Accurate Contracts and Lengths in Historical?

[Leafs67]

I understand that most NHL contracts prior to the 1990s are unknown (and thus can't be perfectly accurate), but I am wondering if salaries will be era accurate (eg. $450-1000 season in 1917-18, $10,000-$30,000 in 1962-63), and also, if in the 1990s and 2000s (when contracts were made public) the contracts will have the right length, not just have everybody on a 3 year contract. Also, as a sidenote, will you fix the bug where in historical mode literally every player is resigned, and there are no good free agents every year?

Thanks in advance for an answer

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Leafs67

I understand that most NHL contracts prior to the 1990s are unknown (and thus can't be perfectly accurate), but I am wondering if salaries will be era accurate (eg. $450-1000 season in 1917-18, $10,000-$30,000 in 1962-63), and also, if in the 1990s and 2000s (when contracts were made public) the contracts will have the right length, not just have everybody on a 3 year contract. Also, as a sidenote, will you fix the bug where in historical mode literally every player is resigned, and there are no good free agents every year?

Thanks in advance for an answer

I'm going to ping one of my beta testers who is more in tune with the historical game to come give you a better answer, but, I can tell you for certain that the salaries are realistic. You don't have guys in the 1950s making millions, for example.

Anyway, I'll get you some more concrete answers from some of the guys who have tested historical a lot more than myself.

[Duranium]

Originally Posted by Leafs67

I understand that most NHL contracts prior to the 1990s are unknown (and thus can't be perfectly accurate), but I am wondering if salaries will be era accurate (eg. $450-1000 season in 1917-18, $10,000-$30,000 in 1962-63), and also, if in the 1990s and 2000s (when contracts were made public) the contracts will have the right length, not just have everybody on a 3 year contract. Also, as a sidenote, will you fix the bug where in historical mode literally every player is resigned, and there are no good free agents every year?

Thanks in advance for an answer

Cole is right on the contracts - based on my testing experience the salary progression works pretty fine / realistic so far in historical mode.
Also the team budgets work out fine that far so that you´re able to extend key/core players without significant problems but you´re not able to just amass an all star roster, that would give you budget problems (even w/o a cap).
I know that my beta-experience is just a small sample but so far it looks pretty good and balanced.
Hope this helps a bit.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Duranium

Cole is right on the contracts - based on my testing experience the salary progression works pretty fine / realistic so far in historical mode.

Just to elaborate on that a little: they won't quite be precisely accurate to the actual salary levels in a lot of years because we need to smooth the data out a little for things to work properly - big jumps (or decreases) in average salaries from year to year would really mess up the game's finances and AI. And NHL salary progression over the last 85 years has been characterized by that kind of jump - for example, you get big leaps forward in the late 60's/early 70's with the arrival of the NHLPA and WHA, and then again as free agency is opened up in the 90's.

Using actual salary data for the players is a long way off, though. That's going to require a lot of research to handle properly, and there's the issue of fitting it in with the smoothing process mentioned above.