[JeffR]

One of OOTP’s hallmarks is the ability to create rich fictional worlds with unique settings, and FHM will offer that, too - albeit in a more limited form in the beginning. With the game still at an early stage of evolution, allowing complete freedom of setup is a little too ambitious at the moment - and we also need to consider that custom leagues will have to be playable in the upcoming multiplayer mode. Having to account for wild league setups would make getting multiplayer a lot more complicated, and we understand that a lot of people are waiting anxiously for it. We'll be able to get a little more adventurous with custom mode after we get things working properly there.

I'll admit that I don't normally play custom setups (at least with modern leagues) in OOTP, so going in I was a little bit in the dark about what people who use this mode wanted to see. But I've since had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who play that way (our trip to New York and meeting people in-person at the meet-and-greet was particularly useful), so I think I now have a better perspective on where to go with this mode, even if the place we start from is a long way from there.

I'll comment on the various aspects of custom play in the order they appear during league setup, so you can follow along in-game if you've already bought it. Note that what I'm talking about may not match exactly what you see, since I'm looking at a later build than the current release version and also know what changes are about to be made.

When you create a fictional league in FHM, you’ll have several predefined league structures to choose from. We had hoped to allow complete freedom in setting up league, conference, divisional structures, and schedule lengths, but that's something that's fallen firmly into the "too many complications for now" category. So we're going to offer as many predefined structures as we can, using ones that we already know don't create any problems.

The basic format of custom leagues will, for this version, always be a top-level league accompanied by a minor league, replacing the NHL and AHL. Eventually, we'd like to allow different levels of custom league, but that would be a major project that we're not going to have time to tackle this year. The rest of the hockey world will continue to operate as it normally does (note that this isn't currently active in the most recently released update), so you'll get a regular supply of players from lower levels.

You'll have the option of choosing to use real players, or fictional ones; either way, the league will start with a draft of the available players to fill team rosters.

Once your league structure is chosen, you can decide where to locate your league. Note that the "region" setting is optional, and is mainly intended for multinational leagues. The game will initially populate your league with random teams, but change them as you wish, as well as changing league, conference, and division names. You're free to relocate the teams to whatever nation and city you want, even outside the specified Country/Region for your league, but be aware that doing so may create some problems with the out-of-area team's ability to scout the rest of the league and complicate any rules restricting the number of foreign players.

Drafts setups are fairly flexible. The player database should be able to provide a more-than-adequate player pool unless you get specify a very, very narrow group of draft-eligible players. Note that if you want players to be able to play immediately after being drafted, the minimum draft age needs to match the minimum contract age set later in the setup process.

The trade frequency setting controls the trading behaviour of the AI-run teams in the league; as a rule of thumb, set it to approximately the number of trades you want to see on the league's trading deadline day if your league had 30 teams.

Extremely high or low numbers in the game engine settings could lead to game-breaking issues like excessive penalties keeping the teams from putting enough players on the ice, so we recommend keeping those settings somewhat close to reality.

A salary cap, if it's activated (by entering its amount in the Salary Cap field), will operate in approximately the same manner as the one currently used by the NHL. Most of the remaining league and roster rules are self-explanatory; the "Min. Prospects Needed" and "Prospects Max Age" settings force teams to use a certain number of players that age or younger, allowing a situation like the KHL's development rules to be reflected.

Contract rules are also pretty straightforward; the free agency rules, if turned on, will operate in a manner similar to current NHL rules. "The 2-Week Buyout" option allows you to instantly buy out a player's contract for the cost of two weeks' wages, a common system in some European leagues.

There are a few contraints on the game rules to prevent game-breaking situations (periods hundreds of minutes long, one skater on the ice, and so on), but you have some room to experiment. Wins will always have to be worth at least one point, and regulation losses always zero, to prevent situations that would break the league standings

There are currently no safeguards to make sure playoff setups are suitable for the league structure, but we'll add some basic ones to prevent situations like an 8-team playoff being specifed for a 6-team league. Exercise care with the rest day settings, as you could prevent the league from finishing its championship by forcing the schedule past the start of the new season on July 1. The 'Participants' settings determine how the league identifies which teams make the playoffs; 'Matchups' settings are use to decide which teams meet each other.