This post covers issues with the current implementation of Drop-in in NHL 17. Suggestions are made in order to streamline the whole drop-in experience; and a way to implement class-based line-changes is presented to add more depth to the EASHL/Drop-in game modes.

Introduction

I have some thoughts I’d like to share about redesigning the Drop-in experience. I firmly believe the health of the EASHL, this online gaming community, and to some extent the EA NHL franchise could benefit greatly from a further improved Drop-in experience.

Drop-in is the first taste of the 6-on-6 online hockey experience for most new players. While I guess everybody agrees that club is better, Drop-in is (or should be) easier to commit to. I’d like to see the numbers behind the scenes, but there has to be hundreds of thousands of Drop-in games played in a year’s span. When no EASHL club teammates are on, a lot of players will use Drop-In to learn a new position, test some player classes, try to improve their game, and/or just relax and have fun.

Considering those points, the goal of this Drop-in redesign suggestion is to deliver:

Quicker matchmaking

Better, more consistent 6-on-6 experience

Better on-ice gameplay allowing for more strategies

Current Workflow

The current Drop-in workflow is the following:

Launch Drop-In Select a position group (Forward, Defense or Goalie) Search for a lobby Pick the exact position in the lobby (1-2 minute wait) Load class selection screen

Pick exact class

Pick team + jersey by each team’s captain

Load & start the game

That makes for a lot of steps before we are actually playing hockey. Many of those steps expose a possible point of failure.

Current Issues

When trying to play as a forward:

Expect to get matched with other people that want to play forward only, 9 times out of 10. This, more often than not, results in 3-on-3 games if nobody quits before the game starts. While this looks like a bug, it could be a trade-off EA had to make in order to keep a 2 minute “lobby lifecycle”.

When matched with only 5 other people in a 3-on-3 lobby, some players will understandably leave the lobby or the class-selection screen in the hopes of finding a 6-on-6 match.

And when that happens, all players are back to square one – meaning it takes a lot of effort to get a 6-on-6 game going in Drop-in as a forward.

Pro-tip if you want to play as a forward in 6-on-6 games As explained before, dropping in as a forward will create a 6 man lobby nine times out of ten — if the lobby doesn’t immediately fill-up entirely, it most likely never will. If you really want a 6-on-6 game going, the easiest way is to use the Group-matchmaking feature: Join a game as a defenseman, it should fill-up quickly with other players.

Invite another defenseman(from your team or the other team) in a party/group chat.

Leave the game immediately . This could make the lobby fail, so try to do this as quickly as possible in order to allow for somebody else to take your spot and not break the game for everyone.

. This could make the lobby fail, so try to do this as quickly as possible in order to allow for somebody else to take your spot and not break the game for everyone. Use the group-matchmaking feature, and drop-in with your new friend using a forward and a defenseman.

You both will join a 6-on-6 lobby instead of the dreaded 3-on-3 lobbies.

When trying to play as a defenseman or as a goalie, it’s actually not as bad — most lobbies will fill with 12 players. There still are some issues though:

If your Competitive Rating (CR) is high, you will most likely be matched with poor teammates. My CR is roughly 650-700, and I constantly get matched with 350-450 CR players while the opposition mostly have >450 CR players.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the matchmaker doesn’t usually create evenly matched teams.

Even as a D or G, lobbies sometimes fail to fill entirely, especially if one team has a low-level-badge goalie, or if one team looks “stacked” with multiple prestige-II players (which doesn’t mean anything, to be honest). Or the game simply disconnects on load.

All in all, it can take many iterations to get a game going.

Suggested Workflow

Being a software developer, I’ve been hoping for years that the actual drop-in workflow would change to it’s simplest form which, in my opinion, would look like:

Launch Drop-In Matchmaking preferences Matchmaking Load & start the game