Hi Elie,
First thanks for your great work over the years on this game, it’s been really fun to watch and play as the game has evolved and compared to other titles, the fact that you roll out exciting new features all the time and then continue to refine them is so refreshing.
The major new expansion of college hockey is awesome as it reflects the new real life importance of the NCAA as perhaps the most elite pre-NHL development model, if not in the world, then in North America, sitting now clearly as a station between the CHL and Pro hockey.
It does bring some complications to how the game system functions and as all of us are experimenting with how to best streamline the Juniors–>College–>Pro simulation within the framework of the game, it does lead me to the notion that it would be amazing to have a “FutureTransfers.txt” for the game.
The reason is that collegiate hockey recruiting is too vast and too complicated to be mimicked with accuracy by a simple rule of (making up an example here) “game sees player who is 19 and American playing in the OHL with a rating of XX and decides they should be playing for their college-rights team”. Players good enough for college sometimes stay in juniors an extra year or two because they are comfortable there or see it as a better path or for a myriad of other reasons. Right now in the game, if you give a player that fits that example their real future collegiate commitment in their player rights but start them on their junior club, the game will force them onto their college club if they meet that predetermined rating threshold. The current use of setting various league rights can’t accurately reflect some of the nuances of when a player changes levels or leagues because, as is reasonable for a game/simulation, it uses a rule based structure based on the player’s age, nationality, nationality of leagues that they have rights in and rating. This overrides attempts to create real pathways even if you have everything coded into the player as accurately as possible.
A FutureTransfers configuration would give us the chance to building in real future commitments, at realistic future commitment dates for college recruits and keep the game very realistic at the start for real players. Could there be a script that would look maybe similar to Buyouts where you could craft a pre-determined development path or transfers that would kick-in at September 1 of each season and could do this for multiple seasons into the future? That way you could set a transfer multiple years into the future or even set an entire development path to be coded in for a real youth player.
The functionality would extend beyond the North American development system as well. In Swiss National League, transfers are often confirmed for a player a full year before they actually move. In Russia, big clubs often loan their young KHL players to other KHL teams for a year and you could mimic the loan situation by having the player start on their loaned team and then future transferred back to their main club.
Something like…?
PlayerID#,YearofTransfer,League.Team,ContractSalary,ContractLength,ContractType
But then allow for it to be set multiple years in advance or have multiple transfers.
I guess the file would have to “lock” a players ability to be transferred or recruited if they have a FutureTransfers setting so I’m not sure if that is a stumbling block or not.
This kind of script or txt file, if workable into the framework of the game, would eliminate so many of the complaints we are seeing about prospects not being set on the right path or right college recruitment.
Thank you for your time!
- BK