Be A GM Idea for future versions

[bwiggy33]

So I'm thinking about a way to make Be A GM more realistic and challenging. One that has come to my head is to make each team run with the salary they use in real life (or close to it). I'm looking at capgeek.com right now and there are 15 teams who still have 10 million dollars or more in cap space and five of them have 15 million dollars or more in cap space. That's a crap load of teams. This is obviously due to those teams not being able to afford spending more salary or just the lack of team success. To me I wish this was influenced into the game to make each team a different challenge.

I'll use the Isles as an example. They have 25 million dollars (the most in the NHL) in cap space available. In NHL 11 you can take a team like the Isles and through free agency and trades you can build them up to a playoff contender in just one year. That is due to the fact any team can use the whole salary cap if they want. The idea I've come up with is that with teams such as the Isles there should be a way to unlock money. So let's say you begin season 1. The game will give you a list of a few goals (realistic and relevant to the type of team you have). The easiest will be $2 million, the second would be $3 million, and the 3rd would be $5 million. As you complete each goal you earn that amount of money towards the salary you are allowed to use. Then there would be a bonus if you complete all 3 goals. If you don't complete any maybe the owner gives you a couple million anyway or he doesn't give you any at all. This would force you to actually have to perform well and it also makes it a struggle to build up a bad team or badly funded team. This would also emphasize the importance of the draft. I just believe it would be a great way at replicating the rebuilding process.

Another example would be Nashville. They have the second highest salary cap space with 23 million. They are in a different category than the Isles though. The Preds are consistently in contention to make the playoffs each year, yet their budget continues to barely increase (if it even does at all) each year. So in NHL the goals for the Predators would be much more difficult. ie: "Make it to the conference finals and get 3 million dollars". Even though making the conference finals is a difficult task, it still isn't big enough for the Preds to dramatically increase their salary budget. Therefore the user would have to perform extremely well in order to add a decent amount to their budget. So in other words it would require winning the cup in order to increase it a fairly decent amount.

Of course not everyone would want to play this way because many of us would like to take our favorite teams with a full salary amount, and lead them to the cup. Therefore, there should be an option to turn the real life team salary off. I just think this would throw a much needed challenge into Be A GM. After reading about Be A GM for NHL 12 its just more of the same that we have seen the past few years. There's not much spice. I'm sure it will be tuned better (and hopefully better gameplay) but it is just lacking that big time challenge of using a less talented and poorly funded team.

Obviously this is just wishful thinking. I'm sure it's a challenging task but IMO I truly believe this kind of idea should have already been in the game. I mean in The Show and if I'm not mistaken MLB 2k they have a flat budget that each team runs on. The budget increases upon performance, goals, and fan attendance. The budgets are in the area of where they are in real life. So the Yanks have their 200 mill dollar budget or whatever it is, and the Marlins have their 50 mill dollar budget. This feature has been in both games for the past few years even. I really believe this is what the NHL team should really look into doing to really put Be A GM over the top.

What are your guys thoughts about this?

[Vikes1]

I like your idea Bwiggy.

Yep, it would add spice to the GM mode. Which imo...it could use. Having a "budget", rather than just simply being handed the ability to spend your way up to the cap limit, sure would add a big layer of depth and challenge to the mode.

If not this...I just hope the GM mode got some kind of a nice kick in the pants.

[Anysound]

I tried doing that with my GM team this year. I decided on a cap of like $50m that would increase/decrease with how my team finished in the standings and playoff success. It would be nice if the game did that for me though as I was too lazy to keep it up. It would go well with a better owner expectations system.

[savoie2006]

NHL 2K10 has a Budget option instead of Salary Cap. One of the things I definately like better about it, is that it is in fact based on your team's performance. So if you don't make the Playoffs, you'll have less money to work with. Where as, if you go deep into the Playoffs, you could be sitting pretty come the offseason. The only downer with this in 2K10 is that if an team is over the Cap when you start a Franchise, it shuts down both options.

[Vikes1]

Quote: Originally Posted by savoie2006

NHL 2K10 has a Budget option instead of Salary Cap. One of the things I definately like better about it, is that it is in fact based on your team's performance. So if you don't make the Playoffs, you'll have less money to work with. Where as, if you go deep into the Playoffs, you could be sitting pretty come the offseason. The only downer with this in 2K10 is that if an team is over the Cap when you start a Franchise, it shuts down both options.

Man...you sure gotta give the 2K people credit for understanding the beauty of game options.

[HawkeyMediaPlus]

They need owner mode!

Be a GM is a good mode but it's very stale. The menus are rather complicated for some and it seems boring at times. Be a GM is nice but I never have the feeling of managing the finances. They need to take it one step further and add owner mode.

MVP Baseball had it. Madden had it. You started off building your own ballpark even! Owner mode/dynasty is where you started off buying the team. Then you got a small stadium with like 1,000 people. You got 20 million dollars to start and you could customize your teams stadium by choosing the walls, the grass, the seats etc etc. It had build your own arena basically. Then as you went on you could purchase more seats and add and add until your stadium became 65,000. You could buy concessions, hire coaches too.

Attendence was based on many factors on a 1-10 scale. Each game you played had this scale. For example a game in September with the division on the line between the Cubs and Cards would be a "10" which was draw a full house. A 1 would be a game in April against a bad team like the Pirates. Playoffs were awesome because you could jack up the prices and the stadium would still fill. Then you had a balance sheet to try and make money. If you made revenue, you invested it back into the team, stadium, players etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73Uzp-_jr8

[bwiggy33]

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkeyMediaPlus

They need owner mode! Be a GM is a good mode but it's very stale. The menus are rather complicated for some and it seems boring at times. Be a GM is nice but I never have the feeling of managing the finances. They need to take it one step further and add owner mode. MVP Baseball had it. Madden had it. You started off building your own ballpark even! Owner mode/dynasty is where you started off buying the team. Then you got a small stadium with like 1,000 people. You got 20 million dollars to start and you could customize your teams stadium by choosing the walls, the grass, the seats etc etc. It had build your own arena basically. Then as you went on you could purchase more seats and add and add until your stadium became 65,000. You could buy concessions, hire coaches too. Attendence was based on many factors on a 1-10 scale. Each game you played had this scale. For example a game in September with the division on the line between the Cubs and Cards would be a "10" which was draw a full house. A 1 would be a game in April against a bad team like the Pirates. Playoffs were awesome because you could jack up the prices and the stadium would still fill. Then you had a balance sheet to try and make money. If you made revenue, you invested it back into the team, stadium, players etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73Uzp-_jr8

Yep I still have the game for PS2 and PC. The owner mode is a thing of aboslute beauty. In fact it may have been too hard. You just never made enough money to sign any FA's. That was when I was younger and less smart though. I'm sure I could do a little better in that mode now since I have more of an idea how an owner or GM manages finances and what not. The difficulty is what was so great about the game though. This is exactly what they need to do in more sports video games, especially NHL.

[onem4n4rmyy]

I'm not a fan of this idea. It limits what we can do and is unnecessary in my opinion. I think that if you want to be the isles and spend to the cap you have every right to do that. I don't see any problem with it. Just play the way you like to play.