Forum Discussion

Beauts90's avatar
Beauts90
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago

Franchise Mode ... My Top 10 List

The last couple of years I have made a post about the top 10 things I would improve to franchise mode. I try to keep it fairly simple and not add overly complicated additions or fixes although I understand that there is no such thing as a simple addition. I will not go into all the details of everything in the original post as I don’t want to make it a 500-page novel, so I will leave it in point form for now. Of course, I can dive more into it and I also hope others leave their ideas as well. I do still enjoy the mode, although I feel with these changes it could add more realism, depth and allow us more ways to create the franchise we envision.

1. Scouting
a) Simplify it!! Manual scouting is such a chore to set.
b) Have more separation between player traits; Central Scouting and our/cpu team scouts
c) Difficulty settings for full potential discover

2. Coaching
a) Make it less Random
- Pick a type of coach at the start of the mode
- Cornerstone players: two for each team selected at the start of each year
b) Chemistry and schemes always changing based on team/player performance
c) More options to build a team: Secondary Scheme Fit (speed, skill, physical, toughness, balance, ....)

3. Morale
a) Allow us to start a conversation with a player anytime to try and improve morale
b) Remove or change player roles - have them be Top 6, Bottom 6, Top 4, Top 6 ...
- Most teams try to have 2 solid lines with players spread out the lineup
c) Personality/promises for roles from contract negations

4. Free Agents
a) Interest from other teams and offers received for bidding wars (UFA)
b) Most important trait for each player so we know what they want (money, term, winning, role,...)
c) Flexibility (or lack of) on term/AAV based on morale and personality and stats (RFA)

5. Customization
a) Salary Cap increase: High, Med, Low, Random
b) Trade and signing sliders; star player movement; controls how much cpu GM's will make trades/resign players
c) Expansion year(s) and number of teams. Let us select the year the team(s) enter the league

6. Prospect Development
a) Add ceiling and floor to use with potential (small range = safe pick, broader range = possible steal or bust)
b) Only based on performance, no manually assigned traits
- Attributes grow as per player type/stats/position
c) Coach input on/off to assist where a player should play

7. Trades
a) 3-tiered trade block (untouchable, will listen, actively shopping)
b) Specific requests for each player (prospect + pick, ....)
c) Add salary cap space to wants/needs so teams can better handle their priorities

8. Record Book
a) Show us every contract each player has signed
b) Show us every trade that each player was involved in
c) Look back at previous draft classes to compare stats for each players career

9. Real CBA Rules
a) Real waiver rules (unlimited pre season roster, IR)
b) No Trade and No Movement Clauses; Adds to UFA bidding and helps to limit excessive star player movement
c) Assign prospects to European leagues or generic Russia/USA leagues

10. Team Overalls Matter More
a) Make it so the better a team is, the better they sim in the regular season
- It's fine if it is a little off and playoff success wouldn't always translate
b) Change criteria for Buyer, Seller, ....
- High overall teams should not trade away all of their players for an abnormally bad season and low overall teams should not be giving up all their assets for one
c) Have team rating factor into trade values
- More difficult to pry away good players from good teams, need overpay
- More willing to give up additional assets for players/salary relief

6 Replies

  • SkylerJames13's avatar
    SkylerJames13
    5 years ago
    @Beauts90 While every single one of those things are dead on, #10 I think is definitely very important that they work on. The GM AI are just stupid. Literally incompetent. They cannot learn how to make cap room to sign noteworthy players. They make stupid trades because they had one bad/good year, even if they are consistently bad/good. The trading is stupid in this game, it’s downright embarrassing.

    The salary cap idea for the trade block is genius. You should work for EA since you’ve had more, and better ideas in one post, than they’ve done in 7+ years lol

    And SchultzEric idea of forcing/veto trades. This can obviously be abused, but who cares? If someone wants to cheese the game then let them. But give us the opportunity to make it realistic for those that want realism.
    Let us edit players again. That was a stupid brain dead decision to take it out. Still don’t understand it.

    I don’t care much about morale, because I don’t trust EA to implement anything correctly, and morale has always been a mess. But that’s just me, I know others like it.

    Letting us customize coaches too would be great. So many coaches just don’t make sense.

    If Joe Thornton retires, but his scheme is stupid and doesn’t make sense as to who Joe is, I want to be able to edit him so I can hire him. Cus I was jumbo, but not if his scheme is ridiculous and doesn’t fit how he used to play.
  • SkylerJames13's avatar
    SkylerJames13
    5 years ago
    @Beauts90 I know that it’s likely we won’t see anything like this, for years. But it’s still nice to brainstorm and have some hope for.

    EA does not listen to us offline players though, so I’m not holding my breath.

    If 2K made it on the other hand, maybe we’d have a playable game. Or maybe the competition would make EA actually put some effort into it’s offline modes instead of pumping all its time and resources into making children gamble with loot boxes, and HUT
  • Beauts90's avatar
    Beauts90
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    @SkylerJames13 I don’t expect any changes for this year, so this is just brainstorming for future years. I’ve done this for the last couple of years and I doubt they have actually got the ideas from me, but some of the things do end up in the game. Just tell EA to return my calls. I haven’t really played NBA2k, but I know they definitely have a lot more depth and customization for franchise mode as well as a pretty cool Be a Pro mode. Their agreement with the NBA seems superior too as rookies were literally added to the game the day after the draft. Back when they made hockey games I wasn’t a fan of the gameplay at all so I never purchased them or really cared when they stopped making them. I always feel competition is a good thing and brings out the best in companies, my fear would just be dividing what is already a smaller community and overall I do like the NHL series so I would personally rather just see improvements made by EA. The focus is clearly in the money-maker HUT which sucks, but this is still a business, I just hope they do keep adding to the offline modes

    Morale has pretty much been a disaster since they introduced it, but it has improved the last two years. I leave it on just to add another little challenge which can get frustrating, but I think with just some small changes it wouldn’t be horrible.

    Combining the trade block ideas with #10 is the only logical solution outside of full league control that I could come up with to try and make the AI GM’s more competent so I really hope they look to try and accomplish that. I also don’t see the point of building a good team if you are mostly a sim player as performance of teams is always so random.

    All I am going to say about coaches is that it is extremely rare to see a GM build their team around the coach and that’s exactly what this game forces you to do. I also want to make sure that my franchise players fit the system and like you said letting us customize coaches would be great as well.    

  • SkylerJames13's avatar
    SkylerJames13
    5 years ago
    @Beauts90 NBA is definitely a bigger market than hockey, as hockey is only really huge in Canada, and not as big in the US. That being said, that’s also reasoning as why to NHL is always so behind in the times compared to the other sports games. I understand your concern about division and I do have the same concern. It’s just, at this point in time, I’m desperate for any kind of shake up to get some change. Change that EA is not making to the NHL series.

    If EA actually stepped up and put some real effort into this game and fixed it, and listened to our feedback, then maybe we’d have a decent game. And I’d be okay with NHL staying with EA. If they put some effort in.

    HUT/multiplayer games that focus on gambling is the downfall of quality single player/offline games.
    Call of duty, fortnite, every other multiplayer game that has loot boxes. They ruin the market. The (initial) monstrosity that was Star Wars battlefront 2, got the single player star wars game cancelled, a game Star Wars lovers were excited for.

    Went off topic a bit lol but essentially HUT ruins FM/BAP, as it hogs all the resources and time.

    This list is great though. Hopefully we can add to it, build it up, and try and show it off, especially when they start developing nhl 22.
  • Tobbish's avatar
    Tobbish
    Seasoned Veteran
    5 years ago

    All great ideas that I would love to see! ❤️

    One thing I have been thinking about is the skating and shooting style of players. I can't honestly say that I have looked at every player to see if their style is realistic, but I have a feeling that a lot of players have not been given a lot of love in this regard.

    It's a nice feature to add different styles, but without being able to share any editing of such a thing (comes back to sharing rosters...), there's not much reason for someone to put an effort into getting it right. Me personally would love to spend time adjusting every single player to give them a more accurate feel. I'm sure there are others like me who could team up and pick a team to handle at least, and then it it was possible to merge the changes somehow.

    But I'm not gonna edit every player, looking at YouTube-videos of their skating and shooting, adjusting skills and potential (with data from Evolving-Hockey) only for my own enjoyment, it's simply not worth doing it just for me. I want others to be able to enjoy it too. Binnington still has fringe starter-potential, right? Most of the players I have looked at has the same skills as in NHL 20 (and even 19 and perhaps further back). I have noticed some changes in fighting skill and strength. But most players look exactly the same.

    And I also hope that something will be done about player faces. With the game looking as good as it does, and next year with next-gen even more so, it doesn't matter how good/accurate the top players look, if the less known players has some "close enough"-generic face. Players that have been in the league for several years should have a face that can be recognized.

    I understand that it would be a lot of work, but I think there are plenty of people interested in helping out to get these things right. I know I would!

  • Beauts90's avatar
    Beauts90
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago

    @Tobbish I definitely agree, the more player likeness in the game the better especially with it going to next gen. I’m not one of the guys that cares that much about it, but it does really add to the game. I like that they added skating styles although I haven’t checked closely enough either, but it is cool to see some player differences in game.

    You can clearly tell they don’t update the rosters enough as the potentials they have for some guys are mind boggling. I don’t do a lot of ratings changes myself but one thing I do is change the potentials of players that are very clearly inaccurate and still the same as a few years ago when they were hyped up.

Recent Discussions