Preferred Numbers
 

I love the new preferred numbers system. It gives a sense of reality to what numbers each player wants to have. However, the further you get into a career, more and more forwards just want the number 9, and a lot of d-men want 4 or 6. It begins to lose its effect as that happens. Additionally, I like that numbers can be retired or honored, but I have no clue how to do it, nor are there instructions in the manual. Is this an automated feature, if so how does the AI calculate this, and is it possible to give that control to the player?

It's automated right now, based on similar standards to the Hall of Fame (but a little lower, and allowing for more emphasis on things like games played). But I'd like to get an option in there that at least allows you to decline the retirement, or gives you a choice in borderline cases.

Not sure what's up with the heavy preferences for those few numbers. I'll have to dig through the database and see if that's where it's coming from, or an issue with generated players (although those should get a wide variety of preferences by design.)

Appreciate the feedback. I think a lot of the players are generated that have the number preference. I just found it bizarre that so many would want to have that specific number. As for the number retirements, if you are going to give an option on boderline cases, I'd love for the opportunity to also have a choice if a player hadn't spent a TON of time with the team, but in his short time had a massive impact on their franchise history (i.e. single handedly lead them to a multitude of Cups, etc.)

It looks like something's going wrong with the generation of preferred numbers when the players are being created - they're supposed to be assigned in a way that distributes them realistically (usually low numbers for D, high single digits/teens for F, etc.) but right now it looks like they're not getting set at all, which is causing the demands to focus around the default preferences.

I appreciate the investigation. Would be interesting if players had unusual preferred numbers, or their preferred numbers could change or evolve based on the numbers they receive over their career. Other than that, I'm glad the source of the problem has been found.