rainsilent

In my opinion once you go above a certain salary a 2 way contract should be unavailable to offer. I find it ridiculous that a 2 million dollar GHL contract can be sent down when very few players that are worth that 2 million dollar contract are not GHL quality players. I did predict player hoarding would happen.

Surely if its a cone of could you would rather eat it no? Its either got to be a snow cone or ice cream cone.

My team hasn't won a championship. Joking aside I didn't see anything wrong with my team looking it over.

Stamkos won't hit any of them. Well ok he wont hit targets in an empty net.

No. My team didn't really show up in the last game. The first game my team won handily. The second was a high scoring affair where both goalies were bad and his better offense outdid mine. That said my team did throw away a 3 goal lead in that game. To Steve while yes his team confidence in tactics and winner instinct were blue rather than green he didn't play either the Vandals or Protons on equal terms player confidence wise. His players were at full confidence whereas both the Vandals and Protons had players in the lineups with less than ideal player confidence. Thus neither team was playing at their full abilities. In my opinion what happened was a perfect storm scenario for a "dark horse" team to win and the Marauders were the perfect dark horse team. The current meta reduces the importance of depth scoring because of the lack of it that you get and the Vandals and Protons relied on their depth scoring to just outdo other teams in the past. The Vandals biggest advantage however was not their offensive depth against the Marauders. It was a slight advantage in skilled Dmen and a better goalie skill wise. That series mostly came down to which teams best players would outdo the others since the Vandals and Marauders were actually pretty fairly matched skill wise. Marauders better skill offensively vs the slightly better D and better goalie of the Vandals. In a result that even shocked me to a degree Hanrahan outplayed Yu and that explains the Marauders beating the Vandals. As I said earlier I had the Vandals a 60/40 favorite. That is nearly a coin flip so it wasn't much of an upset in my eyes. As for the Protons they just acquired their current starter goalie just before the playoffs started and he had yet to rebuild his confidence. It isn't like he was perfectly solid up to the finals either. If anything he was showing to be the potential weakest link in the prior two series due to not having full confidence. In my opinion, based strictly off of what I have seen prior in regards to the impact or lack thereof that player confidence plays, this was the major reason that the Marauders beat the Protons. So why didn't the other 2 teams the Protons played prior do the same? The Volcano is a team mostly of meh players backstopped by an amazing goalie. They didn't have much offensively that was ever going to realistically put any pressure on the Protons. Unless that manager really does a big makeover that team is going to be the Canadians of this league in that an amazing goalie is carrying an otherwise meh team everywhere. As for Pegasus? While they have a few marquee forwards they don't have the talent or depth to come close to what the Marauders have offensively at the current time. After all it is that teams 2nd year here in the GHL. The Marauders have been here twice as long and have been building, apparently quietly, a very strong team over that time. While I didn't think that they were quite ready to pull off what they did this season (I think their young D needs another year or two to grow) I didn't think they were too far off at all and were the best unknown team entering the playoffs. My genuine opinion going into the playoffs was that the Marauders were the 3rd best team talent wise.

Teams do slip up a bit and it is all due to the confidence of the new player. How big the slip is all dependent on the position of the new player in the lineup. The bigger the role the bigger the slip up. This happens in reality too. A lot of real NHL GMs complain that the trade deadline is too late in the season because teams don't "get back to normal" until near the end of the regular season. Thus a number of GMs every season push for a change to the date of the trade deadline to push it up at least a few weeks. Confidence is one of the biggest impacts to how a team plays in the game. The first quarter of a season is extremely wild in terms of results because every team has yet to develop the confidence. Also just because I have gone over more data with my team in terms of game trends doesn't mean that I am right when I notice something. There is a such thing as statistical oddities and outliers and if I happen to be going through such it will skew my view on whatever it is. Just know that I do try to do my homework and learn as much as I can. I encourage everyone else to do the same. The more you know the better you will be.

And what about the opposing teams winner instinct and overall talent level? You can't just look at partial data and end up with a solid conclusion. You guys are also glossing over the fact that the Marauders best players outplayed the Protons best players in the second game. I think the biggest contributor to the Marauders winning the cup is the lack of depth scoring that is going on in this patch as the two teams that had the most offensive depth, the Protons and Vandals, couldn't effectively use it to their advantage. Without that advantage it more or less became whose best players outplayed whose. Also another major factor was the starting goalie for the Protons not having full confidence. To be frank Arttur Kaila did not have a particularly good playoffs. In fact game 1 of the series he had a pretty bad game and cost the Protons the game despite the Protons otherwise completely outplaying the Marauders. I have no doubt that the lower confidence of Kaila played a role in that outcome. I also like how nobody is mentioning that they also beat me 2-1 in the first round even though Hanrahan had 2 very bad games against me. Marauders congratulations on winning the cup. Against all odds you managed to win going though the best teams in the Vandals and Protons. It was fun to watch. Mostly. The first round wasn't so fun.

Ambition is a modifier to another talent that is now hidden that used to be visible. That talent was an indication of how good the player could be. Potential. A player with great potential but is lazy will still grow exceptionally fast. A player that doesn't have a lot of potential at all but is ambitious won't grow much at all. What you want to look for in terms of ambition is for what players are growing first then look at their ambition. As for winner instinct it becomes more evident and impactful in closer leagues. Teams with higher team winner instinct will more often than not find ways to win close games. Again though that requires close games and relative parity between teams. I have never had an overly talented team offensively (defensively is another story though) yet I am regularly at the top of the standings in my league. Why? I play the odds of keeping games as close as possible and then winning those close games. If you want to see the impact of winner instinct look at all of the games that your team played where the difference was 2 or fewer goals. That said my team wins games in OT like nobody's business but can't win in a shootout to save their lives. Finally dirty is about manager preference and statistical certainty. Even on the lowest aggression level your team will take penalties. It is an inevitability. So why not pick up a few players lower talented players that have the tendency to take penalties and play them on your lower lines and eat up as many PIMs as they can? Also some managers just want aggressive teams like the "Big, Bad Bruins" of old however be mindful that your team doesn't turn into the undisciplined Jets that regularly burn themselves with too many PP goals against. The rest I think you have spot on although I don't really see the need for Anders to give specifics. That said somewhere in this forum is a record where he did say something along the lines that it goes on a number scale system in that not all lazy players are the same lazy. Basically think of it as a 0-10 system with 0 being most lazy for example and 1 being lazy but not as lazy and so forth.

First one I said I think they are fine. That is my current opinion on the matter. Second I said they may (not they are but they may) be having less of an impact than intended. That isn't my opinion and rather is me saying that my opinion may be wrong on the matter. I didn't contradict myself however it appears that I didn't make what I said totally clear either. Sorry for the confusion. Sports management games where you have no direct control of the players is all numbers run thus in a loose sense it is all RNG. That is what I meant by that. Yes tactics have a major say as does talent but even those have numbers behind them determining things. RNG impact in sports management games can vary wildly. From seemingly completely random (bad RNG impact on game) to ones that are actually rather predictable and are believable. As for the rest I would be disappointed too in your position. You had the better team and lost. It is really disappointing when that happens. As for your struggles it is more the fact that the talent gap between your team and most of the other playoff capable teams isn't as big as it used to be just last year. As a result the games are going to be closer than your used to. It isn't that your team struggled, ok it did offensively more than it should have but the bigger, more relevant picture is you don't have that comfort margin that you had even just last year.

I hate to break it to you but all sports management sims are complete RNG. Real life sports is the same. Replacing RNG with human error and other things of course. Having better players with "better" traits only stacks the odds in your favor. It doesn't guarantee the win and there will always be the chance of a loss. As for nervous it depends upon what kind of magnitude you put big deal at. Before I go on let me make one thing clear. Traits should not be a major determining factor either in game or for a manager outside of a few key players. They are to be seen as and should be a minor modifier to the way the games play out. To me that is how it seems at the moment. Back to nervous. For example sake lets just say nervous players have a 25% chance at a bad game in the biggest games. Anxious 20%, Stable 15%, Determined 10% and Heroic 5%. That would mean that for a nervous goalie to have a bad game in a big game would require the equivalent of flipping 3 coins and all 3 landing on tails. That all said we don't know how it is set in game. Thus speculation is pretty much guess work via shots in the dark and thus very unreliable at the best of times. Talent is much more important as it should be. So what are you so up in arms about? Is it that you lost in the Biscuit playoffs because you thought you had the better team? Well you did have the better team in the same way that the Rangers had the better team over Ottawa or Anaheim had the better team over Nashville last playoffs. They still lost. Better teams lose to worse teams pretty much all of the time. Your team lost in a bit of an upset but your team actually wasn't significantly better that you should have thought the series an automatic win. Far from it. In fact I was seeing that series as 60/40 in your favor. Even the Protons shouldn't see the series against them as an automatic win in the finals. That said I do give them at least 75/25 edge. Yes you have the 2nd best team in Biscuit at the time of typing this however the gap between you and the 8th best team is not that significant. Protons on the other hand... Well that will still be another season or two however unless they find a few more tricks it looks like it will be a bit of a hard crash as most of their key players are 33+. You need to come to terms with the fact that you can't have the always winning dominant team, that you will lose to worse teams some times including in the playoffs and that every team will have regular tough stretches to go along with the highs. If you can't handle the losing that inevitably comes with being a manager of a team (good or bad losses) as well as the success then the problem is you not the game. I think everyone but the Protons have been through that in the GHL a this point. Heck the Trojans had a bad losing streak during the entire last quarter of the season and I had them as a playoff team to start the season. I'm not saying this game is perfect. It isn't and the traits may have a bit too small an impact however they shouldn't have a massive impact on the same level as player talent.

Traits should not be playing a key major role along the same magnitude as talent and they most definitely aren't. That said do I think it is too small a role? Again no. I just think you are over emphasizing the relevance of them and maybe even the relevance they should have.

To add on lazy will also lose skill due to age much sooner. Lazy is only going to impact their growth potential and how soon they decline. Anonymous won't hurt you pretty much at all team performance wise unless you make them captain or assistant. Arrogant players will hurt team chemistry if you have too many on the team. In theory anyways. Nervous will have a higher chance at a bad game the higher the pressure of the game. This said non key positions this trait doesn't matter much at all. For example 3rd/4th line wingers and 3rd pairing Dmen that otherwise aren't playing key special teams roles you want to be much more focused on the player talent fitting what you need in those specific small roles and the salary said player is asking for than if they are nervous or heroic. Finally tough simply determines the standard frequency of penalties and major penalties taken.

They very much don't. In fact they have a chance to actually decline in skill faster by not training on hard. So far as I am aware AI teams train on medium and there is a massive example list to go to of players playing on AI teams not growing or even regressing however the players get on human teams and train on hard they progress and sometimes progress significantly faster if they are young enough.

Genuinely I don't even know this one. That said the only real way someone is ever going to have a definitive answer to this is by testing the same players development at the same time with that being the difference to see what the difference in growth is.

If you go to tactics when at your team page and then explain tactics you will find it in the player characteristics part of the description for crash the net, dump and chase and aggressive forecheck. As for what I think I think it is talking about players with high spirit and physical attributes. Maybe speed too. Kind of what you think of when you are talking real life hockey too.

If you don't want the player and they can be sent down you could offer them to a SHL team.

Very much not true at all. Well ok it depends upon how strict you interpret the rules and what you quote as rules. It is why I never use the word rules in this circumstance because even Anders has only ever provided guidelines. The trade system still is not perfect and won't stop all abusive trades. Anders clearly said in his topic talking about such that it may still be possible for trades to go through that he would not consider fair trades. As you said though use some sense and at least ask yourself if you would genuinely consider accepting the deal if it were offered to you.

Suggesting a waiver system is hardly a nerf to the affiliate system or a protest for something new though is it? It is a real life solution to an exactly similarly identified problem in real life. Without a waiver system you risk there being less parity with more players potentially being signed and then sent to the affiliate teams of a few teams and left there until needed. It happened in the NHL until waivers were introduced. Personally I'd rather not see a Montreal like dynasty built upon always having a wealth of talent to draw upon due to hoarding talent. I'd rather see a Detroit like dynasty where it is sustained success through great management. Having a waiver system prevents hoarding of talented players above a certain age. Preventing the hoarding of players creates more parity. More parity creates better competition. Better competition makes the game better due to it being more fun to play. A more fun game will be more likely to attract more players. I'm not saying that Anders needs to get this out the door asap but I don't think that this could be left alone for an extended time due to the faster leagues. Also in regards to it being relatively easy to rise through the ranks that was true back when AI littered the leagues. However most will not be able to do that now with more human managers. Skilled and clever managers will pretty much be able to no matter what. I'd love to give it a go with a second team but I don't want to create essentially 2 profiles.

Waivers. Anybody sent to an affiliate above say 25 goes to waivers. Anybody of the same league or below interested sends in a claim. The team highest in the claim order gets the player. Very simple and straightforward. Therein lies the problem. They have to make an offer. Knowing your trading tendencies your going to want something more than a throwaway contract. Not saying that you wouldn't make a deal like that happen more that others may be doing it to try to force trades for players. You know. Gather enough players to try to force a trade or get all the quality players and then try to work deals with lower teams. It is only a bad thing to have a high league team signing all of the quality players for lower leagues no matter if they try to trade them down or not. There is no reason that a SHL team should not be able to send a waiver claim for Baroni on my team, Sharp on yours or one of the many on Pegasus who seemingly can't offer enough contracts to FAs. Nobody should be able to collect players above a certain age (again say 24 or 25) and then without care send them to their affiliates without them going through waivers.

It isn't so much a bad idea so long as the number is high enough but then what is high enough? Too low and your too restricted on developing your own prospects and nobody wants that. Too high and it doesn't matter. Ultimately you don't want to restrict the number of prospects a team has to choose from. That is just bad. It is the signing or holding onto of 25+ yo players that can play big roles on lower league teams (like Sharp on the Vandals for one example) that is not playing for the team they are contracted to that is the problem. That is what you want to prevent. The hoarding of non prospects and the best way to do that is a waiver system where someone can put a claim on a player that a team is basically holding on to and just sending down to their affiliates.

They are a vast improvement in the sense of a team can develop its own prospects. However much beyond that they kind of are overkill. A team shouldn't need 6+ reserve players like a few teams are going after. It is also pointless to have a good reserve team. That said some people find it important to have a good reserve team. It isn't a massive problem that needs fixing. It is just a nuisance for a team to hoard a lot of players that they essentially end up not using. The proposed waiver system is a way to get around the hoarding.

This is why I suggested it before FA even hit. Because I saw this happening from a mile away. There are GHL teams snapping up a number of quality SHL players that really have no value to them with the number that they are signing. Something about the waiver system however is that the waiver system will only come into effect at a certain point like say once a player reaches 24 for an example. The waiver system still doesn't prevent prospect hoarding like what I am doing. Yeah I know but I did wait an entire day to send them offers and only sent them offers if nobody else sent them one. Frankly there are other issues making a bigger impact. One is managers in lower leagues not making the right decisions contracts wise having stuffed teams with no room to sign FAs or just not retaining young players or just not being active in the FA market as is and the other being players having the bad preference to sign for teams that they can't yet play for. Short of a prospect I drafted nobody in FA below say 82 ovr should choose to go to my GHL team over a SHL team.

I do agree on unfair. If there is a set age to start rather than a more complex system it cannot be too low otherwise it would be exactly that. Being waiver eligible still defeats the purpose of one way contracts in this game though. While you continuously say that you do understand it you still say things like this in bold. Your farm team is in a lower league. The purpose of a one way contract in this game specific to a promotion/relegation league is to prevent players with such a clause in their contract to be sent down, traded to, whatever to any lower league. That includes farm teams as well as direct lower league teams like SHL relative to GHL. That is how one way contracts work in promotion/demotion leagues. Anders could use a hybrid like what you suggest and I would have no problem with it but it would require a recoding of one way contracts. Maybe you do understand how one way contracts work in promotion/relegation leagues and would rather a hybrid system and you are speaking in terms of that system so me saying that you don't understand it was me misreading what you were saying. If that is the case I do apologize for the error on my part. The way you are saying it makes it look like you are viewing 1 way contracts in this game as the same as 1 way contracts in the NHL when they aren't at all. The percentage increase could prevent you from having suitable scratch players (if you send them to the minors or not) and your good young prospects under contract (making sure then get vital playing time and maximize their growth potential rather than sitting in FA waiting to sign to a random team that may not play them a lot) though. As for defeating the purpose outside of prospects it actually doesn't. Look at how many vets go unsigned every offseason. Some of them are of pretty good quality. It more accurately prevents higher ranked teams in leagues from clinging on to players that can play in lower leagues while mostly being useless to the team they are on. Most managers don't have a lot of interest in veteran players anyways thus veteran players signed for depth would likely go untouched. Also all players still under trade restriction would be unavailable for waiver claims obviously. I don't see the waiver system being a hassle too often though to be honest. You are in Biscuit. Look at the Pegasus team in the GHL. They have 6 players on their assigned list that are over 25. 1 is fully capable of playing in the GHL. 1 is a likely good 4th line contributor if used in a specific way. The other 4 are completely useless and dead cap to the team. Pegasus refuses to cut them (they are all on lower league contracts meaning cutting them would be for free) and likely hasn't tried to trade them. Even if they tried most managers don't have the creativity to see the value in trading for more cap space alone with a SHL team rather than demanding up front quality in return. Situations like this is going to be the most common use of the waiver system. A manager promotes and has a number of now useless players in their new league under contract. Rather than cut them for free if they are on lower league contracts and refusing to trade them they hold on to them when they don't need them. In this instance a SHL team would likely be the source of the waiver claim for those 6 players and the GHL team gets some free cap space. A win win. What about if a team gets promoted and then demoted again? I would rather not hold onto most players I brought with me in that situation. I would rather do either what Erzac did recently in Biscuit (brilliant job by him although I do think he did slightly over do it) via trade what you will lose via the one way clause due to demotion for the best that you can get in two way contracts that will be on your team for at least another year if not more or go at it mostly from scratch. History of watching what is available in FA certainly shows that there won't be a lack of good FAs to go after. How high would it be? Too low and you can't have any depth in case of injuries. Too high and it is irrelevant.

The difficulty coding wise is more in how it plays with everything else. If it doesn't mesh with everything smoothly, which is pretty much impossible to guarantee, it could "break" a lot. Just look at multi million game titles from massive game studios and all of the bugs from what you would think to be simple things to code. Thus when it comes to coding the principle k.i.s.s. (keep it simple, stupid) really applies. Why make something more complicated when you could just make it straightforward and easy with much less risk of unknown and unforeseen issues propping up? I'm not saying that I prefer a flat one age system for waivers. Personally I don't. I would rather a more complicated system similar to what the NHL uses. However I also understand that the more complicated you make something coding wise the easier it is for something to go very wrong. Thus it becomes the case of how much do you want to risk in terms of potentially messing up the game for a more true to life complicated system. As a result while I would prefer a complicated waiver system for realism and depth however for the sake of ease of coding and quick introduction I would rather see a straightforward system. After all Anders could code the simple one into the game first to "get it out the door" and later on change to the more complicated one after making sure that it runs smoothly.