When looking into the long-term vision of the EA SPORTS™ NHL® franchise, we wanted to make sure that the Club Challenges feature will be able to be improved upon and made more useful for players in the future.
The development of the World of CHEL required a rewrite of our online dressing room, with new features (such as Outdoor ONES, Pro-Am, rollover lobbies, and more) layered on top. In rewriting the tech, the Club Challenges system was impacted and required a code rebuild. We quickly identified a fix, but the fix required more time than anticipated and didn’t make it into our “on disc” development timelines, meaning that we will address it via the first post-launch patch in early October.
While we understand the frustration this might cause, we wanted to take a few minutes to explain why, and how, we are changing Club Challenges.
Why Are We Overhauling Club Challenges?
Our previous Club Challenge system was very restrictive. Its infrastructure prevented us from improving it to make your experience better and giving more control to you, the player, to set up matches against friends.
This didn’t align with our vision for where we want EASHL to go. We want to make sure that the Club Challenge feature will be able to be meet the need of the players and provide more tools for you to utilize when setting up games.
Why Can’t You Reuse the Old Option?
This year, EASHL took on a significant tech overhaul because of the addition of World of CHEL. The changes to the Dressing Room will set us up to be far more flexible with features in the future, but unfortunately, getting a challenge system in place for launch wasn’t something we could accomplish. Additionally, we could not have kept the Club Challenge option that was in previous EA SPORTS NHL titles because of the improvements made to the technology behind Dressing Rooms.
What Will the New Club Challenge System Look Like?
Moving forward, the new Challenge feature will be password-based. You will be able to create a lobby based on a specific password that the room leaders create and share. Here’s how it works:
How Will It Benefit Me?
The new Challenge feature will offer more user control when setting up a Challenge match. This will allow you more freedom to set up games, tournaments, and leagues with your peers in more modes than before. This includes the highly-requested ability to play Challenge matches in EASHL Club 3’s! There are more benefits to the new Challenge feature which we’ll be excited to share with you when the feature is available in game, including the ability to have randomized teams.
What Can We Expect for NHL 19?
The new Challenge feature will be available in early October 2018. When it is released, it will be able to be used in EASHL Club 6’s, EASHL Club 3’s, and NHL THREES Drop-in. We will continue to work on improving the Club Challenge feature to allow you more freedom and customization when you are creating a challenge match.
We apologize for not having it ready on day one and understand the frustrations and difficulties this may cause. However, we are looking forward to providing you more freedom with Custom Matchmaking in EASHL thanks to the overhaul to the Club Challenge feature.
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