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Re: FM AI GM’s logic is ridiculous

@SkylerJames13 the logic used by AI GM's has definitely been an issue for years and is probably the most frustrating thing about the mode. This year it has become quite a bit worse just as you said, I think they tried to do too much with the trade deadline and it has made a mess of things. Any team having a bad year instantly becomes a seller and will trade anybody at the deadline even if they are one of their young top players signed for a few more years.

I can't remember if it was last year or the one before but in the franchise mode deep dive there was a point made that AI GM's will trade away players, including picks if needed in order to resign their players. I remember getting excited as every year before that a number of the top RFA's would sit out because teams didn't have cap space to sign them. It still has not improved, the only thing that changed is they increased the salary cap (and made it increase the same every year, used to be random) and as you and someone else pointed out AI GM's are still letting their best players walk while having 10 defensemen on the roster. I mentioned this last year too as its been a frustration of mine for quite some time that even if you did try to help a team out by taking on salary there were no extra picks or prospects included because they weren't "bad contracts" just players that the team would actually want to move to keep their stars and you would have to even overpay to get them because they weren't even on the trade block.

22 Replies

  • @Beauts90 I remember what you’re talking about. The trading was, ever so slightly, decent at that point in time. It wasn’t good. It was still pretty meh. Now, the entire trading process and trade values are completely useless, and it’s an entire waste of time. The worst is when you try and trade (even a trade that’s really bad for you, and good for them) and you get the stupid response “we’re saving our cap space for pending free agents” but they never do anything. It never makes sense and they never put any effort into fixing it even when nhl 17 came out, which was their “new” game developed for the ps4/Xbox one generation. They’ve released the same game for 5 years, and besides BAP “looking different”, but playing even worse,” the game hardly looks different at all. The gameplay itself is different, a bit better in some ways, a bit worse. But the offline game modes themselves have hardly been touched. And whenever they make a half-hearted effort to do anything with it, they just ruin it and make it worse
  • Beauts90's avatar
    Beauts90
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    I have no doubts that trying to program an AI GM is just like an AI player where no matter what its never going to be very good. I also know that releasing a game yearly has its difficulties in the amount that can be added and for the most part I know what I am paying for each year so I'm not overly disappointed when not much as changed. Like I've said before, they have added some cool things the last few years, but they still need improvements as well. I think the disappointing part this year is that the same flaws that they have had for years have actually got worse. I don't think the AI GM's will ever get to the point where people stop asking for gm connected so they don't have to deal with the AI GM's. Instead I hope they should look more into giving us more options so we can try and set up and play the mode the way we want. Some good suggestions from here for trading have been force/veto trades and signings, trade/free agent frequency sliders, allowing us to set up protected lists for all teams and improved team wants/needs. A more complicated suggestion would be to give each player personality traits of what is most important such as loyalty, winning, money, stats or term. Have something similar for each GM as well to try and better control how they make trades and signings. 

    Edit: One thing they could add that would help with the bad trades is NTC/NMC to franchise. Not only would it add another element to franchise mode, but more star players would request it when signing. This would also allow us to give them to players we don't want traded before starting a new one.

  • I've said before, I'll say it again, I'll never stop saying it:
    there's an easy fix that'll make perfect AI logic while requiring very little effort on EA's part: full customization. Allow us to force trades as well as make CPU-CPU trades. Then we can look through and figure out what teams should be moving what contracts, and we can figure out what's fair for them to move a bad contract, and what team would be willing to take on a bad contract, what assets they would demand in order to do so.

    It would be time-consuming for us to do this every single deadline (or whenever), but I'm sure all of us would be thrilled to do so in order to keep the game realistic and functioning logically. Over, you know... the * they've been giving us.

    Full customization is the answer to all EA's problems. Bad potential/development? Allow us to edit ratings. Wrong positions or player type? (Whether or not it's "wrong" or we just prefer something different.) Allow us to edit position and player type. Polish players with names like Greg Liston or Marvin Jones? Allow us to edit player names.
    This isn't hard. It's not hard to figure out, it's not hard to program. Yet... they keep failing us. Even worse, they've been *removing* customization, as we were actually able to edit at least *some* of those things in NHL 20 (positions and roles).

  • DeMiGoD1988's avatar
    DeMiGoD1988
    5 years ago

    @SchulzEricT Could imagine that.. players would trade all the top stars to one team and [profanity removed] the rest

    Edit: Removed profanity. Please keep the following rule in mind:

    • Don't curse or swear. Don't try to get away with it by using symbols in place of letters, too. We all k*** what you're trying to s**.

    Thank you. -CM

  • LordDecland's avatar
    LordDecland
    Seasoned Adventurer
    5 years ago
    @Beauts90 Literally They should just take notes on what 2K does, they have all of this and so much more in their MYLEAGUE and MYGM (both franchise modes) which they actually combined both into "MYNBA" in NBA 21 on next gen where you can customize your experience however it is that you want to play it; I personally don't have the PS5 yet though.
  • @LordDecland What 2K does is too high of a standard for EA to achieve. As of now, EA makes plenty of $$$ from HUT and selling gambling mechanisms to children aka hut packs (which they were fined for in the Netherlands)
  • SkylerJames13's avatar
    SkylerJames13
    5 years ago
    @SkylerJames13 3+ months and still waiting for fixes, and no communication or effort put into fixing the game from EA, only HUT has been getting any attention
  • DeMiGoD1988's avatar
    DeMiGoD1988
    5 years ago

    Oh they're watching my swear word got removed from my comment.. xD. I guess community outreach with offline modes aren't that important to them ☹️

  • @DeMiGoD1988 Frankly, I don’t expect support from EA, in terms of BAP or FM anymore. But I’ll still continue to voice my frustration and displeasure, since I am a customer that unfortunately paid money for this trash game.

    I’m still baffled how bad the AI GM logic is after all this time
  • DeMiGoD1988's avatar
    DeMiGoD1988
    5 years ago
    @SkylerJames13 I did make a post of ideas on general discussion board. Should have a look. See what you think of them. Just want to see if I'm in line with how the community feels or if I'm alone on my ideas
  • @DeMiGoD1988 No you’re definitely not alone. We all have the same ideas for the most part. The entire community thinks fairly alike. The problem, is that EA doesn’t listen to us. The community doesn’t actually have a voice apparently. HUT and online have louder voices, especially because of their streamers and because of the gambling loot boxes cash cows they have.

    But we as a community have been ignored for years, really. Everyone once in a while they “give” us a feature, but they implement it so poorly, and don’t bother to fix it/make it work right, that it wasn’t even worth the time, and it’s not worth our money.
  • EA_Aljo's avatar
    EA_Aljo
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    5 years ago

    @DeMiGoD1988 

    We absolutely care about offline players. If we didn't, so much work wouldn't be put into them. It's certainly disappointing to see so much frustration with these issues and we'd love to see them resolved. When it comes to fixing issues, it's not as easy as it may seem. There are also times it's better to spend the time necessary to resolve these issues properly which can mean waiting for a future game as it's possible changes coming down the road could affect the fixes that are put in. I'm not saying that's for sure the case here, but it's something that needs to be considered. 

    Also, yes, there are a lot more online players than offline. When it comes to getting out fixes that affect the high majority of players versus the smaller population that plays only offline modes, it makes sense to address the issues affecting more people. There's a limited amount of time and resources and they need to be used where they can to make the most impact. Sadly, this means we can't make everyone happy.

    Please keep the constructive feedback coming. I understand it may look like you're being ignored, but that's not the case. Bug reports help the dev team gets these issues resolved.

  • @EA_Aljo Chemistry and coaching issues have been an issue for a long time, and same thing with TWD TWF being useless in terms of chemistry. How many more games do we have to wait for them to be fixed?
  • @EA_Aljo I'm gonna disagree. It's known franchise mode is the most played mode, has been for years and we've seen the same bugs in title after title. One bug I brought up here back in 2017 and I was told it'll be fixed for NHL 2018... Still is there, not fixed at all. When I've been lied to for 3 years straight being straight with you is constructive. I made a second post which is extremely constructive on how to make the mode more realistic and that's all we ask for, some are difficult fixes others easy. However it's unfair for EA to ask for respect when you blatantly lie to our faces about overhauling the mode when you added one feature (which is buggy at best) and this one feature bugs up other features. Each year we also get less and less features. I remember the time we had the likelihood of a player wanting to join a team, or we could hire medical personal or a legal team... I remember when the all star game was in franchise mode, all that has been since been removed. This alone tells you ive played this game yearly and for a long time and over the years I see key features leave and don't see a new one to replace it for years later only for it to be shoehorned into the game in a very messy state.
  • @EA_AljoAlso to revert back to key features missing and another offline mode (just to hit home how offline modes have been disregarded) you completely removed normal seasons from the CHL, OHL & QMJHL not to mention what age you want to start as and you're locked into going to either NYR or LA if you do good or ANA if you don't.

    Yes I'm refering to Be A Pro. But I'm proving a point how EA NHL doesn't see profit in a mode it's pushed aside for the most part.

  • @DeMiGoD1988 You’re bang on with everything you’ve said, and you’ll be countered by EA with the “we listen, we improve, we work on it, it’ll come in the next game” etc spiel that they always have, but we all know the truth. We don’t matter. The online gamers matter. We. Don’t.
    We’ve been asking and pushing for support, for fixes, for an actual playable game mode. And we’ve been given nothing. Nothing notable for years
  • DeMiGoD1988's avatar
    DeMiGoD1988
    5 years ago
    @SkylerJames13 Let's not forget you use to be able to play you're career as an existing NHL player in Be a Pro and legends started in the league as a 17-18 year old on Franchise. Now you can't play as a NHLer in BAP and legends start their career in Franchise at 26-27 years of age, also if you put legends in Franchise it plays up with lifetime records sort all time.

    Also if you put Gaborik into the wild organisation his records won't continue either.. and Woltsky was a Avalanche his entire career when he was in the NHL yet it says N/A in his stats :/
  • EA_Aljo's avatar
    EA_Aljo
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    5 years ago

    @DeMiGoD1988 

    The idea that we don't care about this mode because it's not part of HUT is completely false. Look at EASHL. That mode doesn't have a way to spend money and gets a very large amount of support. The thing is, the modes that appear to get more attention are also live services. Yes, they are the 2 most popular modes in the game, but there are a high amount of offline players. If we truly weren't interested in Franchise and BAP, they wouldn't be in the game let alone have received big updates over the years. Franchise Mode in particular has had improvements every year for the last few years especially. BAP went through a big revision with NHL 21. I understand it's not up to your expectations and we hate that you're disappointed. Constructive feedback is most certainly used to help improve the game year after year so please keep it coming. 

  • @EA_Aljo The trade deadline a hot mess, apart from a way to not to exit it once you're done you have to wait and also the AI of the GMs unbalanced trade values, most of the time they treat the 4th pick as if it's a 2nd and they offer a high pick for a cap dump.. And if you do make a trade then lines are automatically edited without any prompting and you haven't got a say in it. As for BAP didn't we go down this road back in 14 or something where you got interviewed and such? Also I don't have say on what I sign actually I've got none.. This isn't career mode this is season mode on loop and locked to one player. We should have the option to decline offers and regular full seasons for college and Europe hockey so we aren't tied down to three teams on draft day. That's what's fun with the draft!. The unknown! But in BAP you do well and answer all the questions humbly you end up with the rangers, answer them like a knob then you're with the kings however if you do bad in the college or Europe playoffs you end up with the ducks. It's my career I want control over it. Its not that hard of a request and it should've been a no brainer from the start
  • @EA_Aljo Oh and you've also got the injury bug.. 3 players injured so you bring players up and when the 3 return you've got to many on the active roster but you can't send them down as you're stuck on the best lines, edit lines, rostwr movemtns and assistent coach moves screen until your forced to close and restart the app. Which has been a thing since 2018, which I reported at the time and I was told that the fix would be in 2019 however here we are 2021 and the bug is still alive and kicking
  • @DeMiGoD1988 Don’t forget the issue, similar to this, when an injury happens to a forward, and when you replace that person, it won’t replace them on all the lines their on, such as PP/PK, etc if they are on the “D” pairing. Even though many teams run 4F 1D on the PP nowadays.

    It’s been years and years and this still happens

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