• NHL 15 - Next-gen Feature List; No EASHL/GMC

    After weeks of community speculation, this afternoon EA SPORTS NHL Producer Sean Ramjagsingh released the full feature set for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, confirming doubts that the popular EA SPORTS Hockey League and GM Connected modes will not be available in NHL 15. It is worth nothing that Online Team Play will be added to NHL 15 in a future content update.

    While losing features from last-gen to current-gen is always discouraging, this news stings even more given that the NHL development team did not put out a PS4/XB1 version last year at console launch as they worked towards "developing a best-in-class hockey experience for new platforms in the future."

    If you were planning on purchasing NHL 15, does this dampen your enthusiasm and prevent you from purchasing the title? Or will the other available modes keep you on-board? Continue on share your thoughts with the community and see the blog from EA SPORTS.

    From today's EA SPORTS NHL 15 - Game Modes blog:

    We can now confirm that the following modes will be available when you purchase NHL 15 on PS4 and Xbox One* on September 9:

    • Play Now
    • Be A Pro
    • Be A GM
    • Online Versus
    • Hockey Ultimate Team
    • NHL Moments Live



    As part of the move to next generation consoles, our team is focused on delivering significant content updates post launch. We plan to listen and work with you to improve NHL 15. Our commitment is to continue to optimize the gameplay experience for you in the months to come, as well as deliver new game content throughout the year for free.

    Given our commitment to build a truly new generation of hockey games for our fans, we had to make some tough design decisions. I’m writing this to let you know that despite our team’s best effort to squeeze as much into the game as possible at launch, we will not be able to deliver EA SPORTS Hockey League or Online Team Play when NHL 15 releases on September 9 for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

    ONLINE TEAM PLAY (OTP):

    OTP will be rolled out as part of our NHL 15 content update program. We’re close to having it done, but our priority is to deliver a quality experience that’s stable for you, the players, and we still have some testing work to do. We’ll have more information for you on the schedule closer to launch. Stay tuned to our channels for the latest updates.

    EA SPORTS Hockey League (EASHL):

    As a franchise, we’re 100% committed to the EA SPORTS Hockey League. While we can’t deliver EASHL in NHL 15 on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, we have huge plans for the mode in future iterations of the game. We will be putting together a small EASHL committee made up of you, the fans, to ensure that we deliver an experience that is bigger and better than any of us would have imagined when we first introduced the feature in NHL 09.
    This article was originally published in forum thread: NHL 15 - Next-gen Feature List; No EASHL/GMC started by jaymo76 View original post
    Comments 16 Comments
    1. jaymo76's Avatar
      jaymo76 -
      Quote Originally Posted by jaymo76 View Post
      Pasta reporting that it's confirmed.... no gmconnected in PS4 or x1
      Add to that: no eashl and no live the life modes.
    1. SmoothPancakes's Avatar
      SmoothPancakes -
      The hell.

      Sent from my Droid Maxx using Tapatalk because I'm a lazy ass
    1. SmoothPancakes's Avatar
      SmoothPancakes -
      Is there even anything in next gen NHL?

      Sent from my Droid Maxx using Tapatalk because I'm a lazy ass
    1. psusnoop's Avatar
      psusnoop -
      Not cool at all
    1. bdoughty's Avatar
      bdoughty -
      Quote Originally Posted by SmoothPancakes View Post
      Is there even anything in next gen NHL?
      A letter to the fans...

      That has been an annoying next gen feature for Live and now NHL. We are sorry, blah, blah, blah.
    1. steelerfan's Avatar
      steelerfan -
      I've gotten over the news of no GMC, accepting it for what it is. I've gotten a little information (which I won't share) that makes it understandable (though it is still a disappointment).

      That said, the article above did not even mention GMC. What the hell? Surely it's not gone forever. I'd like to see SOMETHING about it so I know what the deal is.
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by steelerfan View Post
      I've gotten over the news of no GMC, accepting it for what it is. I've gotten a little information (which I won't share) that makes it understandable (though it is still a disappointment).

      That said, the article above did not even mention GMC. What the hell? Surely it's not gone forever. I'd like to see SOMETHING about it so I know what the deal is.
      OperationSports' interview with producer Sean Ramjagsingh included this mention of GM Connected:

      Update: After realizing we had no quotes from Sean on GM Connected we reached out to EA for a comment. Here is an official response from EA on why it was excluded: "GM Connected was one of our lowest played modes. We’ll be looking to see how we can bring a better online GM experience to the franchise in future iterations."
    1. steelerfan's Avatar
      steelerfan -
      Quote Originally Posted by Paakaa10 View Post
      OperationSports' interview with producer Sean Ramjagsingh included this mention of GM Connected:
      Christ.

      If there's no online franchise mode in the plans, I'll have to ween myself off of NHL out of spite.

      Thanks for the info, Brian.
    1. SmoothPancakes's Avatar
      SmoothPancakes -
    1. bdoughty's Avatar
      bdoughty -
      I am more shocked by Paakaa posting here. A year and half since the last post. Good to see you back!

      You may not like EASHL Steelerfan but it is pretty popular for the masses. Sports threads are rare at Neogaf but this omission was a biggie over there. Then of course HUT, gotta have that HUT money.

      I still hope one day to have College teams and the Froze Four. Until then I will spend the majority of my time playing international tournaments. They do plan on having the national teams this year?
    1. Paakaa10's Avatar
      Paakaa10 -
      Quote Originally Posted by steelerfan View Post
      Christ.

      If there's no online franchise mode in the plans, I'll have to ween myself off of NHL out of spite.

      Thanks for the info, Brian.
      I can understand, to a point, where they're coming from. People for years were calling for an online league mode, it got implemented, and then it became the new least-used mode. We can argue for days about whether that was due to the mode having fundamental flaws (like slow menus, etc.) or there just not being as much of a committed community for it as expected, but in the grand scheme of things, you can understand why it would end up on the cutting room floor for the new-gen debut.

      The real "feet to the fire" moment for the NHL developers will come when NHL 16 is in progress and whether or not there is somebody on board actually working to craft a better online league experience. If not, then I'd agree that fans of the mode are better served getting off the train sooner than later.
    1. JeffHCross's Avatar
      JeffHCross -
      It's interesting to me that one of the larger gripes over the years for NCAA was the limit on having only 12 players in a OD. Yet all the professional games that allowed more saw those modes played less. I wonder if that's a reflection of polish, passion of the fan base, or the unwieldy problems that result from so many schedules to arrange.

      I also think football has an inherent advantage with teams playing only once per week. It lends itself nicely to a schedule.

      Hi Paakaa! Hope you had a good birthday!
    1. CLW's Avatar
      CLW -
      Quote Originally Posted by JeffHCross View Post
      It's interesting to me that one of the larger gripes over the years for NCAA was the limit on having only 12 players in a OD. Yet all the professional games that allowed more saw those modes played less. I wonder if that's a reflection of polish, passion of the fan base, or the unwieldy problems that result from so many schedules to arrange.

      I also think football has an inherent advantage with teams playing only once per week. It lends itself nicely to a schedule.

      Hi Paakaa! Hope you had a good birthday!
      I think it's a little of both.

      (1) the NCAA "core" player LOVED dynasty mode (these other games I suspect do not) Heck even Madden rarely focuses on Franchise mode b/c the "core" Madden gamer is apparently all about MUT and random online play.
      (2) the biggest problem with a large online dynasty/league is just the difficulty in 2 different people finding a set time to play a video game.
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      It sucks that GM Connected is the lowest played mode because that was the only mode I played
    1. steelerfan's Avatar
      steelerfan -
      Why would you guys assume that because you can have 30 user teams anyone had more than a few?

      I played in 2 GMCs. One had 8 or 9 users, the other 3-4. Neither one was tough to schedule, the vast majority of your games are against the CPU.

      If GMC was "one of" (EA's words) the least played modes, I suspect it was for two reasons (in order):

      1. 82 game season
      2. Clunky menus

      The "passion" of the NCAA community is more about 12 game seasons than people who love college football so much more than other people love other sports.
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      We were pretty damn dedicated to get through as many seasons as we did, but yes those menus blew. Even worse on NHL 13.