EHM The Blue Line

No need to change what schedules you use in the off-season compared to in the season. There really isn't a difference for most players. If a player needs II Nor during the season, he needs it during the off-season too. I've had two players who needed different schedules in the off-season than in the normal season in my entire time playing EHM, and both of them had very low professionalism. Barring those extreme cases there is no need to make any changes for the off-season as far as training is concerned.

hey guys pls help, I set all training areas as intense, however players skills doesn't increase and condition levels are always 100% what's the problem?

Do you set the players with the training though? Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but sometimes we can forget some steps.

philou21 wrote:Do you set the players with the training though? Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but sometimes we can forget some steps.

yes, i had doubts to do training by myself, finally i set "Head coach takes control of practice - No" in GM Options, is it correct?

also, how long should i wait to see players improvements and conditions decreasing? I started to set practises only in the middle of season....

Condition shouldn't decrease in the season. If it does, your team performances will start to decline. They're pro athletes, they're supposed to be top shape.

As for improvements, it happens in a spam of4-5 months but it's happening more during the off season. Not during it.

philou21 wrote:Condition shouldn't decrease in the season. If it does, your team performances will start to decline. They're pro athletes, they're supposed to be top shape.

As for improvements, it happens in a spam of4-5 months but it's happening more during the off season. Not during it.

understood, thank you very much!

jean14 wrote:

philou21 wrote:Condition shouldn't decrease in the season. If it does, your team performances will start to decline. They're pro athletes, they're supposed to be top shape.

As for improvements, it happens in a spam of4-5 months but it's happening more during the off season. Not during it.

understood, thank you very much!

If I can add more details, I noticed that during the season it's mostly 4-5 months but during the summer, they just do training without playing games, so that's probably why attributes go up faster. Most of the time I notice an improvement towards june-july and the other one before the start of the season or the training camp.

I am training most of my prospects on II Nor and not one of them is significantly improving from October to March. Most improvements happen from March to September, especially during offseason. Not quite sure why this is, but I stopped panicking when no one has improved early in the year.

Another thing I have noticed: I play my AHL team with a second account to improve training conditions there, hire better coaches, etc. About my ECHL team, I read it's mostly for the low-rated players, like fifth-round draft picks, so I sent all those players there who didn't make the roster for my AHL team, but are too old for major juniors. Surprising for me, they are developing quite fast there, two of them might even get a new chance on the AHL team next season. Most of them develop better than my AHL prospects with II Nor or MM Nor. I don't know if this is because they get so much playing time in the ECHL (the roster there is very small) or because they have a certain talent (three stars, good key attributes, well-picked in the drafts), but low current abilities and bad players are able to improve faster than players which have already hit the abililty cap for their age group. Many high rated players I drafted have not significantly improved during their first years in the AHL, despite of playing a lot (and yes, I let them play juniors until they were overaged). I think this might be because they are already too strong? Still don't fully get it.

If player are 'too good' for the league they're in, they will indeed improve less in their time there unless they're super professional workhorses who give a 110% whether they'd be on a frosted over pond in northern canada or in the NHL.

It makes sense, the competition isn't there for them so they don't have to go as hard in practice and during games to perform well, so they're not pushed to self-improve because they're already the best. It could also be they've just capped out, a lot of young players can cap out really early because their CA was close to their PA when you drafted them, and they just hit their peak early and their peak is AHL level.

Also it can be that the final bit of improvement just takes longer, you see this in defenders and goalies a lot, where they hit a low-NHL level early but then kinda stagnate despite getting NHL time. And then slowly improve their game year-by-year until they finally hit their peak somewhere in the mid-late 20s.

tl;dr - Yeah, players can stagnate because they're not challenged enough. You can always let their ELC run out after giving them a qualifying offer, and hope they sign at a European (non-KHL) team instead. Or you can always trade them if they're taking too long and there are teams that do want to play them.

Hello not sure if this has been address anywhere but I am looking for some information regarding practice in EHM. I have come to realize that the goaltending practice is the one that improves positioning. Prior to this I just assumed that Def. Skill would improve it, yet none of my players ever get better in this stat.

So my questions:
1. Can this stat be improve on skaters or is it strictly a goalie stat?
2. Coaches can be assigned to specific areas, i.e, conditioning, skating, shooting, Off. Skill, because of this do players on a specific practice drill need to be coach by someone who is coaching that drill? For example, I recently set all my practice drills to include light goaltending in the hopes of improving the positioning stat, however I have no coach in those drills that is set to coach goaltending, does this matter?
3. Can skaters be placed on the goaltending drill and have it improve stats. I placed someone on there to test but didn't wait long only a couple weeks, decided to go with the light goaltending tactic instead.

Thanks for your help guys and if I start to see improvements I'll let you know.

Been following the latest instructions as portrayed on this thread, but lately I've seen many players begin to decline at around 27 years of age. Playing NHL with awesome coaches and have the training set up as recommended here.
Now, most of the original players (TBL rosters 10.3) seem to stay pretty level until 30-32 years of age, so I'm wondering if my problem is with regens only. But I also saw a very sharp decline in techical skills on one player at 33 y/o, skill values dropped three points in average in just a few months time. The decline in physical values wasn't even that hard.

So my question is do you guys see your star players suddenly start to decline as early as 27 years old? And if yes, have you found any way to combat this problem?

OH, and running the intensive training regimes throughout the season seems to cause quite a lot of injuries - in the 82-game regular season my team accumulates an average of about 15 injuries, some of which affect the team performance quite a bit. Would it help if I made the training programs lighter during the season and if yes, would it be counter productive in terms of player development?

TurboJ wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 3:52 am Been following the latest instructions as portrayed on this thread, but lately I've seen many players begin to decline at around 27 years of age. Playing NHL with awesome coaches and have the training set up as recommended here.
Now, most of the original players (TBL rosters 10.3) seem to stay pretty level until 30-32 years of age, so I'm wondering if my problem is with regens only. But I also saw a very sharp decline in techical skills on one player at 33 y/o, skill values dropped three points in average in just a few months time. The decline in physical values wasn't even that hard.

So my question is do you guys see your star players suddenly start to decline as early as 27 years old? And if yes, have you found any way to combat this problem?

OH, and running the intensive training regimes throughout the season seems to cause quite a lot of injuries - in the 82-game regular season my team accumulates an average of about 15 injuries, some of which affect the team performance quite a bit. Would it help if I made the training programs lighter during the season and if yes, would it be counter productive in terms of player development?

Anyone with any comments? Started a new career, again in the NHL and once again there are sharp declines in pretty much every attribute category on some players. Before age 30, sometimes a little past 30. Not the kind of drops that would typically be associated with aging as the drops are very very fast and happen to skill attribs too and not only physicals. This happened with the normal 10.3 rosters I've been using too, although now I'm using the 'prospect generator' found on this forum. Maybe the prospect gen thing exxaggerates the effect if the game has some kind of built-in system that prevents all-star teams from happening, like, if you have too many high PA players on roster the game will nerf some of those players to achieve some kind of "equilibrium".

Ideas and comments are welcome.

Sounds like maybe a bug, because I've never seen that. Most of the time the technicals don't drop at all as the players age - only the physicals. I usually let my head coach take charge of training.

Interesting if it is a bug because I've seen it now on three different careers, and the first one was using an unmodified TBL 10.3 roster and without any other mods that could alter the game mechanics.

There has been talk about generated prospects developing to a lesser degree while some of the best high-PA players are still on the player pool. I'm wondering if this is true and if it could be affecting existing players too, simply because the game might "think" there are too many star level players around. This would certainly explain why I'm seeing the issue more commonly now that I'm using the 'prospect generator' as it does add a substantial number of high-PA players onto the database.


EDIT. FWIW I've been using the "Shindings" practice regimen for a while now. It involves having every player on a tougher practice Schedule than the ones already in the game. Basically there are more cases of intensive training, even if it is balanced according to player age and development etc. I'm wondering if too hard training might actually make the players regress… Haven't heard about such a thing happening before, only that young player development could slow down with the wrong kind of training.


In any case I wonder if there still is a real knowledge around about how the practice schedules actually work. Some people play around with these a lot, some just leave them to the coaches to handle. I do wonder if you can actually have much of an effect on players simply by means of practice schedules.. It would seem like ice time and opposition quality have more of an effect on players. And naturally CA vs PA; some players tend to develop well even if they have the wrong training and less than ideal game experience.

I'd imagine it doesn't really matter what database you're using if it's a bug. Then it's a game bug, not a database related bug. But I don't know. Just guessing here.

TurboJ wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 3:52 am Now, most of the original players (TBL rosters 10.3) seem to stay pretty level until 30-32 years of age, so I'm wondering if my problem is with regens only. But I also saw a very sharp decline in techical skills on one player at 33 y/o, skill values dropped three points in average in just a few months time. The decline in physical values wasn't even that hard.

I've not done such testing with EHM 1.4, but with EHM 1.3 the player Attribute testing I did showed similar pretty sharp Attribute decline with the original players too. https://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/v ... 4&start=25 )

Players can lose a lot of CA (and thus some lower Attributes) in a single year; over a year maybe 5-10 less CA in their early 30s for some players, and by mid 30s much more (a drop of more than 20 CA over a year is possible). And this CA/Attribute reduction for many players occurs year-after-year in their 30s. Of course this is not all players (Erik Karlsson went from age 33 to age 37 without ever having his 180 CA lower).


Here's the average Attribute value for different CA levels from the developer (from this thread https://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/v ... 10&t=16777)

CA AVG
200 16
190 16
180 15
170 14
160 14
150 13
140 12
130 12
120 11
110 10

I'd think a CA drop from 190 to 170 & a CA drop 160 to 140 could result in the kind of Attribute loss you're describing; and even a drop of 1 in average Attribute value means some Attributes might drop more than one and some not at all

TurboJ wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 1:35 pmThere has been talk about generated prospects developing to a lesser degree while some of the best high-PA players are still on the player pool.

The game doesn’t handle the jump from Junior to NHL very well for the absolute elite players.

Generally the game mechanics produce top CA players (age 19) in the 115-120 range while researchers produce top CA players (age 19) in the 150-160 range for a couple years, and then they’re in the 120-130 range for a couple years, and then the they’re in the 115-120 range.

Researchers (me included) give young players higher CAs than the game does & researchers give fewer low Attribute values than the game does. And the low values given by researchers are often higher than the game gives (see “the full range” below).

Here’s some recent testing of “draft classes” looking at the first decade after startup & 20-30 years after startup that shows future drafts (the game mechanics) top CAs for absolute elite young players is significantly lower than researcher given values https://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/v ... 10&t=20254


Another thing is for many Attributes the game will use “the full range” of the 1-20 Attribute scale and human researchers don’t do this; I did some recent testing that shows this. https://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/v ... 10&t=20236

This, I suspect is a significant factor in people feeling development is different (they're seeing both low CA new young players & they're seeing low/really low Attribute values with high CA players, and they don't see this with researcher created players in the initial years of a new game).

TurboJ wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 1:35 pmI'm wondering if this is true and if it could be affecting existing players too, simply because the game might "think" there are too many star level players around. This would certainly explain why I'm seeing the issue more commonly now that I'm using the 'prospect generator' as it does add a substantial number of high-PA players onto the database.

I wonder what the prospect generator uses for starting CA (is "0" used) and if Offensive Role, Defensive Role, or any Attributes are filled in

TurboJ wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 1:35 pmIt would seem like ice time and opposition quality have more of an effect on players. And naturally CA vs PA; some players tend to develop well even if they have the wrong training and less than ideal game experience.

I think you’re totally on the right track with thinking there are multiple factors affecting things (and practice/training is one). And some Attributes develop based on age and not CA or training. And the player’s Player Role and their Key/Essential/Non-Essential/Irrelevant Attributes are going to affect things too (especially in connection to training). And hidden Attributes (the ones you can’t see in game) and their effect are going to play an important part too.

Alrighty then. I guess I should leave the answers to those who actually know stuff. But no one seemed to be doing that, so I made a guess.

Thanks for everyone's input! All of it is very welcome. I'll browse through the provided links too; wanting to get as good a grasp about the game as possible. Nearing the 1000 hours played mark already, but I never spent that much time studying the mechanics.

Still seeing suprising declines on some players, even as early as 24 y/o. But in a way this is realistic too I guess. Not everyone will stay at their peak very long IRL either.

As for what exactly the 'prospect generator' does to the database I am not sure... But it seems to help with the draft drought issue the game typically has with generated players. I guess the main thing here is if anyone knows if one player can affect another player's development. I mean if there is any system built into the game to keep overall player quality at a certain average. In other words, can it be that the game lowers some players' ability when a number of new star level players are added.

But I'm not wanting to take this too far off-topic; as far as training schedules and reaching the prospect's PA go, I guess there still aren't definitive answers to how all that truly works.

Tasku wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:26 am Alrighty then. I guess I should leave the answers to those who actually know stuff. But no one seemed to be doing that, so I made a guess.

You're the best Tasku, positive and helpful, I've always thought so
Other thoughts come to mind too...like author, virtual truck driver and proponent of the wheel, and baseball fan

TurboJ wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:07 pm Thanks for everyone's input! All of it is very welcome. I'll browse through the provided links too; wanting to get as good a grasp about the game as possible. Nearing the 1000 hours played mark already, but I never spent that much time studying the mechanics.

A good place to start is the Player Roles and Key/Essential/Non-Essential/Irrelevant Attributes thread linked above. I've got other threads with data/etc in the Data Editing Forum you might be interested in including some significant regen testing I did with EHM 1.3 in 2016

If you haven't seen it before this TBL wiki page has some guidance on practice https://ehmtheblueline.com/wiki/index.p ... tice_Guide
It notes "this is not the end all and be all for practices" and I'm not sure when it was written, but looking at the information there I still think it worth looking at

TurboJ wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:07 pmAs for what exactly the 'prospect generator' does to the database I am not sure... But it seems to help with the draft drought issue the game typically has with generated players.

I haven't finished compiling/posting the data for the testing data - "draft classes" (by YOB) thread linked above, but when I do we'll have a much better idea of the prospect generators effects (the testing involves the ECK database with the prospect generator, the TBL database normal start & the TBL database with all possible added players selected at game startup)

TurboJ wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:07 pmI guess the main thing here is if anyone knows if one player can affect another player's development. I mean if there is any system built into the game to keep overall player quality at a certain average. In other words, can it be that the game lowers some players' ability when a number of new star level players are added.

Interesting

Preliminary results from testing looking at results 20-30 years after startup seem to show the very best young players CA level (based on players at age 19) is actually a little higher with the normal TBL database than with the ECK/prospect generator database (but the latter definitely has more/higher PA players)

I've decided to add some CA data compiling/review too, to get a better idea on the player quality level




I'm not sure that there is any lower quality level players as far as the game is concerned - the difference I think being noticed is

• the game (but not human researchers) uses the low range of (1-20) Attributes when human researchers do not
• the game makes up for it with an increased usage of 16-20 Attributes.
• You can really see this in the testing data - NHL forwards Attributes 2018/2050 thread that I linked.
• My plan is once I've completed compiling the data and posting it and some observations my plan is to inform the developer Riz (as I have before) and he'll decide what's a bug and what's the game is running as intended (and sometimes it's not a bug and running as intended, but future change/improvement is still desired)

TurboJ wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:07 pmBut I'm not wanting to take this too far off-topic; as far as training schedules and reaching the prospect's PA go, I guess there still aren't definitive answers to how all that truly works.

I suspect there isn't one definitive way (and with Player Roles and Key/Essential/Irrelevant/Non-Essential Attributes one way isn't going to work for all players like it maybe did with EHM07, before the game had Player Roles).

I've never followed someone else's specific regime, but I've followed general guidelines/philosophy that such regimes are often based on; I have used more intense and even all intense and other such ideas (I think pretty much all around from before I discovered EHM in 2010). Some people still use EHM07 practices (including training practice) with success, but that success doesn't necessarily mean the updated EHM (since 2015) game still functions the same way (though some of those people will say it does). Nothing works all the time in all situations though




FYI - As I recall Shindigs (you mentioned him earlier) didn't know or care to know about important factors (such as Player Roles), and his experience was based on lower league Swedish players and not anywhere close to NHLers. I found much of what he said in regards to game mechanics and how the game functioned to be conjecture at best, and at times just open falsehood (he liked hyperbole and he liked to speak authoritatively, often incorrectly, about things he didn't understand). After trying to tell the EHM Editor creator how his editor functioned and being wrong he disappeared

nino33 wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 11:59 pm

Tasku wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:26 am Alrighty then. I guess I should leave the answers to those who actually know stuff. But no one seemed to be doing that, so I made a guess.

You're the best Tasku, positive and helpful, I've always thought so
Other thoughts come to mind too...like author, virtual truck driver and proponent of the wheel, and baseball fan

Aww, thanks Nino. Right back at ya!

Wanted to share my notion again; there is unexpected decay in player attributes. Sometimes even as young as 22 years old. One of my prospects spent two years in AHL and started regressing after turning 22. Even his anticipation att dropped during that year which seems very odd. On my NHL roster it seems that most pre-made players are able to maintain their att level longer than generated players. But even many pre-made players start declining between 26 and 30 years of age.

Now, previously it's been suggested this is a bug in the game. If it is then other gamers would have noticed it already. Well I guess some have as I'm not the only one reporting this phenomenon.

I think this has to be a training/coaching issue at some level. Because I've now seen this happen on three clean installs of the game and on at least four long careers played.

I have tried to test different training regimes but it's very difficult to make sure that is the variable that's showing an effect. And I don't have the resources to conduct a true experiment by running parallel savegames using different training.

I have two more specific questions though.

1. If you have noticed early decay on players, what have you attributed it to?
2. Many say you have to have intensive training on some areas for NHL level players. Others say intensive physical training during season can have a negative effect on players' conditioning. Is there any consensus which is the truth?
3. Players and coaches & spoken language. IRL it would obviously make it a challenge to coach players effectively if the coach and the player don't share a language. Is the language thing cosmetic only or does it have a gameplay effect?

Question/Food for thought. This may have been covered at some point in this thread (and I have read through all of it), but wanted to bring it up. Anyways, with that said, I hope someone can track what I am asking.

Regarding coaches and their "Coaching Forwards" and "Coaching Defenseman" skill. Does this correlate to Offensive Skill and Defensive Skill or is it actually correlated more towards that coach having the strength of coaching the specific position?

My example would be like this. Say you have a coach, who is 18/20 Coaching Defenseman. They have solid Level of Discipline, Determination, and all the other factors that contribute towards developing players at a steady rate. Now, let's say that they also have the personality of "prefers a direct attacking style of play".

Is this coach effective at coaching defensive stats of ALL players, such as forwards and defenseman, or is this coach specifically effective at coaching the offensive stats (due to the direct attacking style of play) on ONLY defenseman (due to the 18/20 Coaching Defenseman)?

For myself - I personally have always thought that the coach with a high Coaching Defenseman, should get put on coaching Def. Skill and it correlates with all players. Maybe this is the case, but for some reason with reading above that "direct attacking style of play" correlates to offensive stats and "patient defensive style of play" correlates to defensive stats made me wonder if I have actually been running practices wrong this whole time. Maybe it is something that I've easily missed and should have figured out - whoops. Maybe it is something that has never been thought about and I am on to something, who knows! Thanks to anyone who read and tracked my thought process.

Rough Neck wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:52 am Regarding coaches and their "Coaching Forwards" and "Coaching Defenseman" skill. Does this correlate to Offensive Skill and Defensive Skill or is it actually correlated more towards that coach having the strength of coaching the specific position?

My example would be like this. Say you have a coach, who is 18/20 Coaching Defenseman. They have solid Level of Discipline, Determination, and all the other factors that contribute towards developing players at a steady rate. Now, let's say that they also have the personality of "prefers a direct attacking style of play".

Is this coach effective at coaching defensive stats of ALL players, such as forwards and defenseman, or is this coach specifically effective at coaching the offensive stats (due to the direct attacking style of play) on ONLY defenseman (due to the 18/20 Coaching Defenseman)?

This is a bit of a necro but so is most discussion on this forum ATM; I want to comment on this since I feel it's an important aspect of the game.

AFAIK, the coaching of offensive skill and defensive skill affect all skaters. It's down to individual player training programs how much of this coaching they get. If you like, you can have your forwards on intensive defensive training or vice versa. If you have a good coach for defensive training and also a good one for offensive training and have these coaches assigned to proper jobs on the training menu, then your players will benefit from the strongest coaching for any given area.

So basically the coaches will train the players you tell them to train, or in other words, as much as you want them to train them. If your player is on a heavy defensive training regime, then the defensive coach who has been assigned to 'train defensive skill' will be heavily involved in training this player, no matter if he's a defenseman or a forward. That said, players will only benefit from training they are suited for. If a player has already reached his peak skill level at a particular area of skills, no amount of coaching will improve them at those skills. Some skills can peak at quite a young age while others take years to develop, so it's important to know your players and set up the coaching accordingly.

Then, one important thing is the coaches' playing style preference. The 'prefers cautious defensive play' and 'prefers direct attacking play' act as bonuses to skill development. So for offensive forwards you would want a coach who has high skill at training forwards AND a play style preference that involves attacking play. And so on. Also the game notes tell us that having coaches with similar coaching styles will be beneficial - and while I haven't personally tested this effect I have had good results with having two groups of coaches; offensive coaches and defensive coaches, and have both groups separately share play style preferences if possible.

I've been wondering for a long while how the re-training for a new position works. I know the 'adaptability' trait is involved.

But my question is can you ever get a player who has 'unconvincing' skill at a position to be 'accomplished'?

Also, when there is a star player who has peaked in all of his visible attributes, let's say age 26-28. And he has 'competent' at playing another position. Often it seems difficult to re-train these players; I would assume they wouldn't have low adaptability if they're franchise players talent-wise, so I'm wondering if there is a skill cap of sorts, if they've already reached their peak at everything and then there isn't any more 'room' for points at playing a different position...?

For example, in my current save I'm playing as Edmonton and I'm wondering if I could retrain McDavid to play really effectively as a winger (currently listed as 'competitive'). Reason being I just found another generational C, who is NHL all star level in skills already at 18 y/o and posting 1.15 PPG as a second liner. This guy however has 'unconvincing' playing as either wing, and I would really like to have these two play as line mates (especially as the rookie is already at 19 for faceoff skill).

So, any help would be appreciated as to how the retraining works and what limitations there are.