Legitimate Concerns And Feedback For Franchise Mode (Updated 7/15/2023)

Ok, so here we go. My annual copy and paste. I've been posting these exact same issues over the past several years regarding franchise mode.

I will try to write this as respectfully as possible. Some of this may, at times, seem harsh or critical, but I have been voicing these issues for years....years. So I have no time for sensitivity to criticism.

Anyways...here is legitimate feedback on various key issues in Franchise mode and in some areas just the game in general.

1. EDITING FEATURES AND FRANCHISE DURATION 

A) Everything in franchise mode needs to be editable and customizable. EVERYTHING...Coaches, players, strategies, schemes, x-factors, player preferences, you name it. The fact that more editing features keep getting removed without any explanation is beyond unacceptable for a modern sports game. Madden, NBA 2k, MLB The Show all have insanely deep editing capabilities, and there's 0 excuse for this to be absent from NHL.

B) More than the 25 season limit. EA is well aware of this as year in and year out it is requested. Enough is enough.

2. SLIDERS AND GAME SETTINGS (BUGS)

A) Sliders don't seem to have any impact, or at least most of them don't. Penalty sliders have 0 effect, and computer opponent AI is immune to taking any type of stick infractions no matter what they are set to. In fact it's rare that computer opponent AI ever take any penalty except for the interference bug and an occasional holding penalty.

B) I have set the "Draft Quality" settings to all three options and neither of them have any difference. No matter what setting is applied the majority of draft qualities are good. Rarely are they "Weaker than usual."

3. PRE-SEASON AND POST TRADE DEADLINE ROSTER LIMIT (IMPLEMENTATION)

A) This is the feature I can't stress enough...It has been a rule since 2008 that during the preseason and after the trade deadline that the active NHL roster limit is set to 50 instead of 23. After the trade deadline we should be able to carry as many players as needed (up to 50) for the final stretch of the season and into the playoffs. Having to send players down after the deadline and risking waiver claims is incredibly annoying and makes it unrealistic.

4. TRADING PLAYERS AND HIRING COACHES/SCOUTS BEFORE DRAFT (UX)

A) There's no reason why during the resigning phase that we can't trade players or hire new scouts and coaches.

B) There's also no reason why we can't make trades prior to the draft. Pre-draft trades can be some of the most exciting in the game. Why wouldn't that be possible here? It used to be possible but it was removed for some unknown reason.

C) Carbon copy trade proposals. Interaction with other GM's as far as why you reject a trade would be helpful. It would also be nice if, as the GM, you could set prices on your trade block assets. IE 'top prospect" "roster player" etc...They tell you why your proposals are off, we should be able to provide feedback to get the proposals at least somewhat reasonable. 

D) Setting specific positions as criteria in your "Wants" panel. Having only "forwards" "defense" and "goalies" are way too broad. If I have the need for a RW I should be able to specify that as a want/need. 

E) Hiring Goalie coaches is absolute torture. Apparently no one wants to be a goalie coach unless you pay them 3/4 of the coaching budget. Also goalie coaches need their own category of attributes. Why do goalie coaches even have "OFF", "DEF" and even "PP" as attributes with which to begin? 

5. COACH AND PLAYER STRATEGY / PREFERENCES (BUGS, UX, AND IMPLEMENTATION)

A) Non Head Coach - Coaches that are hired as non-head coaches seem to have 0 impact on the team. There is no indicator/indications that players are benefiting from any type of assistant coach, or goalie coach. You can't even view their styles and preferences after you hire them. Pointless.

B) Head coach and player preferences - Coaches that have "Carry", "Efficient", and "Don't Block" for forwards and any combination of “Balanced" for defensemen are 100% useless. Prospects in future drafts beyond the first draft never have these preferences and renders the majority of coaches useless. I don't understand why these preferences were made if they weren't actually implemented and players never have them. Also a ton of coaches have identical preference combinations, and they are the only combinations available. There is absolutely no mix of styles between different coach types.

*Players should be able to be molded to the coaches preferred scheme. Each player should have a "coachability" attribute to determine how well or not they are able to adapt to a coaches system. Maybe a player can adapt two preferences to match the coach as a season goes on based on the coach challenging a player during a game. Like how Madden handles breakout players for dev trait upgrades Also in Madden you upgrade your players archetype which determines their overall. If that player's archetype doesn't fit the scheme you can upgrade specific archetypes so that the player eventually fits the coaches scheme. Why not do this for NHL? *

C) After a coach is fired and a new coach is hired the old coaches' scheme shows up in the player's scheme panel instead of being updated with the new one. ( I think this has been fixed )

6. SCOUTING (UX AND IMPLEMENTATION)

A) Scouting should have an option to select and set multiple prospects all at once.

B) Allsvenskan and Rest of world eventually have 0 prospects generated and it's been this way for almost a decade. I'm at a loss on this one. Huge problem.

C) "Gems" rarely pan out. 

D) Draft player interviews are incredibly shallow and ultimately provides no useful data. 

E) Draft player interviews should automatically reveal more of their "Character" tendencies, and those character attributes should also impact chemistry. 

7. PLAYER TYPES COMPARED TO THEIR ATTRIBUTES (OVERSIGHT)

A) If a player is a SNP, it would make sense that their shooting attributes are a cut above. Having a PLY Center with 0 faceoff ability and no puck skills makes 0 sense. Also why are faceoffs considered a DEF attribute and not a PUCK SKILL? Low faceoffs bring down Defensemen overalls. They shouldn't have faceoffs as an attribute for defensemen. Why attributes aren't in line with the archetypes is mind boggling.

8. PLAYER CHEMISTRY, SCHEMES, AND PREFERENCES (BUGS & MISSING IMPLEMENTATIONS)

A) Again, why do draft prospect forwards never have “carry” “efficient” and “don’t block” as preferences? After the first draft not a single forward has these preferences. Only players ranked in the 500-1000 range as ahl top 6 potential have those preferences and eventually that drops off. Same goes for defensemen with any combo of “balanced” as a preference.

B) The chemistry system in conjunction with coach preferences is inherently broken due to the reason listed above (8-A). There is so much with the chemistry system that needs to be aligned as it is confusing, and doesn't seem to have any effect.

C) There needs to be some sort of documentation or something to illustrate exactly how the chemistry system works, AND indications that it is active or having some kind of impact. The hoops you have to jump through to get it to work, if it even does work at all, is so confusing and is more work than is worth it. The concept is so good, but incredibly tedious and unorganized. It needs so much refinement and at this point could use an overhaul. It's really bad.

9. USING TRIGGERS TO SCROLL FREE AGENTS WHEN VIEWING FROM PLAYER INFO AFTER CLICKING R3 (BUG)

A) I sincerely hope that scrolling free agents with LT and RT has been fixed. If you’re halfway down the list and use the R3 to view player info and then continue to use the triggers to navigate, it shoots you back to the top of the list. It’s absolutely infuriating.

10. TRADE DEADLINE (BUGS)

A) The UI here is awful, it's clunky and as you're scrolling through available players it snaps you right back to the beginning when a trade happens which is so annoying. Too many interruptions and distracting events going on. I like the idea of the mechanic, but as it is it's implemented poorly.

11. PRESENTATION (GAME BREAKING BUGS)

A) I think this speaks for itself, EA falsely advertised this as a huge feature in '23 and couldn't even get cinematics correct. This is a huge red flag for the state of this series. While I know this isn't exclusive to franchise mode, it plays a major role in how immersive the game feels. Right now it gets an "F." 

12. COACHES & PLAYER PREFERENCES (MISSING TEMPLATES) Update 7/15/2023 THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM! 

This goes with forward prospects missing the template of "Carry" "Efficient" and "Don't Block"...and it's these issues that make me seethe as I don't understand how ALL of this was overlooked.

A) Coaches have a power play preference of "PP Carry/Dump"...but for some reason the value they're given is "Forecheck"...this isn't even an option in the edit strategies selection screen

B) Coach strategy sheet does not specify the power play preferences of "Control Breakout" "Power Play Breakout" and "Quick Breakout" 

C) Player preferences do not indicate what their power play preferences are in any capacity what so ever.

I honestly don't know why I am bothering putting stuff in here about the strategies given that EA removed the ability to edit them in addition to removing the ability to edit literally everything else, but my God it's really really bad.

I have not purchased NHL for the past few years because of how bad it's been, but I have played it at friend's places and each year nothing improves with franchise mode. I realize this is a long list, but given what other games do and what is capable of today these should, for most items, not be difficult or resource consuming to implement. The majority of these requests are simply for current features to function as advertised or to be fixed due to them being totally broken.

I have little faith for '24 and probably won't be purchasing yet again this year until I see the plethora of features, issues, and bugs get fixed, but I love hockey too much and I care about the players who love playing this game as much as I used to. There is so much left to be desired with this game and it could be so much more than what it is which makes my heart break. There's so much untapped potential. 

Come on EA, give me a reason to buy this game again.