Janikka

in: @Jakeexh @Kauppias4 Welcome! This completes our roster.

Zenegeim (FCL, ECL, and beyond) in: @Sanezh (C) @Janikka (A) @pakjiz (A) @imosi @jubex0r @Viktorhall (Still looking for #1 LW and 50/50 G.)

Still looking. Also looking for a Goalie to share the ice time ~50/50 (whoever plays better gets the big games).

Thanks for the encouragement. I would perhaps not be the best candidate to run a defending school. When it comes to the current era of the ECL, I've only played in Pro (and a bit in Lite), so it would probably be good for someone guiding others to have experience from the top league and know what it takes to get to that level.

Really interesting, thanks for doing this and reporting on the outcome. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing, and I'd love to see teams at least in ECL Elite take the next step in competitiveness by having dedicated coaching. As long as this scene doesn't stagnate or regress (and we've unfortunately seen some signs of that), I think that would be a natural step for teams to gain an edge over the competition.

Congrats, but where is the legendary MKivinen95?

Zenegeim (FCL, ECL Pro Qualifiers) Zenegeim is looking for a new #1 LW. We will play in the FCL and enter the ECL Pro Qualifiers for the ECL 24 Spring season. Please contact either Janikka-, Pakjiz, or Sanezh. Contact any of us either here or on PSN.

I've now been in five Burst games in HUT on the Helsinki servers (three games before the new patch and two games since the servers went back online). None of these games had any packet loss. Looks very promising so far.

Typically, those affected by the common packet loss problem on the Helsinki servers have packet loss with a stable ping. Do you also only encounter this problem on the Helsinki servers?

I played a few games on the Helsinki servers last night, and the one game where I had packet loss it was at 7%. Looks like the problem has gotten worse, perhaps not in frequency but we're certainly seeing higher figures of packet loss across the board.

Thank you very much, @Kenu and the other SportsGamer admins as well as everyone else who helped find a quick solution to this problem. A shout-out to @FlyerKungen and @pakjiz who both also have DNA, are affected by this problem, and were active in bringing it to people's attention (FlyerKungen even made DNA and EA aware of it). Also thank you to everyone who participated in the relevant threads and polls as you all helped keep this issue on the front burner. Sorry for the corny acceptance speech there, I'm just really happy we got a quick ruling to work around this problem before the season started. I know there are dozens of players like me who can now start their season without having to worry about playing some of their games with packet loss. Here's hoping EA can fix it as soon as possible so the Finnish and Russian players can play their home games with the lowest ping.

I support this sentiment because I think you're right. Naturally, I would hope for a favorable decision as someone with the issue, but the opposite would still provide clarity on this and determine conclusively that it's up to each affected team to decide amongst themselves how they deal with the problem (whether through roster adjustments or something else) while being obligated to honor their opponent's home server selection.

I am currently not playing NHL but Pakjiz is as he said.

Excellent work! Great to know both of the relevant parties who may actually be able to do something about this are now aware of it.

This is an offshoot of my previous thread where I polled people about the problem with packet loss connecting to the Helsinki (Europe North East) servers on DNA, the Finnish ISP. Based on that poll, most players who are on DNA are indeed affected by the problem where their connection to the Finnish servers is weakened by packet loss hovering somewhere between 1 and 3 percent. I feel like the results warrant further steps, and the next obvious step is polling the community about their willingness to honor affected opponents' requests to play both games (home and away) on the Swedish server. This of course excludes the home games of Central European teams who have the right to play their home games on their nearest server. I feel confident that we have pinned the problem down to the North East servers and it does not appear on either the Europe North or Europe Central servers. I understand some teams may have an affected player and still feel like the lower ping tilts the team's preference in favor of playing on the Finnish servers. For this reason, I'm including it as an option in the poll so those teams can also make themselves heard. The packet loss problem is likely not getting fixed in the very near future, and speaking on behalf of everyone I contacted about the topic, we feel like reverting to the Swedish server would be the best workaround until the Finnish servers work smoothly for all players. Obviously, as someone affected by the problem myself, my perspective is perhaps narrow as to the pros and cons of this solution. I just don't see a better one for now unless the community as a whole demands that those affected tough it out and play at least a great number of their games on the Finnish server where they may always encounter the problem. Note that in the poll, "is/is not affected" means whether your team has at least one player in your regular roster who gets frequent packet loss on the Helsinki/North East servers. If you have a player who has the problem but doesn't feel like it affects their game at all, that would still count toward "is affected" in the poll.

Johtaja's legendary Magic Sonera soars high above the fiber connections of mere mortals.

I don't think the problem is getting fixed by Monday. It might be a good idea to poll the community about whether the Finnish teams (who are not affected by this problem) are willing to compromise and play both games on the Swedish server despite the slightly higher ping. Maybe I'll start a poll about that today.

Update: having 0% at the start of a game does not guarantee a packet loss-free game after all. I had 0% at the start of a game tonight and it climbed up to 3% after which it hovered around 2 and 3 percent for the rest of that game.

That's good to know and seems to confirm my assumption. On the other hand, even after the problem started, I've gone at least one whole night without any packet loss. It's just the luck of the draw when it comes to the Helsinki server(s) on DNA, I guess. Usually I do have it in some of my games each night.

This is assuming the issue is indeed isolated to the Helsinki server(s). To be accurate, at this point that's an assumption I've made based on not having encountered any packet loss on the other servers where I've not played nearly as many games in NHL 24. Anyway, I was thinking another possible solution is allowing teams with DNA users to restart the game until everyone has 0% packet loss. At least for me, and I'm assuming others with the problem, having zero packet loss at the start of a game means that game stays smooth to the end. That of course indicates it's only a problem with some or one of their Helsinki servers (I guess they have multiple servers for each location). However, the problem with this solution could be a sometimes unreasonably long restart loop until all the DNA users lucked out and landed on a smooth server.

I actually checked and found out that DNA is the only ISP offering fiber or indeed any sort of wired connection for me as well. I have also had zero issues with them before this, and I'm sure it's more down to EA or whatever servers they're using because I've never had any problems with DNA in other games.

I've been tempted to switch, myself. The only problem is that I have a commitment on my subscription with DNA for about another year. It's really cheap for such a speedy connection, too.

Full disclosure just so we can pin this thing down properly: come to think of it, I'm actually not 100% sure that the problem is isolated to the Helsinki server. I have not had any packet loss on the other servers (Europe North and Europe Central), so I'm just assuming that this is specific to the North East server. However, I've played far fewer games on the other servers, so it's possible that I have just randomly not had any packet loss when playing on those servers.

DNA fiber here as well. That makes me wonder if it might relate specifically to DNA's fiber internet settings on the ISP side relative to EA's Helsinki server.

Greetings, denizens of SportsGamer! For NHL 24, EA gave us Finnish players a nice little gift in the form of a shiny new server located right here in my hometown of Helsinki. This is the Europe North East server in the private search settings. I was pretty happy about this because it means my connection is practically the same as playing offline. However, there's been trouble in paradise for about two weeks or so as of writing this message. Namely, I have packet loss in some games on said server. It seems to be random, or at least I haven't been able to identify any sort of pattern to it. Sometimes I have it and sometimes I don't. For me, the packet loss tends to sit at either 1 or 2 percent and stays pretty consistent from beginning to end. This causes frequent annoying hitches where the screen pauses for a split second from time to time throughout the game. I would rather not play the ECL season with this problem, so I figured I would poll the community about it, see how widespread it is, and determine if there's anything we can do. I would personally much rather play on the Swedish server where I still get decent ping without the packet loss issue, but I understand most Finns would prefer the Helsinki server as it's closer to us and this problem is probably limited to some players only. Based on my own situation and asking around a bit, it seems the problem is specific to those connecting via DNA which is one of the more common Finnish ISPs. So for a start, I'm looking to find out whether the problem is indeed isolated to said ISP, whether everyone on DNA has it, and how frequent it is for others. Any further discussion about this is also appreciated as I would like to bring it to the league admins' attention and see if we can find a way to work around this problem (provided it is indeed widespread enough and doesn't get fixed by Monday when the season begins). Thank you for your cooperation.