Player ratings

[julius]

Since player ratings appear to be targeted in our next updates, I thought I would raise two issues (again).

First, as several have noted, the player ratings do not properly reflect the 'value' of strong, physical defensive forwards, particularly enforcers. Quite unlike their real life counterparts, these players are often not dressed nor receive the same ice-time, which distorts the simulation. As a result, since the simulation does try to produce overall stats that are similar to the NHL, the PIM numbers have to be allocated to players who usually don't earn them. More importantly, if these players are not valued properly, it prevents access to many strategic alternatives for the FHL player. There have been several suggestions for how to add enough value to these players so that they have an appreciable impact on the game results and to ensure that the AI provides them with ice-time, but without knowing how the game engine is coded they are only speculative. For example, if a noted fighter is on the ice, can we adjust the 'bravery' ratings for each opposition player downwards (or increase the 'bravery' rating of his teammates) to the point where it makes an appreciable difference-and this is recognized by the AI? There are other ratings that could also be tweaked to reflect the impact that these players might have, but it is unclear how the match engine could cope with them. Hopefully we can get some feedback from the developers, since this is such a crucial part of the game and the strategies that we can use.

Second, could we please have a tab (probably under the "League" tab) which displays fully sortable ratings and stats for all players in the league? OOTP 14 has a perfect example for how this should work. Information accessed this way is incredibly useful in the game, and also for editing ratings etc.

Thanks for the great work so far.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by julius

Since player ratings appear to be targeted in our next updates, I thought I would raise two issues (again).

First, as several have noted, the player ratings do not properly reflect the 'value' of strong, physical defensive forwards, particularly enforcers. Quite unlike their real life counterparts, these players are often not dressed nor receive the same ice-time, which distorts the simulation. As a result, since the simulation does try to produce overall stats that are similar to the NHL, the PIM numbers have to be allocated to players who usually don't earn them. More importantly, if these players are not valued properly, it prevents access to many strategic alternatives for the FHL player. There have been several suggestions for how to add enough value to these players so that they have an appreciable impact on the game results and to ensure that the AI provides them with ice-time, but without knowing how the game engine is coded they are only speculative. For example, if a noted fighter is on the ice, can we adjust the 'bravery' ratings for each opposition player downwards (or increase the 'bravery' rating of his teammates) to the point where it makes an appreciable difference-and this is recognized by the AI? There are other ratings that could also be tweaked to reflect the impact that these players might have, but it is unclear how the match engine could cope with them. Hopefully we can get some feedback from the developers, since this is such a crucial part of the game and the strategies that we can use.

Second, could we please have a tab (probably under the "League" tab) which displays fully sortable ratings and stats for all players in the league? OOTP 14 has a perfect example for how this should work. Information accessed this way is incredibly useful in the game, and also for editing ratings etc.

Thanks for the great work so far.

This is one of the top things that will determine if this game becomes a success or failure. A key market this game will have to tap takes sim replays very seriously, and a game missing a core element will be ignored-

If they get this in accurately, proper value for tough players, brawls ect- then all the other features will win over a lot of the replay sim crowd

We shall see...