Schedule Snafu

[Lord PichuPal]

I know this is late in the life cycle of FHM 2's relevance (with 3 coming in a couple months probably), but now that I just wrapped up my first fictional season under expansion rules from 22 to 24 teams, I realized more than just my team had a bad schedule. I'd noticed before my expansion team Boston was only going to have 71 games and thought "That's stupid, why would we play 71 when everyone else gets 80?"

Well, apparently that wasn't the only thing wrong with it. Now that we just completed the regular season, I saw it was multiple teams with this issue.

For the life of me I can't figure out why this would happen, or if I'm the only one this has happened to. But I'm hoping it's an isolated incident in the case of my game so that it doesn't happen again next season, or worse yet, occur again in the next game. Anybody else see this happen before?

[AEWHistory]

Well, if this were real life I would suggest that the team folded. Has happened quite a bit historically, especially in small leagues. I don't think the economic model in FHM is robust enough (yet) to have a team fold from lack of funds, but could that be it? Wish I had more useful feedback, but I love the idea of a roller hockey league being simmed on FHM. Why not, right? Now if we could get a roller derby sim.....

[DirkGildun]

Assuming your league is fictional, the custom schedules provided by the game have a lot of problems -- teams having many more home games than road games (or vice versa), very unbalanced (even with no divisions or conferences), etc.


I asked for a basic schedule editor to be added to FHM2 after its release so that we could manually correct the problems (even if it was tedious), but that never happened. Hopefully, this will be added in FHM3 since this issue totally killed any interest I had in FHM2 (after I purchased it).


I do like its player name generator, however. I use it when I create players in another text hockey game.

[Lord PichuPal]

I guess I never ran into this previously due to the fact I never used expansion until this season. Everything had been normal with 22 teams (even if the schedule has a weird 2-week gap in late March when most teams have like 2-3 games left) so I don't understand why it suddenly would mess up with 24 after expansion. I imagined it'd just borrow another real world league structure and schedule and use that, but apparently not. My hope is that bringing it up will make it possible to get fixed in the next game, anyway.

[landru22]

Scheduling is an area where this game needs MAJOR improvement. Even in my 30-team fictional league, which I assumed would mirror the NHL schedule, teams from the Eastern Conference and playing some teams from the Western Conference more than they are playing some teams in their OWN division!

Someone at FHM really needs to review this. If we are not going to be able to edit/create our own schedules, then please at least give us templates that make some sense.

[Adam B]

Originally Posted by Lord PichuPal

I guess I never ran into this previously due to the fact I never used expansion until this season. Everything had been normal with 22 teams (even if the schedule has a weird 2-week gap in late March when most teams have like 2-3 games left) so I don't understand why it suddenly would mess up with 24 after expansion. I imagined it'd just borrow another real world league structure and schedule and use that, but apparently not. My hope is that bringing it up will make it possible to get fixed in the next game, anyway.

We thank you for bringing it up. I know I made sure this was passed on and we're currently trying to replicate it. It should have borrowed another league structure, and the fact it didn't is odd. If we can't replicate it, we may need to see your save to find out what happened.

Originally Posted by landru22

Scheduling is an area where this game needs MAJOR improvement. Even in my 30-team fictional league, which I assumed would mirror the NHL schedule, teams from the Eastern Conference and playing some teams from the Western Conference more than they are playing some teams in their OWN division!

Someone at FHM really needs to review this. If we are not going to be able to edit/create our own schedules, then please at least give us templates that make some sense.

If we aren't informed of something seemingly going wrong, it's tough for us to fix it. The schedule should be balanced automatically, so I would love to see some more details of your league (what structure, did you expand, etc) as to why this happened for you.

As much as the team and testers play the game, it's quite impossible for us to test every outcome because frankly, no one plays the game the same way. We rely on community members such as yourself telling us of your experience which helps us negate these issues.

[Lord PichuPal]

Originally Posted by landru22

Scheduling is an area where this game needs MAJOR improvement. Even in my 30-team fictional league, which I assumed would mirror the NHL schedule, teams from the Eastern Conference and playing some teams from the Western Conference more than they are playing some teams in their OWN division!

Someone at FHM really needs to review this. If we are not going to be able to edit/create our own schedules, then please at least give us templates that make some sense.

I do remember seeing this happen as well, but I think that was using a real life structure for the 22-team league. I don't know what league I borrowed from where a team could be playing someone from their division only twice but then turn around and play the other conference 5 times against one team, while having 7 games against another division opponent. I was hoping I'd seen no more oddities with that one after the expansion, so this is a confusing issue to see pop up.

[landru22]

Originally Posted by Adam B

If we aren't informed of something seemingly going wrong, it's tough for us to fix it. The schedule should be balanced automatically, so I would love to see some more details of your league (what structure, did you expand, etc) as to why this happened for you.

As much as the team and testers play the game, it's quite impossible for us to test every outcome because frankly, no one plays the game the same way. We rely on community members such as yourself telling us of your experience which helps us negate these issues.

Sorry, I have read other threads pertaining to the scheduling issues, so I assumed you were informed. I created a 30-team custom league with 2 conferences, six divisions total (like the NHL was a few years ago), and an 82-games schedule.

I just went through my entire schedule (I'm in my 4th season of play) and against the four other teams in my division I play one of them 4 times, and 1 EACH against the other three. I play one team in the Western Conference (I'm in the Eastern Conference) five times, 6 teams I play 4 times, 5 teams 2 times, and 3 teams once. I play 3 teams in my conference, but out of my division, 5 times, another 3 teams out of my division 4 times, 2 teams twice and 2 teams once.

As I said, I am in season 4 of this league, but I'm pretty sure seasons 1 thru 3 were basically the same as far as the scheduling issues.

If you would like, I would be glad to upload my game, but I'm reasonably sure if you were to re-create my setup from scratch you would get the same results.

I also have a 24-team custom league (2 confs - 4 divisions - 84 games) that has similar results.

I have not expanded in either league.

[DirkGildun]

I tried to create an 8-team custom league with 0 conferences and 0 divisions. The only schedule available in FHM2 is for 78 games. This is wrong immediately (the best result would be 11 games against 6 opponents and 12 games against the 7th opponent?).


I generated the league to see how the schedule would be created, and it was all over the place as far as how many games played against each opponent and how many were set up as home and away.


There are several other custom league schedules I looked at (several months ago) that have the same problem. Apparently, someone should have double checked these more closely before FHM2 was released (especially since they have never been corrected).

[jbaumgardt1]

I have a 36 team custom league 4 divisions with 9 teams each. The schedule that is generated seems pretty balanced, however about 85% of the games are inter divisional/ intra conference games with the remaining being divisional games. If it was the other way around with most of the games being divisional games, I would not have a problem. I'm not expecting the schedule to be perfect, but I would at least like to be able see it be balanced with a stronger focus on divisional play. What happens outside the division doesn't really matter to me. Anyway, I hope that scheduling will at least be improved if not fixed in FHM3.

[Orioles1966]

Originally Posted by jbaumgardt1

I have a 36 team custom league 4 divisions with 9 teams each. The schedule that is generated seems pretty balanced, however about 85% of the games are inter divisional/ intra conference games with the remaining being divisional games. If it was the other way around with most of the games being divisional games, I would not have a problem. I'm not expecting the schedule to be perfect, but I would at least like to be able see it be balanced with a stronger focus on divisional play. What happens outside the division doesn't really matter to me. Anyway, I hope that scheduling will at least be improved if not fixed in FHM3.

If they do have a schedule editor(I doubt it) for FHM3,it might be the only reason I make the purchase.


I have zero interest in playing the modern game(with the same scheduling) as it was intended. How would that be-Very Boring(quoting Adam Ant song).

[Sebastian Palkowski]

The main focus of FHM 3 is the modern game in combination with immersion and career mode. I know that some people will not like it but for the moment it is what it is. If, at any point, we earn enough money to pay another coder, we will have more options for development.

[DirkGildun]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

The main focus of FHM 3 is the modern game in combination with immersion and career mode. I know that some people will not like it but for the moment it is what it is. If, at any point, we earn enough money to pay another coder, we will have more options for development.

So you're saying there will be no schedule editor and/or importer function in FHM3? If not, I guess I'll be waiting for FHM4 then (I'm a diehard fictional/custom league player, and most of the custom schedules in FHM2 are terrible).

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by DirkGildun

So you're saying there will be no schedule editor and/or importer function in FHM3? If not, I guess I'll be waiting for FHM4 then (I'm a diehard fictional/custom league player, and most of the custom schedules in FHM2 are terrible).

No, sorry. In this case it might be better for you to wait for a later version of FHM.

[Anton]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

No, sorry. In this case it might be better for you to wait for a later version of FHM.

Or buy FHM3 and help the squad get over the hump...

[DirkGildun]

Originally Posted by Anton

Or buy FHM3 and help the squad get over the hump...

I already have bought FHM2 (last fall) and not really played it since the first day I had it (because of the scheduling issues). I asked early on for a schedule editor and/or importer to be added in an update, but that didn't happen.


I do use FHM2 occasionally, however, to generate fictional player names for another PC hockey game that I do play.

[Anton]

[Sebastian Palkowski]

I think that is the good thing about more then one hockey game: everyone can chose which one works best for someone.

I´m pretty sure some people don´t like the way we go with FHM (at least in the short run) but another game might be. You can´t just make everyone happy.

[Lord PichuPal]

Well, I'm not so much concerned about an editor program for the schedule as I am just ensuring the fictional schedules actually work as they should. It's confusing why it suddenly came up with the wacky schedule I got in my newly expanded league, when it had been fine prior to that at 22 teams. I just want it to actually create a proper schedule based on the divisions and such, even if it borrows from a real world schedule to do that. I imagine that part is easier than coming up with a completely new program on the side.

Though being able to import/export saves between versions would be appreciated in the future, too. I imagine that's something a lot of people would want for modern or fictional.

[GiantYankee]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

No, sorry. In this case it might be better for you to wait for a later version of FHM.

Okay but have the schedules been tweaked at all? Especially the ones that are really unbalanced? I've read that even a fictional 30 team league (modeled after the current NHL) has a wonky schedule that doesn't follow the NHL's.