FHM 11 - Wishlist & Suggestions

[Tommy44440]

Would love for there to be a go version for the iPhone if possible


You may have responded to someone else’s comment on this, but I’m too lazy to look for it lol

[gord]

Adjust the threshold for injuries that keep players out in the playoffs - unless it's a major injury, a player should be able to play. There's no reason for someone to miss a playoff game due to a 'facial cut' or something like that.

[Colorado]

Post this every year, but re-design the instant result screen - make the score and key game stats more prominent and better placed. Less scrolling, going right to the bottom for PP stats for example. It looks REALLY dated and tired.

The players are centered halfway down the gaming cards, these also could be designed a lot better.

Better QoL design/across all screens

More visible stats and info when players are mentioned in inbox items.

Shape of 2D rink to match that of a hockey rink

Better interaction over roster management between parent/feeder teams.

Scouting feels very tired and once initially set up there's no reason to touch it again.

Much more media interaction (perhaps make it optional for those who don't want real life settings).

I really like the game and appreciate it's a small team but aspects of it have looked tired now for some time and too many new features aren't fleshed out enough before being included (2d match engine being a good example, the players, movement , ice colouring should look a lot better).

All this is meant constructively from someone who has bought the game on release for several years now.

[PabloSanok]

Contract Bonus -> Release Player in case of team relegation

[Javs]

Another player development comment...

Later in the game, there is way too maybe middle tier players... so much high scoring lower in the lineup players and not enough scoring from the top.

I just finished a season with 6.7 goals per game and the leading scorer had 90 points...

[Northernsky]

My biggest one is a toggle for the Harmony/Clique system. Or a re-working to make it funner to interact with players and not so hard to remove cliques.

[wesstukko]

I am hoping we can Finally see a fix to graphics and facegen not displaying properly after years of that issue taking place. As much as I love this game, only issue I can see worth mentioning.

[servo75]

I have a lot of suggestions but it boils down to this. Right now we have two choices of how to play: GM and GM+coach. Can we have a "coach only" mode so that I can just draft, make lineups, strategies and go? As a casual hockey fan I don't understand all the ins and outs of budgets and two-way contracts, scouting, etc. And tbh I really don't care to. Can't we just take over as a coach and have a nice SIMPLE sim experience where we can draft, sign, make lineups and watch games, leave all the advanced GM stuff to the computer and just play?

I have bought 3 versions of the game now and have yet to really get into a career and enjoy the game, because I find myself getting so caught up in weeds and the incomprehensible menu system. Playing this game feels like WORK. Please give those of us who are not professional NHL GMs a nice easy mode, preferably with simplified menus? I'd like to be able to not have to consult a 1-inch thick manual just to figure out how to get to the free agency screen or spend an hour trying to figure out how to edit my team budget. There have been improvements since I first played in FHM7, but not much.

My bottom line is this: In my opinion, the biggest strength of FHM is its realism - unfortunately that's also the biggest weakness. I'd like to be able to play a nice simple sim experience without a PhD in hockey. Assuming someone in the dev team is actually reading this, thank you for getting through my rant

[toque]

This is quite minor, but I really miss having the Short List accessible on the main roster page menu bar. I'm not sure why it was replaced by the reserve list, especially if it's greyed out (for NHL teams at least). I use the short list frequently and it's frustrating to have to go through the transactions menu to access it

[#4BobbyOrr]

When players are playing through injuries instead of it hindering their condition to the point they have to come out of the lineup every few games why not have relevant attributes being affected?

Eg if someone is playing through a broken finger or wrist injury it should drop their shooting rating. If someone is playing through a groin injury it would affect their skating attributes.

It would also be nice if the player could still recover from certain injuries while playing through them. Not all injuries don't start healing until the player's season is done - this would be the case for surgeries etc but not everything.

[zodiarkh]

Rather than adding a bunch of new leagues or features, I hope FHM 11 will focus on improving and fleshing out a lot of current features and systems in the game. Especially with Standard Games and games that play out far into the future.

UI Improvements

• The UI still feels very clunky and slow, especially when simulating 10-20 years or more into the future. When clicking things it takes a second or two sometimes to load the next page. And more specifically on staff and scout hiring pages, as well as other pages that display a lot of players/staff or a lot of information. It can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds to load. Optimizing this would make the game so much more smooth and enjoyable to play!

• When right clicking a player, and adding them to the Watch List, it resets the sorting of the overall page. So if I for example sort players by their potential, or by their rank on the scouting page. It resets back to the default every time I add a player to the Watch List. Which can be very cumbersome if someone wants to add a large amount of players to the Watch List, or do any other task that requires you to stay on the same page. It would be great if the sorting order can persist at least until you click into another page! I'm sure this applies to other areas of the game as well.

• Making statistics more readable would be a great improvement. As well as adding statistics like points per game, goals per game, etc. For career and season statistics.

• Display the last 10 games record for each team in the standings screens. Like it does on the NHL website.

• Having the ability to see any teams/players statistics between two dates would be great, or in the last X amount of games.

AI Improvements

• AI GM's often use a large amount of cap space to sign multiple starting or superstar quality goaltenders. Which just doesn't make sense realistically. In general the AI management of cap space needs improvement.

• AI coaches often put their best players on the 2nd or even 3rd line I've noticed.

• Sometimes AI coaches will assign roles to their best offensive players that make no sense. Like defensive roles or being a screener. Like I've seen McDavid as a screener and even a backchecking forward. I've seen it a lot in minor leagues too.

• I've noticed sometimes AI coaches play their young developing players way too little. There will be a player with 5 star potential, and 3-4 star ability who is getting 3rd and 4th line ice time.

• Overall the way the AI builds and constructs teams seems to be lacking in a lot of areas. Improving this would add so much to the immersion and difficulty of the game too.

Draft & Player Development Improvements

• The draft pool after the first 5 years by default needs to be deeper. It feels like after the first 5 years it's way less frequent that you find a steal in the later rounds. Usually it's only a goalie. Sometimes even before the first round is over, the players available are already down to 2 star potential.

• Scouting reports could be more in depth, maybe add a history of scouting reports to view the players growth over time. As well as more detail on what the player projects to be. Do they have potential to be a middle six guy, or a bonified first liner? Is their shot already NHL caliber? Maybe they have the tools to become a producer in the NHL but need a lot of polishing? Adding more context and depth is always a good thing.

• Sometimes the draft picks are bugged and it will display multiple draft picks of the same year, in the trade screen as well. For example it will display pick 1-7 of the 2038 draft, and then display pick 1-7 of the 2038 draft again. Below it.

• The way players develop feels like it could benefit from more depth. Like you just assign training to them and sort of leave it hoping for the best in most cases. There are plenty more factors that contribute to and influence a players development. Mentorship from coaches and more experienced players could be important. It would also give a bit more of a reason to sign an older player. Having more options to positively or negatively effect a players development would be great.

• Player and rating development needs to be more matched around what type of player it is. I constantly see defensemen get an increase to their screening stat, when that has no relevance at all to how they play. No defensemen is gonna be training their screening skills in real life. Same thing goes with Faceoffs.

• Way too often I see a player that is 6'2+ and 210+ lbs and their strength attribute is like a 13 or less. Now it's totally possible a bigger player could be just as strong or less strong than a smaller player. But it happens way too often compared to real life. Having strength correlate to the players size more often would be nice.

• I don't think offensive read and defensive read should diminish with age. A players understanding and ability to read the game doesn't diminish with age. It's more their physical attributes and ability to get into positions that allow them to execute based off of that ability to read the play.

Contracts and Free Agency

• It feels impossible to sign a player for more than 3-5 years. I rarely get the chance to sign a player to even 5 or 6 years. Make it easier to sign players to longer term contracts.

• Add an option to automatically increase the cap every year by a certain percentage.

• PLEASE display the amount the player is asking for and the term on the free agency listing screen. This would save so much time clicking in and out of the contract screen. Especially later in games, when the game becomes extremely clunky due to lag.

• I'd like to see more often players take a pay cut to potentially keep a team together that can win a cup. Or because they like their teammates, or the city, environment, etc.

• Too often I see players with 3rd and 4th line ice time and production ask for 5 or 6 million dollar contracts.

Player Milestones, Announcements & Awards

• During the players of the month announcement, maybe show the stats of that player during the month in the announcement. Actually I'd love a way to see the stats of a player during any month. Having snapshots of a players performance during a specific period would be a great way to make adjustments or just tell a bit of a story of a players career.

• Have milestones be announced when a player moves up a position in the all time points, goals, assists, etc lists.

• Another thing with milestones is that they don't feel very important, it's just a little message you see along with the 50 other messages you get per day.

• It would be awesome to make the race for the Hart, Art Ross, Rocket, etc more interesting. Give it more importance throughout the season. Have a few announcements here and there, especially if it's a close race. If a player started off slow and stormed back into the conversation. Have that be a big story piece of the year. Finding more ways to incorporate a story line or narrative really adds to the immersion.

• Sometimes the nominees and winners of the awards make no sense at all. A few times I've had a goalie that led the league in every major statistical category not even be nominated for the Vezina. Maybe more in depth statistics should be taken into account for the nominees and winner, or the way they are weighted needs to be re-evaluated.

• Hall of Fame inductions are sometimes a little wonky with who gets in first. I've seen guys who have no career achievements other than a lot of points get voted in over guys with multiple awards and cups.

• Adding more context to announcements would be great. Like if someone is on a point, goal or assist streak. Tell me how it compares and ranks to their own streaks in the past. Or how it ranks compared to streaks within the franchise and the NHL overall.

Line Management & Tactics

• I would love for a way to be able to manage players tendencies depending on which line or situation they are in. Like being more aggressive in attacking and shooting on the powerplay vs playing more balanced in their default 5v5 lineup. In the tactical tendencies screen, there could be a drop down menu for each player that says "5v5" "Power Play "Shorthanded". Or something similar to that effect. Having more control and fine tuning in this area of the game would be great.

• Being able to assign different roles depending on the line the player is on would be great.

• PLEASE add the option to save tactics and tactical tendencies. Into like a favourites list or something. Similar to how it is with lineups. That would save so much time.

Other Improvements & Fixes

• Generally adding more customization to the game in commissioner mode. Like changing the generated player quality for each country is great. But I'd like to be able to change way more than that. Everything as much as possible should be customizable.

• The ability to change job ratings for staff and yourself. I play as GM/Head Coach and it's annoying to constantly see my coaching rating at 12-15 and never see it improve. I should be able to just set it higher or see it grow over time.

• Expanding on the above point, the ability to edit the preferences of staff other than just the Offensive Preference and Physical Preference. Being able to edit the other tendencies would be great.

• Ability to turn a retired player into a coach, or to adjust how often a retired player becomes a coach.

[PabloSanok]

I would add that

When creating new tournament AI will take into account

- if no league history -> Maybe Financial Points or Budget to choose "best team" - not random ones
- if league history on -> choosen league top place, not random ones

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by zodiarkh

Rather than adding a bunch of new leagues or features, I hope FHM 11 will focus on improving and fleshing out a lot of current features and systems in the game. Especially with Standard Games and games that play out far into the future.

UI Improvements

• The UI still feels very clunky and slow, especially when simulating 10-20 years or more into the future. When clicking things it takes a second or two sometimes to load the next page. And more specifically on staff and scout hiring pages, as well as other pages that display a lot of players/staff or a lot of information. It can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds to load. Optimizing this would make the game so much more smooth and enjoyable to play!

• When right clicking a player, and adding them to the Watch List, it resets the sorting of the overall page. So if I for example sort players by their potential, or by their rank on the scouting page. It resets back to the default every time I add a player to the Watch List. Which can be very cumbersome if someone wants to add a large amount of players to the Watch List, or do any other task that requires you to stay on the same page. It would be great if the sorting order can persist at least until you click into another page! I'm sure this applies to other areas of the game as well.

• Making statistics more readable would be a great improvement. As well as adding statistics like points per game, goals per game, etc. For career and season statistics.

• Display the last 10 games record for each team in the standings screens. Like it does on the NHL website.

• Having the ability to see any teams/players statistics between two dates would be great, or in the last X amount of games.

AI Improvements

• AI GM's often use a large amount of cap space to sign multiple starting or superstar quality goaltenders. Which just doesn't make sense realistically. In general the AI management of cap space needs improvement.

• AI coaches often put their best players on the 2nd or even 3rd line I've noticed.

• Sometimes AI coaches will assign roles to their best offensive players that make no sense. Like defensive roles or being a screener. Like I've seen McDavid as a screener and even a backchecking forward. I've seen it a lot in minor leagues too.

• I've noticed sometimes AI coaches play their young developing players way too little. There will be a player with 5 star potential, and 3-4 star ability who is getting 3rd and 4th line ice time.

• Overall the way the AI builds and constructs teams seems to be lacking in a lot of areas. Improving this would add so much to the immersion and difficulty of the game too.

Draft & Player Development Improvements

• The draft pool after the first 5 years by default needs to be deeper. It feels like after the first 5 years it's way less frequent that you find a steal in the later rounds. Usually it's only a goalie. Sometimes even before the first round is over, the players available are already down to 2 star potential.

• Scouting reports could be more in depth, maybe add a history of scouting reports to view the players growth over time. As well as more detail on what the player projects to be. Do they have potential to be a middle six guy, or a bonified first liner? Is their shot already NHL caliber? Maybe they have the tools to become a producer in the NHL but need a lot of polishing? Adding more context and depth is always a good thing.

• Sometimes the draft picks are bugged and it will display multiple draft picks of the same year, in the trade screen as well. For example it will display pick 1-7 of the 2038 draft, and then display pick 1-7 of the 2038 draft again. Below it.

• The way players develop feels like it could benefit from more depth. Like you just assign training to them and sort of leave it hoping for the best in most cases. There are plenty more factors that contribute to and influence a players development. Mentorship from coaches and more experienced players could be important. It would also give a bit more of a reason to sign an older player. Having more options to positively or negatively effect a players development would be great.

• Player and rating development needs to be more matched around what type of player it is. I constantly see defensemen get an increase to their screening stat, when that has no relevance at all to how they play. No defensemen is gonna be training their screening skills in real life. Same thing goes with Faceoffs.

• Way too often I see a player that is 6'2+ and 210+ lbs and their strength attribute is like a 13 or less. Now it's totally possible a bigger player could be just as strong or less strong than a smaller player. But it happens way too often compared to real life. Having strength correlate to the players size more often would be nice.

• I don't think offensive read and defensive read should diminish with age. A players understanding and ability to read the game doesn't diminish with age. It's more their physical attributes and ability to get into positions that allow them to execute based off of that ability to read the play.

Contracts and Free Agency

• It feels impossible to sign a player for more than 3-5 years. I rarely get the chance to sign a player to even 5 or 6 years. Make it easier to sign players to longer term contracts.

• Add an option to automatically increase the cap every year by a certain percentage.

• PLEASE display the amount the player is asking for and the term on the free agency listing screen. This would save so much time clicking in and out of the contract screen. Especially later in games, when the game becomes extremely clunky due to lag.

• I'd like to see more often players take a pay cut to potentially keep a team together that can win a cup. Or because they like their teammates, or the city, environment, etc.

• Too often I see players with 3rd and 4th line ice time and production ask for 5 or 6 million dollar contracts.

Player Milestones, Announcements & Awards

• During the players of the month announcement, maybe show the stats of that player during the month in the announcement. Actually I'd love a way to see the stats of a player during any month. Having snapshots of a players performance during a specific period would be a great way to make adjustments or just tell a bit of a story of a players career.

• Have milestones be announced when a player moves up a position in the all time points, goals, assists, etc lists.

• Another thing with milestones is that they don't feel very important, it's just a little message you see along with the 50 other messages you get per day.

• It would be awesome to make the race for the Hart, Art Ross, Rocket, etc more interesting. Give it more importance throughout the season. Have a few announcements here and there, especially if it's a close race. If a player started off slow and stormed back into the conversation. Have that be a big story piece of the year. Finding more ways to incorporate a story line or narrative really adds to the immersion.

• Sometimes the nominees and winners of the awards make no sense at all. A few times I've had a goalie that led the league in every major statistical category not even be nominated for the Vezina. Maybe more in depth statistics should be taken into account for the nominees and winner, or the way they are weighted needs to be re-evaluated.

• Hall of Fame inductions are sometimes a little wonky with who gets in first. I've seen guys who have no career achievements other than a lot of points get voted in over guys with multiple awards and cups.

• Adding more context to announcements would be great. Like if someone is on a point, goal or assist streak. Tell me how it compares and ranks to their own streaks in the past. Or how it ranks compared to streaks within the franchise and the NHL overall.

Line Management & Tactics

• I would love for a way to be able to manage players tendencies depending on which line or situation they are in. Like being more aggressive in attacking and shooting on the powerplay vs playing more balanced in their default 5v5 lineup. In the tactical tendencies screen, there could be a drop down menu for each player that says "5v5" "Power Play "Shorthanded". Or something similar to that effect. Having more control and fine tuning in this area of the game would be great.

• Being able to assign different roles depending on the line the player is on would be great.

• PLEASE add the option to save tactics and tactical tendencies. Into like a favourites list or something. Similar to how it is with lineups. That would save so much time.

Other Improvements & Fixes

• Generally adding more customization to the game in commissioner mode. Like changing the generated player quality for each country is great. But I'd like to be able to change way more than that. Everything as much as possible should be customizable.

• The ability to change job ratings for staff and yourself. I play as GM/Head Coach and it's annoying to constantly see my coaching rating at 12-15 and never see it improve. I should be able to just set it higher or see it grow over time.

• Expanding on the above point, the ability to edit the preferences of staff other than just the Offensive Preference and Physical Preference. Being able to edit the other tendencies would be great.

• Ability to turn a retired player into a coach, or to adjust how often a retired player becomes a coach.

Nice one man, thorough and detailed - great points!

[northjersey]

really hoping that v11 will allow you to set your lines even if you're the GM but not the coach of your team

[Sebastian Palkowski]

I never really understood why this needs to be in?

Originally Posted by northjersey

really hoping that v11 will allow you to set your lines even if you're the GM but not the coach of your team

[drummerJ99]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

I never really understood why this needs to be in?

Mainly for realism of having a head coach still while being able to edit lines and OOTP has had it for years. LOL Yes in reality the GM normally doesn't have much say but this is a video game. Lets say you want to get some young guy a good look early in the seoson on the top line, GM only you are at the mercy of the AI. In real life you'd walk down from your office up high and talk to the coach about it.



IMHO giving the user more control and options is never a bad thing.

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

I never really understood why this needs to be in?

This is by far and away one of the most common requests I've seen from the entire player base, new and old. As another commenter has mentioned it resembles the 'legacy setting' in OOTP but also I think a lot of the time people are unhappy with the coach AI decisions, be it minute allocations or player placement on lines - it comes up all the time, Reddit, Discord and here. Here's an example from a few hours ago in Discord of the type of thing that's mentioned:



I used to try and understand the AI coaching decisions and explain them but that became more difficult over time, then I thought maybe that like the AI teams, the lines are not set when you see them but get set at game times but that doesn't seem to be it so now the only recommendation is just 'Play as HC/GM' which doesn't seem to really be a solution but more of a workaround for most players.

[Raindrops]

When creating a custom league, put the teams in divisions according to geography as it does in Out of the Park Baseball

[redtiger7]

When setting up a custom league, have a pre set JR league systemn set up. How many teams should we have to be efficient? How many leagues? What nationalities? I'm betting most people get it wrong and the manual doesn't realy give any guidance.

[matt#5]

line management / tactics discussion:

From my perspective, we could achieve some quick victories:
1) Enhance the game's online help, particularly the lines and tactics section, by providing more detailed explanations for all the 'ask assistant to do' or 'ask AI' Actions
a) What is meant by 'Assistant'? Does the game take into account the preferences of your assistant coach in this scenario?
b) What is the definition of 'AI'? Is it simply another term for Assistant Coach/Assistant, or does it imply a completely different logic?

2) add an option 'Assistant - setup organization (keep checked players in place)'
should work similar to the existing option but should keep players that are checked (check box behind names in lines) on this spot in the lines

long term:
for 'GM only mode': add an option to ask Head Coach to put players in defined spots in the lineup:
'I'd like to see Player x in a top 6 spot' (boost his trade value, boost development, ...)

'please put Player x in PP lines' (Ovi scenario to break goal record ;-) )

HC could agree or disagree based on ratings of GM / HC