The EA Sports NHL franchise is finally taking their video games to the next level. As NHL 18 nears the halfway point of its game life, one thing is very clear: They are working to make the best game possible. Although the NHL developers may not do things effectively all the time, this year’s additions have been a breath of fresh air.

There are many features that need to be added to the next edition. If these following additions show up in NHL 18, it will be one of the best NHL video games to date.

Revamped HUT Draft Champions Mode

In NHL 18, fans will be looking for constant updates. In both FIFA and Madden, their Draft Champions modes are constantly updated as new HUT cards come out. This helps players figure out who they like to use to build their own Hockey Ultimate Team. As long as Draft Champions is updated on a weekly basis it will be a home run.
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On top of the updates, Draft Champions needs a more competitive side. The EA NHL developers will need to add a pay-to-play side to help advance the mode. Madden’s recent “Madden Bowl” was a $250,000 Draft Champions tournament that garnered significant attention. If NHL can add on a ranked section of Draft Champions that requires coins to enter, that could be their first big step into making it onto the eSports scene.

Remove Desyncing, Looping, Booting

If you’re not particularly familiar with the NHL series, desyncing and looping are the biggest problems within the game right now. Desyncing and looping are both major glitches within the gameplay that come after stopping play and overwhelming the game’s inputs. If someone desyncs your game, it could be hours until you can get back online to play NHL 17. It’s extremely frustrating to play an entire game only to get thrown off of the EA servers due to a glitch in the mechanics.

Booting is an even bigger problem across video games. With peer-to-peer connections, the IP addresses are easily retrieved by anyone with certain software. In NHL 17, your opponent can boot you offline and leave you with a loss and Internet problems. While this issue isn’t overly prevalent in NHL, it’s easily avoidable. If the EA NHL developers could access dedicated servers for games, there would be no fear of being booted offline anymore.

Improved Puck Pickups, Player Switching

As improved as this year’s gameplay is, being able to pick up the puck effectively and smoothly is still hit or miss. The issue comes up annually and still hasn’t improved over the last two or three editions. Gameplay this year has been hampered by the inability to play loose pucks. This is one of the biggest fixes needed in time for NHL 18’s release.