Open Beta for Final Update

[JeffR]

As with the previous update, we've decided to run a public beta prior to the official release of the final version, giving you access to at least one, possibly more, test builds of the new update before the official release. Hopefully, this lets us catch any remaining urgent issues without the need for post-release hotfixes, or at least keep them to an absolute minimum..

Please bear in mind, if you opt-in to the beta, that these are test builds and may do unexpected things; the whole point of the public beta is to find these problems. We offer no promises that something unpleasant won't happen to any save you use with the beta version, so, if you want to take part with one of your current saved games, it's best to use the "Save Game As" option on the game's File menu to make a new version of the save and use that, so you don't ruin the "good" copy of your save. And it's definitely not a good idea to start a new game you want to continue playing long-term with this beta.


The public beta is only available for the Steam version of the game - Steam makes it ridiculously easy to set one up (only takes a few minutes), where a Fastspring beta would require us a full-scale release process from us (most of a day, assuming we have access to the shared resources we need to use, which isn't always possible), which isn't practical to do.

To join the beta:

1. Right-click on FHM9 in your Steam Library and select Properties
2. Click on "Betas"
3. Under "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter the access code, which is "updatepublicbeta" (no quotes)
4. That should populate the "Select the beta..." box above with the option "public_beta - Public Beta", select that
5. Steam should then automatically update your game to the current open beta version (initially 9.4.103). If it doesn't do that, check your update queue; if it's not in there, exit and restart the Steam client and it should appear.

Should you wish to leave the beta, just go back to the Betas page and on the dropdown menu select None. Steam will then revert you to the current public version of the game. When the final version of the update is ready, the public beta branch will be updated to that one as well, so there'll be no need to change back to get it, although it won't do anything if you do.

If you're already one of our internal beta testers, don't join the public beta! You'll lose access to the beta versions we don't release to the public. Your version is already updated to the current public build.

If you find any problems with the beta, particularly fixes that aren't working or unexpected issues arising out of the changes made, continue to report them the usual channels - preferably the tech support forum on our boards, the Steam board, or /r/franchisehockey on Reddit, those get checked daily. But, when reportng, please mention that you found the problem while using the public beta.

We'll run the open beta a little longer than last time, it'll probably at least a week or so before the full release of the final update, depending on the feedback we get and any necessary fixes.

Notes:

There are quite a few new things this time (we managed to catch up on a few delayed projects), so we'll appreciate any help we can get giving them a final test. As always, the "Current" rosters are updated to their final version, but unlike in past years the cutoff date is about ten days after the trading deadline (so March 12), and a little later than that for the NHL. We've also added eight new historical challenges (on a general theme of "...and then it all went horribly wrong..."); the achievements tied to these are fully functional in Steam as well as in the game, so if you test them now in the beta and succeed, you'll get the Steam achievement. 2D mode has seen a number of changes to the mechanics used during breakout plays (and corresponding forechecking by the defending team) that should produce breakouts that more closely follow what you'd expect to see with your chosen tactical options; the general principle is similar to what was done earlier with improving the exedcution of special teams tactics. (And, naturally, the produced a shift in the stats being produced by the 2D engine, so we also had to make a bunch of corresponding adjustments to get those back in line.)

Historical mode received several improvements to the handling of the Cleveland-Minnesota merger in 1978 and then the corresponding Minnesota-San Jose dispersal draft in 1991, and we also added a large number of players who played in the AHL in the pre-draft era but never made it to the NHL.

GM season score calculations received a light revision, we updated a number of 22-23 European playoff formats, we've added shot charts to 2D mode (and to boxscores for both modes), we added a new goalie start scheduling system (which should mainly be of use in multiplayer, but will also allow precise control of goalie starts if you want to use it), and a long list of smaller changes:

Changes/Additions:

-database updated with post-trading deadline rosters; for the most part rosters are as of March 12, but I continued updating NHL signings, etc. for several days beyond that. Junior/college players who've signed NHL contracts (not renewals) beginning in 23-24 remain with their old CHL/NCAA team with a contract set to expire after this year and a future contract that activates July 1, 2023. Retained-cap contracts should all be set up properly now, with their cap hits lowered and the same amount applied as a cap penalty to the team that retained salary (Side note on the real life trading deadline: the AI doesn't yet know how to do the double-retention trick of passing a player through two trades to reduce his cap hit to the new team by 75% of its original value, as in Patrick Kane's move to New York, but that'll be something we'll try to get in for next year, assuming the league doesn't clamp down on it)
-breakout plays in 2D and corresponding defensive forechecking will now tend to follow the formations specified in the breakout/forechecking tactical settings much more closely (similar to the earlier adjustment that made teams more likely to maintain their selected PP/PK formations) (probably will need a bunch of refining, this is just the first attempt at it)
-added eight new historical challenges (they should all be active both in the game and on Steam now): Toronto 2003-04, New Jersey 1995-96, St. Louis (Eagles) 1934-35, Pittsburgh 1968-69, Detroit 1970-71, Buffalo 1986-87, Florida 2009-10, and Colorado 2003-04 (see the historical challenges setup on the start screen for full descriptions)
-added Dispersal Drafts in 1978 (Cleveland/Minnesota; the 5 worst teams in the league can select a player off Minnesota's protected list) and 1991 (Minnesota/San Jose; San Jose selects unprotected Minnesota players); Cleveland players will also transfer to Minnesota at the start of 78-79
-lowered most of the budget amounts in the Wage Budget setting to correct the trend of long-term leaguewide budget increases
-increased effect of player talent on jersey sales
-improved criteria for the top scorer predictions in the Season Preview email
-when checking if a team is above the cap floor, team is also credited for the cap hits of any players currently on INT status or the disabled list, so the roster AI in particular won't need to add salary if they're close to the floor and have injuries to expensive players, resulting in a bunch of unrealistic temporary moves
-increased starting funds for expansion teams in standard and custom games
-updated presets list in the Current and Opening Night databases with a number of injuries, mainly players who wound up missing the entire season after being expected to return midyear
-the 7-game 3rd-place playoff series in the Mestis is now a single game
-changed the DEL and DEL-2 quarter-final series to best-of-7 from best-of-5
-changed the HockeyAllsvenskan quarterfinals to best-of-7
-added 270 players from the pre-draft era to the historical database; this is pretty much everyone who played at least half a season in the pre-1963 AHL or its predecessors but never made it to the NHL
-Season Score Changes: added a "Met Objective" yes/no category, it'll be a Yes if the team's final ranking in the entire league was equal to or better than its season objective; added Longevity Bonus: 1 point for every consecutive season prior to this one where the user was GM of this team; added a "Financial Health Bonus": If the user's team is currently in the top 20% (rounded up) of the league in terms of Ending Points (on the financial screen), it will add from 1-8 additional points to their score
-adjusted junior preferences in newly-generated players to reflect the post-Covid, post-Ukraine invasion trends (fairly sharp dropoff in Nordic and Russian players heading to North America, but college/major junior preference will be more common in a few smaller countries now)
-added new AI transfer behaviour that attempts to simulate teams with a rebuilding outlook selling off some of their better players who have expiring contracts, as well as increase the frequency of transfers made at/near the deadline (deadlines have also been adjusted from January 31 to February 15 for a number of leagues)
-Liiga teams are now allowed to sign contracted players directly from Mestis/Suomi-Sarja teams in the offseason for a fixed fee of $25000 (we'll probably elaborate on this in 10 to allow for in-season moves as well, this is an intermediate step towards reflecting the real-life mechanics better)
-added shot location overview added to 2D ingame stats ("Shots" button on the Stats screen) and boxscore (for games in both modes)
-added manual game by game goalie start setting (goalie starts tab on the lineup screen) - if the start is set to anything except AI, it will override the normal starter selection with the goalie listed
-added nickname back to the personal details section of the player screen (on the line under Name)
-added new filter options: dropdown list for "Junior Preference", "Rights" option (league dropdown, then team dropdown within that league + all/free/none options), Region" option, and changed ratings filter to Minimum/Maximum rather than just Minimum, "Maximum" checkbox below the ratings section of the player filter popup that switches that filter to use the values specified as maximums rather than minimums
-users currently controlling a team in a league with a high reputation (roughly ECHL/DEL level or better), they will not get any national team job offers for national teams ranked >25 in the IIHF rankings or any U20/U18/U17 teams
-when a team has a farm team in a league that allows promotion and it gets promoted to the parent team's league, the parent league will get their reserve list activated so they have a place to store players who'd normally go to the farm team
-on the "Assign Numbers" popup, if the player's desired number is already used, retired, or honoured, there will be another option between the "Desired Number" and "Choose Another Number" lines, "Suggested Number"
-significantly reduced the local language skill level at which players become much less reluctant to sign in a foreign league on another continent (was 150, now 75); in particular this should improve the ability of teams to re-sign their foreign players after their first contract
-made a number of modifications to the team harmony incident system so teams with recent negative events or a lot of controversial players will be more likely to suffer incidents
-added new Thai and South African U-18 teams, which will allow the lowest level of the U-18 international tournament to function correctly (hadn't been working due to an inadequate number of teams)
-restructured the generic leagues representing lower-level leagues in major hockey countries and the top-level leagues in very minor countries; these are now arrangeed in four groups of similar overall quality levels, rather than the previous approach of lumping leagues of dissimilar talent values together based on their name alone, e.g. "Division 3" of Swedish hockey no longer has worse in-game quality than the top level of play in, e.g. the UAE or Thailand); this should improve the flow of players into/out of these leagues as well as the realism of their generated player stats
-updated transfer deadlines in several European leagues from January 30 to February 15

Fixes:

-in the alternate ("fhm", not dark) skin, the text in the player Bio tab no longer shows up as black on a dark background
-in multiplayer games, NHL training camp tryouts are now disabled (they wouldn't work properly, as the decision is instant and conflicts would exist if teams invited multiple players and then submitted their rosters; previously tryout offers were allowed in multiplayer but not included in the data sent back to the commissioner, which would break lineups; this removes the ambiguity and the lineup errors)
-fixed loophole in the harmony intervention system that could lead to a player getting a conflict with himself due to a failed intervention
-during breaks in 2D play when the Player Stats popups appear, the New Stats popup now also appears, rather than having Show/Hide Stats cycle back and forth between showing one or another, and never actually hiding anything
-made adjustment to 2D engine that should reduce the number of situations where, when there are only 2 offensive players past the blue line, and they repeatedly pass the puck back and forth
-the "PPC/PPG" numbers are no longer reversed on the new Team Stats tab for game reports and in the Stats screen for 2D games
-fixed issue with AI tactical role selection for goon/enforcer roles; the AI should now tend to assign Enforcer/Goon tactical roles to players with the Enforcer-type templates more often
-players will no longer request some types of bonuses and then reject them
-if the user already has the maximum number of players added to his side of a trade, the "Make this Work" button will now be greyed out properly
-the Global Financial Coefficient setting (File-Setup/Options) will no longer revert to 0.000 if any adjustment is made to it
-fixed issue in custom games with historical finances turned that was causing a sharp decline in team budgets after 5-10 years
-fixed issue that could cause AI-run NHL teams to release players during the season without a buyout/cap penalty
-when looking at the tactics tab of the lines screen, if a specific line is selected it will no longer occasionally include some players from other lines (we found some that were missing from the previous fix for this)
-shot chart background image will be copied to existing saves so the chart isn't on a blank background in those games
-on the team staff screen, the "Owner" box at the top-left no longer has the word "Owner" repeated in the middle of it, partly overlapping the Nationality and Confidence in GM lines
-made a number of small text/typo corrections
-fixed potential crash during setup of historical games starting in later (post-2000) seasons

[Spartacus70]

-fixed issue with AI tactical role selection for goon/enforcer roles; the AI should now tend to assign Enforcer/Goon tactical roles to players with the Enforcer-type templates more often

That will help for sure.But you have to make a way for ensuring AI coaches to crank one or two notches in terms of aggressiveness tactic (in historical saves and for the proper coaches). And make sure they will put the bad guys in the roster!

[tomkmb]

Really grateful that you elect to do these open Betas

Just to clarify

"-players will no longer request some types of bonuses and then reject them"

does this include the issue where players would request certain roles and then reject them? I know that had been reported and just want to see if it falls under this same banner

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by tomkmb

does this include the issue where players would request certain roles and then reject them? I know that had been reported and just want to see if it falls under this same banner

That's what it fixes, yeah. The "reject" and "request" lists for a couple of templates accidentally had some overlap.

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by JeffR

That's what it fixes, yeah. The "reject" and "request" lists for a couple of templates accidentally had some overlap.

Great thanks!

[crusadertsar]

Thanks! Have you guys fixed the issue with Tim Connolly being retired in 2005-2006 (and in 2006-2007 as well) season in Historical Mode?

[AbeFroman]

-added new AI transfer behaviour that attempts to simulate teams with a rebuilding outlook selling off some of their better players who have expiring contracts, as well as increase the frequency of transfers made at/near the deadline

Does this include the NHL and making trade deadline moves more realistic or is it just for European leagues? The word “transfer” is the only reason I’m asking.

[redtiger7]

Originally Posted by JeffR

That's what it fixes, yeah. The "reject" and "request" lists for a couple of templates accidentally had some overlap.

Doesn't work on suplementary roles at least.

[bandwagonfan]

keeps crashing all the time

[BlackIce]

Reporting some strange oddities... Detroit picked up Eeli Tolvanen thru waivers a few months ago, and he's played 26 games, mostly playing on the second line contributing to 8 pts, during this stint.

Robby Fabbri who is considered playing some of the best hockey of his career thus far is now on waivers from Detroit playing 46 games totaling 36 pts.... Detroits cap is at 67 Million.

Niklas Backstrom also added to waivers from Washington. Backstrom is totaling 31 pts in 47 games so far this season. Capitals current cap is at 75 Million.

Colorado Avalanche goalie Keith Kinkaid sparkling 10 Wins, 4 Losses, 2.29 GAA is placed on waivers so they can snag Seattle's goalie Joey Daccord whos, 2 Wins, 5 Losses and a 3.90 GAA

[BlackIce]

I'm almost halfway thru my save now and I can't keep up with all these off ice incidents, creating more and more team harmony issues with cliques. I get done dealing with one issue as one player finally falls off the clique and then another forms or another incident.

I'm not complaining here, I just want to point this out is all... In the future, I believe a slider to add more problems or less problems would probably be the best solution as there isn't really a perfect recipe here... On one hand its nice to add immersion, and on the other its starts to become and feel very unrealistic.

I'm currently sitting 6th in the league. If my team is a disaster thru the season I can understand it might create issues amongst the club so leadership and players with high character would be beneficial for a rebuild of some sort but trying to keep up with a dumpster fire of incidents at this point in the season with so much success seems out of reality and frustrating.

[Särås]

Hey,
Did the Florida 2009-10 challenge, won the Stanley cup win in challenge mode and ended up with that I failed historical challenge, was it too bad to win Stanley cup?

What did I miss?

[CanuckJohnny]

Gavin McKenna still has the wrong info in the database.
His birthdate should be Dec 20, 2007, NOT July 3, 2005 (which is wrongly putting him in this year's draft class when he should be a top prospect in the 2026 draft class a couple years down the road IRL)

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Särås

Hey,
Did the Florida 2009-10 challenge, won the Stanley cup win in challenge mode and ended up with that I failed historical challenge, was it too bad to win Stanley cup?

What did I miss?

No, that should have given you the achievement. I think I may know what happened there, I originally had a different Panthers season selected for that challenge and then changed it, I think it's probably pointing to the wrong season right now.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by crusadertsar

Thanks! Have you guys fixed the issue with Tim Connolly being retired in 2005-2006 (and in 2006-2007 as well) season in Historical Mode?

Yes, that's fixed now.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by CanuckJohnny

Gavin McKenna still has the wrong info in the database.
His birthdate should be Dec 20, 2007, NOT July 3, 2005 (which is wrongly putting him in this year's draft class when he should be a top prospect in the 2026 draft class a couple years down the road IRL)

It's not the data, it's the game correcting his to be old enough to meet the league minimum, which it shouldn't be doing. I've asked the guys to remove that check, it was useful at one point but isn't any longer and leads to situations like this.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by bandwagonfan

keeps crashing all the time

Looks like there's a crash when using the left arrow to return from player profiles to the boxscores, if you're getting it in other situations please let us now.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by AbeFroman

-added new AI transfer behaviour that attempts to simulate teams with a rebuilding outlook selling off some of their better players who have expiring contracts, as well as increase the frequency of transfers made at/near the deadline

Does this include the NHL and making trade deadline moves more realistic or is it just for European leagues? The word “transfer” is the only reason I’m asking.

Specifically European transfers. There were already equivalent behaviours for trades.

[Särås]

Originally Posted by JeffR

No, that should have given you the achievement. I think I may know what happened there, I originally had a different Panthers season selected for that challenge and then changed it, I think it's probably pointing to the wrong season right now.

I guess I need to reply it when the real version is out.

As for the Colorado challenge with Kariya and Selänne it's at least no bug, works great.

[Rayzor]

Got this trade offer, when I wanted to disuss it, I got a message that they can't add that mush $$, strange!!!! Then why send an offer?