t understand what EA was thinking.  I know they made a legitimate effort to listen to the community, but it seems some of the biggest, most frequent requests and complaints were ignored, such as:

• EASHL games taking too long – this was a common complaint on the forums. Cut scenes and other interruptions were lengthy, and unless everybody online hit a button, they played out to the bitter end.  Instead of addressing this, EA seems to have made it worse – in more ways than one:
  • The first issue is after the whistle play – now, if there’s any pushing/shoving after the whistle, it takes even longer to start up a cut scene, lengthening the game even further
  • Even worse, when a game ends, it cuts automatically to the 3 Stars presentation, and then a Honda sponsored Highlight Reel.  This would be all fine and good if users weren’t absolutely trapped into watching it.  It will take some more tinkering, but from my assessment so far, I believe that these events are like cutscenes, in that every player must hit A to skip them.  If one player doesn’t, nobody gets to skip.  Therefore, you can’t get to the game menu to view the game summary or exit the game until these things play all the way out (or everyone hits A).  If one guy wants to watch the entire highlights clip – everybody’s stuck watching it.  There is no way to get out of it (short of quitting NHL 10 altogether by exiting to the dashboard, which would take longer by the time you restart the game).
• No EASHL practice mode – this was the most common feature request on the forums.  The vast majority of people interested in EASHL wanted this, begged for this, and started suggesting it just a week into 09’s existence.
• Goalie tutorials – what was the point of including just one extremely rudimentary drill for goalies that doesn’t even teach any of the controls?  This makes no sense at all.  For a regular skater, you go through all sorts of drills.  For a goalie, you are taught to use the left stick to move your goalie back and forth while 3 guys take shots at you.  That’s it.  You don’t learn any of the new (and frankly interesting/great) goalie controls they’ve added this year.  This one tutorial is so short/simple it’s almost more angering to go through it and realize that was it. I’d rather it have not existed at all.
• Faceoffs seem mostly unchanged.  On rare occasion there’s now the odd stray faceoff win that goes to nobody, but for the most part, they’re exactly the same as in 09.  We had too many server issues last night to play enough EASHL games to see it – but I see no reason why one of last year’s major issues would be resolved:  Basically, you can rush the recipient of a faceoff right as it happens and poke check them for a breakaway, if you execute it properly.  This was a huge complaint last year, and though I haven’t seen confirmation yet (only because we could hardly get a game going last night), I don’t anticipate this is solved.
• The menu system is still unintuitive, and often frustrating.  Besides the whole new “Boost” section being confusing, there are a number of other areas that just feel like a developer hammered away at it until he could say “ok it works” and it was never actually tested on a user who had to figure out how to use it for him/herself.  Things are not placed intuitively in the menu hierarchy, making it hard to find what you’re looking for at times.
• On a related note, there are “flow” issues in terms of handling errors.  When the EASHL servers are acting up and games are not getting started properly, your team is dumped a good 2-3 steps back in terms of menus/screens, rather than just returning to the “game room” – meaning everyone has to go through a series of steps to get back in the game room and try again.
• Fighting… wow, where do I start?  Fighting in 09 was pretty bad, but it’s a small enough part of the game that not very many people were clamoring for it to be redone.  EA redid it anyway, and the execution is just really lacking.  It seems like chaotic button mashing, and the first person view is just… weird at best.  Much as everyone likes to rag on the 2k series, I saw a video yesterday and the fighting engine looks incredible.  I’d rather EA spent their time and money on other aspects of the game, personally.  Especially more testing and some serious UI improvements.

Overall, if we ignore the server issues, which EA will likely sort out over the next few days, the biggest problems of NHL 10 (so far) pale in comparison to the cheating/glitching going on in 09.  It’s a welcome upgrade that will prove addictive if they can keep their servers running long enough for all of us to play.

That being said, I’m still sort of amazed at some of the bigger misses this year, and I get frustrated that they get a free pass on it because there isn’t a strong enough competitor out there to challenge their throne.

I’ll close out by saying that I’ve been a developer myself for many years, and I can empathize with the fact that you have to serve so many masters, prioritize so many different requests, etc.  It has become clear that each and every developer over at EA cares a great deal about the end product, and if any of you are reading: I know that reading this sort of criticism of your work can be bothersome.

I respect what you do, and I know you pour yourselves into your work.  I just wish somebody over there was managing the process better, because clearly a massive amount of time was spent on new additions that people are uninterested in at best, and angry about at worst.  It would’ve been great to see that time spent on some of the things the community had been begging for all this time, instead.

Steve Uncategorized

I’ve created http://bugs.fixnhl.com – which will allow you (using the Reddit engine) to vote bugs up, add your own, etc.

The goal is for gameplay and problematic issues to be submitted and voted on there.  I really don’t want it to turn into “give me authentic goal horns and goalie masks!” and will probably delete such submissions.

Hop on over there and vote!

Steve Uncategorized

I can’t say I’ve ever been so simultaneously pleased and disappointed about a product release / patch.

Patch 2 is out.  On the positive side:

• Juicing is (supposedly) gone
• Ridiculously oversized goalies are (supposedly) gone — except they’re not, see below.
• Interference penalties are called properly – fantastic!
• Several cheese goals are gone, or were at least “lessened” by messing with shot accuracy
• Faceoffs now occur in the zone of the team that committed a penalty (minor, but nice)
• Increased penalties for stick lift button-mashing
• Weakened the goalies a bit so that a few more “normal” goals go in

On the negative side, and unbelievable to me and hopefully a number of others, are a couple of broken promises and failed fixes.  First and foremost, this should be an indicator to EA that when the online component of their games becomes this significant, users will need frequent patches to plug holes found over time by users.

There are, however, 3 shockingly offensive failures:

Number 1: EA claimed that patch 1.02 “Made the colours of OTP / EASHL indicators more distinct (yellow and orange)”.  This is a direct reference to the problem of having player indicators that are two slightly different shades of yellow.  These are no different after patch 1.02, though EA Developer Jason Rupert claims they look different to him.  I believe he’s got the best of intentions, and has been great at providing feedback to users lately.  However, I think he’s looking at the Orange indicator that appears on the opposite team’s colors.  The yellows have not changed.

It’s things like this that make me feel it’s not worth paying $60 for an EA product.  For something like this to squeeze through the QA process not once (initial release) or twice (first patch), but three times (second patch!) is utterly ridiculous.  There is no chance that EA playtested this game with full 6 vs. 6 OTP / EASHL functionality and let this get through.  It’s frustrating to everyone I’ve ever played the game with, and it’s ridiculous that not only was it not fixed, but it was not fixed even after we were told it would be.

Number 2:  It took mere hours after the first patch before I saw a new cheese goal exploit.  It’s a new toe-drag wrister from a specific location that goes in 100% of the time due to a goalie AI flaw.  The curve shot is not gone, folks.  In fact, in some ways it’s worse – it works from several places now.  These sorts of things are proof that EA needs constant patch support in order to keep the game fair.  It’s not just that it makes the game unenjoyable to play when you’re pitted against people who exploit this.  EA has a tournament in Vancouver for finalists in the EASHL.  Once you’ve made the competition “real”, and associated a prize with it – it is your responsibility to keep the game fair and preserve its integrity.  EA fails to do this by insisting that patch 1.02 is the last one, and there will not be future patches.  NHL ‘10 is going to need constant support, or it will continue to be plagued by cheaters, glitchers, etc.

Number 3: We were informed that ridiculously-sized goalies would no longer be allowed (usually 6′9″ and 275lbs).  However, I saw one in a game just the other day.  It turns out this may have just been a “display” issue from a sort of half-baked patch.  An EA developer claims that the screen will say he’s 6′9″ and 275lbs, but his in-game size is shrunk to a constrained level.  It’s really hard to tell if that’s truly the case, though.  Even the official patch release notes from EA claim they’re fixed, they may not be.

It’s poor enough that things like the 99 glitch were not addressed much earlier.  It’s far more frustrating that EA has promised a few things would be fixed, and none of them were.

Now, a more complete outline of issues that exist even post-patch, and need to see a demonstrated fix for 2010 before I’ll be contributing my money to EA anymore:

• Two yellow color indicators are still not fixed.  Furthermore, colors should be locked to positions, not randomly assigned.  Playing several games in a row gets obnoxious as players occasionally forget they’ve changed colors since the last game.
• There’s the new / terrible aforementioned glitch goal.
• Generally, the curve shot is a rampant issue.
• I saw a 6′9″ 275 user goalie in a game the other day.  That was supposed to be fixed.  It’s apparently not.
• Goalies still release the puck if they’ve covered it far out of the crease.  No, they’re not passing it.  They just get up and back up to the net.
• Goalies still drop the puck to their stick before covering it up, making them vulnerable to poke checks.
• The puck is still “untouchable” when either moving slowly, or for a short period after being released by the goalie, making tapping in rebounds, etc, a pain
• Even human controlled players have horrible AI reactions to these slow moving pucks – poking at them pointlessly, which effectively paralyzes human control of the player.
• It’s hard to say if this is just a perception issue or not, but goalies seem to either stand on their head or act like swiss cheese in some predetermined fashion now.  We’re either scoring 1 goal the whole game, or 7.
• Cherry picking strategy is still far too effective.  There’s simply not enough advantage to having a 5 on 4 in the offensive zone, it seems.
• There still appear to be “pause glitch” issues or something similar.  Just recently a team paused the game with 30 seconds left (down by a goal, of course) and a new phenomenon occurred:  The game got stuck for both my teammate and me.  We were stuck on a screen where we could not even voluntarily exit the game – we had to exit to our dashboards to get out.  Of course, the win never got recorded for us.
• Jersey selection was never fixed in the patches.  It’s still a ridiculous pain to try and tell them apart, especially when lots of players have “readied up” already.  The designer of that screen should be locked in timeout for a while.  The QA folks who approved it should be locked in for at least five times as long.

Finally, the “It sucked in ‘09 and ought not suck in ‘10″ wishlist, many of which are EASHL specific:

• Button mapping issues are problematic.  Why does a right stick movement call for a shot when RB exists for that?  It shouldn’t.  Why can’t we come up with something better to differentiate between when a user wants to check vs. shoot a loose puck right away?
• Passing is often annoying – going toward a player that the passer didn’t intend to feed.  An indicator of some sort (visible only to the passer) of where a pass would go if he sent it would be great.  At least the user would be given the ability to compensate for the inadequacies of the passing system, which I realize are difficult to overcome because it’s not a simple problem to solve.
• The tendency for players to automatically pass into the boards at times instead of a straight line to the players is extremely problematic – especially notable right off of faceoffs.  They result in an extremely weak, barely-moving pass that is pointless.
• On the flip side, the inability to forcefully ring a pass around the boards is also a problem.
• The number of times a computer controlled player just stares idly as a puck floats by him is in definite need of fixing, especially in terms of defense (both at the offensive blue line, and as the last man back when a loose puck floats behind him and he just ignores it and takes his defensive position instead of retrieving the puck)
• The relative benefit of human controlled goalies just playing far back against their net and creating loads of slot traffic is too high.  Human goalies seem to auto-save just about any shot that isn’t from point blank range if they just play back deep in the net.
• The “no goal” glitch where pucks over the goal line but way up high in the net aren’t registered has been present in v 1.00, patch 1.02 and patch 1.02, and also exists in the 3-on-3 demo I downloaded.  Fix it.  It’s not hard to increase the height of the active area where goals count, and it has resulted in some non-goals when a very hard slapshot bounces in/out without going “low enough” in the net to register.
• Find a solution for how difficult it is to identify gamertags of opposing team members, and specifically tie them to players on the ice.
• Find a solution for how difficult it is to look up teams you’ve just played.
• If you insist on having games that don’t count for one reason or another (i.e. pause glitch, etc) – record “incomplete games” somewhere so that we can look up team names.
• Provide a reasonable means of reporting cheating / abuse with instructions on what to document, etc.

Update: A more complete list of issues, with voting, has been created over at bugs.fixnhl.com

Steve Uncategorized

Well, we haven’t gotten the traffic / response I had hoped for, but there’s clearly support.  Lots of comment replies and so far nobody’s had a single negative thing to say about the letter.

On the positive side, there is some encouraging news.  An EA Developer, while he hasn’t responded specifically to my letter, has acknowledged reading it and gave it some complimentary words over on the EA forums.  He notes that there is a forthcoming patch that will address the 99 glitch and a variety of other issues, but cannot go into detail beyond that.

I still feel that there’s going to be a need for continued patching between now and October if EA truly cares about fostering the EASHL component of the game as an ongoing and enjoyable online experience.  They’ve got a lot of making up to do in the eyes of many customers as far as NHL ‘10 (or 2010, or whatever they choose to call it) is concerned.

Please keep passing on the word on about the letter, and add your comments even if it’s just a “me too.”

Thanks!

Steve Uncategorized

The following is a note to the EA Sports NHL ‘09 team regarding this year’s product and the issues we feel need to be addressed, especially given the fact that online play actually has “playoffs” and a “prize” attached to it.  It is our sincere belief that we would be better served as customers if we saw the items outlined in this letter fixed, as opposed to a batch of new features for NHL 2010.

Please add your name to the list of supporters by commenting on this blog post.

Please feel free to provide your thoughts and feedback by emailing us, especially if you feel we’ve missed something important. Please note that our interest is in bug and issue fixes, not a wishlist of new features.

To the EA Sports NHL ‘09 team:

As long time customers and supporters of your software, we are writing to express our disappointment in this year’s latest offering, and imploring you to provide the customer support we deserve. In the past, when online play was not as common and there was not a serious “prize” on the line, the many glitches that have plagued the NHL series were merely a large annoyance. Now that there is an online league, and online play is the main focus of the NHL franchise, these issues and others are no longer just an annoyance, they are unacceptable.

First and foremost, we are complaining as fans of the franchise. While we may feel disappointed and even cheated this year, we write this letter because we want to love this game and this franchise again.  This year, we are extremely disappointed in the lack of communication from EA about addressing various issues. Most notably, those issues involving cheating: The so-called “99 glitch”, the “faceoff loop glitch”, etc.

In addition to the lack of communication on issues with cheating, there are unacceptable flaws that made it through not only the initial QA process, but also a subsequent patch release. We feel that these items are obvious enough that they should have been addressed and fixed in the product we paid for, even if it took a patch to do so. Finally, we are especially frustrated that some of these issues have existed for years. Those of us who sign this petition are far more interested in seeing NHL ‘09 properly fixed than seeing a whole slew of new features in NHL ‘10 while these bugs and issues remain year to year, as they often have in the past.

We want a product we paid for that is fundamentally broken to be fixed. What follows is a list of our wishes. In case any of the issues outlined below are not clear, the administrator of fixnhl.com has made it clear that he is willing to work directly with EA Sports to clarify any of the items below that require additional documentation:

1) Disable the ability to “99 glitch”, and enable a means of resetting the stats of those players who used it
Update: As of 1/16/2009 It appears a patch will be coming in February to disable the ability to glitch. No word on resetting the stats of glitchers, though.

2) Fix the network synchronization error that allows the “faceoff loop” glitch to avoid losses by causing the game to glitch out, forcing a team to quit out and take a loss

3) Fix the following interface and/or gameplay oversights that somehow made it through the QA/testing process and an additional patch:

• Player indicator colors on teams with 5-6 players are too similar — sometimes, 2 different shades of yellow — add more colors, and ideally fix them to specific positions to avoid any possibility of confusion. Ideally, the blue/purple that can appear similar would be differentiated better as well.
• Provide an option to display the gamertag of the puck handler (especially on opposing teams) – identifying people on other teams is far too much of a chore, at least on the Xbox 360 platform.
• Fix the bug that stops grades from being displayed for a player if the game goes into overtime.
• Fix the well-documented goalie glitches (vision breakaway goal, goal-line slapshot that pulls the goalie off the top of the post, etc) – some of these have existed for several years.
• Display the division, rank, and full team name somewhere in-game (but not in the matchup screen, as this may deter people from playing teams whose rank makes the matchup unattractive). We see no valid reason why these should be concealed, and it preserves the integrity of the game. Higher Division teams are often accused of quitting games early if they feel they may be outmatched, so as to preserve their rank. We ought to be able to see who’s quitting on us.
  • Also, how about penalizing teams that use the 5 minute quit option with relative frequency?
• Provide a means of viewing the opposing team’s roster – including their attribute strengths.  This is a no-brainer and would have allowed identification of glitched teams.
• Address the following long-standing AI and control issues:
  • The “slow puck” glitch (especially detrimental near the opposing team’s net) that causes a player to “freeze up” and be unable to grab or play the puck when it is drifting slowly — especially common after a goalie makes a poor decision to play the puck right into opposition players, rather than freezing it.
  • Goalies who cover the puck any significant distance outside of the crease seem to get up and release it, rather than freezing it, every time – this is incorrect behavior and should be fixed.
  • Provide a “freeze puck” button to tell the goalie to get a whistle.
  • Passing to a player who is standing still is impossible: If a player is standing completely still at the blue line, and a skater passes to him, the AI tries to “lead” the player with the pass even though he is not moving, making a pass impossible. This is a serious flaw that eliminates a number of legitimate plays.
  • Holding vision to stop from checking someone (when trying to shoot in a rebound) is a start in addressing control issues, but the area it works in is too small, and accidental checking still occurs too frequently. Activate this for the entire offensive zone – the sacrifice (not being able to check someone in the offensive zone while holding vision) seems negligible.
  • Passing is sometimes wildly inaccurate, or at least perceived to be, shooting off the boards in a completely different direction from where the user is pointing the analog stick. This could be a bug or an interface issue / user issue. Either way, it should be addressed.
  • The right bumper (RB) is the “call for shot” button, but for some reason, the right analog stick (for checking) still also causes computer AI to shoot the puck. This causes serious issues, especially if a player wants to throw a check right after a faceoff, and that faceoff is won to a CPU-controlled defensive player. There is no reason why checking should also function as “call for shot” when there’s already a specific button assigned to that function.
  • Computer AI on offensive blue line entries is terrible to the point that it’s almost always a bad idea to pass to a computer player who is waiting at the blue line for the puck.  It causes an offsides far too often because of a really weird hesitation that often puts other players offsides when you’d expect him to skate in with it.  It’d be great if this could be addressed.
• Remove the “LB glitch” that allows players to bounce back up instantly after being checked due to a bug in the programming.
• Referees should call interference with significantly greater frequency. The “check anything that moves” strategy, while not always effectively used, shouldn’t even have half a chance at success. Only the player who has (or is at least reasonably close to) the puck should be checkable without a high likelihood of a penalty.
• In the pre-game setup screen, provide a better means of jersey comparison than the semi-transparent view given now. It’s often far too difficult to tell (especially after players have “readied up”) what color jersey the opposing team is wearing.
• Address the fact that, besides “AI glitch goals”, goalies are actually far too good. Good hockey play is rarely rewarded, and far too many “clean games” end up in a 1-0 result, often in 1 or more overtime periods.
• There should be some system that rewards quality play and puck control.  For example, fatigue occurs while in your defensive zone, and players fatigue level drops gradually after clearing the puck and/or entering the offensive zone.
• An AI-controlled player’s response to “call for pass” should have some semblance of reason behind it. If a person calls for a pass from their goalie and is standing behind the net, the goalie should not put it in the net. Ideally, calls requested from horribly congested passing lanes should also not be responded to, though it’s understandable that this may be too difficult to tweak to everyone’s liking.
  • This is especially important in online team play games outside of the EASHL, where you’ll often get a person on your team who does nothing but cherry pick and make ridiculous calls for passes up-ice that get picked off.
• Grades for EASHL games and “pickup” online team play games should be separated somehow. Earning a legend card while doing both is nearly impossible, because being matched up with poor teammates for a “pickup” game makes it nearly impossible to earn good grades.

4) The following may very well be more of a 2010 wishlist, but they’re still things we find to be oversights in the ‘09 QA process that ought to have made it in:

• Provide a means of directly viewing a team’s profile / roster from the “Recent Club Games” list.  The need to memorize names, exit menus and search is cumbersome and frustrating.
• Provide a means of looking at all past games, not just the last 10.  Ideally, this would be complete with statistics, etc. It seems to be a reasonable expectation for a league that ultimately ends up with “actual” winners, a prize, etc.
• Address menu system issues, such as the following:
  • The default option under “Be a Pro” is to create a new “Be a Pro”. This flies against the first rule in interaction design. Having to scroll down to “load” to continue a “Be a Pro” campaign is a sign that very little thought went into the organization of the menus. Accidentally choosing “new” is extremely common and frustrating.
  • When exiting the dressing room after an EASHL game, the user should be returned to the EASHL menus, not the root menu of the game.
  • Player Hub should be accessible from the EASHL menu. The only time most people even use it is to view invites to an EASHL team – it only makes sense to be able to find it there, rather than (or at least in addition to) the obscure place it’s hidden.
• The inability for teams to enter practice mode together seems to be a significant oversight that ought to have been included in ‘09.

Steve Uncategorized