EHM The Blue Line

Slowly we turn towards FHM 3 development, so now is the time to gather feedback for features you would like to see in the next version. Let us know, as we want as many opinions as possible from different sources.

Thanks!

Will International be playable this time around?

also the CHL (the club competition)

and a small bug bear of mine a way to bundle the stats together for regular season and play offs

2D match view is the biggest for me, to the point where FHM2 with that added would be enough for me.

Beyond that, anything that makes the modern game feel more realistic, so the trading/roster AI that you have talked about being re-written would be good, along with CHL/larger game world.

At this point I will not commit on any specific features but international play and league cups (local and international) are on top of our list so the chances are pretty high that it will be part of FHM 3.

In general is the main focus on the modern play. Our goal is to make the leagues feel like real leagues and not just some fictional league with a real name. Together with more immersion it should bring the main game to a new level (and improve historical/fictional play at the same time).

I agree with hluraven about the trading I am ten season into a save with the Cannucks and I havn't had a trade offer since season 2.

For me what's missing is immersion. The reason I keep playing ehm over fhm is because ehm has much more relevant news messages and stuff that make it feel like a real league.

Besides that I hate the match engine screen. There is too much detail in the main overview and it doesn't please my eyes. A clean match screen with relevant stats and fun to read play-by-play would help me keep invested.

To be end with a positive: I like the happiness thingy. Makes it more fun to bench (or not) players

Maybe in FHM3 will be playable all European leagues?

Here's what I'd like to see:

A 2d engine. That along with the immersion mentioned is why I'm playing EHM over FHM. Hockey is a fast paced game and reading text isn't really all that fun for me.

I too want the immersion factor. Having those news reports and rumours adds to the experience of being a GM. I also want things like waivers, trades and signings tweaked. I know you guys are working on them in any event.

Thanks for listening.

Immersion is something we want to improve greatly. We want to get rid of the days you just click continue and nothing happens. We change our news system (to give the user a much better control on what he wants to see), we change the look of the home screen a bit to improve the general gameflow for the day to day player and make it (much) easier for the user to understand what he needs to do (without forcing user who don´t want this to use it). We will make events like the draft or trading deadline day more interesting and of course work on the pre-season. Add in many new news types (like e.g. streaks or records) and the world should come alive.

In terms of immersion I think the following would all help:

* Storylines with decisions and consequences like you find in OOTP

* Unhappy players not wanting to sign contracts and / or asking for trades. Too often I've had a disgruntled player due to lack of ice time who's just happily signed the next contract I've placed in front of him.

* More realistic salary demands. Too many players request short-term bridge deals and that makes it easy to hoard talent, either making solo-play too easy or unbalancing multi-player leagues.

Brent_dog wrote:
* Storylines with decisions and consequences like you find in OOTP

This sounds very interesting. Do you have a screenshot or two?

Alessandro wrote:

Brent_dog wrote:
* Storylines with decisions and consequences like you find in OOTP

This sounds very interesting. Do you have a screenshot or two?

That's the "storylines" feature. Here's an example though it's an old one. http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/newsletters/nl0094/

I would also like to see more immersion. Many of the news items repeat themselves over and over (player is injured, out for 4 weeks, wants to get back as soon as possible). A little more personality in the game would be fantastic.

Also, the injury time seems to be stagnant and cookie-cutter. Almost all of them appear to be 3 or 4 weeks. I rarely (if ever) see any injuries for a few days, out for the season, or something else in between.

A continuous tweaking of the trade AI would be great. The trades so far in my first season:

Dallas trades John Moore (D, 24) to NJ Devils for Travis Moen (LW, 33)
Carolina trades Ryan Murphy (RD, 22) to Montreal for 3rd round pick
Edmonton trades Liro Pakarinen (RW, 24) to St. Louis for 3rd round pick
Edmonton trades Griffin Reinhart (LD, 21) to Calgary for Jonas Hiller (G, 33)
Edmonton trades David Musil (LD, 22) to NY Islanders for 3rd round pick
NY Rangers trade Marc Staal (LD, 28) to Carolina for 4th round pick
Edmonton trades Cam Talbot (G, 28) to NY Rangers for Dylan McIlrath (RD, 23)
Toronto trades Nazem Kadri (C, 25) to Montreal for 2nd round pick

These trades are pretty awful and one sided. Why would a young (and constantly rebuilding) Edmonton Oilers team trade all these young guys for practically nothing? I would like to see the trade AI improve.

For the record, I have not made any trades at this point, just watching the other teams for now.

Finally, I want to see some type of pre-game/saved-game editor, much like the ones we have had for EHM over the years.

Immersion is our main focus for FHM 3: more news stories, more to do for the user, better presentation of the "things around the league(s)", better present special events and so on.

Regarding injuries, we are in contact with a hockey team physio and if we have the time, we will completely re-write the injury system.

Tweaking of all AI´s (not only trading) is an ongoing project.

Editor: at the moment we re-write the researcher pre-game editor. The long-term plan is to make a (basic) version available for public.

RomaGoth wrote:I would also like to see more immersion. Many of the news items repeat themselves over and over (player is injured, out for 4 weeks, wants to get back as soon as possible). A little more personality in the game would be fantastic.

Also, the injury time seems to be stagnant and cookie-cutter. Almost all of them appear to be 3 or 4 weeks. I rarely (if ever) see any injuries for a few days, out for the season, or something else in between.

A continuous tweaking of the trade AI would be great. The trades so far in my first season:

Dallas trades John Moore (D, 24) to NJ Devils for Travis Moen (LW, 33)
Carolina trades Ryan Murphy (RD, 22) to Montreal for 3rd round pick
Edmonton trades Liro Pakarinen (RW, 24) to St. Louis for 3rd round pick
Edmonton trades Griffin Reinhart (LD, 21) to Calgary for Jonas Hiller (G, 33)
Edmonton trades David Musil (LD, 22) to NY Islanders for 3rd round pick
NY Rangers trade Marc Staal (LD, 28) to Carolina for 4th round pick
Edmonton trades Cam Talbot (G, 28) to NY Rangers for Dylan McIlrath (RD, 23)
Toronto trades Nazem Kadri (C, 25) to Montreal for 2nd round pick

These trades are pretty awful and one sided. Why would a young (and constantly rebuilding) Edmonton Oilers team trade all these young guys for practically nothing? I would like to see the trade AI improve.

For the record, I have not made any trades at this point, just watching the other teams for now.

Finally, I want to see some type of pre-game/saved-game editor, much like the ones we have had for EHM over the years.

An iOS version as well please!?!

Sebastian Palkowski wrote:Immersion is our main focus for FHM 3: more news stories, more to do for the user, better presentation of the "things around the league(s)", better present special events and so on.

Regarding injuries, we are in contact with a hockey team physio and if we have the time, we will completely re-write the injury system.

Tweaking of all AI´s (not only trading) is an ongoing project.

Editor: at the moment we re-write the researcher pre-game editor. The long-term plan is to make a (basic) version available for public.

Thanks for the response Sebastian. You guys have come a long way in a short time with FHM. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the kind words. We work hard every day to make another big step up with FHM 3 this year!

RomaGoth wrote:

Sebastian Palkowski wrote:Immersion is our main focus for FHM 3: more news stories, more to do for the user, better presentation of the "things around the league(s)", better present special events and so on.

Regarding injuries, we are in contact with a hockey team physio and if we have the time, we will completely re-write the injury system.

Tweaking of all AI´s (not only trading) is an ongoing project.

Editor: at the moment we re-write the researcher pre-game editor. The long-term plan is to make a (basic) version available for public.

Thanks for the response Sebastian. You guys have come a long way in a short time with FHM. Keep up the good work!

My wish is :

-iOS version
-CIS available to play
-France league
-Acess to farm team simply and directly, like in ehm 2007

I could be a little late on this is but ill still put my opinion

On trades:
Being able to retain cap
a little bit more easy navigational layout on trading

On Ability Display Stars:
if your said prospect is more than 5.0 Potential its should overlap the Yellow Stars with another color until it hit the max potential
✰✰✰✰✰ = 5.0 Potential
★✰✰✰✰ = 6.0 Potential
It kinda confusing if you have never played the game before but in my head it makes sense

Make the Editing player screen more colorful and a little bit more user friendly like be able to edit potential, you have 2 little arrows and i know you can type in whatever number you want before it reaches the limit, but just a thought

Make an option to where you make a draft class and people can post it here, so that you are able to make it more user friendly and it makes it fun for everyone

scyie wrote:I could be a little late on this is but ill still put my opinion

On trades:
Being able to retain cap
a little bit more easy navigational layout on trading

Yes!

scyie wrote:On Ability Display Stars:
if your said prospect is more than 5.0 Potential its should overlap the Yellow Stars with another color until it hit the max potential
✰✰✰✰✰ = 5.0 Potential
★✰✰✰✰ = 6.0 Potential
It kinda confusing if you have never played the game before but in my head it makes sense

One of the better ideas I have seen. It is very confusing when you see a player with 5 yellow stars but his actual number is 6.0 or something.

scyie wrote:Make the Editing player screen more colorful and a little bit more user friendly like be able to edit potential, you have 2 little arrows and i know you can type in whatever number you want before it reaches the limit, but just a thought

Agreed!

Thanks @romagoth for agreeing

What about an 'offer to all' option where we could offer our players out to everyone in the league and they can come back to us with offers. I'm sure that was available in one of the ootp baseball games its also an option in EHM.

MWE wrote:What about an 'offer to all' option where we could offer our players out to everyone in the league and they can come back to us with offers. I'm sure that was available in one of the ootp baseball games its also an option in EHM.

That´s something I throw around in my head for some time now. Since our main focus for FHM 3 is career play and immersion it would fit in perfectly and make the user job much easier. So I hope to find some time somewhere and add it to the game.

Sebastian Palkowski wrote:

MWE wrote:What about an 'offer to all' option where we could offer our players out to everyone in the league and they can come back to us with offers. I'm sure that was available in one of the ootp baseball games its also an option in EHM.

That´s something I throw around in my head for some time now. Since our main focus for FHM 3 is career play and immersion it would fit in perfectly and make the user job much easier. So I hope to find some time somewhere and add it to the game.

Any chance you can obtain the real teams/logos and license like OOTP17 this year?

I would really love to see a career focus. I recently purchased Football Manager, despite strongly disliking soccer, and have played more hours on that than FHM2 by far because I find the career focus to be so fun. Trying to build a reputation as a manager/coach, ways to develop my attributes, interest from bigger teams, starting small and really building up. I think that is a load of fun and would love to see a career mode taking a coach/GM from a place like the NAHL/etc up through NCAA/CHL and into the NHL. I also love NCAA games because of the recruiting process - and would love to see recruiting implemented - whether that is the ability to take a prospective free agent signing around the community (Hard for an NHLer to turn down a California team after walking around the rink in shorts in December) or an actual college recruiting mode. My favorite part of these games is getting the chance to take something and build it up into a powerhouse. That hasn't really been a part of past FHMs, but is a key feature in every one of my favorite games of all time.
Break a leg, and thanks for all the work you do!