More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

[Steve_OS]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/20/17446816/nhl-19-release-date-preview-ea-sports-ps4-xbox-one

The other main change in NHL 19 comes in the series’ Franchise mode, which EA Vancouver upgraded last year with expansion teams. This time around, the studio has focused on the mode’s scouting setup, which fans have long criticized as too simplistic.

In NHL 19, you’ll have a separate scouting budget, and will have to hire and fire scouts with an eye on their regional specializations. For instance, one may be an expert in Russia and Scandinavia but may have a mediocre awareness of players elsewhere. Scouts will return detailed reports with graded attributes and text descriptions, and there’s a fog-of-war element: Any players to whom you don’t assign a scout will be blind spots, with no hints of their abilities. And if you draft someone you haven’t scouted, you still won’t see their ratings until they play a few games somewhere in your organization.

“It’s deep enough to be a standalone product,” said Ho of the new scouting system.

Unfortunately, that’s the only major improvement for Franchise. And it sounds like the only change for Be a Pro, the single-player career mode, is the addition of skill trees for traits akin to what’s available in FIFA. Here’s hoping Be a Pro — my personal favorite mode — gets some love next year.

[lvl]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Embarrassing. How can they sit there and actually think fans would be ok with this.

[Madwolf]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

I just don't understand how you can add these changes to these two modes and be naive enough to think the fans of either will be happy with them. Fixing the systems to work well at a fundamental level, even with out much other than minor changes and improvements to the rest of the systems would have made this upgrades actually mean something.

In GM Mode for instance, if FA is still deeply flawed, the AI draft logic still incredibly bad, the sim engine broken, and the progression system still one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe, then what does this amazing new Scouting system really matter?

[scitychamps87]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Why wouldn't you make the whole world of Chel thing part of Be A Pro?

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[TDKing]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

No word on being able to play shorter seasons in franchise mode and no gm connected, another sad hockey gaming year for me, oh well. Before anyone says it, i don't like simming games, lol!

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[Peter_OS]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Thanks Stevie. As a franchise mode gamer myself I'm pretty disappointed to hear that scouting is the only improvement in franchise mode in NHL 19.

[onlybygrace]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Looks like I'll have plenty of time to develop my NHL 18 created team...

I'll pass on NHL 19 most likely until it goes up for sale.

This development team needs a complete overhaul and the complete lack of connection to their hardcore fans is completely past it's shelf life on my end.

I have zero faith in them at this point.

[Locke214]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Any chance of increasing the length of franchise mode being put in nhl 19, I would totally buy if I could do an 80 year franchise like 2k.

[drewst18]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Looks like I'll have plenty of time to develop my NHL 18 created team...

I'll pass on NHL 19 most likely until it goes up for sale.

This development team needs a complete overhaul and the complete lack of connection to their hardcore fans is completely past it's shelf life on my end.

I have zero faith in them at this point.

What exactly are your issues with franchise. I haven't touched it in a few seasons hashing focused on other modes the NHL series does so much better than FIFA or Madden having dove into franchise in last few weeks.

Scouting improvements sound great which is probably the biggest issue currently. The big thing missing is multiplayer but by in large for the most part the users here don't even like multiplayer gm mode.

[tyler289]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Scouting wasn't the biggest issue with franchise, it could have been improved by overall I thought it was fine, if not good. Made it really satisfying to draft later-round guys who turn out to be contributors.

The biggest issues with franchise mode are overall atmosphere things. Can't see box scores of games. The playoffs feel not important. Trades can be wonky. It's overall OK, honestly. Franchise mode playoff games need some work in terms of graphic overlays (series record, for example), there needs to be some tweaks to progression. I wish they added coaching staffs so we could change coaches and stuff like that (have coaches with "systems" and "traits" to make the unique, for example).

I wish they did stuff like that more than revamp scouting, which was fine. Franchise mode overall is alright, not great, not bad. I played more franchise mode this year than the last few years combined.

[actionhank]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

Scouting wasn't the biggest issue with franchise, it could have been improved by overall I thought it was fine, if not good. Made it really satisfying to draft later-round guys who turn out to be contributors.

The biggest issues with franchise mode are overall atmosphere things. Can't see box scores of games. The playoffs feel not important. Trades can be wonky. It's overall OK, honestly. Franchise mode playoff games need some work in terms of graphic overlays (series record, for example), there needs to be some tweaks to progression. I wish they added coaching staffs so we could change coaches and stuff like that (have coaches with "systems" and "traits" to make the unique, for example).

I wish they did stuff like that more than revamp scouting, which was fine. Franchise mode overall is alright, not great, not bad. I played more franchise mode this year than the last few years combined.

My issue is that while scouting before was simple and annoying ("Done scouting here, where to next?")...it didn't need to be deep because what good did it really do? I feel like it's a bandaid on a missing limb.

You're scouting players but it doesn't seem like it really matters. The overall attributes not affecting gameplay much mean that you're pretty much just scouting to scout. I

In terms of franchise mode they could have done a ton to make things better. Players still have no personality, the morale thing never really became anything more than another useless bit of information that didn't affect the on-ice product.

I guess that's always been my biggest issue with EA and Franchise mode, and it's been growing since they started slowly shifting the majority of their focus (that's pretty much official now, when scouting is the only real change to franchise mode...) to the online gameplay.

The Franchise mode feels so stale. There's no feeling like you're in a real hockey league. There's no negotiating with free agents, there's no good trade AI, there aren't players who demand trades because they're unhappy with whatever problem they have. GM's of teams still don't respond realistically to their team and the world around them. On trade deadline day there's not a bunch of free agent movement.

Them saying that scouting was the only thing that they felt really needed to be touched for Franchise mode in the entire year since NHL18 came out either says they think Franchise mode is nearly perfect (I highly disagree) or that they don't care about the offline gameplay.

[RagingTrav]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

The two biggest scouting issues for mine are the lack of actual scouting reports with your scouting history of a player and a 'watch list' that seems to have zero influence on what players are watched.

A scout can watch a player 10 times but you only get one scout report and it won't always be the most accurate one. I've seen it multiple times where a player that has been scouted to 'exact' will have his scout report regress.
This is all well and good as opinions on players do change but for it to work well, there needs to be a scouting history that you can use to evaluate a player to the best that you can with the information available. Maybe even do away with the exact ratings, leaving only high - medium - low so you are still required to judge a player for yourself.

The watch list is the most frustrating part of scouting for me. I list 5 guys that i feel have the potential to be late draft gems only for the scout to completely disregard them and scout a bunch of guys projected to go undrafted and never make it past the AHL. What is the point of it apart from marking a handful of guys on draft day?

I love the concept of scouting and trying to unearth gems but i do find these things frustrating and while they don't ruin the expansion mode experience for me, i believe they can definitely enhance it.

[LousyJackRanga]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

I can't see why in this day and age, we can't have all leagues playing concurrently in franchise mode. If fifa can do it, why the hell can't the nhl series do it.

Imagine a franchise mode where you could start your career in the chl, progress to one of the European leagues before landing a job in the nhl. Unfortunately all their time and effort is put into the online money making modes with the bare minimum put into franchise.

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[giantsharks]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

If they just overhauled the presentation of Franchise mode I would be happy. From pre-season to playoffs it just feels the same. If a player beats Gretzky's goals in a season record, have a better little cut scene for it. Things like that would go a long way. I know this is getting a little off topic, but the presentation has felt like its changed a minuscule amount in the past 10 years. Everything just feels so stale. From NHL 08-18 we should see a bigger difference.

[Mike Lowe]

Re: More NHL 19 Franchise Mode Scouting System Details, Not Much Added to Be a Pro

I'm a huge NHL supporter, and it's probably EAs second best sports series behind FIFA, but in today's gaming environment, it's a travesty we're don't see Connected Franchise Mode back yet as well as the ability to create EASHL private leagues ala LG, VG, etc. Franchise modes need a chance to keep up in today's gaming environment, and we're not seeing that enough in games today outside of trading card modes.

Remember how popular franchise modes were when they first were introduced? Imagine that again today when these studios finally connect folks to those modes again.