Some Suggestions

[of17]

Overall very much enjoying the game, but there are some quality of life suggestions that would make it much better. I'm just going to list them all so you guys can take or leave as you'd like, since I'm sure knowing about them is more appealing than not.

Could we get an option to assign scouts indefinitely please? Most of the time, it's the same scouts I'll assign to the same areas/focuses, and having to assign them all every 16 weeks is tedious.

Sometimes sims will stop for waived players, and other times they won't. Having the sim stop telling you a player was claimed when you'd have liked to have claimed that player is frustrating, and it leads to having to check the waiver box every time a sim stops (which is an annoying two clicks we could do without).

Hiring of personnel is wonky. On two occasions, I've had one AI fire a head coach and another hire him in the same day, so I get a notification that Mike Babcock has been fired and another that he's been hired without a chance to hire him myself. Would it be possible to prevent AIs from hiring fired candidates for a day or two please?

I posted this in the bugs forum, but being a national team GM causes the game to crash for me, and I've tried multiple ways of getting around it. Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to hire a national team coach and national team assistants. Why not?

There are certain bugs with free agents wherein they can only be signed to ELCs but won't accept a max value ELC, saying that it isn't enough money for them, or that they require a one-way contract. Same happens with drafted players. Could that be fixed please? Effectively means certain players are impossible to sign.

No matter what type of players I have or which player I'm looking at, my scouts always tell me that I don't have a player like player X on the roster in the scouting reports. While that's literally true that I don't have a player with the same stats, it makes that section kind of useless if the same response comes for every player.

Game rating and talent score don't seem to correlate too well. I routinely have 3-star talents consistently pull better game ratings than 5-star talents. Makes the talent star rating somewhat irrelevant.

AIs undervalue quantity of picks and overvalue quality of picks. There are times when trading a player for a 3rd gives me a doubtful message, but trading him for two 4ths gives me a likely message. That doesn't jive with the value of those picks either in real life or in the game.

Free agent prices are pretty wonky too. Alex Pietrangelo, as a young UFA, isn't going to want $4.2 million for 3 years.

As soon as the playoffs start, the salary cap is raised by its 10% offseason escalator, allowing rosters that normally wouldn't be allowed in the regular season.

Could we hire personnel for jobs other than their job titles? For instance, a fired head coach who has been out of work for a year would be of great help to my forwards, but I'm not allowed to hire him as an assistant coach. This kind of hiring happens all the time in the NHL, as I'm sure you know, and it would be nice to be able to do so in the game.

I seem to get way more quality prospects from the former USSR and Nordic Europe than from Canadian junior leagues. This doesn't jive with real life. I have more scouts assigned to the areas than are necessary, so that isn't the issue.

That's what comes to mind at first. It's a lot, and I certainly don't expect a balance patch in a week that fixes all of these issues, but if I were in your shoes, I would want to know all of these things, so I typed what came to mind. Thanks for your time, and thanks for the game.

[redtiger7]

Originally Posted by of17

Could we get an option to assign scouts indefinitely please? Most of the time, it's the same scouts I'll assign to the same areas/focuses, and having to assign them all every 16 weeks is tedious.

This.

[Torgonius]

Originally Posted by of17

As soon as the playoffs start, the salary cap is raised by its 10% offseason escalator, allowing rosters that normally wouldn't be allowed in the regular season.

Lots of good suggestions in there, but the salary cap doesn't apply in the playoffs. The game is handling this more or less correctly. NHL players aren't paid their salaries during the playoffs. They are competing for bonus money that comes from the league. In 2016, there was a pool of $16,000,000 which was split among the 16 playoff teams depending on when the were eliminated.

For 2013, when teams were splitting 13 million, it went like this:
First round losers — $2 million ($250,000 each to eight teams)
Second round losers — $2 million ($500,000 each to four teams)
Third round losers — $2.5 million ($1.25-million each to two teams)
Stanley Cup finalist — $2.25 million
Stanley Cup champion — $3.75 million

Each team would generally split their portion 25 ways, so the first round losers got $10k per person, while the Cup winners got $150,000 each.

The actual playoff roster restriction is that the player had to be on your protected list on trade deadline day. It's not modeled in the game currently, but this is how real NHL teams can sign their drafted college players at the end of the NCAA season (which is after the deadline) and still have them in the playoffs. Chris Kreider is a recent example of this.

[Rand]

Originally Posted by redtiger7

This.

So much. Endlessly telling them to do the same thing gets old fast.

[omjo]

Game rating and talent score don't seem to correlate too well. I routinely have 3-star talents consistently pull better game ratings than 5-star talents. Makes the talent star rating somewhat irrelevant.

I think this could be due to the roles of the players. For example, a 3-star player will likely face lesser competition in a bottom six role with more limited icetime, whereas the 5-star players (ie top line players) are usually playing against the best players the opposing team has to offer.

So those bottom six/bottom pairing players could be looking better because they're being sheltered as opposed to your 5-star players. Just a possibility anyway.