Goalie starts

jwnovak · 02-26-2022, 02:36 PM

Are there any plans to change the way goalie starts are assigned?

How much affect does coaching philosophy have on goalie starts?

Playing in an online league for a couple years now.
Part of the issue with goalie starts is that when you play in an online league, for time constraints basically all online leagues are simulating a week or so of games at a time.
Doing this, over-riding goalie start selection isn't exactly feasible for every game when you have 32 human controlled teams.
So, with the sliders. We have weird things happening all the time. Guys who's goalies start 25 games in a row and others (with the "stick with starter in playoffs checked) who's team is starting their 2.5 Ab/3 pot goalie with 20 starts over their 4 Ab/5 pot with 40+ starts during the playoffs.
It doesn't matter what the sliders are, we have tested it with GMs having the exact same sliders, but the affect on goalie starts is basically non-existent.

Can we request some sort of "assigning starts" feature for goalies?
It's made goalies complete voodoo/rng for the starts. Same sliders from one team to the next and you get wildly different starts for goalies.
It makes startegizing goalie starts basically impossible.
ESPECIALLY the "Stick with starter in the playoffs" not working is incredibly frustrating. It's shouldn't be weighted. It should be you play the starter period in the playoffs. A 100% override.

It's pretty common in the NHL to have your calendar and before hand you can pick and choose starts for a goalie. Like making sure your starter is in for rivalry games, or choosing which in a back to back you want which goalie. Why do we need to rely on "weighting and sliders" for starts? Takes the GM/Coaching aspect out of it.

jumpSeat · 02-26-2022, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwnovak

It's pretty common in the NHL to have your calendar and before hand you can pick and choose starts for a goalie.

Just so you know you're not alone, there was a recent suggestion in another thread that echoes this quite nicely. Here's the actual quote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ESL_Commish

Goalie Starts - i would love for GMs to be able to set who starts what game in the calendar view - what this solves is that goalie start settings are...sometimes inconsistent (who is considered "the starter" by the AI etc.)

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...2&postcount=32

I too have found the 'weighted' system to be too inconsistent and would support an improvement in this area.

jwnovak · 02-27-2022, 12:03 AM

Sliders

https://imgur.com/WixXfVy

Goalies

https://imgur.com/4VXARZE

Playoff Series. Round 1. *edited correction. The 2 star goalie started all 4 games over the 4.5 star goalie.*
This will cost him his playoff run. And likely another paying customer gone. Why continue to play a broken game mode?

https://imgur.com/zXyNcIn

I wouldn't say that it needs improvement. From an online league perspective where you need to simulate more than one game at a time? The goalie start settings are 100% broken. There is no logical reasoning that this should happen in the playoffs. None.
The fact that this is possible, means there is a broken feature in this game. There should be no conceivable way to make a 2/2 goalie start all 4 games of a playoff series over a 4.5/4.5 goalie. Period.
It makes it unplayable. It needs to be fixed prior to FHM9.
Literally ruins the fun of the game and has chased away several paying customers from our league. We've been together, buying the new game each year, porting our saved game file over for over 2 years now and this has chased away many of our former GMs.
It absolutely breaks any immersion in the game.

I have a good idea of the sheer amount of hours that the devs put in to this game, how readily they respond to posts here and how they have helped out with bugs. I could not applaud them more.
But this NEEDS to be addressed.
For all intents and purposes, the "stick with starter in playoffs", "play the better goalie" is completely useless. When you have a 4.5/4.5 and 2/2 goalie, there is no such thing as a weighting system that should allow that 2/2 goalie to set foot on the ice in the playoffs.

Meanwhile on another team in our league, the AI started his better/starter goalie for 33 straight games. His goalies have a 70/12 split.

Again, weighting goalie starts doesn't need tweaking. It's broken and needs to be replaced.
Absolutely brutal.
I will not be buying FHM again if it's not fixed.

jwnovak · 03-11-2022, 08:26 AM

So…….
Are we even going to look at goalie starts?
Or are we fine with the way this doesn’t work?

JeffR · 03-12-2022, 03:22 PM

We've been working on it, fixed one serious bug and made a couple of other changes. Testing it now.

02-26-2022, 02:36 PM	#1
jwnovak Bat Boy Join Date: Feb 2021 Posts: 15	Goalie starts Are there any plans to change the way goalie starts are assigned? How much affect does coaching philosophy have on goalie starts? Playing in an online league for a couple years now. Part of the issue with goalie starts is that when you play in an online league, for time constraints basically all online leagues are simulating a week or so of games at a time. Doing this, over-riding goalie start selection isn't exactly feasible for every game when you have 32 human controlled teams. So, with the sliders. We have weird things happening all the time. Guys who's goalies start 25 games in a row and others (with the "stick with starter in playoffs checked) who's team is starting their 2.5 Ab/3 pot goalie with 20 starts over their 4 Ab/5 pot with 40+ starts during the playoffs. It doesn't matter what the sliders are, we have tested it with GMs having the exact same sliders, but the affect on goalie starts is basically non-existent. Can we request some sort of "assigning starts" feature for goalies? It's made goalies complete voodoo/rng for the starts. Same sliders from one team to the next and you get wildly different starts for goalies. It makes startegizing goalie starts basically impossible. ESPECIALLY the "Stick with starter in the playoffs" not working is incredibly frustrating. It's shouldn't be weighted. It should be you play the starter period in the playoffs. A 100% override. It's pretty common in the NHL to have your calendar and before hand you can pick and choose starts for a goalie. Like making sure your starter is in for rivalry games, or choosing which in a back to back you want which goalie. Why do we need to rely on "weighting and sliders" for starts? Takes the GM/Coaching aspect out of it. Last edited by jwnovak; 02-26-2022 at 03:32 PM.

02-27-2022, 12:03 AM	#3
jwnovak Bat Boy Join Date: Feb 2021 Posts: 15	Sliders https://imgur.com/WixXfVy Goalies https://imgur.com/4VXARZE Playoff Series. Round 1. edited correction. The 2 star goalie started all 4 games over the 4.5 star goalie. This will cost him his playoff run. And likely another paying customer gone. Why continue to play a broken game mode? https://imgur.com/zXyNcIn I wouldn't say that it needs improvement. From an online league perspective where you need to simulate more than one game at a time? The goalie start settings are 100% broken. There is no logical reasoning that this should happen in the playoffs. None. The fact that this is possible, means there is a broken feature in this game. There should be no conceivable way to make a 2/2 goalie start all 4 games of a playoff series over a 4.5/4.5 goalie. Period. It makes it unplayable. It needs to be fixed prior to FHM9. Literally ruins the fun of the game and has chased away several paying customers from our league. We've been together, buying the new game each year, porting our saved game file over for over 2 years now and this has chased away many of our former GMs. It absolutely breaks any immersion in the game. I have a good idea of the sheer amount of hours that the devs put in to this game, how readily they respond to posts here and how they have helped out with bugs. I could not applaud them more. But this NEEDS to be addressed. For all intents and purposes, the "stick with starter in playoffs", "play the better goalie" is completely useless. When you have a 4.5/4.5 and 2/2 goalie, there is no such thing as a weighting system that should allow that 2/2 goalie to set foot on the ice in the playoffs. Meanwhile on another team in our league, the AI started his better/starter goalie for 33 straight games. His goalies have a 70/12 split. Again, weighting goalie starts doesn't need tweaking. It's broken and needs to be replaced. Absolutely brutal. I will not be buying FHM again if it's not fixed. Last edited by jwnovak; 02-27-2022 at 01:52 AM.

03-11-2022, 08:26 AM	#4
jwnovak Bat Boy Join Date: Feb 2021 Posts: 15	So……. Are we even going to look at goalie starts? Or are we fine with the way this doesn’t work?

03-12-2022, 03:22 PM	#5
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 17,431	We've been working on it, fixed one serious bug and made a couple of other changes. Testing it now.