FM AI GM’s logic is ridiculous

@SkylerJames13 the logic used by AI GM's has definitely been an issue for years and is probably the most frustrating thing about the mode. This year it has become quite a bit worse just as you said, I think they tried to do too much with the trade deadline and it has made a mess of things. Any team having a bad year instantly becomes a seller and will trade anybody at the deadline even if they are one of their young top players signed for a few more years.

I can't remember if it was last year or the one before but in the franchise mode deep dive there was a point made that AI GM's will trade away players, including picks if needed in order to resign their players. I remember getting excited as every year before that a number of the top RFA's would sit out because teams didn't have cap space to sign them. It still has not improved, the only thing that changed is they increased the salary cap (and made it increase the same every year, used to be random) and as you and someone else pointed out AI GM's are still letting their best players walk while having 10 defensemen on the roster. I mentioned this last year too as its been a frustration of mine for quite some time that even if you did try to help a team out by taking on salary there were no extra picks or prospects included because they weren't "bad contracts" just players that the team would actually want to move to keep their stars and you would have to even overpay to get them because they weren't even on the trade block.

I have no doubts that trying to program an AI GM is just like an AI player where no matter what its never going to be very good. I also know that releasing a game yearly has its difficulties in the amount that can be added and for the most part I know what I am paying for each year so I'm not overly disappointed when not much as changed. Like I've said before, they have added some cool things the last few years, but they still need improvements as well. I think the disappointing part this year is that the same flaws that they have had for years have actually got worse. I don't think the AI GM's will ever get to the point where people stop asking for gm connected so they don't have to deal with the AI GM's. Instead I hope they should look more into giving us more options so we can try and set up and play the mode the way we want. Some good suggestions from here for trading have been force/veto trades and signings, trade/free agent frequency sliders, allowing us to set up protected lists for all teams and improved team wants/needs. A more complicated suggestion would be to give each player personality traits of what is most important such as loyalty, winning, money, stats or term. Have something similar for each GM as well to try and better control how they make trades and signings. 

Edit: One thing they could add that would help with the bad trades is NTC/NMC to franchise. Not only would it add another element to franchise mode, but more star players would request it when signing. This would also allow us to give them to players we don't want traded before starting a new one.

I've said before, I'll say it again, I'll never stop saying it:
there's an easy fix that'll make perfect AI logic while requiring very little effort on EA's part: full customization. Allow us to force trades as well as make CPU-CPU trades. Then we can look through and figure out what teams should be moving what contracts, and we can figure out what's fair for them to move a bad contract, and what team would be willing to take on a bad contract, what assets they would demand in order to do so.

It would be time-consuming for us to do this every single deadline (or whenever), but I'm sure all of us would be thrilled to do so in order to keep the game realistic and functioning logically. Over, you know... the * they've been giving us.

Full customization is the answer to all EA's problems. Bad potential/development? Allow us to edit ratings. Wrong positions or player type? (Whether or not it's "wrong" or we just prefer something different.) Allow us to edit position and player type. Polish players with names like Greg Liston or Marvin Jones? Allow us to edit player names.
This isn't hard. It's not hard to figure out, it's not hard to program. Yet... they keep failing us. Even worse, they've been *removing* customization, as we were actually able to edit at least *some* of those things in NHL 20 (positions and roles).

@2k wanna make an NHL game that isn't trash

@SchulzEricT Could imagine that.. players would trade all the top stars to one team and [profanity removed] the rest

Edit: Removed profanity. Please keep the following rule in mind:

• Don't curse or swear. Don't try to get away with it by using symbols in place of letters, too. We all k*** what you're trying to s**.

Thank you. -CM