Franchise Wish List/Changes Needed

This is very close to what I would put as well, so thanks for making this list so I don’t have to again this year.

Much of this was addressed last year when everyone was complaining that they couldn't control coaching strategies.  You aren't the coach.  It isn't realistic for the GM to tell a coach how to do their job - I mean the coach hires the GM, right?  It's just unrealistic.

But seriously: whether it's the devs or it's the execs - EA is not interested in making offline modes enticing.  They took away coaching changes and they took away a beloved camera angle and they made it so that you cannot have Gretzky on historical teams by making retired numbers mandatory in order to get you to try HUT.  If they get you playing HUT because you can't stand franchise mode they will make 10x as much off of you each year.  They want you buying microtransactions.  If they give you a good offline mode, you might choose to keep playing that old version of the game, but HUT is online so if all the players move on to NHL 25, you have to buy a new game and buy new microtransactions to make your ideal team again and be at all competitive.  They aren't interested in making a good offline game, they are interested in nudging people off slowly so as to maximize the number of people who choose to move over to HUT.  Next year they will change a few other things to make the game less playable offline, so more try HUT to recoop the buried cost of buying the game and end up throwing good money after bad.

If you want to see EA do good you have to find a way to get someone to compete with them or win the lottery so that you can open up your own game studio to compete with them.  Then they'll throw some money behind offline modes to try to hold on to any income at all.  While they have a monopoly on NHL games they aren't going to change course.  This series has slowly degraded since 2K fell out of the market and then HUT was introduced.

I am proud to say I never spent a cent on any of their addon items. I figured out the scam immediately and I wasn't willing to buy my way to competitiveness.

I curse the damn fools that fall for this crap and spend more money to RENT their stupid cards to compete against other people stupid enough to RENT cards for a season.

What fools. 

Unfortunately EA has exclusive rights to the NHL so our hope of ever seeing a GOOD hockey sim is non existent 

EA's NHL rights are *not* exclusive.

What other NHL sims are available?

While I would like many of the things you mentioned I would prefer to have GAMEPLAY fixed first.

Coaching is non existent.

No timeouts used. No pulling of the goalie many times. NEVER pulling the goalie with less than 5 seconds in the period and an offensive zone faceoff. ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE line changes, players don't change when their health has been drained for 20 seconds and you skate right by the bench without substitutions.

OWN GOALS - INTENTIONAL sabotage by EA sports, there is no excuse for these off ice own goals almost every game.

Line builds - what is the purpose of the adjustments if the computer can't put together the most advantageous line combinations?

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@Manster54White wrote:

What other NHL sims are available?

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None, but that's not due to license exclusivity... there's just no one else willing to dump huge sums of money into getting a license and developing an entire hockey sim from scratch with little hope of ever recouping those costs.

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@VeronicatheCD wrote:

Much of this was addressed last year when everyone was complaining that they couldn't control coaching strategies.  You aren't the coach.  It isn't realistic for the GM to tell a coach how to do their job - I mean the coach hires the GM, right?  It's just unrealistic.

But seriously: whether it's the devs or it's the execs - EA is not interested in making offline modes enticing.  They took away coaching changes and they took away a beloved camera angle and they made it so that you cannot have Gretzky on historical teams by making retired numbers mandatory in order to get you to try HUT.  If they get you playing HUT because you can't stand franchise mode they will make 10x as much off of you each year.  They want you buying microtransactions.  If they give you a good offline mode, you might choose to keep playing that old version of the game, but HUT is online so if all the players move on to NHL 25, you have to buy a new game and buy new microtransactions to make your ideal team again and be at all competitive.  They aren't interested in making a good offline game, they are interested in nudging people off slowly so as to maximize the number of people who choose to move over to HUT.  Next year they will change a few other things to make the game less playable offline, so more try HUT to recoop the buried cost of buying the game and end up throwing good money after bad.

If you want to see EA do good you have to find a way to get someone to compete with them or win the lottery so that you can open up your own game studio to compete with them.  Then they'll throw some money behind offline modes to try to hold on to any income at all.  While they have a monopoly on NHL games they aren't going to change course.  This series has slowly degraded since 2K fell out of the market and then HUT was introduced.

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It’s also not the responsibility of the GM to control ticket pricing, arena renovations, merch pricing, or actually controls the players and play the game. It’s a video game. I can control just about every aspect of the game but coaching? Why? If that’s really their logic, then all we should be able to do is sign players and watch the game from the press box.