NHL 19: In-depth interview with Sean "Rammer" Ramjagsingh

[craigscar]

Re: NHL 19: In-depth interview with Sean "Rammer" Ramjagsingh

My biggest problem with the NHL development is the condescending, antagonist attitude the developers have for anyone outside streamers/HUT/etc. Talking down and acting like basic requests for non-online features are huge issues is insulting.

I enjoy the game overall every year and know it's a tough job with a smaller team but the way they talk to the media needs to be improved. SDS with MLB The Show is the worst at it ("look how amazing our only franchise mode update is! it's just new menus!") but these guys really appear to dislike the community besides the people who feed their ego. As someone who just wants a good game but understand HUT comes first it gets annoying that my biggest requests (better emotion in the game, better presentation and atmosphere, create-a-play) are basically met with "you're dumb for even thinking about those."

I have no idea what they actually think and know it's not their forte (they're developers) but they need to be trained better at answering questions without condescending people.

As an outsider, can you give me an example of when a developer basically gave a, "you're dumb for even thinking about those"?

Also, what exactly is "better emotion", better presentation, better atmosphere?

While everyone freaks out about not being heard, EA doing the same thing over and over, etc. Just understand, ANY feature has to be weighed vs. the cost. Does it pay for itself, earn a profit? Will adding "better emotion" cause more users to purchase the game or spend more money on micro-transactions?

And, before anyone freaks out about, "all they want is money", ask yourself, when's the last time you went to your job and decided to just work there without being paid out of the goodness of your heart? No? Then don't freak out when a development company treats it like a business.

[Kinvarus]

Re: NHL 19: In-depth interview with Sean "Rammer" Ramjagsingh

As an outsider, can you give me an example of when a developer basically gave a, "you're dumb for even thinking about those"?

Also, what exactly is "better emotion", better presentation, better atmosphere?

While everyone freaks out about not being heard, EA doing the same thing over and over, etc. Just understand, ANY feature has to be weighed vs. the cost. Does it pay for itself, earn a profit? Will adding "better emotion" cause more users to purchase the game or spend more money on micro-transactions?

And, before anyone freaks out about, "all they want is money", ask yourself, when's the last time you went to your job and decided to just work there without being paid out of the goodness of your heart? No? Then don't freak out when a development company treats it like a business.

Yes but you can treat it like a business while also doing your best to cater to all of your playerbase and not just a select few of them. There are a lot of people who play franchise mode and who get maybe one or two updates a year if that. Be A Pro doesn't get touched more than once or twice a console generation and if like me you like playing goalie you get ignored every year for even the bare minimum improvements like things that have been issues for years now that they know about yet never seem to fix.

Yes Online is where they make most of their money with Micro-Transactions and HUT so of course they're going to focus a lot of their time on those but that doesn't mean that's the only thing you should focus on and ignore the rest of your player base who don't play the online stuff as much.

I occasionally play EASHL but for the most part I play Be A Pro and Franchise and there are a lot of gamers out there who only play one of those modes and it used to be that they would focus on doing stuff for everybody, even if it was online one year then offline stuff the next year and so on. Not any more, now it's online every year and the tiniest of "improvements" to everything else and that it them essentially saying screw you to all of those members of the consumer base, not with words but with their actions.

It is them saying unless you play online we don't care about you and we'll do the bare minimum we can just to give the impression we do things with those modes.

Now people can say 2K are starting to get a little lazy with the NBA series but there is a reason why NBA 2K is still regarded as the best sports game series around. Because while they focus on online stuff and their micro-transaction stuff especially in the career mode is still over the top ridiculous they still make other improvements to all their modes in one way or another year after year.

And like Tyler said about things like presentation even the small things either don't get fixed or are removed, things like your character's profile image, back in the day your Be A Pro created character's face would be their image on the UI when they scored a goal or something for years then one year they just took that out and now you have the generic black silhouette, despite the fact it's a tiny thing that they used to have in game and have since removed.

As for your where has a dev ever come out and said you're dumb for even thinking that or being condescending, just watch the video this thread is about, Rammer does it in it., like the aforementioned players who play goalie taking over the extra man until they're back on the ice feature, his whole reaction to it is a mixture of condescension and treating the interviewer and more so the gamers who requested the feature like idiots.

He says that they don't have time to do things like that because they don't have time, then immediately says that they had it in the game, then removed it and that it would take a day or less to put it back into the game but yet is a feature people won't see for a very long time because they don't have the time to do it.

Sometimes it's not what they say but how they said it, especially with the way he tries to justify it when we all know what he really means is they had it, they took it out and they aren't going to put it back in and we all know that's what he means and the fact is that if he had just come out and said something like:

"Yeah we talked about it and we had it in the game but we took it out because although goalies might get taken off the ice for an extra attacker the fact that there's usually not a very long period of time that that attacker is on the ice before there's a break in play and the goalie is back out there again we don't feel like giving the player control of another player for that short frame of time is worth diverting that time away from another feature."

Something like that a much more consumer friendly way of saying it than the bumbling mess of an answer he gave.

[tyler289]

Re: NHL 19: In-depth interview with Sean "Rammer" Ramjagsingh

Also, what exactly is "better emotion", better presentation, better atmosphere?

While everyone freaks out about not being heard, EA doing the same thing over and over, etc. Just understand, ANY feature has to be weighed vs. the cost. Does it pay for itself, earn a profit? Will adding "better emotion" cause more users to purchase the game or spend more money on micro-transactions?

And, before anyone freaks out about, "all they want is money", ask yourself, when's the last time you went to your job and decided to just work there without being paid out of the goodness of your heart? No? Then don't freak out when a development company treats it like a business.

I 100% understand why they do what they do and make the choices they make. I don't think every decision needs to be directed at making people buy more micro-transactions (and not every decision is made that way fortunately). I think this team has done a pretty good job overall of making a good game.

One example of "more emotion" is the way MLB The Show added guys fist-pumping and fired up after big hits. They don't do it perfectly, but it's a start. I'd love to see cutscenes of big celebrations by teams after overtime goals, especially in the playoffs. Right now it's basically like any other goal. The playoffs are terribly done.