Franchise Mode information: should you buy it?(100% don’t buy it)

Unless I I missed it, multi team control in franchise or at least the ability to make full league transactions, something the offline community has wanted after seeing it for years in ALL other sports games. 

- Fully editable players.

Never going to happen. They took it out for a reason and have said they aren't putting it back in... 

-GM connected. 

They'd need to find a way to monetize it. Probably a 15 dollar a money fee to access it.

- 25 season cap removed

Replay value. If it goes longer then 25 years you won't start a new one or buy a new game next year.

Scouting revamp/update:

I'm not sure what's wrong with this system. I mean other then the fact we should have 25 Scouts. You need to explain the weaknesses of this system to me sometime.

@IrishOwl 

MLB the Show's franchise mode allows for fully editable players in every aspect. It also has an unlimited season length, so the "you won't start a new one" or "buy the next game" statement doesn't really hold up. No disrespect intended. 

Scouting in NHL is inherently broken for many reasons.

1. Prospect generation eventually does not exist within certain regions. In this case "Rest of World" and "Allsvenskan." It renders having scouts in those areas useless.

2. Prospect scheme preferences are broken:

   2A) Forward prospects after the first or second draft never have "carry" "efficient" and "don't block" as scheme preferences. And the ones that do are always prospects who will never reach the NHL, i.e. "AHL Top 6" (or less) potential.  

   2B) Defensemen prospects after the first or second draft will never have "balanced" as part of their preferences. And if it's indicated in the scouting report they do have "balanced" as a preference in any capacity its not accurate and once they're drafted it will be revealed that it will either be "pinch/shoot" "pinch/cycle" or "hold line/shoot" or "hold line/cycle."

This renders most coaches totally useless as well given that the coach and chemistry system is totally broken as well. Offensive and defensive coach schemes will eventually be rendered obsolete by the 4th or 5th season. Especially if you prefer to have a team that has 100% computer generated players.

3. Scouting interviews do not reveal anything useful that isn't already available with direct scouting of a player, and is limited to only 3 or 4 items. Player style (SNP, OFD, PLY etc...), NHL readiness, biggest strength, and biggest weakness.

4. Character values do not actually do anything. They don't impact chemistry even though it should be a primary driving force. It's not actually connected to anything, and if it is, or is supposed to be, its not evident at all.

5. Player types are not in line with their attributes. It would be expected that players who are snipers would have high shooting abilities. I find that player attributes are rarely in line with their play type. And given that we can't edit players it makes scouting rather futile.

The actual reason they removed editing players was so that we couldn't edit player types to gain full chemistry values (PWF + PLY + SNP = +5 chemistry)...but given that they totally nixed that formula when they introduced X-Factors and didn't re-introduce player editing is a monumental failure/oversight.

6. Gems never pan out. All the "gems" feature does is add a green (or red) diamond to a randomly selected prospect that will never amount to anything. All they did was add a column to the prospect database to make you think the system is doing something. It's not.

7. Also, why is the age range for scouting 17-50?....does anyone actually have players older than 36 on their team? I personally don't scout players older than 30.

I could go on and on, but these are just a few of the issues, off the top of my head, that plague scouting. The problem with them adding new features is the fact that they don't fix the problems that infest the features they've add the year before...and the year before...and the year before.

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@IrishOwl wrote:

Scouting revamp/update:

I'm not sure what's wrong with this system. I mean other then the fact we should have 25 Scouts. You need to explain the weaknesses of this system to me sometime.

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I agree it’s not terrible, but it is time consuming and monotonous as hell. If the menus were faster I don’t think it would bother me as much.

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@jjbyrd04 wrote:

@IrishOwl 

3. Scouting interviews do not reveal anything useful that isn't already available with direct scouting of a player, and is limited to only 3 or 4 items. Player style (SNP, OFD, PLY etc...), NHL readiness, biggest strength, and biggest weakness.

 

 

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omg I HATE interviewing prospects and coaches. It takes so damn long just to ask three questions. I’d rather be able to select three things I want to know and then immediately get the answers all at once. 

@IrishOwlif you think that removing the 25 season cap is a bad thing, then you must work for EA. You realize in 25 seasons you have NO WAY unless you sabotage yourself on purpose, to build, get old, rebuild, and go through all the real ups and down a franchise has, then you are going to add up to 48 teams a season and still only have 25 seasons? Its asinine. Your argument is that you would never buy a new one if it never ended? How about all the people that wont buy the new one because nothing has changed? You don't think that alienating the largest user base in the game is a recipe for disaster? (I am going off the fact that every year Franchise mode is the BIGGEST section of the Answer forum, but the most ignored as well.