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It appears that players are starting to decline way too early. I’m noticing a lot of players starting to lose ability once they start to hit 26 (considering that the player peak age is hard-coded, as of now, at 25, this is probably the reason) and just seem to start losing ratings in all categories affected by decline when, in reality, you could argue that a majority of players haven’t even reached their peak yet (players like Martin St. Louis, Pavel Datsyuk, Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas come to mind). I know that it’s taken to chance (considering they have, IIRC, two or three chances a year to suffer decline in attributes), but the chances of decline should be far less when they are ages 26-31, which is around the “average” player’s prime years. It’d be good to experience more variety in player development peaking ages as well, but that’s for another day.
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I've played my NJ Devils GM game up until 2021 (4 Stanley Cups yo) and yeah, players are declining way too early...except the ones I've drafted that play top 6 minutes/top 4 D. I see just about all the problems you've listed above, but I'll include another one:
The top free agent in 2021, including RFAs, was a 7.0 overall. Since the AI can't develop propects and the "pre-programmed" crop of great players has by and large disappeared/retired/declined, there's no-one left to sign that's good. Hell, try and trade and there's not much to be found.
Prospect development is a huge issue, as you noted and I'm wondering if there's any idea to continue this game of mine since there are very few good players in the game.