[AEWHistory]

So I have been using the new FHM player development option instead of just letting the player just follow their historical stats automatically. I love this idea in theory. In practice, however, I think there are a few issues I'd like to bring up for the future. I may be off base, so I'd like to understand if I am, but here goes....

1. Player prime is set at, I think, 23. This appears to have an option to change it but nothing I do seems to let me do this, so it is stuck there. I wonder if 23 is really the crescendo of a player's ability? Especially with defenseman, they often reach their prime well into their 20s. The problem is that their stats will improve up to about 23 and after that your coaching staff often is bailing water out of a sinking ship. What I mean by this is that by 25 many players start to lose attribute points, so you have to put resources that would go toward developing young players into just keeping your newly developed veterans from falling off a cliff. I've seen my guys lose 2 and 3 attribute points in a month! No doubt for some this makes sense, but would a prime of 26 to 28 make more sense? This brings me to my next issue...

2. Because the window for development is fairly short (up to about 23) and some players have to to develop a LOT to reach their potential, I don't see how some of these superstars can reach their potentials. For example, going from a 12 in one stat to, say, an 18 would take half a year if you hit that stat every single time. That isn't going to happen, so maybe it takes two or three years. But what if the player has half a dozen stats that need a lot of developing to reach their historic potential?

I'm not saying every historic player must reach their historic performance, but for some it doesn't seem possible and that seems like a flaw to me. This is exacerbated by the next issue....

3. In the main FHM game you can develop players in your minor league system but HM lacks this. I'm not really complaining about that as I am fine with the quasi-minor leagues represented as the 'reserve'. In fact, I actually prefer the reserve to managing minor leagues, but the effect of the reserve needs to better simulate what the minor league system does By putting a developmental player in the system. As it is now, a player put into reserve often lead to unhappiness and the box denoting poor competition slowing development turning on. So your stuck either keeping an abysmal player with lots of potential on your main team, where they'll get no playing time anyway, or put them in reserve and hope for the best.

So I'm not sure what to do. I have no doubt that the development system works great in the main mode, but perhaps it just doesn't work well in history mode right now. I may be wrong and I'd like to hear other experiences. In my experience, HM isn't allowing enough development, fast enough, especially in reserve. while the existing players regress a bit too rapidly.

Hopefully HM will eventually allow the player the opportunity to recreate the each individual historic player (roughly) while allowing the game to develop its own unique history. That way some players who were stars may not work out as well and others who weren't great successes maybe excel, but on the whole most move down a path similar to their historical courses. Something like that.

Anyway, hopefully this isn't too long. Thanks for reading, Aaron