Franchise mode - Players who have a great season do much worse next year

I actually like the gameplay a lot this year. Sucks though because in my 4th season of franchise the few young, elite players on my team haven't progressed at all b/c their natural growth has a matching negative number to whatever their growth numbers are. I can't even believe it lol

Yep that’s the exact issue right there, it’s ridiculous. I don’t even care if they make a bunch of new changes every year. If they’re not going to make a bunch of changes, at least make sure your game f-ing works. I’ve always enjoyed franchise mode. Whenever HUT drives me insane, I can calm down by playing franchise mode lol. Now I can’t even do that.

I definitely hear ya. I pretty much exclusively play franchise mode, dabble w/ be a pro from time to time but lets be honest, even with the new changes this year, it gets boring really fast. Thus, I can literally not play the game and it's quite frustrating to say the least. Praying this new update fixes things so I can get back to draining hours in FM lol. 

Well friends, I'm afraid ours fears are starting to become reality. As it happens EA released the details of the 1.3 patch coming into effect tomorrow. It seems they are fixing the trade values, record book, and skating characteristics; however, nothing....NOTHING about the player overall bug. It is a dark day in the eyes of this franchise. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll just magically be fixed. Though I think we can all agree the chances of that happening are slim to none. Thus, we must wait...and wait some more, in the hopes of a sunny day down the road. smh ea..... smh

@SkylerJames13  It is truly a sad state of affairs. I will no longer be buying EA NHL games early, as it seems they are so bad that after 2 weeks the price dropped to half of what it was. I understand that HUT brings in the money and therefore gets the most attention by the developers. But really it's sad that the people who really love the game of hockey, who want to see what it's like to be a 'GM' in the game can't even play. I'm a hardcore franchise mode player, it's the only game mode I really devout any time to. And yet, all the time I've invested into developing a team is completely and utterly wasted due to this bug. I want to play this game, I REALLY do, but I can't, who do I see about this? Who is responsible for releasing this game with so many bugs and who is responsible for not fixing the game that continues to be so broken? And why does it seem that any major bug in FIFA or Madden gets fixed promptly while NHL takes a back seat? 

Why...why....why EA must we endure this struggle? Video games are meant to bring people joy, not cause them to quit the game entirely....

Anyone wanna be a trooper and try out a couple seasons of franchise mode to see if the bug got fixed? :D 

Don't really wanna play the game again until I know this bug is fixed tbh

@LordDecland Basically for younger players experience the same amount of negative growth as they do positive growth once you sim. After the season ends you might see a player at 87-90, but once you sim to the next season (after simming through pre-season usually) you'll see that their overall dropped back to what it was at the beginning of the prior season. Thus, it seems kinda pointless to spend the time developing your young guys when their overalls can never really grow that much. In my experience it doesn't happen to every player. For example, goalies seem to be completely shielded from this bug, also Franchise potential players I believe. It's incredibly frustrating to see all the time you spend basically kinda wasted. 

I'm wondering if this was now fixed in the 1.3 update that come out today. So if you're trying to see, look at your younger players and see if they experience this negative growth after a good season. 

@EA_Aljo @EA_Blueberry yo

@LordDecland Yep, nothing from EA, not overly surprised at this point just incredibly disappointed. They said that developers look at these but if that were the case then why hasn't this issue been resolved yet, especially with the update that just came out... And from what I can tell it doesn't happen to CPU teams just your own, could be wrong tho.  

It usually happens after 3+ years, players that the game automatically generates won’t develop no matter who the coach is. 

I am going to say the problem is still there. I just simmed 2 different franchises and all real players with elite potential grow just fine, but generated prospects still do not.

The teams I used were Chicago and LA were both really bad and the prospects were not putting up good numbers though.

My one guy put up 70 points and was a 90 (high elite potential) and then next year right back down to 85 after I auto signed him to a 3 year $13 million AAV deal.

Byfield ( med elite potential) only put up 48 points and grew to be an 88 the next season and signed for an AAV of $5 million for 3 years.

As for the fixes, I don't think they are allowed to comment on them until a solution is known to be found. We talked about trade values for weeks and did not hear anything about them until a couple of days ago, so I do still have confidence that they are aware of the problems that we post on here.

Thank you for running the sim for us; that’s really unfortunate, and a little disheartening that no one is listening. It’s a damn shame.

@Beauts90 Dang.... that really sucks.

I don't have a problem with them not replying until they have a solution (although I think it's stupid how they can't even acknowledge the problem) I DO however have a problem with the fact that this bug hasn't been fixed yet. I mean come on... if the developers really do read these bug reports then how have they not seen this one?? This has been a hot topic for two weeks, with the problem being there long before that... This whole process is just infuriating. All I wanna do is play a game that's not broken. We have given them time to fix it and they have not. 

Anyways thanks for checking it out and letting me know.... guess I won't be firing up the game again any time soon.

@TwoHeadedTOM I definitely hear ya. All I want as well is for this mode to be in an enjoyable state and it still isn't. 

Unfortunately, this year they have been playing from behind since the release and each month they have had to fix game breaking bugs. Scouting, chemistry, edit lines, trade values and the record book have all had to be fixed this year so its safe to say the pandemic has hit this mode extra hard. 

I'm a broken record on this:

the easiest catch-all solution to all their non-gameplay bugs (many of which they've had in previous games, so it's not just Covid) is maximum customization.

Allow us to not only edit position in Franchise mode, but also roles... even names, faces, nationality, ratings, potential. Allow us to force trades and make CPU-CPU trades; allow us to block CPU-CPU trades (that way we could have CPU trades turned on, thus allowing some realism, while merely vetoing the most outlandish trades; I'd honestly not do that, I'd just spend several hours going over rosters at the start of the preseason, then again at the deadline, and make several targeted trades. It'd be less realistic, but more satisfying for me, and that's more important, honestly. But I absolutely think other players should have that option even though I, personally, wouldn't choose it.) Allow us to veto retirements, or force retirements.

Being able to edit those would solve problems with positions being wrong (like right-handed defenders being listed as LD, or defenders with the now-outdated "D" and no secondary position, or goalies with secondary positions), it'd allow us to fix those infuriating bad names (like the Polish-born Greg Liston and Marvin Jones not having traditionally Polish names)... we could just jump into a Franchise mode without having to spend hours fixing their inaccurate roster ratings; we could just fix a couple players' ratings/potential here and there as we notice them, in between games. We could fix ratings to reflect what their development was to counter-act the buggy decline. We could fix positions for players that've spent several years at RW; it's dumb that one year at LW in juniors means you're a LW even if you spend over a decade in the NHL as a RW. Sometimes forwards get moved to defense, and vice versa, yet EA thinks that we shouldn't be allowed to do that. ("If it's in the game" * you, I guess. Because we don't want to allow you full control, because you may, *gasp*, "cheat" and have a good time. I mean... I'd do it largely to make the game *more* realistic, but even if I cheated in every possible way... so what? It's a video game, the point is to have fun, right? If that's fun for somebody, then why does EA feel compelled to police how they enjoy it?)

And again, we should even be allowed to edit stats. I just want it 99% because I create a player that I draft in year 2 or 3, and I want his juniors stats to be what my Be A Pro got, rather than the underwhelming simmed stats... but also: at the moment both Sami Vatanen and Ryan Suter have a combined 0 goals and 2 GWGs in my Franchise, and uh... I guess that's an impressive ratio. That needs to be fixed. And even if EA fixes it *moving forward*, there's no way they'll be able to retroactively fix GWGs. But you know how it *could* be fixed? Maximum customization.

It wouldn't solve *every* problem, but it would solve *so many* of them, and in the easiest way possible for them and the most satisfying way possible for us (because we'd be able to choose which solution works best for us).

Also, this is off-topic, but...

why do players have silhouettes rather than faces? I mean, I get it with the relatively few players who are real but for whatever reason don't have portraits, but... your Be A Pro has a portrait, right? Clearly they have the technology to do that. So why don't all created players (both player created and CPU-generated prospects) have that feature? Why is it that the game essentially condemns you to have a team that is 90%+ silhouettes by year 15-20 of your Franchise mode? It's not functionally important, but... it's just dumb. It's easily fixed.

I was personally excited when I saw that they introduced the ability to choose your draft class quality this year. Ever since they introduced scouts I have found it too easy to build strictly through the draft and there wasn't much need for trades or free agents other than placeholder spots while your prospects develop. I get that most guys like just drafting/developing and that's cool too, at least we had options this year. Now of course what is happening is not a good thing and is clearly a bug as putting up good stats need to grow appropriately, especially the franchise and elite potential players. I have yet to be able to test out the different options to see if there are in fact or prospects that don't develop into what they are supposed to or these options only control how many elite players are in later rounds. Once the turnover of real players is complete, it seems the mode will be basically over (so 8-10 years...), but I am still going to get into a franchise now and see if I can notice if this is happening to all cpu generated players if of course I get that deep into it before the next patch. (the roster turnover may just be too much for me to handle as well, we shall see)