Historical League Suggestion

[mayday10]

For FHM 8 and beyond.... not sure how it can be done, I was hoping for a brainstorm of some sort here: (unless the option already exists)


I would love to do an historical replay/progression and use the real players and have them perform similar to their real-life counterparts. However, this mode loses its' steam quite a bit when dealing with scouting, drafting, etc when we already know players based on name. This also renders the NHL draft almost worthless past the first round, and scouting is just reduced to nuisance messages.

I wish there was a way to obscure the players of enough identifiable information so you cant exactly tell if you are scouting, say Larry Robinson or Marcel Dionne. Then, after the draft their real identities are revealed. Not sure what graceful way there is to do that.

[JeffR]

I thought about doing it that way back when we were first setting up historical mode, but in practice it's still trivially easy to identify the top players unless you obscure all the biographical data, including nationality, and make scouting so wildly undependable that you can't rely on the ratings it reports at all. And at that point, it's essentially turning the draft into a big lottery.

[Mark L]

What I do in historical (basically all I play) is ignore scouting and don't hire any (more) scouts. I want to challenge my hockey history knowledge.

In a draft, I avoid looking at the players' general ratings and never click on a player. I only allow myself to scan their durability after they are in my organization.

It's nice drafting in random debut and getting say a 32 year old Johnny Bower when you know his best years (based on NHL play) are yet to come.

Also the AI is drafting mostly based on real potential, so the game player doesn't have a huge advantage there.

[d9rat]

Something I've been playing with in my head is giving the user an option for a "Historically Accurate Draft" and a "Hindsight Draft".

"Hindsight Draft" is what you normally see in historical play. Everyone based on their actual potential so that the best players are in round 1, second best round 2, etc.

"Historically Accurate Draft" would allow historical leagues to have those hidden games still appear. Bu how to do that?

Basically, every player would have an extra "Hype" rating which would be based on where they were drafted/signed.

Hype would essentially be what scouts are seeing and how they determine how to rank players in a range (actual potential would be hidden to them, but better scouts could use potential to more accurately see the range).

Using the 1998 NHL draft:
Lecavalier would have both one of the highest potentials and highest hype ratings (he was one of the best players in the draft and the #1 pick).

Tanguay would also have one of the higher potentials but, as a #12 pick, his hype rating would be lower. Good scouts would see him as the #12 pick, worse scouts lower.

Ribeiro would also have a higher potential but his range would be low-midrange second rounder to end of second rounder (good scouts placing him higher, worse scouts worse).

Datsyuk would be a low sixth round pick pick to possibly out of the draft (once you start hitting round 5 there are a lot of players who's floors are career minor leaguer, this is where scouts start to earn their keep).

The Hype rating can start to shift once players start playing at higher levels and will gradually move to match their actual potential after a few years of playing and proving themselves.

Martin St. Louis would be a great example.

1997 NCAA FA, his Hype would be career AHLer to ECHLer. Basically, no NHL team would sign him. But after half a season in the minors he'd get a boost in Hype to 4th liner to career minor leaguer. Another season and it would be boosted to 3rd liner to Euro league import.

It would take a few years, and good scouts, to recognize the he actually has all-star potential.

This would make for historically accurate drafts, encourage teams to try out players in different line combos (maybe this player who's rated as a 3rd liner is actually a 2nd liner, let's give him some minutes to find out), and would make scouts more important in historical play.

Of course, you'd want to partner this with a "blind draft" option that blurs all biographical details save for height, weight, birth date, and country (for import rules).

But, yeah, you could also partner this with historical pre-draft stats to also create a "Analytics Hype" stat to give teams (or GMs) who invest in analytic scouting a leg-up on some players (or wrong in others).

Be fun to be looking at a player with a "career minor leaguer" scouting report but see they put up almost 2 points per game in the NCAA and think "you know, maybe I'll take a flyer on this guy" and find yourself rewarded with St. Louis or go against your scouts and draft 3rd-5th rounder who tore up the NCAA as a freshman and land Gionta.