EHM The Blue Line

I think it will

I've been playing East side Hockey Manager for a handful of years now like a number of you's and still remember downloading the freeware version made and developed by the great Risto Remes. I'm writing today in an attempt to add my own idea's that I'd like to see in the game which include:

- More in-depth of GM / Coach and Players interaction
Example: Instead of always disciplining the players why can't we approach them and let them know they are doing a great job ? This could boost morale, consistancy perhaps ? How about us GM's letting the coach know how exactly you feel the way they are coaching so far ? being able to send some feedback over could allow the coach to feel more pressured to give more effort into disciplining the players trying to break out of a slump perhaps.

- Fighting / Aggression / Rivalries
At the moment (EHM 2007 3.1) we have players capable of going out with "Berserk" aggression set and they just fight anyone who skates near them, capable of piling up monster PIM's during a season if they play all season long. What I would like to see is this:

If I have a team carrying an aggressive lineup with more than a few known players that are out there to fight like the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins or even a team like the Philadelphia Flyers, I'd love to see the opposing team looking at the possibility to "more than often" dress some toughness for the game or call up some players countering the certainty that the game will be obviously physical especially if the teams are known rivals, removing the need of a player who's aggressive but rarely fights always racking up fighting majors and needless Penalties in the EHM's current engine and coding.

I would also like to see a revamped version of the fighting option that would include a "protect" setting that would allow the player to use his limited ice-time to determine himself wether he needs to retaliate by seeking payback after a huge check on his teammates, or simply getting involved and settling down a physical game. A "Fight Tough-guy" option that will allow the player to seek out the other teams designated tough-guy and do his thing besides dropping them with non-fighters.

Online mode
I'm sure this has been asked a billion times over but man I would love to join a league where I have the ability to run my own team along with all the other NHL teams being run by human-controlled as well. I'm not a network guy so I'll leave it as that!

Trading
The ability to set the frequency of trades. With so many trades how do you keep track of what player is now playing elsewhere ? In the NHL trades happen very very rarely, up until the offseason, trade deadline and a few at the draft but during the season, there isn't almost 30-40 trades ! I'd love to see teams looking at the future more and developing they're prospects better besides adding them to the waiver wire to save 1.3 million in salary =P

Well thats it for now. Feel free to add or comment to what I have wrote.
I look forward to the release of the OOTP hockey project and would like to thank the blue-line community and administration for the undying love of this game. Without all of you this game would have a very very slow pulse!

Oilfield 316 (Rob)

Does OOTP has any relationship with SI?
I think OOTP is a product of SI years before,am I right?

That's right - OOTP and SI briefly joined together to develop the OOTP Baseball game.

It has a name: Franchise Hockey Manager 13. Late December/Early January release.

Hmmm....FHM....

I think I'm going to enjoy not being specific enough when I need to Google "FHM"

darn it Stinson! hahaha

Ah I'm pleased to see the name and logo have now been announced. I'm really excited about how things are shaping up!

Looking good! I'm really looking forward to this!

I'm really curious to see how things will come up with this game! I'm almost sold to it, the only thing I'm waiting to know is, will the AI will be better than EHM about trades etc..... that would make a huge difference to me for buying it or not.

philou21 wrote:I'm really curious to see how things will come up with this game! I'm almost sold to it, the only thing I'm waiting to know is, will the AI will be better than EHM about trades etc..... that would make a huge difference to me for buying it or not.

I agree - the AI and particularly the trade engine will be key to the reception to the game.

I guess in this respect, the demo will be useful. Assuming, that is, that there will be a demo.

I hope so! A demo of six months in-game like EHM would be great. Six months should be the "minimum" as a demo of an hockey game speciafically to try trades and see what the AI can do with it, as well as waivers. Waivers sometimes were really weird in EHM.

I'm very interested!

On July 31st on the OOTP site Developer Sebastian Palkowski noted

“So what can you (realistically) expect from us in version 1: a database with all NHL teams and players (with bio data and basic career stats). We found a way to rate player without rating them for every year they played in the NHL: basically, each player will get ability ratings for 5 points in his career (start, pre-prime, prime, post-prime, end) and a pre-defined template that describes him best so we can generate plausible skills for every year he played. It will be possible for the researcher to rate prominent player in more detail if the templates are not enough.

So what you most likely can expect from version 1 is the ability to start the NHL in the past, continue through the years, rookies will show up in the draft pool (or assigned to the real teams, your choice), finances will be modified to reflect the time and stats will reflect the years as well (at least stuff we have data for: scoring level, penalties).”


With my love of "retro/old time hockey" I love what's being described here!
While the gameplay/interface is of course critical, the ability to "start the NHL in the past" makes it potentially a spectacular game to me...

This will be great. The world needs more hockey manager games.

nino33 wrote:I'm very interested!

On July 31st on the OOTP site Developer Sebastian Palkowski noted

“So what can you (realistically) expect from us in version 1: a database with all NHL teams and players (with bio data and basic career stats). We found a way to rate player without rating them for every year they played in the NHL: basically, each player will get ability ratings for 5 points in his career (start, pre-prime, prime, post-prime, end) and a pre-defined template that describes him best so we can generate plausible skills for every year he played. It will be possible for the researcher to rate prominent player in more detail if the templates are not enough.

So what you most likely can expect from version 1 is the ability to start the NHL in the past, continue through the years, rookies will show up in the draft pool (or assigned to the real teams, your choice), finances will be modified to reflect the time and stats will reflect the years as well (at least stuff we have data for: scoring level, penalties).”


With my love of "retro/old time hockey" I love what's being described here!
While the gameplay/interface is of course critical, the ability to "start the NHL in the past" makes it potentially a spectacular game to me...

This.

Anyone know what the online capability will be?

eric1985 wrote:Anyone know what the online capability will be?

From the June 29th update... (http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... 113&t=8772)

"The game will not have a network mode where people connect and play a multiplayer game. The game will implement online leagues in a very similar way to OOTP. The initial version might not be that deep, but the plan is to develop it to ultimately be on a par with OOTP 13+."

I'm afraid I don't know what "in a very similar way to OOTP" means as I've never played OOTP online (or offline!)...has anyone played OOTP online?

nino33 wrote:I'm afraid I don't know what "in a very similar way to OOTP" means as I've never played OOTP online (or offline!)...has anyone played OOTP online?

I haven't played it online myself, but from what I've heard, it sounds like a direct evolution of the "classic" method. You do what you need to with your team, and then export it to the commissioner. He then sims x amount of time, and uploads the new file. You download the new file, manage your team, export, etc., etc. Of course, they've surely integrated this all into the game and stuff, but I think that's the basic idea.

Online leagues seem to be pretty popular in the OOTP community, so I think we'll be in good shape. In fact, OOTP easily has the most enthusiastic online leagues that I've ever seen. Whether that's simply how OOTP fans are, or if that's how good the online capability of the game is, I'm not sure... but it's a great sign. Good example, check out this league: British Baseball Society (site doesn't display well in Chrome). And keep in mind, apart from the home page, much of that HTML content is generated by the game itself, and simply exported by the commissioner.

Well I think that's a great name. Can't wait for this to come out. Even if the first version isn't great hopefully it will be a continuing series and become a great game.

When this comes out will there be challenges etc. like there is for EHM on this forum?

Probably at some point. I'm not sure if it would happen right away though. We'd have to see how it would work out, do some testing and such.

I was wondering if we could perhaps run the same Challenge across both games at the same time. We could have separate standings/winners for each game. I don't know if this would work or whether it would dilute the number of users in each game - but it's just a thought.

It might dilute the number of people participating in each. I guess we'll have to see how many people buy FHM and go from there. If enough of us buy it, we might not need to run the challenge with EHM.

I would probably wait and see if FHM is good enough first