Full HUT thoughts

This is my first year playing HUT.

I really like the salary cap and the thought of the line combos. My wife just gave birth to my first child, I have a deployment coming up, trying to get time in the gym.. I usually give up on HUT after 2 weeks because I immediately fall behind. I'm not at the cap but I know other teams are not FAR better than me so I'm staying interested. I know regular HUT players and people with more free time are not the biggest fans, bit I wanted to open up conversation about how to make the mode as good as it can be.

Line combos- really cool idea but I think there needs to be more. Personally I think theme TEAMS should also be an option. 5 players from 1 team? You get 1 chem boost for those players. 10 you get 2 chem boosts. 15 you get 3. 20 you get 4. You can use those boosts in whichever way you want between ovr, AP, or salary cap. There needs to be more ways to build out your team because with a small number of lines we are ending up with teams being strikingly similar. We need to be looking for ways to push people to build their teams differently. 

Salary cap - I actually really like the cap, and it's high enough you can build an extremely good team still. I also like that event cards could actually be viable for a long time depending on how slowly the cap creeps up over the year. Maybe an 86 in previous years would be out of your lineup in a few months (I'm not sure how quickly teams get better) but with a salary cap maybe an 86 can stay on your team throughout the whole year and a team of 99s is just never possible. Personally I wouldn't want our teams to get TOO crazy. Having mid 86-88 ovr players on our 3rd 4th lines would be cool with me at season's end..

Events - for the most part are run okay, I personally wish they would overlap a bit more so that we have a little more time for each of them but that's not super important.

Fantasy event - I was told this is one of the biggest events of the year. I didn't care for it.. I got a random Atlantic player, I wish I could have gotten enough to select who I wanted but didn't. My other gripe was the players chosen for this event. I'm a Wings fan, JVR isn't someone I'm super excited for. I think a bit more thought should be put into the players chosen.. personally I think rookies or sophomores would be the most interesting and fun.. maybe a rookie pops off or a sophomore has a slump? 

Pack openings - personally I wish there were far less "random player" packs and more packs where I select who I want. Maybe I really need a left hand swedish defensemen for a line chem and I see one in the 4 players I can select between. This would have people really paying attention to what they could use to activate chems. I also think that whatever favorite team you have selected should have a small percentage boost to get players from that team, as long as you don'talready own that card. During the marquee event I opened up 8 individual packs and they made 4 players because every other card was a duplicate which was annoying when trying to do all the objectives and only having 4 guys. If you already own a card I think the percentages that you open another should plummet. Just some small adjustments that would make things better imo.

New mode - I know long time players and players that play a TON want to get all the best players and play with them.. I think they should have that option.. maybe also have a ranked mode or something for that too.. but this mode would be open to a lot of different options.. my friends play lots of sports games and our favorite thing is to team up.. HUT would be a lot more fun if we could do that. Add that option in this mode. Then allow us to choose how to divide the team. Maybe one player is the defensemen and bring their defenders, one is C and goalie and uses his team strategies, and one uses wingers.. or one uses left W and D one is C and G, and one is right W and D. 

In WoC having the rotating events is cool, is this something HUT does? Having the bobblehead mode, an arcade threes mode, or whatever else would be cool. 

I don't care about card art but having some cards with no player on them is 

All in all I am having a good time building my team out and getting cards. Some of the rewards feel a bit lacking but it's okay, I don't expect to have a team of 95 ovr in a month haha! Sometimes grinding is fun as I'm getting rewarded for all kinds of stuff and sometimes I just feel like I'm grinding to grind, maybe just add a few new ways to play because cup chase and stuff will likely eventually grow stale.

Curious what other new HUT players and long time HUT players think.