Enforcers

[diesel230]

Their were some issues with enforcers being sent to minors in last years version and some not fighting much. If you wanted to play in the late 80's early 90's, when most teams had multiple players with over 200 pims. How is fhm2 handling the enforcer role?

[BlackIce]

The OOTP staff and especially Jeff who have maintained an awful amount of attention to this area has been working extremely hard on getting the structure of the Enforcers sorted out.

The game engine does work hand in hand with certain coaches that may be more inclined on playing a physical lineup so you can expect to have your team facing a lineup with an Enforcer dressed regularly in this case.

There have been a few of us doing a lot of simulations on this area and I have specifically been sending a lot of feedback in this area but rest assured you will not be disappointed friend.

[diesel230]

In regards to the late 80's and early 90's when playing historical leagues, "certain" coaches "may be inclined" to "dress" an enforcer doesn't sound statistically or historically accurate.

[BlackIce]

Originally Posted by diesel230

In regards to the late 80's and early 90's when playing historical leagues, "certain" coaches "may be inclined" to "dress" an enforcer doesn't sound statistically or historically accurate.

All I can say is that the players penalties & fight totals are that of the same as they would have in that era. They really have done an excellent job on the historical end of the game including the rough and tumble 90's.

I'm a hockey fight nut as well, trust me... I live and breath tough guys.. I can assure you, you will not be disappointed with the results. I have oodles of Enforcers in my tests putting up the 300+ PIM's for the early 90's if this helps.

I'm sorry I cannot be more informative at this time.

[diesel230]

If your fight fan like myself and a few others on this board and you are pleased with how it's looking, I trust your judgment.

Last year it listed "fights won" on player profiles. Be great if it would list who they fought plus who won on the players page. This way we could do a quick check of records and feuds.

[diesel230]

I purchased FHM because i support all of Markus's products.

I started the 1991 season and simulated the first few weeks.

As i fight fan who lives and breaths tough guys, you dont see an issue with Dave Brown fighting Paul Coffey? Gord Donnelly fighting Gary Suter? Ronnie Stern fighting Thomas Steen? Ken Baumgartner fighting Gary Galley? Darin Kimble fighting Stephane Richer? Pat Lafontaine fighting Brent Hughes and Peter Bondra fighting Rob Ray in the same game...im sure you get the point.
I've seen 2 fights that make any sense or are the least bit realistic.

The enforcers are dressed, which is great and indicative of that era of hockey. But the matchups are terrible and extremely far fetched.

I don't pretend to know much about programming, but couldn't it be written in the player codes that Steen, Suter, Galley etc.. NOT fight. Or have players labeled ENFORCERS fight ENFORCERS except the rare circumstance?

So far going thru boxscores i'm happy that the fights are showing up like they did in the early 90's, but quite frankly the matchup's are laughable at best!!!

[pens66]

There is actually too many fights in historic mode. I noted this in another thread, too.

In my first playthrough starting in 1981-82 I found Jack Carlson with 47 and 68 fights in his only two NHL seasons, I found Theo Fleury with 57 fights once or a certain Alan May (don't know him actually...) fighting between 32 and 55 times in all of his six NHL seasons. I could go on and on.

I know it is probably very difficult to code these nice mutliplayer fisticuffs, which we all love, into a computer game. But unless you do and it works to a certain degree you will never have realistic penalty numbers in a hockey simulator, especially when we talk about North American hockey and even more so about the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It is pretty simple: There are no brawls or even little scrums in the game and because of that there a) too many fights and b) phantom misconduct penalties handed out to achieve somewhat realistic penalty totals.

Its certainly the biggest flaw in the match engine, which really produces good numbers otherwise. It's a shame, but it is what it is, because I am pretty certain that the fighting aspect will have to take a backseat to other stuff.

[MXD]

Originally Posted by diesel230

I purchased FHM because i support all of Markus's products.

I started the 1991 season and simulated the first few weeks.

As i fight fan who lives and breaths tough guys, you dont see an issue with Dave Brown fighting Paul Coffey? Gord Donnelly fighting Gary Suter? Ronnie Stern fighting Thomas Steen? Ken Baumgartner fighting Gary Galley? Darin Kimble fighting Stephane Richer? Pat Lafontaine fighting Brent Hughes and Peter Bondra fighting Rob Ray in the same game...im sure you get the point.
I've seen 2 fights that make any sense or are the least bit realistic.

The enforcers are dressed, which is great and indicative of that era of hockey. But the matchups are terrible and extremely far fetched.

I don't pretend to know much about programming, but couldn't it be written in the player codes that Steen, Suter, Galley etc.. NOT fight. Or have players labeled ENFORCERS fight ENFORCERS except the rare circumstance?

So far going thru boxscores i'm happy that the fights are showing up like they did in the early 90's, but quite frankly the matchup's are laughable at best!!!

Well, the bolded being the proverbial exception to the rule, as his on-ice play totally warranted being jumped by an opponent enforcer.

[diesel230]

Getting "jumped" by an enforcer would not lead to only coincidental 5 minute majors.

Point is superstars shouldn't be fighting heavyweights. Thomas Steen has 3 fighting majors in 10 games for Winnipeg. That's broken.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by diesel230

Getting "jumped" by an enforcer would not lead to only coincidental 5 minute majors.

Point is superstars shouldn't be fighting heavyweights. Thomas Steen has 3 fighting majors in 10 games for Winnipeg. That's broken.

Right. If Brown actually started hammering Lafontaine some Sabre on the ice would come in real fast if not just clearing the bench. Couldn't happen in a real game situation just to let them fight.

Why I thought the fighting rating should not be a "how much they fight" but how well they fight. Then a Brown who might be a 20 vs a Lafontaine who is a 4 would equal a 99% response of at least a third man in to save him (1% random where the Sabres all hate him so let him get beat up and injured for 5 weeks) sort of thing.

As well should Brown be tagged with a "fight" there should be a high likelyhood that is going to be against the toughest player on the ice, not every time for there are exceptions to every rule. But that is why Rob Ray or Bob Boughner would be on the ice when Brown was out there just to be sure such things wouldn't happen.
'

[JeffR]

The non-fighters fighting in historical is primarily a data, not an engine, issue. The new engine substantially changed the way fighting determinantion interacted with the database ratings. But that means we had/have to adjust all the data now. I just finally got the modern NHL into good shape last weekend, and historical is a lot more data to deal with; I'm running full 85-year simulations regularly and paring down the worst of the fighting results. And the way the historical modeling generates players also has an issue with inflating fighting ratings for good players (like Steen and Lafontaine).

I'll either have to talk to Sebastian about a workaround to put a cap on fighting ratings setup in historical for certain types of players to keep their fight count at the correct level, or do a bunch of batch editing in the next week or two to knock it down manually, which may be the better solution, but may require some changes to our internal editor to let me identify who needs fixing. You'll probably see the historical fighting numbers fluctuate a bunch in the next few weeks, but I got it working in the modern NHL and I'll get it working here.

[pens66]

Jeff, are there any actual plans to tackle the problem at its roots? It's obvious that you guys want to please the stats gurus, especially the historic mode players. They want accurate numbers, so you give them enforcers who rack up 300+ penalty minutes. But they do so by doing stuff they never did, i.e. fight 50 times per NHL season.

So will the fisticuffs model be expanded at some point to include brawls, scrums and what not?

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by pens66

Jeff, are there any actual plans to tackle the problem at its roots? It's obvious that you guys want to please the stats gurus, especially the historic mode players. They want accurate numbers, so you give them enforcers who rack up 300+ penalty minutes. But they do so by doing stuff they never did, i.e. fight 50 times per NHL season.

So will the fisticuffs model be expanded at some point to include brawls, scrums and what not?

Brawls are part of the game engine design, but there are a few issues with handling large combinations of simultaneous penalties, particularly misconducts, at the moment, so we've got them turned off, for the most part, until we can deal with it properly. But the large number of fighting penalties in some historical years has more to do with the reasons I stated above. Fixing that will bring down the overall penalty totals along with the fight numbers, getting the misconduct numbers up will help get them back to where they should be; it'll require some careful balancing. I'm not, as you're suggesting, taking some kind of lazy shortcut to get penalty numbers or making it "take a backseat to other stuff." We're going to continue working on it, and we've got BlackIce and Tiger Fan in the testing forum, both of whom pay as much attention to the fight numbers as anyone here. It's not going to get ignored.

[pens66]

Okay, that's great to hear!

[sprague]

Originally Posted by JeffR

Brawls are part of the game engine design, but there are a few issues with handling large combinations of simultaneous penalties, particularly misconducts, at the moment, so we've got them turned off, for the most part, until we can deal with it properly. But the large number of fighting penalties in some historical years has more to do with the reasons I stated above. Fixing that will bring down the overall penalty totals along with the fight numbers, getting the misconduct numbers up will help get them back to where they should be; it'll require some careful balancing. I'm not, as you're suggesting, taking some kind of lazy shortcut to get penalty numbers or making it "take a backseat to other stuff." We're going to continue working on it, and we've got BlackIce and Tiger Fan in the testing forum, both of whom pay as much attention to the fight numbers as anyone here. It's not going to get ignored.

I too commend this concept.
To me when this is has become a reality, then to me it will be a game I will purchase and try- but like you say it can't just throw out the right raw numbers, those penalties not only have to come in a correct way, but also be of potential value.

One issue the game has is that there is a over all slider (penalties per game). And if you bring it up say from 7.05 to 11.90 the game will generate more penalties, but those penalties will be in the same ratio mostly minors just a few majors misconducts ect. Thus a second slider of some type that indicates how to change penalty distribution somehow. Two leagues of 7 penalties per game can generate very different PIM per game if the type of penalties- minors to majors to misc are very different.
I recalll the original EHM had sliders not just for number of penalties but for fights, which if you raised the fights but not penalties would increase PIM, fights, but not the overall penalties or PP in a game. This made the game customizable in those areas as well

I know you know this, but more this is a post for the community in general.
I would also make a suggestion, that considering you can be "the coach" of a team, one of the few options coaches really have during a game is to send players out to fight. Agree or disagree with the philosophy but it is a fact of life, especially the further back in history one goes. In time that could become realistic options or coded into the game where a junior coach like Bill Laforge, Paul Theriault or Punch McLean might have a team with 5 bench clearing brawls a year while a Brian Kilrae team might have 1.

I know long post, but as a historian this area of the sport is just as important to me from a realism standpoint as goals assists and faceoffs.

Final comment from me is that I like your response, and even though many may not see the importance of it- having the team following it to get these areas right will in time make a much more complete game- hence far more sales.

Best of luck with this. I will be following along and look forward to see this come to light. Cheers

[zyberianwarrior]

FYI Shea Weber fights too and while exciting the GM (Poile) doesn't want to see HIM FIGHT!!!!

[BlackIce]

Originally Posted by zyberianwarrior

FYI Shea Weber fights too and while exciting the GM (Poile) doesn't want to see HIM FIGHT!!!!

Totally agreeable. One factor you do need to consider is that he IS a phenomenal captain of the Pred's and will do anything for the team including sticking up for his teammates.

While he's good for two or three fights a year the rest of the team needs to help with this aspect as they are not the most physical so you should see more help from players such as Gaustad, Jackman, Nystrom, Fisher, Neal, (take your pick).

The Preds did muster up 17 fights total last season and 34 total in 2013-2014. Jeff is beginning to get a nice balance of other players contributing but not exceeding real life statistics by a huge margin. This is very noticeable currently as the game isn't just sorting a one - dimensional look with just "Enforcers" so to speak.

Again i do understand you don't want Weber fighting as he is too valuable for that role but the game is slowly transitioning to allowing a mixture of others such as aforementioned above.

[sprague]

How are the imrovements coming along in this area?

Haven t seen anything mentioned for a while on the forum

[JeffR]

Sebastian's been working out a few of the issues with penalty handling, that should open up the possibilities to a broader range of fighting/brawl/misconduct situations. Fighting stats overall still look pretty good, the dropoff in the early seasons is decreasing as players get re-rated.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by JeffR

Sebastian's been working out a few of the issues with penalty handling, that should open up the possibilities to a broader range of fighting/brawl/misconduct situations. Fighting stats overall still look pretty good, the dropoff in the early seasons is decreasing as players get re-rated.

Thanks for the reply,
Really looking forward to when you have that ready to give it a full test drive, then see how the 70's and 80's look in play.