Considering Purchasing

[Dave Hansen]

I have played OOTP extensively since v4. I am on the fence about this hockey sim.
OOTP is the sports management sim I use to benchmark against many other sports titles I currently play.
I am more interested in the NCAA option vs. an NHL career.
I've spent a fair amount of time in this forum and watching various on line videos.
My "take"...the NCAA option in its current state stacks up against OOTP 23 at a level of maybe 35%. The NHL option...75%.
I would appreciate in comments/insights, because I am looking at adding a hockey sim to my collection of sport sims.
TXS

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by Dave Hansen

I have played OOTP extensively since v4. I am on the fence about this hockey sim.
OOTP is the sports management sim I use to benchmark against many other sports titles I currently play.
I am more interested in the NCAA option vs. an NHL career.
I've spent a fair amount of time in this forum and watching various on line videos.
My "take"...the NCAA option in its current state stacks up against OOTP 23 at a level of maybe 35%. The NHL option...75%.
I would appreciate in comments/insights, because I am looking at adding a hockey sim to my collection of sport sims.
TXS

The NCAA element was only added this year, so it's very much in its infancy. I'd say from my experience that stacking sports sims up against each other almost always leads to disappointment. I grew up on Football Manager, any other sports sim seemed lacking in comparison, then I moved to OOTP and fell in love with that for it's own reasons, moved to FHM some time afterwards and kept comparing it to OOTP and it really affected my ability to enjoy my time with the game despite putting in >200 hours. Now when I play these games I just try to enjoy them each for their own nuances and I'd say that FHM is my favourite for many reasons currently.

If you're a Hockey fan and you're looking for a Hockey sim then this is hands down the best, it improves each year and has a passionate team creating it, the community with visual mods is engaged and always provides great content to help with immersion. If you're mainly looking for the NCAA mode I'd say just remember that it's not likely to stack up to your experiences with OOTP as it's just too new to be that polished.

[thesmokeshow]

I think there alot of good things in this game. Tactics, line chemistry, depth of numerous leagues, fan approval system and a bunch others seem to be headed in the right direction.

For me, the drawbacks are somewhat few but substantial. The draft classes fall off a cliff after the 3rd class. Become pretty unrealistic for longer term builds. Which kinda baffles me why this is the case. I am no programmer but it seems like a reasonably easy fix.

And the AI management continues to be underwhelming. As some have mentioned on these forums, the AI just make some immersion-crushing decisons. They let way too many higher rated prospects go unsigned. And the contract renewal system needs a complete overhaul. Way too many 3 year extensions for elite players that would normally get 6-8. And the salary per year is very unrealistic for the elite guys as well as the bottom end guys. You see too many of them get $4-5M which probably effects why so many important young players don't get signed.

All of this leads to sims not aging well. The further you get in, the more unrealistic it seems to get. For someone like me that likes to have long term sims, it takes me out of it way too quickly. I also understand some of these things are probably the hardest things to fix. AI management is more than likely very difficult to program.

But FM and OOTP do it well enough for long term sims to stay really fun.Im sure the FHM team is much smaller than those ones so it's understandable but its just not good enough for me to stay engaged as long as I would like to.

Its all about what's important to you. But if realism over the long haul is your thing, FHM is still falling short for what I look for in a sim. Despite some of the very much improved mechanics, it leaves me wanting a bit more.

Even if they could clean up the contract stuff, the draft classes and not letting so many key young guys go unsigned, this game would be something I'd play a ton more.

I've recently started playing in an online league. And its been awesome. When you take the AI management out of the mix, then this game is very good and fun to play.