NHL 21 Be a Pro current state
The overhauled Be a Pro had some good ideas and great that the mode finally got some attention, but it's lacking execution in quite many aspects, and some are just bugs. Here's a few (became a lot) I feel like should be adressed:
Mistakes/Bugs:
-The bap apparently doesn't have a salary cap (ifor example in my save Stars have Seguin, Benn, Radulov, Klingberg, RNH, Bishop, Kessel, Letang, Hoffman, Niederreiter, Schmidt, Khudobin, Heiskanen, Gurianov, etc. combined for a cap hit of $102M in the season 2021-22, the cap won't have raised by $20M in one year. Also I wonder how on earth there's so many high value players in the first place, like they traded literally noone)
- The starting age has a bug, you get drafted a year too young, at least starting in europe.
- One contract year is consumed from other players when starting in europe or memorial cup, every contract expires a year too early.
- Not being able to train your player in training sessions during champions league. Just why is it disabled, 2 to 3 months go to waste?
- The mode is way too concentrated on the rookie season. They even call you the rookie after the first season. Would have needed just a few more lines recorded to fix that.
- The draft interview cutscenes have the team and star responses reversed occasionally.
Removed features that should return asap:
- The "request a trade" option needs to be added back
- The possibility to end up playing in the ahl or early in your career back to juniors, if you're not good enough. Many people just want to develop their player, instead of jumping to nhl as a 70 ovr (that's quite unrealistic too). Why on earh was that removed in the first place?
- Ability to choose your starting age and play several full junior seasons if you want to, also should apply to playing in europe if that were to be an option in the first place
Should be reworked:
- They are talking about being chosen to the all star game and you can see "all star game appearances", but there isn't one to play or the skills competition.
- Conract negotiations: You should be able to negotiate your contract: a sum and amount of years, or at least ask some. And inquire if some other teams were interested.
- We spend way too much time in player training menu confirming every choise. Just make us "confirm all" in the end, or maybe save the preset that you could use and easily change when you want to.
- Being able to train all the attributes should be possible.
- Abitility to focus your XP earned in games to attributes you want to develop. Being maxed at 99, all the XP after that gained for that attribute go to waste while others are almost impossible to develop.
- The development report popping up to the whole screen kind of interrupts everything. But no need to remove it completely as having to find it from the menus every time would be worse, but if it were easily accessible with one press of a button of so, that would be great.
New features that need adjusting:
- Brand likeability is maxed way too easily: your brand in real life forms over the years so it should take at least two seasons imo, and you'd earn some advertisements with increasing reward money along the way.
- Applies to the other two likeability meters as well, takes under half a season in all of them to be maxed out, so the range should be expanded I think.
- Getting drafted 1st ovr is too easy, playing on Superstar I still had to deliberately play badly to not get 1st or 2nd ovr, while still wanting to develop my player, quite an impossible combination with the current player development.
- Becoming a team captain is way too easy and unrealistic: Also you should be asked if you want to become a captain or not (not really a fan of taking the C out of Toews and giving it to my player after the rookie season). Not sure if it's linked or not but one requirement for becoming a captain could be teammate and management likeability meters being close to maxed out, as the captains are highly respected both by the players and management irl.
- Ability to play at least one actual full league season instead of only champions league + maybe the champions league if the team made it there. Even better, if you'd be able to go back to europe later in your career.
-While having the main and secondary position, which is good idea initially, you should still be allowed to play the main position most of the time,
- Another CPU generated draft class for 2020 draft in addition to the real one makes the rosters a bit unbalanced imo by giving the top picking teams additional high end prospects. Since the game is not showing other draft results anyway, it could have been done by just giving the user's player a draft position.
- The player you're interacting in cutscenes with should change sometimes.
- This is a minor one but still: Why is DeBrincat the same size as my 6'6 player in a cut scene, the same with on-ice team celebrations?
- Finally, A big plus: Having the real world 2020 draft eligible players being assigned to their real nhl teams adds some needed realism, so a big plus for that.
- Would be great to have an World Junior Championships u20 or a "lookalike" tournament, if the real one coudn't be licenced, as that's one of the main events for draft eligible players and closely monitored by scouts. There's many issues to fix so I guess that has to wait.
