I get what you are saying. In a perfect world, the AI would play perfectly out of the box. And in a perfect world you could edit your players in Franchise down the road when you are in your 8th season and so on….
But unfortunately this is not a perfect world, and I’m sure you kinda run into some of these problems too when you are FAR into Franchise mode. No ?
Heck, Tougie stopped playing 24 Franchise after 2 days !!! And he was invited by EA in Vancouver and stuff… That should tell you how much Franchise is doing great 😏
Tougies analysis of franchise mode have sounded like 5 star reviews compared to mine the last few years, so I’m actually glad to see he’s finally taking a stand against it. You and him have a lot in common as he puts 100’s of hours into roster editing and can’t justify putting in that time for NHL 24.
I think introducing roster sharing helped satisfy him for a few years, but that along with custom leagues wasn’t something I was ever interested in.
The amount of spreadsheets, data frames and other extra stuff I used to have to do to make the mode fun hasn’t been worth it the last few years, I keep turning it on throughout the year when I get the itch only to remember why I turn it off and end up back here to talk about improvements instead of playing the game.
I get that Franchise mode has been left to dry for too long and I feel your pain 😔 So many things they could do to that mode to make it shine…
As far as why I enjoy 23 so much now, is that the gameplay has always been my no.1 priority. I mostly play seasons and play now. Lots of Franchise guys are also using our setup as they like to play many games or many periods during a season. For guys that prefer simming through entire seasons, custom roster are not ideal, but like I said before, even if it’s not custom, the same problems arises… Unfortunately 😫
