[JoeMagician]

I've played a few different versions of the game, but I didn't want to write up a wishlist until I put some time into 11. Picked it up, and not a lot of my wishes to see in the game between versions were addressed so gonna give it a go here.


1. Special abilities. This is a game mechanic that has a lot of potential that seems to be kind of abandoned or underdeveloped. There's a bunch of special abilities players can have, like being good at rebounding or being hard to knock down or being intimidating. However the way they are implemented is kinda scatter shot, and feels like it was trying to be what football manager has with traits where players can have many traits that modify their behavior. Things like playing with their weak foot, playing up more often, going for big passes, slide tackling a lot etc. That mechanic in FM really can add a lot of character to your players and makes them dynamic, as well as something worth scouting for. In FHM, special abilities has three problems. First they are underwhelming in effect and lack in scope. Sure having someone good at rebounding is a good extra trait to have, however most are nebulous in what they do or if you want them. For instance two of them are being blind in one eye or another, another is knocking other players out when fighting more, another is they are more likely to stay where they are. Some of them seem to be like....innate qualities like the player doesn't get injured, but others are just skills. Like I said being a good rebounder, or having a strong ability to knock people out, or being hard to knock over. Those are all things you can work on as a player to get better at. However, there's nothing like....cherry picker, or good at board battles, or plays well on their off side, great at backhands, or a great tipper, or plays better under pressure that you see in other games. Some of that is covered in tactical tendencies of course but those are instructions not a players personality, their DNA that makes them worth having on your squad. Second, special abilities are exceedingly rare because of the narrow scope of them. After a few years, many of the players with these abilities age out and retire and newgens very very rarely get them. You end up quickly with a pro population that does not have special abilities and basically never will again. And the third problem goes into the next topic, training. In FM, traits aren't innate things a player is spawned with but a training target you can specifically try to give someone. Instead of editing the player to give them special abilities, it should be possible to tell your training staff and player to try and get a specific special ability. Also, a small thing, it doesn't matter because they are so rare but it seems players are limited to 3 special abilities. If you could train them or acquire more easily, then the cap should be raised.



2. Training. Training is a black box of a game mechanic, that most of the advice around it that I've searched for including from the game devs is to set it to let the AI handle it and leave it alone. For a game where you're trying to build players up from drafting very often to take advantage of the cap, it's very strange that the best advice for the system is to just not touch it. Other sim games also have systems that are often best left alone, however they also usually let the manager dictate where it should be going. Select for a specific player that you want them to work on specific parts of their game. Or specific skills. If you go into that screen now, it's very generic in terms of what you can target at all with training. If you want a player to learn a new role on the team and the skills to do it, you are out of luck. It'd be great to be able to give instructions to training to say "I want you to work on being a garbage collector and train at those specific skills which will improve it". Or I want you to work on playing at center or on the wing. And with above, this would be a great place to introduce special ability training. Forego stat training and instead try and get a special ability to their arsenal. Part of the reason that player development in this game feels so hands off and arbitrary is because the training system is not rewarding or intuitive to interact with. You're better off not touching it at all, which is a big loss to a manager sim.



3. Tactics. Tactics are...to put it mildly, extremely confusing and difficult to interact with. At a basic level, you cannot save tactics and switch between them easily like you can with lines and lineups. Makes it so that if you want to have a specific tactic ready for a match up, you have to go through one by one each time to change it. That's a very very simple and easy fix that would add a lot of depth. At a more fundamental level, tactics are not rewarding to interact with. The best advice for how your tactics should work that I've read in numerous places is just pick the tactic for a unit that has the most good or greats in them, and leave it alone. Nevermind how those tactics work together, why players are good at them, or the familiarity they have with them. Familiarity is a hidden mechanic I guess that I've heard the devs mention where the more a player stays with a tactic, the better they get at it. That is information that I cannot find anywhere in the screens, so you just kinda gotta vibes it. Real hockey teams have tactics that have synergies with each other, so that you're not asking players to do things that are basically impossible. That is not really present here, as I said you're encouraged to just match up good and great fits and leave it there. There's some really good threads that explain how they should be used and how they can work together, that's a lot of paratext that isn't particularly present in the game. And part of that is the tactics have no visual component to them in game. It's up to your reading comprehension to understand where your players will go on the ice or your own knowledge. Many sims have small diagrams showing the basics of a tactic, and where each player would go if you used it or how it functions. For instance it wasn't until I watched a whole game that I realized the Funnel tactic is a dump in, and that's why I had so many turnovers. A simple animated diagram of my players would've told me not to use that one. And there's no modifying a tactic, you can't flip them so that it fits one winger or d man better than the other. That would a great feature to just mirror a tactic to help out a match up. Or assign specific players to the roles in a tactic.

God help me too with the behavior sliders, I read that one thread where a very helpful player tried to break down how to use them for individual players and it is so hard to follow how the behaviors work for different players and what you should emphasize. I've basically taken up a guess and check approach, trying to change the sliders so they match what I would consider real behavior to middling results. I've seen a player on a breakaway stop in front of the goalie, turn around, and fire a rocket pass to the blue line to a double covered winger because I told them to pass too much. That's so hard to figure out from the very limited descriptions that we get above the sliders to get them to act like humans. I would really love a more intuitive system on how those sliders work and maybe....have them auto populate for their role as a default? Like if you make a player a power forward, their sliders might have a default setting on them that encourages specific traits that help them. And then you can modify and save them.


One thing I would really love is that if the player fits could change based on factors. For instance, if a player if familiar with a tactic their fit gets better, maybe goes from bad to good. And some kind of visual cue that they know this tactic and can run it, rather than guessing if they are familiar or if they've gotten it yet. Another would be if you could instruct them to train in a tactic to get better at it. Some fits are just bad, and there's no way around it however there should be a way to make your players better at them over time. Alternatively a negative if they're brand new to it until they understand it better.



4. 3D sim. This is probably well outside the scope of possibility, but I would really love a 3d sim like OOTP and FM have for their games. It is very difficult to read the action on the ice and see what is actually happening using the 2d or classic sims. Players fly across the ice wildly, pass the puck to each other 10 times in a row at light speed, etc. A real 3d sim would be very cool for seeing how your team actually plays, and getting attached to them. Seeing them celebrate, seeing them make plays, seeing them on breakaways. That would greatly increase my enjoyment of playing this game.



5. AI trades. based on other comments, this is a well beaten horse. But it remains my biggest frustration with the game flow. The AI makes insane and unbalanced trades with itself all the time that make no sense and yet when it comes time to trade with you, they want the sun and the moon for a player. I've seen in one day Jack Campbell traded 4 times in a row for a 2nd round pick each time. I've seen a 2 star player flipped for a 1st rounder. And the waivers are part of it too, the amount of star players I've seen sent to the minors is astonishing. When I do trades, I don't even try to appease the AI anymore. Whether it's a player on the trading block, or giving them a need, it does not matter they will only try to rake you like a 1960's GM trying to get you fired. Meanwhile turn around and give out a 1st round pick for a depth player. At this point, I only play with commissioner mode on to undo insane trades and force mine through when they say it is well balanced. Something has to be fixed there, it makes the game unfair to play watching the trades fly that you will never get. Also the ability with comissioner mode to reverse trades easily if it can't.

Also the way trade and contract negotiations work are very hard to work with. When you're negotiating a trade, you get feedback and submit it and then.....sim for a few days to see if it accepted. This makes it extremely hard to do quick or last minute trades, and trade deadline effectively useless as a mechanic. The same for contracts, you might have a player agree to a deal but then you have to sim several days until they ink it. It should be possible to negotiate a trade or contract within one screen and have it finished when you exit. I've played a lot of other sims that can do this, and it makes it all so much easier. FM I believe has a function to even pause trade and contract negotiations and come back to them as a conversation almost. It's so much easier to deal with in other games, and part of the reason I use force trades a lot. It's often the only way to get a deal done if you need it done quickly, or if you're trying to do multiple at the same time. And the same for three way or multi team trades.

An edit on this last part, I have no problem if there's multiple offers and players or GMs are taking their time to evaluate their options. Certainly players at FA get many offers at the same time. However that should be an option not the default. It should be possible that if both sides agree it is executed immediately which we know it can be, you can accept trades from messages immediately as well as when shopping players and the force trade option. And if they want the ability to wait and see, that's an option too. It's just locked now into ALWAYS waiting a day at least when you are proposing trades and contracts.


6. Players into coaches. This is QOL idea, I would really like the ability to try and turn former players into staff. There's some that choose to, I know in OOTP there's a button you can do to convert them into a coach or staff member. Being able to take your retired legends and at least offer a choice to keep them employed with the team would be really great instead of relying on lots of newgen staff to pop up or recycling the same guys until they retire. I would love to make Patrice Bergeron my coach or assistant coach, or hire him as a scout and have him work his way through the front office. But that's not an option.


A side wish for this topic, I think there's not enough front office and coaching staff to impact your team. You can sorta think about it in terms of "some of your assistant coaches might be doing other things" but that's really a fantasy in your head. Having a sports science job along with trainers, assistant gm's to aid with trades and negotiations, GM's for your farm teams, more active scouts who you can tell to bring you recommendations, player development staff, video coaches, analytics staff, scouts in charge of regions, prospect specific development, etc. I would love if in scouting especially going up to free agency you could tell your staff to bring you recommendations for specific types of players. Like find me Centers who are good at being two way forwards. Or defensemen who are really good at the point shooter role. There's a lot of cool modifiers and ways for wealthier teams to improve their teams that aren't being used in the sim. For instance, the Toronto Maple Leafs leverage their huge income to outspending almost everyone else in the front office and training and development staff. That's not really a thing you can do in FHM outside of hiring a lot of assistant coaches and scouts. Can't even hire more than one trainer, when most teams will have entire departments made up of trainers, physical therapists, strength and conditioning, and rehabilitation. More jobs and having more flavorful ways of filling them would be a really cool addition to the game. Right now I personally hire a bunch of people at the start of a sim and forget them until they retire or until they need a new contract.



7. Chemistry. I have a similar problem with chemistry as I do tactics. It is very unclear what constitutes chemistry between linemates other than I think playing a long time together. When chemistry has a lot more to do with personality, playing styles, shared backgrounds, achievements together. The way you want to look at it now is kinda obtuse, you hover over a player in your lines and it shows like a top 10 list of who they have chemistry list and you have to read this tiny text to see if anyone on your team is on there. And then repeat that for the other two linemates. It'd be much better to have a visual system where you can see the overall chemistry of the line, some games use a color system or lines to show it. Or just a numerical value. And then also tell you why the chemistry is that number, and allow you to increase it by fulfilling conditions. For example, if you have a playmaker on a line have it increase in chemistry by inserting a dedicated scorer on the line and decrease if you give them two fighters because those roles don't really mesh. An IRL example David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha have chemistry because they have complimentary styles one being a goal scorer the other being more a two way power forward. But they also are from Czechia, and they are friends IRL. Having that in the game, and moving around lines and players to maximize that would be a really great addition to the very basic "play together for X amount of time" chemistry that exists now. And it'd be interesting if harmony negatively affected on ice chemistry, it might now but it's hard to know as I try to avoid harmony at all costs. It's such a strange mechanic that you don't do anything for except....click intervene once in a while and trade away problem players.



8. Long term play. This one is very tough, that the game basically breaks down within 10 years. The stars retire, or there's too many in the game, and drafts just fall apart after the first few picks. The overall talent in the league drops drastically when the game is responsible for generating new players to come into the league. I think there's a system where it respawns retired players, however that system seems to not do enough to keep up with the current talent pool. And also contracts tend to calcify as all the ones signed by real people expire and you have the AI signing deals that are all according to the formula. Ends up being a very.....stale league like 10 years in. I wonder if the players in game at the start are too highly rated, and that causes the crash in player quality as it normalizes? Not sure.


Sorry for the essay, I really enjoy the game and I hope some of this kind of stuff can show up in the future! There's a ton of potential in the game.