EHM: FE: Some belated comments and questions

[Honolulu_Blue]

I finally got around to playing what was my most anticipated game of 2004, bringing together two of my favorite things: Champ Man and hockey.

I got the game back in July, waited around for patches. Once it was all patched up football season rolled around, the NHL lockout started to kick in, I was getting married, and moving back to the states. All this, on top of a busy few months of work, made it impossible for me to devout the time and energy needed to get into the game. So it sat and waited...

Finally, Christmas break rolls around. I have a week to do basically nothing but hangout, watch college football, etc. Good times. So a buddy of mine and I decide to settle down and spend a few days with the game. I've played every Champ Man game since 00-01 and played the free-ware version of EHM quite a bit.

Comments and review:

1. We decided to take a random team in the East. We didn't want to take the Wings (on the thought that it'd be too easy, though based off the dynasties I've read here, the Wings always seem to suck in this game) and randomly decided on the New York Islanders. Based on my familiarity with EHM and Champ Man and reading threads here, it didn't take us long to get up and running. The season was great. There was enough going on during the season outside the games and the games we watched had a good feel to them. It felt like the sim was working. We tooled with tactics, line combinations, etc. It was great.

2. We made a trade or two, nothing major, and ended up in the play-offs. We beat New Jersey then lost to Montreal. A great series, three games went into OT. It was intense and exciting to "watch." Then the off-season rolled around and that's where things started to go pear shaped...

3. With the NHL free agency period about to begin we tried to keep those players we wanted. We made qualifying offers to all of our RFA's. Two, however, all of a sudden became UFA's. Both Aucoin and Cairns were listed as potential RFA's. We made qualifying offers to both. The message right before July 1, said qualifying offers were made. July 1 rolls around and both were all of a sudden UFA's. Not sure what gives there. Seems to be an error.

4. Free agency comes and we can't make offers to anyone. The board will only allow us to offer US $1 million to "key" players, US $750,000 the "core" and so on and so forth. Basically, we can't sign anyone of note. I check the finances info for our team and the player budget is at around US $35,000 and our current salaries are above that. I checked that screen a few times and it seems quite static.

It would have been very helpful to have a message a bit before free agency to let us know what the actual current team salary was and what the prospective budget would be. We got caught completely flat-footed and off guard. There was also a number (around US $2 million) that was set aside for "player transfers." This number seemed to be meaningless. I know how it works in CM. That value is the amount you can spend on trying to buy new guys. You sell guys and a portion of that sale goes into that pot. It's easy to identify how much you have to spend and you can make decisions based on that. We found it near impossible to really get a sense of what our actual budget was, what our current total salaries were, etc. It appeared we could sign an endless amount of players at around US $1 million, but could not offer more than that. That just doesn't make sense.

Also, we could offer new contracts, at almost any value, to any player currently under contract. For example, if a player's contract was going to expire next year, the board would allow us to increase his salary quite a bit. This would, of course, make us go over budget even more.

5. Because we lost Aucoin and Cairns unexpectedly, not too mention both back up goalies (UFA's), we needed to sign players. But, as described above, we had no shot. We decided we had to trade Yashin and his US $8.5 million a year salary to get us under budget. We finally worked out a trade for a few mid-ranged picks and Mike freakin' Commodore. We took it, just to see. After the trade we STILL couldn't offer free agents any more than we could before, even though we were then under budget. This was quite frustrating.

6. Trades were also a bit of an issue. The "Team Needs" were nice, as was the almost immediate response to most inquiries, but I would like a little more information. A team flat out saying they don't want to trade the guy, he's an untouchable, or they want "X" or "Y" instead. This would make particular sense in situations where the player has been made available. More feedback in trades is necessary.

Basically after the begining of the off-season, the game really lost it's shine. It's possible there was a way to really get a handle on all this and we were just inexperienced and got blind-sided all of a sudden. But, I am not sure if this information was readily available. It would be nice to have some place where it tracked closely current salaries versus budget and the board or whomever would tell you, you need to cut $X million. This year's salaries can't exceed $40 million, you are currently at US $42. Then your contract extensions, trades, etc, all have an impact. So, if you dump salaries below the budget, you can then offer players the differnce. Maybe it does work like this, but it certainly didn't feel like it. Too many inconsistencies. We could offer our current guys any amount of salary (or so it seemed), but could only offer free agents (even RFA's whose rights we had) a very limited sum. A budget should be a budget.

Sorry, this is all a bit rambling. To sum up:

1. Great game play and sim. Good immersion.

2. Need more feedback on trade proposals.

3. Oh! A great draft. I loved the draft, scout reports, etc. It was a lot of fun.

4. The financial/free agent system didn't work and there wasn't enough information. Things just didn't make sense to me and didn't seem to work. Is there something I am missing? Have others experienced this problem? Thoughts? Suggestions?

[sachmo71]

Just to be sure...you've patched to 1.07?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Just to be sure...you've patched to 1.07?

Sorry about that. I meant to mention that. The game is fully patched. Playing on Version 1.07.

[riz]

Thanks for the feedback. I have seen a few reports of the weird limitations on player salaries during the offseason (when signing UFA's) but haven't come upon that myself in the game. Basically, once you get under your budget limitations the limits should raise. I'm not sure if I followed the numerical info you posted correctly about the free agent signings. The limitations sounded correct in a situation where you are clearly over the budget but the total player salaries and the budget figure ($35,000) seemed a bit dodgy. If you have more info or better yet, a saved game that I could take a look at, I would be more than happy to do that.

We are already deep into the development of the next version but anything like this we would like to take a look and make sure it will definately not happen in the future.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Thanks for the feedback. I have seen a few reports of the weird limitations on player salaries during the offseason (when signing UFA's) but haven't come upon that myself in the game. Basically, once you get under your budget limitations the limits should raise. I'm not sure if I followed the numerical info you posted correctly about the free agent signings. The limitations sounded correct in a situation where you are clearly over the budget but the total player salaries and the budget figure ($35,000) seemed a bit dodgy. If you have more info or better yet, a saved game that I could take a look at, I would be more than happy to do that.

We are already deep into the development of the next version but anything like this we would like to take a look and make sure it will definately not happen in the future.

The numbers may be a bit hard to follow because they are based off memory at the moment.

If I recall the player budger dropped from US $40 million to US $35 million. This is fine, I don't mind restrictions at all, it's all part of the challenge, but it was so sudden and without warning.

When I traded Yashin (US$ 8.5 million for Commodore US$ 500,000), the team's Total Player Salaries went from US $42 million to US$42.5 million. It seemed to add Commodore's salary without removing Yashin's.

Also, the disconnect between signing free agents (being very limited) as compared to restructuring existing player contract (not limited much at all) seemed a bit odd.

I will see if I can keep the save game and send it to you, Riz.

Thanks for the immediate response, by the way.

Is there one file I need to save/send for the saved game. If so, what is it?

Thanks again.

[Joe Canadian]

When I traded Yashin (US$ 8.5 million for Commodore US$ 500,000), the team's Total Player Salaries went from US $42 million to US$42.5 million. It seemed to add Commodore's salary without removing Yashin's.


I've had this happen a number of times when recently playing my Maple Leaf career. I traded Nolan to dump salary, and it didn't seem to change the current salary in the financials window, and I also released Belfour for $3.5 Million but current salary never changed even though it should have dropped.

I've played the demo since it's release, and finally purchased the game last week. And I've only come up with a few slight problems... the above being one of them. Prospective Head Coaches (unemployed or in lower leagues) either never wanting and NHL Head Coaching job, or always wanting to be Ass. Manager.

And the other being the lack of trade "discussion"... I feel like I'm flying blind every time I attempt to make a trade. If the player/pick is untouchable, I'd like to know that... but when I inquire about a draft pick, prospect, or roster player I'd like some sort of meanigful response.

[Karim]

One thing that I've noticed is that the budget doesn't change until the new month. Every time I dump salary nothing changes until the 1st of the following month.

The transfer funds are pretty useless in this game. What they seemed to be used for is if you poach a coach or scout from a minor league team - then you owe them $3k or something.

I've had problems re-signing some of my own RFA's even if the salary would maintain the budget at current levels. It seems I need cashflow and once season ticket money comes in, I could offer $9 million p/a according to the board.

[condors]

maybe something happens if you go over the total

I think i have only seen this problem when i go over my budgetl then i have problems getting it back inline

(not positive but i have had offseasons where my salaries of players were subtracted from the teams total)

I really enjoy the game wish i had more time to play it more

[Honolulu_Blue]

Thanks for the feedback, lads. I figured what happened was something along those lines. It taking a while for the total salaries to kick or problems where the team is over budget. I am pretty sure we were over budget, it just would have been nice for things to kick in more quickly and for it to be easier to track what the budget was and what actual salaries were. Just getting caught sort of flat-footed was annoying and fouled up the game a bit.

Armed with this knowledge, I reckon I will give it another go and keep a better eye on things. The game certainly has enough promise to do so.

[riz]

I'll use the info from this thread to try and see if this has already been fixed for the next version or if it still needs fixing. It definately seems like the player budget just needs to refresh more often especially as trades are done.

As for the quick response time....a board like this with all its text-sim knowledge plus the comedy...how can I not lurk around :)

[Icy]

Riz, now that i see you around. I asked this to Mr Vaughan a few days ago but as you're the main EHM developer this applies more to you. Why did you remove commish mode online league mode? Some of use enjoyed a lot playing online leagues with the shareware version and we can't now. I suposse that is because you worked over the CM code for this first EHM:FE encarnation, but please, add it for the next version. Most of us preffer commish mode online leagues over the actual SI games ip to ip online play, where all gms must be online at same time. I really hope that both you for EHM and Markus for OOTP will put that game mode into your SI games as you had it before. Even Mr Vaughan said that he could consider it for FM and of course that would be one of the best online experiences, to play into a worldwide commish mode online league with docens of humans GMs.

[riz]

Nothing was actually removed (expect football stuff) when NHL EHM was coded, rather some things that were supported by the freeware did not make it into the first NHL EHM because of time constraints and resources. Remember, it is a completely new game and was built on a new platform instead of taking the old freeware and building upon that. There was never any kind of support for the commish type of league play in the CM platform we took as base code, so we'll need to code it from scratch at some point. There wasn't much of a "commish code" in the old freeware either, just functions to save your lines to a file and also read in lines from files (already both are present in NHL EHM) and that was about it. The reason why playing a commish run league on the old freeware was much easier, was the fact that there was very little interaction outside of making lines, moving players between main team and farm and trading/signing players. In NHL EHM there is so much more to do and so much more information that the saved games are huge compared to the freeware and commish run leagues become harder to manage.

Now...they can be done with NHL EHM but it will require a lot of time and effort from the commish. The commish can add all the needed managers to his game and control all those teams in his own game. GMs can load the same saved game and make their own lines, save them down and then send them on email to the commish. They can negotiate trades with other GM's on their own and once they agree to a trade, they just email the commish who sets the trade up in his game and accepts its by both GM's in his game. I believe this is pretty much the way it worked with a lot of the leagues in the old freeware, as it did not have that much specific support built in for commish leagues either. The difference is, with NHL EHM the commish needs to do all the actions on behalf of the GMs in his game and because there is so much more detail in the new game, there is a lot more to do than in the freeware.

Finally, what the freeware did better was the amount of HTML outputs etc, which allowed better opportunities to run commish leagues. Because we only have a small team of programmers, we haven't had the chance to focus too much energy into the HTML outputs yet. Hopefully, we can already improve them in the next version to bring it closer to the level of output from the freeware.

Also, any suggestions on what kind of code to add in to help commish run leagues are welcome. I have a few ideas of my own on how to maybe make the commishes job a bit easier than having to recreate all the actions for all the GMs based on what they just email him.

:D

[Icy]

Thanks for your answer riz, i agree that the biggest problem would be the huge savegames. Some of us FOFCers are playing in a FBCB league and the save game is around 15Mb plus another file for box scores, game logs etc because the huge amount of teams in colege basketball, but yeah worldwide hockey has even more teams, then the news, etc etc. I guess you would need to find a way for the commish to export only the minimum required parts of the game and then the stuff like news etc could be exported as html and publised at the league website. I like a lot the OOTP multiplayer features, as the players can export FA stages separated from team lineups etc and the commish can export the save game and the html in a separate way, all that dirctly to ftp without sending emails etc. I can only dream about that, playing with docens of gms in different leagues, with the gms moving jobs around the virtual world etc :)

[Bea-Arthurs Hip]

Hey riz, a little off topic..How will the lockout effect the release of your next version? Can you release the game say next september if the players are still locked out ?

I too am really enjoying the game, I fired it up last week after not playing since the 1.05 patch and I can say it is the most fun I have ever had playing a game. It even made me put away FM2005..

Cant wait for the next release.

[samifan24]

Hey so it's 2005 in my game and the Thrashers let Coburn's rights run out without signing him. It's little things like that which annoy me about this game. :mad: I appreciate Riz's efforts to make things better for the next version and I hope things like this won't find their way into the next version.

[JeffR]

Hey so it's 2005 in my game and the Thrashers let Coburn's rights run out without signing him. It's little things like that which annoy me about this game. :mad: I appreciate Riz's efforts to make things better for the next version and I hope things like this won't find their way into the next version.

It happens in real life. Last summer the Rangers lost the rights (acquired from Vancouver) to R.J. Umberger, the #16 pick in 2001, when they couldn't reach a deal with him. He then signed with Philadelphia. (And the Rangers got an extra draft pick as compensation; unfortunately, NHL:EHM doesn't model that rule yet.)

[samifan24]

It happens in real life. Last summer the Rangers lost the rights (acquired from Vancouver) to R.J. Umberger, the #16 pick in 2001, when they couldn't reach a deal with him. He then signed with Philadelphia. (And the Rangers got an extra draft pick as compensation; unfortunately, NHL:EHM doesn't model that rule yet.)

Yes I know. I watched Umberger play against Hartford this year. He didn't look too special. It does happen, but Coburn is a building block type player, similar to Ryan Suter for Nashville. The game's not perfect, but this one move irked me.

[riz]

Yes I know. I watched Umberger play against Hartford this year. He didn't look too special. It does happen, but Coburn is a building block type player, similar to Ryan Suter for Nashville. The game's not perfect, but this one move irked me.

The AI teams will do their best to sign all their biggest prospects but if the prospect is playing hardball and the ownership is tightfisted with the budget, then the GM might have to let him go. It all comes down to the team finances and I know it's not ideal, but the alternative would be for the AI to cheat and ignore the budget limitations and sign their prospects regardless of what their budget allows. Again, I'll try to tweak the minimum funds the GM has available for new signigns (as discussed above in this thread) in the next version. Hopefully this will help on a few issues without overflowing the budgets too much.

[samifan24]

The AI teams will do their best to sign all their biggest prospects but if the prospect is playing hardball and the ownership is tightfisted with the budget, then the GM might have to let him go. It all comes down to the team finances and I know it's not ideal, but the alternative would be for the AI to cheat and ignore the budget limitations and sign their prospects regardless of what their budget allows. Again, I'll try to tweak the minimum funds the GM has available for new signigns (as discussed above in this thread) in the next version. Hopefully this will help on a few issues without overflowing the budgets too much.

Thanks for the feedback, Riz.

[samifan24]

To anyone playing EHM, have you found that certain players are always outstanding and "come out of nowhere" to dominate career after career. In my career, winger Ivo Ruthemann is one such Superman, helping my Nashville Preds towards a cup run. The guy's absolutely ridiculous in my game. Any other random people always seem to do well for/against you?

[JeffR]

To anyone playing EHM, have you found that certain players are always outstanding and "come out of nowhere" to dominate career after career. In my career, winger Ivo Ruthemann is one such Superman, helping my Nashville Preds towards a cup run. The guy's absolutely ridiculous in my game. Any other random people always seem to do well for/against you?

The 'Good Player Guide' (http://community.sigames.com/eve/ubb.x?a=frm&s=21019056&f=117206453) over at the SI forums has a lot of that sort of thing.

Ruthemann's a decent player in real life, and has really come into his own in the last couple of seasons in the Swiss league, but he's a bit overrated in the game. This Swiss head researcher, for some reason, went way above the suggested ratings guidelines for his league. After that was noticed last summer I went in and nerfed them down to a more reasonable level in time for one of the patches, but it looks like I was a bit too easy on some guys, including Ruthemann. If you hunt around a bit more you can probably find other Swiss-league guys that'll be serviceable NHL'ers. The Czech league may have some, too.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I decided to continue my Islander career... It's been enjoyable. I've learned to work with the system. The $35 million budget doesn't allow for much, but I have managed. It's up and down...

A couple of other things I've noticed:

1. Scheduling. In 2006, NHL players went and played in the Olympics. This is good. However, I played two games during that time. The NHL would not schedule games while players were in the Olympics. This needs to be fixed.

2. Trade bug. I am currently caught in a never ending trade cycle. I inquired about Scott Hartnell because he wanted to be traded. Nashville asks for Mike Commodore and a 3rd rounder. I respond and confirm. Then I get a message about the trade proposal and then a message Nashville wants to negotiate. They offer the exact same deal. I click on "confirm" and I get the same two messages. It appears as if there is no way to make this deal.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I am just going to keep commenting as things come up... Again, I continue to play the game all. the. freaking. time. I am really enjoying it.

1. The draft. I think this works really well. I love the draft. Everything about it. Being able to trade during the draft and getting immediate feedback is key. The scouting really seems to work. I spend a lot of time, trying to make sure I have a good lay of the land when it comes to the draft and, I think, it has paid off. I have been happy with my drafts and have found what appear to be some "diamonds in the rough" thanks to good scouting.

I have read that there have been some issues with scouts being "too accurate" and all or most first rounders really blossoming into stars. I haven't run across this issue yet, though I am only in the 2007-2008 season.

2. Odd hiring bug. Atlanta fired Don Waddell as their GM. They did a search for a few weeks for a new GM. They finally found one. Don Waddell. That just aint right...

Loving the game, despite the minor bugs and such.

[BigJohn&TheLions]

While we're on belated comments...

I hope everyone here has a Merry Christmas!

[condors]

becarefull if you draft a guy too good he may come out wanting 12.5 million a year or something crazy like that. It just happened to me but i am Flyers so i could give him the cash although i considered letting him go to free agency (nobody else on the team makes more than 4.8 million), gave him 8 million a season with a 3 million dollar signing bonus

[samifan24]

Has anyone else noticed how insanely hard it is to make trades in this game? I'm Nashville and have to offload David Legwand cause he "has personal problems and wants to leave the team," but almost every team in the league will not do a 1:1 trade. Edmonton rejected Legwand for Dan Corso and Patrick Stefan. I mean, come on! Won't somebody take him off my hands?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Has anyone else noticed how insanely hard it is to make trades in this game? I'm Nashville and have to offload David Legwand cause he "has personal problems and wants to leave the team," but almost every team in the league will not do a 1:1 trade. Edmonton rejected Legwand for Dan Corso and Patrick Stefan. I mean, come on! Won't somebody take him off my hands?
I have had some success at making trades. It's odd though. Usually I will get a rash of terrible, terrible deals and then all of a sudden some team comes up with one hell of a bargain.

I was offered two #1 picks and a player for Ty Conklin.

I got Scott Hartnell for a #2 rounder.

The thing I find most frustrating is how long it can take to make a deal. As stated earlier, there needs to be more feedback in the process. Something to let you know if you're close to a deal or you're just banging your head into the wall because the other team doesn't really want your guy. More feedback in trading is key.

[klayman]

2. Trade bug. I am currently caught in a never ending trade cycle. I inquired about Scott Hartnell because he wanted to be traded. Nashville asks for Mike Commodore and a 3rd rounder. I respond and confirm. Then I get a message about the trade proposal and then a message Nashville wants to negotiate. They offer the exact same deal. I click on "confirm" and I get the same two messages. It appears as if there is no way to make this deal.
This might be explained by Commodore having a no-trade clause and rejecting the trade to your team. I had a series of messages one season that looked like Leetch was traded to about 12 different teams at the trading deadline one year, but he never ended up leaving Toronto. I just assumed it was because of a no-trade clause.

[JeffR]

This might be explained by Commodore having a no-trade clause and rejecting the trade to your team. I had a series of messages one season that looked like Leetch was traded to about 12 different teams at the trading deadline one year, but he never ended up leaving Toronto. I just assumed it was because of a no-trade clause.

Don't think so. Too many reports of it happening with guys who wouldn't logically have no-trade clauses (only a very few top players request them.) I haven't really seen any common element to the reports, though - but it's happened to me, too, so I know it's not that uncommon.

[samifan24]

I finally moved Legwand. Here's the deal I made:

To Minnesota:

C David Legwand
2 3rd Round Picks

To Nashville:

C Marc Chouinard
LW Antti Laaksonen
D Willie Mitchell

Not a bad deal in that it fills some holes on my roster, and it seems realistic, but it took so long to complete. I second any motion that future versions of EHM need more trade feedback.

[Karim]

How long did it take in game time? Some deals take months in real life. I know it took me the better part of a year to convince Columbus to part with the rights to F Rostislav Olesz after they didn't re-sign him as a RFA. Feedback would have sped it up and Riz has implemented this in the next version.

I know Sutter (IRL) was trying to get Weimer all of last year before the playoff run. He couldn't swing it and ended up signing in the off-season.

[samifan24]

How long did it take in game time? Some deals take months in real life. I know it took me the better part of a year to convince Columbus to part with the rights to F Rostislav Olesz after they didn't re-sign him as a RFA. Feedback would have sped it up and Riz has implemented this in the next version.

I know Sutter (IRL) was trying to get Weimer all of last year before the playoff run. He couldn't swing it and ended up signing in the off-season.

It took two weeks (the length of Legwand's leave of absence from the team) to finally complete a deal involving him. Deal after deal was decline, even one-for-one deals. Funny enough, I completed another deal not a week after in "game time." I think it's a steal on my part, but could be realistic:

To Calgary:

RW Steve Sullivan
D Scott Ferguson

To Nashville:

RW Chuck Kobasew
2nd Round Pick

Both Sullivan and Ferguson were in their contract years. I was pretty surprised when the Flames accepted it, cause they rejected Sullivan for Kobasew straight up.

[Honolulu_Blue]

This might be explained by Commodore having a no-trade clause and rejecting the trade to your team. I had a series of messages one season that looked like Leetch was traded to about 12 different teams at the trading deadline one year, but he never ended up leaving Toronto. I just assumed it was because of a no-trade clause.
This could be possible. Never checked and I picked Commodore off waivers. Can't check now, however, as years have passed.

Once Riz installs the trade feedback in the next version, I think it will greatly enhance the game. The game just needs a little more tinkering here and there and it will be great. Hell, it already is great. I was a little late coming to the party, but I'm havin' fun now!!