I dabble in NHL games, I usually buy one every 2 - 3 years, they update their rosters up to April and then you can just tweek them. One year I made a full custom roster based on the newest game.
Lot of NHL Fans have been saying this about the NHL Games for years, EA only responds to HUT Pack Addicts wanting tweaks to the pay to play mode, rather than paying attention to the bugs that've been in the rest of the game for years. Some are excited because it looks like they might be doing some singleplayer stuff this year, but I'm not optimistic.
And nothing is gonna change. It's the same thing with Fifa or every other yearly sports title. The silent casual majority will still buy it in the millions, and we'll still get a new one next year.
The only exception to this in recent history is WWE2K, who are skipping this year in order to have more time for 2K22, but that is a way more niche game, and its last installment was way more broken
ya...spend 60$ on a game you might play at least 5 months of, til the end of the year and they roll out a new one so you have to buy it just to play online...no thanks, I got caught into this crap with nba 2k ,..