canucks

GoodMeanshelf likes this
 
 
Liking your own posts and complaining about trade offers you can decline or just put your players untouchable to prevent them? Please, get a life.

In Hockey Dynasty, we could tag players as available or untouchable. We could also highlight what type of players we're looking for. So far, we've got that here in GPH as well. The additional thing was that we could enforce our needs/wants by choosing an option that would block all other users from including our untouchable players or players from their team that didn't fit our needs/wants criteria.
 
For example, I could say that I'm looking for a Top Line Center and enforce that. The system would automatically disallow other users from including Centers that are not Top Line worthy based on MY current team.
 
Obviously, there is some room for concern as well, since we may be looking for a certain attribute in a player.....but the computer will continue to enforce our needs/wants criteria based on whatever equation is being used by the developer.
 
A workaround for that would be to allow us to specify certain attributes(Examples -> Shooting of at least 85, Ovr of at least 90) in our needs/wants criteria instead of just the general "Top Line Center", etc.

+1

You're right, it's not optimal and I'm looking into how to solve this. But right now it's not a highly prioritised feature.

Hiring of staff is a high prioritised feature that I've been wanting to add for quite some time now. I'm hoping to release this feature in the next couple of months. It's only on the sketch board yet, but it will most likely include hiring of coaches, scouts, doctors, agents.
 
What a coach could add to the game is something like; game breakdowns player by player, boost training for players, team reports, suggestions of best lines, suggestions of game tactics.

Nope, Montreal your rival  I am in Social Science

Here's a sneak preview of how the forum and chat will be included in game.
 
https://twitter.com/gameplanhockey/status/651417674862448640

now let's get recruiting more peeps for the worlds and where's your avatar?

I'm going to start trying to implement the game world forums and chat rooms into the game tomorrow. Hopefully I can have update ready at the end of the week. An inbox message announcement is a good idea. Thanks.

In terms of recruiting, I've already got one highschool/Uni friend of mine playing in the Iron League in Biscuit
 
I'll try to find more...

Well tbh, the only online manager game I've played for an extended period of time was Hockey Dynasty(still play it, but we're all sorta waiting to see if its going to continue or not)....we had forums like the ones you have now, league forums, a chat(with a preview window at the top of every page), guestbook on every manager page, and messages....I played Powerplay Manager before that, but don't really remember too much about that....
 
In those forums, we would have different forums for trades, trashtalking, team updates, etc...
 
At one point, we even did a couple fantasy hockey leagues(NHL)...that didn't work out too well though(perhaps if you and Chris ran them or something, it'd work out)....
 
Also, before the game sorta started to die, we(the users) had a plan on making up different awards, etc and assign them manually to different users, players, teams, etc....

At the moment there are five active game worlds; Biscuit, Clapper, Duster, Fishbowl and Gino.
 
Creating a section per game world might actually be a good idea.
 
I also would like to investigate the possibility of automatically creating a GM Games account when signing up for the game. I think that would make more people join the community.

If you check out the bottom of the forum, there is now a live chat that will has historic messages saved. I can share the arrowchat embed code for you that can be added to any HTML pages. One if jquery, one is iframe and can be targetted by chat room.
 
Let's try also adding a few sections to see how that flies. 
 
I don't believe it's the worst thing in the world that there are separate communications ID's .. some people may have no desire to chat at all, and just want to play the game in peace.

Ok, there is a Game Worlds category now with each of the worlds being described, as well as a live chat room from the bottom menu bar.

Moved this to Suggestions just like you said.
 
I agree with you that it's hard to make trades without the possibility of communicating with each other. I actually had an idea to include personal messages in the trades release but didn't find the time. I'll do my best to include this as soon as possible.
 
I understand that it's important with a good community in game. What features do you think is most important?

I may look into having a live chat at the bottom and pitch it as a suggestive prototype

What kind of community features would be the most important ones to have in game? As a complement to this forum?

I run the GM Games main site and forums. I've been trying my best in affiliation with Game Plan Hockey Manager to get both his game and the forum going.
 
Hoping we can make the most of the tech here first.. I'm going to try somethings today.
 
How many league worlds are there? We can begin the process of creating sections for each 

Well, in terms of features, I think you're pretty well-equipped....love the advanced stats, tactics, lineup options...trades are now in play as well, so that's great...draft and prospect system will really boost GPH as well...
 
It's moreso the features that don't actually have to do with us managing our teams that will really strike home tbh...
 
But like I said before, sick game...I'm lovin it so far (Besides the games my team is losin of course)
 
For League Forums, if someone from every league could start a thread, that'd take care of that tbh....
 
I could make one for Game World Biscuit, SHL...but I'll wait for a bit to see if the vets will take over from here...don't want them thinking of me as a noob trying to do too much

Hi all,
 
I'd like to introduce GamePlanHockey, a browser hockey manager game.
 
In this topic i will be telling you my career story in the game from start to end (well hopefully there is no end). Along the way, i will discuss all the aspects of the game in depth, which will hopefully help you all to decide if it's a game for you or not 
 
If you like to know more about this game, i advice you to read this amazing and inspiring blog post of the creator of the game, Anders Granberg. It gives a good insight of what to expect from the game in general.
 
http://www.gameplanhockey.com/blog/why-another-hockey-manager-game
 
offcourse you could also directly browse to the main site:
http://www.gameplanhockey.com
 
Now, let's start a career!
 
 
1) The beginning
 
Like other browser games you will need to fill in a email-address, username and password to start playing gameplanhockey, but there is also one important decision you will need to make as a manager right from the beginning. You will need to decide which game world you want to participate in. 
 
 
1a) decide on a game world
 
In gameplanhockey, right now, there are 8 game worlds, as you can see in the following screenie:
 

 
All game worlds consists of 5 leagues and 80 teams. They differ in the pace of updates. There are 4 different pace levels.
 
Slow: 1 match per day
Normal: 2 matches per day
Fast: 4 matches per day
Lightning: 8 matches per day
 
P.S. Currently there is one game world type, which is the European style, but Anders did mentioned a second type in his interview with Chris from 3 Feb 2015:
 
 
So, all NHL fans have to wait a bit for the North American game world, but the good news is that it will be coming.
 
Since i could not decide on whether to play an European or North America style yet, my only decision to make was "how many games do i want to play per day". I decided to go for game world "Echo", which is a slow paced game world, meaning 1 match per day.
 
P.S. don't worry about choosing the wrong game world. After joining a game world you can always resign from your team and start a new career with an other team in a different game world.
 
 
1b) found a team, customize it or not?
 
After making a decision on the game world, complete the signup process and the system will start finding a team for you. You will be redirected to the following screen:  You will be assigned to a random team. It can be a team with already a history or not (it depends whether the game world is brand new or not). Here you can either take over the team and/or customize all the details of the team. You can customize the team name, city, logo and colours: 

 
I have decided to change nothing of the team. I am happy to start my career as GM of the Rio Grande City Bandits, who currently sit 1st in the BHL (Bronze Hockey League).
 
P.S. as a new rookie manager you will always start in one of the 3 lower leagues, there are 5 leagues, all have different promotion/relegation rules, which i will be discussing later:
Golden Hockey League Silver Hockey League Bronze Hockey League Iron Hockey League Lower Iron Hockey League   
1c) manager welcome screen
 
After you have customized a team and taken it over you will redirected to the manager welcome screen.
 
This is the page that you will see every time you log on to gameplanhockey.

 
When you see this screen the first time, you will notice a game hint in the form of a black box (see above). On every page in gameplanhockey you will see these hints popup. I advice you to read them one by one as it really helps you understand the game. You can disable the hints in the settings area, which you can access by clicking on action -> settings, as seen in the following screenshot, where i also clicked away the hint to see what's behind it  
 

 
Turns out to be a message box. Cool, here the system will keep you posted about all the news surrounding your team (i.e. match results, injuries, transfers, player awards, etc)
 
Well that's the start of my career and the end of this first post. I have signed up, joined a game world and signed for a team. Stay tuned for more...

This is awesome

Thx, found a terrible mistake in the opening post btw, i said that game world "Echo" was a normal paced league. It is actually a slow paced league, so 1 match per day instead of 2. Fixed it.
 
Next post coming up later today.

First day at the club.  I haven't made any team decisions yet, but have shaken a lot of hands with people from the board, staff and sponsors    ... Furthermore, i have taken some time to discover the world of gameplanhockey. How is the competition structure setup and what are we actually fighting for? Before getting into that, let's have a quick look at my message inbox of today. 
 
As you can see i have 2 new messages. The first one is a nice welcome message. The second one is a game result. Apparently we won and have a nice winning streak, hooray   .. that is a great start!
 
Some messages guide you directly to the right context, for example a game result points you directly to the game log as seen below.
 

  Now let's dive into gameworld "Echo". 2) Explore the game world Click in the main menu on "World" to view the game world.  On the screenshot you see an overview of the game world "Echo" showing the 5 leagues i mentioned before (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron, Lower Iron). The league shown in blue is the league that your team is currently playing in. "Echo" is an European style game world. That means there are promotion and relegation rules. Your goal as the GM of a team is to reach the Golden Hockey League, qualify for the playoffs and eventually win those playoffs. The winner of the last season Golden Playoffs will be prominently visible on this page (logo and teamname will be visible at the top). To know more about the promotion/relegation rules, enable the hints, and the system will present them to you. In short, they are as follow: Golden League: first 8 qualify for playoffs, bottom 2 relegate to Silver, nr 13+14 will play playoffs to not relegate. Silver League: first 2 promote to Gold, 3rd to 6th play playoffs for promotion, bottom 2 relegate and nr 13+14 will play playoffs to not relegate. Bronze League: first 2 promote to Silver, 3rd to 6th play playoffs for promotion, bottom 2 relegate and nr 13+14 will play playoffs to not relegate. Iron League: first 2 promote to Bronze, 3rd to 6th play playoffs for promotion, bottom 2 relegate and nr 11 till 14 will play playoffs to not relegate. Lower Iron League:  first 2 promote to Iron, 3rd to 10th play playoffs for promotion, there is no relegation   So now i know my goal --> become the best team in the Golden Hockey League! But my first goal is to promote to the Silver League. I need to finish in the top 2 to secure direct promotion or finish between 3rd and 6th to have a chance to promote through the playoffs. I'm up for the challenge! Follow this topic regularly to see if i succeed   The world view also informs you about the highest placed teams in the standings, players with the most points and the most experienced human managers in all the leagues. Note that there are currently no human controlled teams in the Gold and Silver league, that's because "Echo" is currently in Season 1 and new rookie managers can only start their career with a team in the Bronze League or lower. Furthermore, on this page you can see all the teams in the world ranked on reputation, the top 100 players ranked on reputation and all the human managers ranked on reputation aswell. Click on the respective tabs to view or look at the next 3 screenshots. 


 Wow, that are a lot of different reputations. Looks like reputation is an important aspect in gameplanhockey. I have read in one of the blogs from Anders that it will unfluence a lot of things, like contract negotiations, salary demands, player's willingness to join teams, etc. Sounds interesting. I will be discussing this reputation system in a separate post as i am learning more details about it along the way. Well that's it for today. I have shared my first messages that i received as GM, explored the game world and presented you the competition structure in game world "Echo". Tomorrow i will meet up with the team and get a first impression of the players at the club. Will they be good or will i be disappointed?, we'll see...

Hi all, today i'm going to have a look at the current roster of my club.

3) Glance at the roster

Click on 'Team' and on the tab 'Roster'.

Here are the players currently at Rio Grande City Bandits. (I took 2 screenshots, since i couldn't get them all on 1)





The first thing that becomes immediately clear is the fact that there are 4 different positions in gameplanhockey, namely Centers, Forwards, Defenders and Goalies. Forwards are simply Wingers, maybe they use the term Forwards in Europe, i don't know.

On the Roster View you can switch to 4 different views: Info, Profile, Contract and Ratings. The one you are now looking at and which i will be focusing on today is the Info view. In short the 4 views can be described as follow:

Info: Shows basic information about the players. Profile: Shows players characteristics (leadership, greediness, potential, ambition, etc) Contract: Shows players contract details. Ratings: Shows players ratings in various skills. (skating, scoring, defense, puckhandling, etc) The most important information from the info view is the overall rating. This number presents the overall strength of the player, it generally gives a good indication, but don't solely look at this number, because it does say nothing about the individual skill ratings and player characteristics, which also play an important role on performances. I will be looking at them later.

Looking at my roster now, the disbalance strikes me. Previous manager obviously made a mess. There are a massive 8 centers under contract and only 9 forwards (only 2 of them being Righthanded). We have 8 defenders, which is fine, but also only 2 of them are right handed. In a perfect situation i would like to have:

"5 centers, 10 forwards, 8 defenders and 3 goalies. Hands equally divided."

So, it looks like i will need to do some business on the transfermarket soon

Looking more closely, i have been very blessed with the goalies. Matias Gorman has the best overall rating (76) and the backup goalie Nicola Saint-Arnault isn't far behind (75). Generally the team looks old, but that also means very experienced. Two factors that probably helped the team climbing to the top of the table.

Behind some players you will notice some icons, the C stands for Captain, the A for Assistant Captain, the SCR stands for Scratched. The star mean star-player. Note that the star players are not always the best players rating-wise, but i believe performance is also factored in.

Next to overall rating, two other important attributes from the info view are Confidence' and 'Health'.

Health means the condition of the player. It decreases if the player plays too much minutes or trains too much. Players with low health will be more injury-prone and perform worse.

Confidence is a bit more tricky. It also influence player performance like health. It can be best explained by quoting the creator Anders:

 
P.S. The colors (Green, Blue, Orange and Red) that are used as background are there to give you a quick indication. I have noticed that there are heavily used at other parts of the site. You already did see some of them yesterday ;-) .. Green and Blue are good signals, with Green being the best. You should try to avoid Orange and Red, with Red being the worse.

That's it for today. I glanced at the roster and discussed some weekness and strength of the team. In the next days i won't have much time to post, but i will try to look at the other 3 views (profile, contract and ratings). Later!

Hi all, team is still going great. They already won 3 games under my belt. Still haven't made any big decision yet, but do i need to? Only thing i am changing at the moment is swapping the goalies if some of them isn't fully healthy.   
 
But as promised, let's talk about more about the roster views. Specifically let's dive into the profile view.
 

 
Every player has a preferred Role and some Characteristics. The latter is divided into 6 categories. Let's first talk about those categories. Here is what the hints tell about them (together with all the possible values)
 
Potential
"This will give you a hint how much talent the player has and how likely he is to develop his skills and become a future star."
 
[Natural Talent, Gifted, Capable, Untalented, Slow-witted]
 
Greed
"What is more important; Money or Team spirit? Some players go for the highest bidder while others prefer great teammates and long-term relationships."
 
[Loyalist, Team Player, Professional, Individualist, Mercenary]
 
Dirtyness/Temperament
"How does the player behave on ice? This will offcourse influence the number of penalties but also how well he adopts to your tactics."
 
[Gentle, Respectful, Tough, Agitator]
 
Leadership
"Some people are born leaders while others depend on others to show the way. This is a good place to start looking when choosing your captains."
 
[True Leader, Role Model, Respected, Modest, Anonymous]
 
Determination/Big Games
"Who will rise to the occasion and show fighting spirit when you need it most? It's no coincidence that some players score the game winner every other game."
 
[Heroic, Determined, Stable, Anxious, Nervous]
 
Ambition
"Believe it or not, some hockey players have a life outside the rink. This ambition value will tell you how much he is willing to sacrifice for his hockey career."
 
[Ambitious, Purposeful, Enthusiastic, Half-Hearted, Lazy]
 
 
The hints are pretty clear. Potential and Ambition looks the most important to me, aswell as Leadership for captains, but you will also need some players that rise to the occasion (Determination). Loyal players are important to keep the team together and make some salary room. Finally you should avoid many players that loses their temperament and don't stick to the game plan (Dirtyness).
 
Note that the characteristics values are fixed. They don't change during a player career.
 
 
Roles
 
Every player has a preferred role, but it's important to note that contrary to characteristics they are not fixed. They may change during development of the player and when the team is promoting/demoting to an other league. For instance, a Stay-At-Home defenseman in Bronze, could very much prefer a Two-Way  role in the Iron League, cause he is surrounded with worse players. A forward that is developing quickly can potentially turn from a Grinder to a Sniper or Playmaker.
 
Here are all the roles in the game:
 
Sniper, Playmaker, Powerforward, Two-way, Grinder, Enforcer, Stay-At-Home (defense only), Offensive (defense only) and Goalie.
 
There are no different goalie types as of today, but they could be added in the future.
 
Roles are important. If you play a player outside his preferred role, he will perform worse and lose confidence. For instance, a playmaker will not like a 4th line role.
 
 
Now, can i already make some early conclusions by looking solely at the player characteristics and general info? Yep, i now know:
 
Ezekiel Sheehan is one of the 8 centers in the team, he has the lowest overall rating 59, is only 18 years old, but has a slow-witted potential, so i doubt he will become a great player. He also is nervous during big games and could see some minutes on the penalty-box. This player will be resigned from the club first, no doubts.
Juan David Martin is the 5th overall player on forwards rating wise (70), but if you take his characteristics into account, he looks way better. He is a true leader and team player. Furthermore he is capable, respectful, stable and enthusiastic. Definately a player the team counts on.
Defender Ludovyck Beggs is also a very interesting player. 23 years old, but a natural talent and purposeful. Combine that with being a loyalist, role model, respectful and stable and we are looking at a real talent. It will be interesting to see how much he grows this season (65)
Center Marlon Heintz (72) is a sniper and has heroic determination. He could potentially score many game winners. I will keep an eye on him for sure.  
 
Okay that is it for today. I showed you the profile view and shared some early opinions about some players. Next part, i will be discussing the player skills.