This certainly looks to be a big improvement over the first game and I'm really excited to see the new match engine in action. I believe Sebastian has said in a post somewhere that fictional play is not a priority and that there is a lot of room for improvement in other features, so the fact that you guys nevertheless cleaned up the system a bit and removed all the league clutter is definitely appreciated. It's also cool that FHM2 is getting facegen and it will add some immersion to fictional mode as well.
That being said, as an almost exclusively fictional player in these types of games, I feel there are a few changes that could be made in future versions that would go a long way. I don't know exactly what the "redesigned fictional mode" in the feature list entails (aside from league streamlining) since the description is on the vague side, so I can only make some suggestions based on what I know of the original game:
- Actually using truly fictional players with randomized personality and ratings, instead of real players from the regular database with just their name/hometown/date of birth/whatever changed. To be honest I'm not entirely sure how this part of the game works, or even how many players are used in this way, how many are truly random (if any), etc, but in fictional mode, a lot of the players you can select for the intial draft are most definitely renamed real players. One of the top forwards being nicknamed "Sid the Kid" kinda clued me in...
I don't know about you guys but this is definitely an immersion-breaking problem for me and does not truly feel like you are playing your own unique setup.
- Differentiating between regulation and overtime wins. This would be important if you want to use the 3-point system or an alternative that values regulation wins more. Provisions for stuff similar to this already seem to be in place; i.e. a "draw" column appears in the standings when draws are enabled in the league settings. It would be good if this functionality was extended to OT wins. You can of course already use whatever point values you want when setting up the league, but it is pretty clunky without the OT win tracking, and no variation possible on the standings shorthand to check at a glance. By that I mean you have to use the 0-0-0 numbering for win/loss/whatever, instead of being able to use 0-0-0-0 or whatever other option is relevant.
- In relation to the above, a pure win/loss standings without points, perhaps? Although I guess this can be modeled with the current point options anyway.
- Not really that important but it would be nice being able to make leagues larger than 30 teams in the league setup, for those who want it. The team limit seems to be based off the current real-life NHL, which does not really make sense as the NHL conferences are unbalanced anyway, and you have the same result in-game. Setting limitations based on a real-world league shouldn't really matter if we are talking about fictional play. Something like 32 teams might be a good number to bump it up to, and would give balanced conferences.
- Weighted lottery options for certain draft picks. Would be relevant to non-fictional play as well as this is something that closely follows real-life drafts.
- I would like to see the option of implementing an MLB-style luxury tax. While it is not really a concept relevant to hockey, it's still fictional play we're talking about and it could not hurt to have some more depth and versatility here, rather than the salary cap/no salary cap binary system. No clue if there is actually demand for this or if it is just something I personally want to see.
-Promotion/relegation. I don't really have anything to say about this that hasn't already been said countless times, related to both FHM and OOTP, but it would be a welcome feature way down the line.
...that ended up rather long than I expected it to be. Sorry for ranting.
