Immersion in FHM (and other games) + little FHM update

[checkyoursixx]

Yeah I'd hate to see development time get cut for a game that probably is not played a whole lot anymore, but I can understand why you need to do it. People may have purchased the game because of the new match engine.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Rich Tiger Fan

Don't take this the wrong way but personally if I had known that the match engine patch for 2014 was going to take this long and take away time from 15 (FHM2), I certainly would have preferred just dropping the engine for 14...but that's just me. I just don't see the value anymore. I'm never going to play 14 again, even with the match engine. I'm pretty much just waiting on FHM2 now...

By the way thanks for the update!!!!!!! It was a good read and sounds like things are coming together, which is exciting.

Totally understand your view, but I'm of the exact opposite mind. The first version has been a total debacle; I've never enjoyed the game and frankly feel ripped off. I'd never consider buying FHM2 if they reneged on the promised revised match engine for '14. I'm skeptical of their ability to successfully produce this game, although I'm very much hoping they prove me wrong -- the revised match engine for '14 is their way to do so. If that doesn't happen (and it's been over a year since details were announced), then I'm done.

[Bluenoser]

Thanks for the update, looks really good.




Please moore4807 - there is no need to criticize OOTP.

I have been there since day 1 with OOTP, every version.

It did not take 15 years and much fan upheaval to get a stable game. Like most games, it improved every year.

The only time there was fan discontent of major proportions was the conversion from 6.5 to 2006. Anybody who knows anything about software development and programming should not have been surprised, you don't just change the engine and coding of a game and expect it to go smoothly. 2006 was a growing pain, much like FHM 1 has been. Growing pains are part of life.

OOTP has been a stable playable game from day 1.

Do some homework before making false claims please.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

I don't think moore4807 wanted to criticize OOTP. We all know that OOTP is a great game, always was and always will be so please all, keep it civil or I have to close this so far constructive thread. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

Thanks for the update, looks really good.




Please moore4807 - there is no need to criticize OOTP.

I have been there since day 1 with OOTP, every version.

It did not take 15 years and much fan upheaval to get a stable game. Like most games, it improved every year.

The only time there was fan discontent of major proportions was the conversion from 6.5 to 2006. Anybody who knows anything about software development and programming should not have been surprised, you don't just change the engine and coding of a game and expect it to go smoothly. 2006 was a growing pain, much like FHM 1 has been. Growing pains are part of life.

OOTP has been a stable playable game from day 1.

Do some homework before making false claims please.

[BlackIce]

Sebastian, I cannot wait for the FHM2 game to hit the shelves, I for one will be in line with the rest of the fans with my credit card and all hitting the enter button afterwards in hopes for a fresh copy of FHM2 in the near future!! lol

I do have a few questions though and that is this...

- How does the game perceive fighting & brawls and does it accumulate for more misconducts to allow for more PIMs in the season.

- Does the game engine allow enforcers to battle against other enforcers rather then against players who do not drop the gloves as much

- How does the game perceive the agitators ? Do they draw more penalties on players and tend to drop the gloves on the rare occasion with players around they're specific weight class (height / weight) ?

- Is they're a setting baked into the game engine allowing for the frequency of more fisticuffs for the historic and past and the tendency of less with the game as it has turned itself into now ? Or can we adjust the frequency in a setup to allow for more of the fisticuffs during our games / specific leagues regardless of time era persay ?

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Fighting and penalties got a complete overhaul. You get now single fights, line fights of various size and bench clearing fights. Additional penalties to the fighting penalty are also included. One thing I'm still not happy with in my tests is who fights who, it needs additional tweaking (it is better then before). Thats where the patch will come in handy as we can use the feedback to further improve this area.

Originally Posted by BlackIce

Sebastian, I cannot wait for the FHM2 game to hit the shelves, I for one will be in line with the rest of the fans with my credit card and all hitting the enter button afterwards in hopes for a fresh copy of FHM2 in the near future!! lol

I do have a few questions though and that is this...

- How does the game perceive fighting & brawls and does it accumulate for more misconducts to allow for more PIMs in the season.

- Does the game engine allow enforcers to battle against other enforcers rather then against players who do not drop the gloves as much

- How does the game perceive the agitators ? Do they draw more penalties on players and tend to drop the gloves on the rare occasion with players around they're specific weight class (height / weight) ?

- Is they're a setting baked into the game engine allowing for the frequency of more fisticuffs for the historic and past and the tendency of less with the game as it has turned itself into now ? Or can we adjust the frequency in a setup to allow for more of the fisticuffs during our games / specific leagues regardless of time era persay ?

[deanwells1234]

I dont know if it is possible but I would love to see the option of starting your career as a Head Coach (only be able to do line changes and such) and try to develop a winning team and then maybe become a GM. Or be able to not be the coach and only be the GM and let an AI do your lines and such. I just dont like that I am both when I have such low skills and I am hampering my teams on ice development early in the game simply because I am not a good coach and there are others that are much much much better then I am. I think that would be great fun!

[geckon]

Originally Posted by deanwells1234

I dont know if it is possible but I would love to see the option of starting your career as a Head Coach (only be able to do line changes and such) and try to develop a winning team and then maybe become a GM. Or be able to not be the coach and only be the GM and let an AI do your lines and such. I just dont like that I am both when I have such low skills and I am hampering my teams on ice development early in the game simply because I am not a good coach and there are others that are much much much better then I am. I think that would be great fun!

Well technically you can do that in the manager menu where you can forward various duties to your "assistant". Thus you can let the AI do all transactions, drafting and similar decisions and focus solely on coaching. You can also let the AI do the coaching and focus on trading, drafting etc. only.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by trident

1) Trending

- This seems to something that is popular in general around the web. To see a box in your UI that says who's hot and cold between teams on streaks and players on streaks would summarize a bit better.

Thats kind of a running gag as we already have a box for that (for player on each team) but it never got filled with anything. Will be part of FHM 2.

2) Eligible Draft and Current Prospect Pool Tracking (per team)

Originally Posted by trident

ISS Ranking, World Junior tournament call ups, prospect development (junior clubs)
- So let's say someone's main club isn't doing well.. I personally get as much fun watching the prospects or late round picks begin to develop. This means following them before draft eligibility somehow and then beginning to have an attachment to them. Even if they don't make the pro's, its fun watching them try to make it in Europe because you know that player, you essentially put your faith in that player for better or worse.

I know what you mean. At some point we will introduce national teams of different levels to the game which will make stuff you describe pretty cool to follow. But making it easier to follow (young) guys you have rights for is something, that just moved up my to-do list.

Originally Posted by trident

3) Even if FHM gets to the level of text play by play such as CM 01/02 it'll be a major accomplishment and that game has been selected to the GM Games hall of fame. A must over time.

Our new PR/Marketing guru Cole works also for OOTP Dev as the new text guy. It is amazing what he already added for all three games (OOTP, BTS and FHM) and it will be cool to see what else is possible in the future. For the 2014 patch we will be a bit limited with pbp text as Cole has to work for OOTP at the moment but once he is done there he will shift to FHM 2 fulltime.

Originally Posted by trident

4) Not a great deal of clicks to see the player stats history by average rating or whatever the KPI is where users figure out where to find better players. Full ratings, player history stats, average rating same screen.

I think we improved the GUI/navigation a lot with FHM 2 and I'm really looking forward to all your feedback. The navigation is now much different to OOTP and IMO better suited for a Hockey Game.

Originally Posted by trident

5) Spacebar advance always to keep the flow going. Similar to why people love Tab button on forms.

The Sim Day button is now always visible, thats a big improvement for me. I will look into the space bar thing, not sure if that is technically possible.

Originally Posted by trident

6) This last one has to do with the rookie generation in the future that it avoids some of the regens traits per draft class from the versions of EHM. This will help the integrity of online leagues and players not spending all their time scouting regens. (If possible of course). Maybe just take a sample window of a generation 10-20 years and how many of the 1st rounders, later rounds, top picks etc reach some potential .. more like a lottery but where the top players will likely succeed but scoring doesn't go up or down excessive amounts based on talent pool.. static distribution of talent pool but dynamic ebb's and flows over a generational period (10,20,30 yrs)...

I don't get this one, sorry. In FHM we don't have regens at all.

[trident]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

Thats kind of a running gag as we already have a box for that (for player on each team) but it never got filled with anything. Will be part of FHM 2.

2) Eligible Draft and Current Prospect Pool Tracking (per team)



I know what you mean. At some point we will introduce national teams of different levels to the game which will make stuff you describe pretty cool to follow. But making it easier to follow (young) guys you have rights for is something, that just moved up my to-do list.



Our new PR/Marketing guru Cole works also for OOTP Dev as the new text guy. It is amazing what he already added for all three games (OOTP, BTS and FHM) and it will be cool to see what else is possible in the future. For the 2014 patch we will be a bit limited with pbp text as Cole has to work for OOTP at the moment but once he is done there he will shift to FHM 2 fulltime.



I think we improved the GUI/navigation a lot with FHM 2 and I'm really looking forward to all your feedback. The navigation is now much different to OOTP and IMO better suited for a Hockey Game.



The Sim Day button is now always visible, thats a big improvement for me. I will look into the space bar thing, not sure if that is technically possible.



I don't get this one, sorry. In FHM we don't have regens at all.

Awesome Sebastian. Thank you for taking the time to follow up. If you don't do regens in FHM that's perfect. What I'm saying though is, to make sure that for online leagues, when scouting, that there is some element of luck and some element of expectations for early round picks.

I'm just hoping that over 10-20 simulated seasons, someone who is in a league can't figure out your code. Then a bunch of online GM's will trade for picks in THAT upcoming draft year and have an edge and say:

"The curve now means that FHM will need to correct themselves to keep the stats aligned, we all know this will be a deep draft based on the fact the game needs to fix the league average numbers, etc"

So hopefully some of that kind of stuff doesn't hurt the prospect classes, rookies, potential in the patterns as described above.

[deanwells1234]

Originally Posted by geckon

Well technically you can do that in the manager menu where you can forward various duties to your "assistant". Thus you can let the AI do all transactions, drafting and similar decisions and focus solely on coaching. You can also let the AI do the coaching and focus on trading, drafting etc. only.

I know that but I dont like having my coaching abilities ruin the potential of my young players. it just is a little annoying. Some may want to do both I just want to run the team and not the lineups and stuff.

[dave1927p]

Originally Posted by trident

6) This last one has to do with the rookie generation in the future that it avoids some of the regens traits per draft class from the versions of EHM. This will help the integrity of online leagues and players not spending all their time scouting regens. (If possible of course). Maybe just take a sample window of a generation 10-20 years and how many of the 1st rounders, later rounds, top picks etc reach some potential .. more like a lottery but where the top players will likely succeed but scoring doesn't go up or down excessive amounts based on talent pool.. static distribution of talent pool but dynamic ebb's and flows over a generational period (10,20,30 yrs)...

What's great about FHM is that they use a "newgen" system opposed to a "regen" as we see in EHM. When a player retires, I believe his nationality is kept, but everything else is changed (CA, PA etc). So in FHM you can keep looking for that Hasek regen but you will never find him.
I think the hit and miss feeling of the draft is something that will always need to be improved and tweaked. In EHM we would rarely see later round draft picks turning into top players or even regular players. No goalies past the first round were starters.

[dave1927p]

Originally Posted by deanwells1234

I know that but I dont like having my coaching abilities ruin the potential of my young players. it just is a little annoying. Some may want to do both I just want to run the team and not the lineups and stuff.

I understand that. Even though you can do that already, the game still sees you and treats you as a GM - you want that full recognition of just being the Head Coach and additional features that might come along with that role. That is a new feature in the upcoming OOTP16 where you can just play as a manager and it seems many are excited for that feature.

[greenOak]

Originally Posted by dave1927p

What's great about FHM is that they use a "newgen" system opposed to a "regen" as we see in EHM. When a player retires, I believe his nationality is kept, but everything else is changed (CA, PA etc). So in FHM you can keep looking for that Hasek regen but you will never find him.
I think the hit and miss feeling of the draft is something that will always need to be improved and tweaked. In EHM we would rarely see later round draft picks turning into top players or even regular players. No goalies past the first round were starters.

Drafts in FHM are really top heavy too. You still typically get useful players in the 2nd round, but the 3rd to 7th rounds typically don't have much talent. Moreover, all the stars are usually top 10 picks. The AI seems to be too good at drafting players on their true potential in this game. Hoping this will be tweaked in FHM 2.

[DaximusPrimus]

I have never seen it in FHM14 but it would be cool if you could have players whose ability exceeds their potential. So you could have a late round pick, like a Datsyuk that is projected lower say 6.0 or so but after a few years if he plays good he all the sudden jumps to a 9.0 or so by the time he's 23-26 years old. Could make for some really interesting online play. Maybe the stats would play into it, like he's exceeding his potential.

[trident]

Originally Posted by DaximusPrimus

I have never seen it in FHM14 but it would be cool if you could have players whose ability exceeds their potential. So you could have a late round pick, like a Datsyuk that is projected lower say 6.0 or so but after a few years if he plays good he all the sudden jumps to a 9.0 or so by the time he's 23-26 years old. Could make for some really interesting online play. Maybe the stats would play into it, like he's exceeding his potential.

We used to see these "pops" a lot in early OOTP leagues. People would be like "WTF how did this guy's ratings or potential jump so much" .. I think there is some element of hidden potential that would be interesting per draft .. just keep it random like lotto and base it on analytics of player success in later rounds as per real life (unfortunately this might need to correlate back to Nationality so countries are consistent). One thing though all the little online weasels start figuring out how to find editors to reveal this information from the DB and cheat in leagues.. Encryption on top of that would be even better. ha!

[beezer2434]

Originally Posted by trident

We used to see these "pops" a lot in early OOTP leagues. People would be like "WTF how did this guy's ratings or potential jump so much" .. I think there is some element of hidden potential that would be interesting per draft .. just keep it random like lotto and base it on analytics of player success in later rounds as per real life (unfortunately this might need to correlate back to Nationality so countries are consistent). One thing though all the little online weasels start figuring out how to find editors to reveal this information from the DB and cheat in leagues.. Encryption on top of that would be even better. ha!

In ootp i believe it has to with their intelligence rating along work ethic?

[Sebastian Palkowski]

We had a big "fight" about this topic for FHM 2 as I didn't like the way it worked in 2014 and I don't like how it works in OOTP. We made some changes now and I'm sure it works much better now.

Originally Posted by trident

We used to see these "pops" a lot in early OOTP leagues. People would be like "WTF how did this guy's ratings or potential jump so much" .. I think there is some element of hidden potential that would be interesting per draft .. just keep it random like lotto and base it on analytics of player success in later rounds as per real life (unfortunately this might need to correlate back to Nationality so countries are consistent). One thing though all the little online weasels start figuring out how to find editors to reveal this information from the DB and cheat in leagues.. Encryption on top of that would be even better. ha!

[Simple Mathematics]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

Fighting and penalties got a complete overhaul. You get now single fights, line fights of various size and bench clearing fights. Additional penalties to the fighting penalty are also included. One thing I'm still not happy with in my tests is who fights who, it needs additional tweaking (it is better then before). Thats where the patch will come in handy as we can use the feedback to further improve this area.

While the line fights and bench clearing brawls sound awesome for the Broad Street Bullies era of hockey, I hope these don't creap their way in to the current era of hockey. They simply don't happen anymore - especially the bench clearing brawls.

[moore4807]

Originally Posted by Simple Mathematics

While the line fights and bench clearing brawls sound awesome for the Broad Street Bullies era of hockey, I hope these don't creep their way in to the current era of hockey. They simply don't happen anymore - especially the bench clearing brawls.

REALLY?

Perhaps you might visit YouTube videos Hockey fights...
2/9/11+ 3/24/14 Boston vs Montreal
2/11/11 NYI vs. Pittsburgh
4/5/12 Philly vs Pittsburgh
2/7/13 + 5/6/13 Pittsburgh vs Boston
11/1/13 Philly vs. Washington
1/18/14 Calgary vs. Vancouver
I believe in keep fighting in the sport as its been from the beginning, the 70's were one area where the rubber band got stretched too far but then got stretched equally as bad with the Gretzky/Lemieux(?) years where flopping became an art form. Hockey is and always has been both a physical contact sport and artistry on ice, but that contact is forever going to cause sparks to fly!