Goalie generation bug

[HockeyEnjoyer1980]

Platmorm: PC, Steam

Version: 12.1 build 24

Mode: Custom game

Desc: All goalies from Junior league draft dont have mentals skills at all

How to reproduce:



PROOFS:

[Alessandro]

Bravery and temperament are skaters-only ratings

[HockeyEnjoyer1980]

What do bravery and temperament have to do with this? Look closely at the screenshots; the problem is clearly visible: the difference between the first and second columns. This applies to all goalies entering the draft, which completely ruins the game experience.

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by HockeyEnjoyer1980

What do bravery and temperament have to do with this? Look closely at the screenshots; the problem is clearly visible: the difference between the first and second columns. This applies to all goalies entering the draft, which completely ruins the game experience.

I see. But you first said "have no mental skills at all", so I thought you were referring to the ratings set at zero

[JeffR]

I've tried replicating this with the same setup, but I can't find any goalies with extremely undeveloped mental attributes like that, so I think I've done something differently than you. Could you upload that save so we can have a look at it and see what's gone wrong there?

[HockeyEnjoyer1980]

Originally Posted by JeffR

I've tried replicating this with the same setup, but I can't find any goalies with extremely undeveloped mental attributes like that, so I think I've done something differently than you. Could you upload that save so we can have a look at it and see what's gone wrong there?

Hi JeffR!
Sure, let’s take a look at the issue together. Here’s my save file.
https://limewire.com/d/q3yjT#25qRjPAN9q
Once you load it, jump into any NHL team — you’ll notice that there are no goalies better than about 3–3.5 stars.
And if a goalie comes from a JUN league,


he will have mental attribute problems 100% of the time.
if you make a new save - You don’t need to sim as far as I did to see the problem on your end — 5–10 seasons should be enough. Players from the JUN leagues don’t show up in the NHL draft right away; they need a few years to grow after being generated.

Since you’re already inside this save, also take a look at the skaters’ contracts across teams. That’s actually the reason why I simmed this save for so long. I originally started because of the goalie issue, but then ran into another one: some (not all) players end up with way underpriced contracts — and I’m talking about good players, 3.5* and up.
I’m not sure what exactly causes it, but the result is that teams can load up on a ton of quality players without ever hitting the cap.

And while we’re on the subject, I also want to talk about Custom Games. It’s my favorite mode — I’ve simmed hundreds of seasons in testing and dozens more in actual play. But there are definitely areas where it could use some love. As a player, the biggest thing I feel is missing is any form of control over the drafts. Right now, I only really have two ways to influence them:

1) Junior leagues

But they come with a lot of problems. Player generation is odd.
I already described the goalie issue, but skaters also look strange: take a look at the draft pool — all players come in with 0.5* ability and basically look identical.







Later they grow like supermen, but at draft time you have no idea who to pick because everyone has no skills.
Plus the contract issue mentioned earlier.

2) Not using JUN leagues at all

You can try to “feed” the drafts manually via:
Edit league → Create player → age 17 → NHL rights: none.
This method technically works, but it’s really tedious. Imagine manually creating around 10 players every season — it takes forever. It’s a nice option to have, but ideally I’d love the game to do this automatically.

Since I’m criticizing, I want to suggest something too.

Some time ago, I noticed something with the Farm league setting.


I’m not sure what the original design idea was, but I found something interesting:
If you remove all NHL affiliations (set them all to “None”), then change the Min Age / Max Age for the Farm league to 15–20, guess what? The Farm league becomes fantastic for generating players.

:> It doesn’t have goalie generation problems (apparently it uses a different method than JUN leagues).

:> It doesn’t have skater generation problems — at age 18 players already have reasonable skills and are clearly “draft-ready.”

:> And since you can control how many Farm teams exist, you can directly control how many players get generated: more teams = more players, fewer teams = fewer players.

Honestly, the only thing it’s missing is the ability for those players to actually enter the draft. Right now they can only reach the NHL years later as free agents.

As a player, I would be extremely grateful if you added an option — maybe a toggle in the Farm league settings — to allow players from it to be eligible for drafts. That would be amazing. I don’t know how complicated that would be to implement, but it would be a huge quality-of-life improvement.

Sorry for the long post — I just really love the game and want to help however I can.