Franchise Hockey Manager 3 - Officially licensed by the NHL - Pre-order now!

[Rayzor]

Is FHM3 still on track for early release on Oct 14 for the people who pre-order, which is 4 days away.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by GiantYankee

So does that mean fictional play wasn't touched for FHM3? The schedules? Don't mean to beat a dead horse but I want to be clear. Personally I love smaller leagues 12-16 teams. I would probably buy the game even if I could have a 30 team fictional league that played like modern NHL with the NHL schedules. I purchased FHM1 and 2 and want to support OOTP developments. I just don't want to be disappointed. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

It got fixes and tweaks as needed (basically everything we fixed/tweaked in modern mode also applies in fictional) and new additions as news types, streaks and so on show up in fictional as well (or the new tactic/role system, injuries, development, etc) but we did not add/change any options for creation of fictional leagues.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

1. While NHL rosters are accurate, how deep will the rosters go? Will they go as deep as to have teams' junior players on their teams? For example: if I pick the Devils, will their AHL team's roster be accurate, and will guys like Blackwood and McLeod be available as part of the franchise?

I can´t speak for every player but we try to have as accurate rosters as possible for the playable leagues. Your two examples are in the game and in the Devils franchise. If we have player missing, we will fix rosters of course.

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

2. I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole path to glory thing. People have said that you "develop skills." Is that to say that you learn how to play the game more effectively, or that the user will actually have ratings similar to that of Footy Manager?

Like in FM your GM/Coach has skills (he always had) and like in FM, in career mode you start with lower skills and raise them when gaining experience. The skills will help you e.g. with coaching, team management, negotiating, etc. In Sandbox mode you still have this skills in the background but they are raised on it´s own over time so the user does not have to bother about stuff like this.

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

3. Since you start out as a rookie GM essentially in Path to Glory, is every team going to be available to you or do you have to start with a lower ranked team and work your way "up to the top?"

You have both options. We don´t want people to play a team they don´t want to coach, so just pick e.g. your favorite team and start or choose from a few random offers in the beginning.

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

4. One last question because I'm trying to figure out the difference. If I started a "sandbox" game and a "path to glory" game on the same day, and attempt to play both games identically will the only differences be coach development, length of the game (limited vs. unlimited) and the availability of commish mode?

Since most people here know FM, I can use it as comparison: Path to Glory (a.k.a. career mode) is basically just like you would play FM (disclaimer: of course FHM is not nearly as deep as FM at this moment but the goal is to slowly evolve the mode into that direction with every update and new version). You can´t edit stuff, you can´t speed sim and you can´t let the AI handle everything. You still can ask your Assistant Manager to do the dressing or build lines if you wish but e.g. roster moves are always your responsibility. And limited is only for your GM/Coach, you can always continue with a new Coach/GM, it just looks strange when you compare with other (historical) greats and you have hundreds of GP more because you still are on the bench with age 120.

[Game On]

I pre-ordered today. Just making sure it was received.
Thanks.

[tward13]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

You can play different fictional setups if you want or play all historical NHL/WHA seasons out of the box. If one of the two modes is the only way to play for you, FHM might not be your game.

ALL 100 NHL seasons? Weren't we limited to starting at a later date in FHM2?

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by tward13

ALL 100 NHL seasons? Weren't we limited to starting at a later date in FHM2?

Sorry, my wording was not correct.

[Game On]

Difficulties with your store for pre-ordering on Mac using Google.

[croatian]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

I can´t speak for every player but we try to have as accurate rosters as possible for the playable leagues. Your two examples are in the game and in the Devils franchise. If we have player missing, we will fix rosters of course.



Like in FM your GM/Coach has skills (he always had) and like in FM, in career mode you start with lower skills and raise them when gaining experience. The skills will help you e.g. with coaching, team management, negotiating, etc. In Sandbox mode you still have this skills in the background but they are raised on it´s own over time so the user does not have to bother about stuff like this.



You have both options. We don´t want people to play a team they don´t want to coach, so just pick e.g. your favorite team and start or choose from a few random offers in the beginning.



Since most people here know FM, I can use it as comparison: Path to Glory (a.k.a. career mode) is basically just like you would play FM (disclaimer: of course FHM is not nearly as deep as FM at this moment but the goal is to slowly evolve the mode into that direction with every update and new version). You can´t edit stuff, you can´t speed sim and you can´t let the AI handle everything. You still can ask your Assistant Manager to do the dressing or build lines if you wish but e.g. roster moves are always your responsibility. And limited is only for your GM/Coach, you can always continue with a new Coach/GM, it just looks strange when you compare with other (historical) greats and you have hundreds of GP more because you still are on the bench with age 120.

Isn't there a limited number of seasons in Path to Glory mode, I am confused a little bit ?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by croatian

Isn't there a limited number of seasons in Path to Glory mode, I am confused a little bit ?

The season aren't limited.

What is limited is the length of the career you can have with any one manager. Your manager character will eventually retire.

You can keep playing indefinitely though, you'll just need to create a new manager to do so.

[croatian]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

The season aren't limited.

What is limited is the length of the career you can have with any one manager. Your manager character will eventually retire.

You can keep playing indefinitely though, you'll just need to create a new manager to do so.

Thanks !

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by croatian

Thanks !

No problem!

[truebatman]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

You can play different fictional setups if you want or play all historical NHL/WHA seasons out of the box. If one of the two modes is the only way to play for you, FHM might not be your game.

I understand fictional wasn't the focus but I was wondering if we can atleast this year use real NHL players in fictional mode? Sorry if this was asked already (didn't notice it), if not would it be too difficult to add??? That's the only thing missing for me. Wanting to know this before preorder, fingers are crossed Thanks in advance!

[SlyBelle]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

The game will have NHL opening night roster (or at least close to opening night roster. We will release an roster update with the final rosters, and any needed fixes to the db).

Ok thanks....

In case you didn't see, the Penguins arena had a recent name change, now "PPG Paints Arena"....its a mouthful

[Anton]

Originally Posted by Rayzor

Is FHM3 still on track for early release on Oct 14 for the people who pre-order, which is 4 days away.

^That. *but with a '?'...

[AEWHistory]

Originally Posted by Robmeister89

Is this sarcasm? Seriously? Why would you remove online league functionality?

I get being bummed--I would be if history mode were removed. Then again, I'd be really frustrated if I put a huge amount of effort into organizing people to play history mode and then I couldn't continue every time an update came out, so I understand why they've done this. It sucks as I've had a long-standing date with Duranium for a Penguins and Scouts/Rockies/Devils rivalry, but isn't it better that it is included when they are confident the function can work properly? Give them time. This game has come a LONG way in a short time. That's my $.02.

[AEWHistory]

Originally Posted by landru22

I'm sorry, but this statement here is not acceptable. I have had to painstakingly re-enter each team and their players for each version of this game for my league that has been running since the early 1970's! I had really hoped I had finally found the platform for me (I judged this by the development of OOTP baseball). I fully expected by version 3 there would be an import option.

Not being able to import saves from a previous version is a game breaker for me and I can no longer support this game.

IME not being able to move saves between major versions is true of almost all games (eg- going from FHM1 to 2 to 3) and even in version updates within one title it is usual that saved games cannot be maintained. For years I've played the Europa Universalis series and other Paradox games and, unless they've changed quite a bit in recent years, their saved games did not transfer from version to version. They DID come up with a way to move your game across history (from EU, to Victoria, to Hearts of Iron) but this is a totally different kettle of whatchamacallits.

Out of curiosity, what games do you play that allows for this? Maybe OOTP have gotten far enough along to allow it, but i can't think of any war game or other sim I have played that allows this. Sims are just too complex. Now something with simpler saves like an arcade style game will likely allow this.... but this isn't an arcade game.

Originally Posted by landru22

I don't believe this statement. If I can manually enter all of this information into FHM3, I don't see why this could not be automated in some way. Maybe it wouldn't be called an "Import". Perhaps a "Convert" would be a better term.

Almost anything is possible with enough effort. The question is: do you want them to put their time and effort toward this? Allocating time is a zero sum game my friend--if you want something done then you WILL lose time for something else. The only other option is to keep hiring more peeps and that's expensive?

[AEWHistory]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

We are still experiment with it but expect something around 25 to 30 seasons.

I want to say that I'd prefer more like 35, but I don't know if any REAL hockey coach actually coached that long to justify that. Anyone know that sort of tidbit?

[SlyBelle]

Originally Posted by AEWHistory

I want to say that I'd prefer more like 35, but I don't know if any REAL hockey coach actually coached that long to justify that. Anyone know that sort of tidbit?

This is the all time coaching list, looks like 30 years is the top...with about 4.8 years being the average. So although rare, would love to have the cap be at least 35 just in case you have one of those special careers going, but anything in that area should be fine.

Coach Yrs

Scotty Bowman* 30
Dick Irvin* 27
Al Arbour* 23
Jack Adams* 20
Ken Hitchcock 20
Mike Keenan 20
Joel Quenneville 20
Pat Quinn* 20
Paul Maurice 19
Art Ross* 19
Lindy Ruff 19
Barry Trotz 18
Ron Wilson 18
Jacques Lemaire* 17
Jacques Martin 17
Bryan Murray 17
Darryl Sutter 17
Sid Abel* 16
Roger Neilson* 16
Billy Reay 16
John Tortorella 16
Marc Crawford 15
Peter Laviolette 15
Terry Murray 15
Alain Vigneault 15
Mike Babcock 14
Pat Burns* 14
Jacques Demers 14
Punch Imlach* 14
Claude Julien 14
Dave Tippett 14
Toe Blake* 13
Emile Francis* 13
Bob Hartley 13
Lester Patrick* 13
Glen Sather* 13
Milt Schmidt* 13
Brian Sutter 13
Bob Pulford* 12
Michel Therrien 12
Bob Berry 11
Frank Boucher* 11
Randy Carlyle 11
Eddie Gerard* 11
Newsy Lalonde* 11
Michel Bergeron 10
Bruce Boudreau 10
Hap Day* 10
Red Kelly* 10
John Muckler 10
Andy Murray 10
Lynn Patrick* 10
Jim Schoenfeld 10
Fred Shero* 10
Rick Bowness 9
Terry Crisp 9
Peter DeBoer 9
Cecil Hart 9
Tommy Ivan* 9
Todd McLellan 9
Tom Renney 9
Dan Bylsma 8
Jack Evans 8
Bob Gainey* 8
Tommy Gorman* 8
Paul Holmgren 8
Eddie Johnston 8
Craig MacTavish 8
Bob McCammon 8
Tom McVie 8
Pierre Page 8
Larry Robinson* 8
Herb Brooks* 7
Jack Capuano 7
Kevin Constantine 7
Craig Hartsburg 7
Ron Low 7
Harry Neale 7
Todd Richards 7
Glen Sonmor 7
Red Sullivan 7
Paul Thompson 7
Phil Watson 7
Tom Watt 7
Johnny Wilson 7
Doug Carpenter 6
Don Cherry 6
Fred Creighton 6
Leo Dandurand* 6
Robbie Ftorek 6
Gerard Gallant 6
Fred Glover 6
Pete Green 6
Bob Johnson* 6
Dave King 6
Mike Milbury 6
Ted Nolan 6
Rudy Pilous* 6
Terry Simpson 6
Harry Sinden* 6
Gerry Cheevers* 5
Jon Cooper 5
Bobby Francis 5
Bernie Geoffrion 5
Jack Gordon 5
Doug MacLean 5
Al MacNeil 5
Dan Maloney 5
John Paddock 5
Larry Pleau 5
Claude Ruel 5
Floyd Smith 5
John Stevens 5
Brent Sutter 5
Mike Yeo 5
Georges Boucher* 4
Guy Boucher 4
Colin Campbell 4
King Clancy* 4
Dit Clapper* 4
Odie Cleghorn 4
Joe Crozier 4
Alex Delvecchio* 4
Rick Dudley 4
Red Dutton* 4
Curt Fraser 4
Butch Goring 4
Johnny Gottselig 4
Wayne Gretzky* 4
Bep Guidolin 4
Glen Hanlon 4
Lorne Henning 4
Dave Lewis 4
Rick Ley 4
Paul MacLean 4
Phil Maloney 4
John McLellan 4
Barry Melrose 4
Mike Murphy 4
Claude Noel 4
Mike Nykoluk 4
Craig Patrick* 4
Muzz Patrick 4
Jean Perron 4
Barclay Plager 4
Joe Sacco 4
Ted Sator 4
Ken Schinkel 4
Jimmy Skinner 4
Conn Smythe* 4
Vic Stasiuk 4
Mike Sullivan 4
Tom Webster 4
Lou Angotti 3
Doug Barkley 3
Red Berenson 3
Wren Blair 3
Marc Boileau 3
John Brophy 3
Guy Carbonneau 3
Cory Clouston 3
Charlie Conacher 3
John Cunniff 3
Willie Desjardins 3
Kevin Dineen 3
Art Duncan 3
John Ferguson 3
Greg Gilbert 3
David Gill 3
Scott Gordon 3
Tony Granato 3
Gary Green 3
Ted Green 3
Glen Gulutzan 3
Ted Harris 3
Tom Johnson* 3
Marshall Johnston 3
Mike Kitchen 3
Bobby Kromm 3
Hal Laycoe 3
Barry Long 3
Clem Loughlin 3
Billy MacMillan 3
Bill McCreary 3
Kirk Muller 3
Bob Murdoch 3
Terry O'Reilly 3
Davis Payne 3
Don Perry 3
Bill Peters 3
Nick Polano 3
Joe Primeau* 3
Charles Querrie 3
Craig Ramsay 3
Jimmy Roberts 3
Patrick Roy 3
Denis Savard* 3
Joe Simpson* 3
Jean-Guy Talbot 3
Orval Tessier 3
John Torchetti 3
Rogie Vachon 3
Garry Young 3
Keith Allen 2
John Anderson 2
Scott Arniel 2
Bill Barber* 2
Danny Belisle 2
Craig Berube 2
Don Blackburn 2
Jeff Blashill 2
Leo Boivin* 2
Charlie Burns 2
Dave Cameron 2
Dick Carroll 2
Bruce Cassidy 2
Dave Chambers 2
Art Chapman 2
Guy Charron 2
Neil Colville* 2
Bill Cook* 2
Bill Dineen 2
Dallas Eakins 2
Phil Esposito* 2
Bill Gadsby* 2
Ebbie Goodfellow* 2
Dave Hakstol 2
Don Hay 2
Ivan Hlinka 2
Peter Horachek 2
John Hynes 2
Mike Johnston 2
Steve Kasper 2
Rick Kehoe 2
Pat Kelly 2
George Kingston 2
Orland Kurtenbach 2
Lou Lamoriello* 2
Ron Lapointe 2
Ted Lindsay* 2
Steve Ludzik 2
Parker MacDonald 2
Keith Magnuson 2
Bill Mahoney 2
Wayne Maxner 2
Lorne Molleken 2
Dunc Munro 2
George O'Donoghue 2
Adam Oates 2
Ed Olczyk 2
Frank Patrick* 2
Alf Pike 2
Eddie Powers 2
Marcel Pronovost* 2
Larry Regan 2
Doug Risebrough 2
Ron Rolston 2
Bill Stewart 2
Ron Stewart 2
Steve Stirling 2
Bill Sutherland 2
Duane Sutter 2
Percy Thompson 2
Bill Tobin 2
Rick Tocchet 2
Mario Tremblay 2
Gene Ubriaco 2
Don Waddell 2
Cooney Weiland* 2
Trent Yawney 2
Gary Agnew 1
Dave Allison 1
Jim Anderson 1
George Armstrong* 1
Andre Beaulieu 1
Jared Bednar 1
NJD Bench 1
Nick Beverley 1
George Burnett 1
Eddie Bush 1
Frank Carroll 1
Wayne Cashman 1
Sprague Cleghorn* 1
Lionel Conacher* 1
Pierre Creamer 1
Roger Crozier 1
Randy Cunneyworth 1
Alex Curry 1
Billy Dea 1
Cy Denneny* 1
Dick Duff* 1
Jules Dugal 1
Frank Eddolls 1
Maurice Filion 1
Frank Fredrickson* 1
Herb Gardiner* 1
Jimmy Gardner 1
Ted Garvin 1
Phil Goyette 1
Dirk Graham 1
Shorty Green* 1
Aldo Guidolin 1
Ned Harkness 1
Doug Harvey* 1
Frank Heffernan 1
Rosie Helmer 1
Harry Howell* 1
Dale Hunter 1
Earl Ingarfield 1
Billy Inglis 1
Emil Iverson 1
Duke Keats* 1
Larry Kish 1
Ralph Krueger 1
Bill LaForge 1
Jacques Laperriere 1
Hugh Lehman* 1
Pit Lepine 1
Percy LeSueur 1
Kevin Lowe 1
John MacLean 1
Sylvio Mantha* 1
Bert Marshall 1
Godfrey Matheson 1
Pierre McGuire 1
Howie Meeker 1
Pete Muldoon 1
Lou Nanne 1
Todd Nelson 1
Mike O'Connell 1
Murray Oliver 1
Bert Olmstead* 1
Brad Park* 1
Rick Paterson 1
Bob Plager 1
Jim Playfair 1
Larry Popein 1
Mike Quinn 1
Cap Raeder 1
Ken Randall 1
Mike Rodden 1
Alex Romeril 1
Andre Savard 1
Tom Shaughnessy 1
Brad Shaw 1
Al Sims 1
Cooper Smeaton 1
Alf Smith* 1
Barry Smith 1
Mike Smith 1
Ron Smith 1
Harvey Sproule 1
Barney Stanley* 1
Bill Stewart 1
Alpo Suhonen 1
Bryan Trottier* 1
Bryan Watson 1
Bill White 1
Jim Wiley 1
Larry Wilson 1
Rick Wilson 1

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by AEWHistory

I want to say that I'd prefer more like 35, but I don't know if any REAL hockey coach actually coached that long to justify that. Anyone know that sort of tidbit?

That´s all stuff we can tweak later if we see that the demand is there.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Rayzor

Is FHM3 still on track for early release on Oct 14 for the people who pre-order, which is 4 days away.

We have just announced a slight change of the release date, see here:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ease-date.html