JoP

Also think it should be tuned down some few steps. I see two problems if the upcoming draftclasses is gonna be this good. One shortterm and one longterm:

Shortterm we can look at people who in the last, say 3-4 seasons, had:
- a bad team but some early draftpicks that should have helped them gain some momentum
- Or has tried to rebuild, or develop prospects to build a team, either to get a better team in the long run, or just for the fun of it! (Many likes that way of play in managergames in my experience from a few, pc and online)

These one gets kind of "screwed" as in 1-2 draftclasses people can get 3-4 really GREAT players, and another 3-4 that within a season or so will be just as good as those that developed like 3-4 seasons. So looking shortterm it sort of makes things UNDONE for those that really had a plan for the long term for managing and building their squad.

I´ll definitely survive, so I ain´t complaining, but just to give an example. I have Jeremy Maxwell. He´s a D, a top draftpick at number 8 with nice mentals. I needed to rebuild an old D-core and it was hard to find solid D-men at the time. I did pay up to get him, but I thought it was worth it at the time:
 
Season 18, GHL, Traded from Oshawa Cougars to New Haven Whales for Libor Jágercík and Alessandro Luby plus a GHL level 1st round pick and a GHL level 2nd round pick. ​Should say Libor was a good solid midage forward, 2nd to 3rd line, with great mentals and still having a great development that should make him a top 6 forward. Is around 90 OA today in the game. Luby, nah...just a tradepiece but still with some potential. But then a 1st and a 2nd pick as well. It did cost me a bit but felt like an ok deal. I got my D
 
Maxwell was 81-82 OA at the time I think. Today AFTER 4 FULL SEASONS of development, and a nice such, he just ticked over to a 91 OA! Wooohoo...feels great!!

Well, if it wasn´t for the fact that I can go down to 9th place in the lumber draft today and find a 17 yo with +90 OA already, and to the 2nd round and find players +85 OA......

Lets just say that if I (instead of being a top GHL-team) was a strong SHL team trying to catch up, and have played it the way that you built and set yout hopes on some promising youths during the last seasons. Did a few trades the way I did. A somewhat normal, and a common approach, in many IRL-leagues anf in managergames if u wanna develop your team longterm. Well, let´s just say I would feel kind of frustraded right now seeing my strong 21-23 yo prospects I developed turned in to average youngsters in 2 draftclasses    
Now, this is my take, my way to look at this, and I may think about it the wrong way. Also this is the shortterm-problem and the game is still in beta, so I´m fine with it. Just a little doubtful this will work out the way intended.

Longterm I agree with what many already has said here. The game already have an abundance of toptalent, top quality and also a bunch of, what should be, real superstars. This will just add to that, and sure ...it may be fine because it may even things out and make it easier for promoted teams in the long run to take the step up and make it at a higher level, in a tougher league. Still, the topteams will get even better talents, and soon the GHL will be a league of +92 OA-players, all 4 lines. Sure, tactics will matter more then maybe. But still, no superstars because their is +5 players with +96 oa in each ghl-team, no big diff between 3rd and 1st lines and so on....Not sure that is what we want?

Still to me, I´m more thinking about how the abundance of talent kind of takes a bit of the fun out of the excitement of building your team, of finding, or drafting, and developing a few great prospects. It wasn´t that hard before. Now it´s a bit like throwing dart agains a barnwall and the bulls eye is those two big red Barndoors.   

 

Also think it should be tuned down some few steps. I see two problems if the upcoming draftclasses is gonna be this good. One shortterm and one longterm:

Shortterm we can look at people who in the last, say 3-4 seasons, had:
- a bad team but some early draftpicks that should have helped them gain some momentum
- Or has tried to rebuild, or develop prospects to build a team, either to get a better team in the long run, or just for the fun of it! (Many likes that way of play in managergames in my experience from a few, pc and online)

These one gets kind of "screwed" as in 1-2 draftclasses people can get 3-4 really GREAT players, and another 3-4 that within a season or so will be just as good as those that developed like 3-4 seasons. So looking shortterm it sort of makes things UNDONE for those that really had a plan for the long term for managing and building their squad.

I´ll definitely survive, so I ain´t complaining, but just to give an example. I have Jeremy Maxwell. He´s a D, a top draftpick at number 8 with nice mentals. I needed to rebuild an old D-core and it was hard to find solid D-men at the time. I did pay up to get him, but I thought it was worth it at the time:
 
Season 18, GHL, Traded from Oshawa Cougars to New Haven Whales for Libor Jágercík and Alessandro Luby plus a GHL level 1st round pick and a GHL level 2nd round pick. ​Should say Libor was a good solid midage forward, 2nd to 3rd line, with great mentals and still having a great development that should make him a top 6 forward. Is around 90 OA today in the game. Luby, nah...just a tradepiece but still with some potential. But then a 1st and a 2nd pick as well. It did cost me a bit but felt like an ok deal. I got my D
 
Maxwell was 81-82 OA at the time I think. Today AFTER 4 FULL SEASONS of development, and a nice such, he just ticked over to a 91 OA! Wooohoo...feels great!!

Well, if it wasn´t for the fact that I can go down to 9th place in the lumber draft today and find a 17 yo with +90 OA already, and to the 2nd round and find players +85 OA......

Lets just say that if I (instead of being a top GHL-team) was a strong SHL team trying to catch up, and have played it the way that you built and set yout hopes on some promising youths during the last seasons. Did a few trades the way I did. A somewhat normal, and a common approach, in many IRL-leagues anf in managergames if u wanna develop your team longterm. Well, let´s just say I would feel kind of frustraded right now seeing my strong 21-23 yo prospects I developed turned in to average youngsters in 2 draftclasses    
Now, this is my take, my way to look at this, and I may think about it the wrong way. Also this is the shortterm-problem and the game is still in beta, so I´m fine with it. Just a little doubtful this will work out the way intended.

Longterm I agree with what many already has said here. The game already have an abundance of toptalent, top quality and also a bunch of, what should be, real superstars. This will just add to that, and sure ...it may be fine because it may even things out and make it easier for promoted teams in the long run to take the step up and make it at a higher level, in a tougher league. Still, the topteams will get even better talents, and soon the GHL will be a league of +92 OA-players, all 4 lines. Sure, tactics will matter more then maybe. But still, no superstars because their is +5 players with +96 oa in each ghl-team, no big diff between 3rd and 1st lines and so on....Not sure that is what we want?

Still to me, I´m more thinking about how the abundance of talent kind of takes a bit of the fun out of the excitement of building your team, of finding, or drafting, and developing a few great prospects. It wasn´t that hard before. Now it´s a bit like throwing dart agains a barnwall and the bulls eye is those two big red Barndoors.   

 

Also think it should be tuned down some few steps. I see two problems if the upcoming draftclasses is gonna be this good. One shortterm and one longterm:

Shortterm we can look at people who in the last, say 3-4 seasons, had:
- a bad team but some early draftpicks that should have helped them gain some momentum
- Or has tried to rebuild, or develop prospects to build a team, either to get a better team in the long run, or just for the fun of it! (Many likes that way of play in managergames in my experience from a few, pc and online)

These one gets kind of "screwed" as in 1-2 draftclasses people can get 3-4 really GREAT players, and another 3-4 that within a season or so will be just as good as those that developed like 3-4 seasons. So looking shortterm it sort of makes things UNDONE for those that really had a plan for the long term for managing and building their squad.

I´ll definitely survive, so I ain´t complaining, but just to give an example. I have Jeremy Maxwell. He´s a D, a top draftpick at number 8 with nice mentals. I needed to rebuild an old D-core and it was hard to find solid D-men at the time. I did pay up to get him, but I thought it was worth it at the time:
 
Season 18, GHL, Traded from Oshawa Cougars to New Haven Whales for Libor Jágercík and Alessandro Luby plus a GHL level 1st round pick and a GHL level 2nd round pick. ​Should say Libor was a good solid midage forward, 2nd to 3rd line, with great mentals and still having a great development that should make him a top 6 forward. Is around 90 OA today in the game. Luby, nah...just a tradepiece but still with some potential. But then a 1st and a 2nd pick as well. It did cost me a bit but felt like an ok deal. I got my D
 
Maxwell was 81-82 OA at the time I think. Today AFTER 4 FULL SEASONS of development, and a nice such, he just ticked over to a 91 OA! Wooohoo...feels great!!

Well, if it wasn´t for the fact that I can go down to 9th place in the lumber draft today and find a 17 yo with +90 OA already, and to the 2nd round and find players +85 OA......

Lets just say that if I (instead of being a top GHL-team) was a strong SHL team trying to catch up, and have played it the way that you built and set yout hopes on some promising youths during the last seasons. Did a few trades the way I did. A somewhat normal, and a common approach, in many IRL-leagues anf in managergames if u wanna develop your team longterm. Well, let´s just say I would feel kind of frustraded right now seeing my strong 21-23 yo prospects I developed turned in to average youngsters in 2 draftclasses    
Now, this is my take, my way to look at this, and I may think about it the wrong way. Also this is the shortterm-problem and the game is still in beta, so I´m fine with it. Just a little doubtful this will work out the way intended.

Longterm I agree with what many already has said here. The game already have an abundance of toptalent, top quality and also a bunch of, what should be, real superstars. This will just add to that, and sure ...it may be fine because it may even things out and make it easier for promoted teams in the long run to take the step up and make it at a higher level, in a tougher league. Still, the topteams will get even better talents, and soon the GHL will be a league of +92 OA-players, all 4 lines. Sure, tactics will matter more then maybe. But still, no superstars because their is +5 players with +96 oa in each ghl-team, no big diff between 3rd and 1st lines and so on....Not sure that is what we want?

Still to me, I´m more thinking about how the abundance of talent kind of takes a bit of the fun out of the excitement of building your team, of finding, or drafting, and developing a few great prospects. It wasn´t that hard before. Now it´s a bit like throwing dart agains a barnwall and the bulls eye is those two big red Barndoors.   

 

Had the same thing on my starcenter this season. Had him for like 10 seasons, been my 1st line center and go to-guy in most of these years and around 95-97 OA and being in points, top 5, many seasons...being nr 1 as well.

Haven´t seen any real decline before, up to age 37, but this season turning 38 he started to drop massively. Like crazy, 4-5 steps overall, kjust like that all of a sudden!!
Ended up trading him. Looking now he went from 97oa to 87oa just this season. Still a decent GHL-center in lumber, but nothing more than that. A 3rd-4th line center with a to big salary then. 

Would prefer to see it happen a bit more gradually fro age 35-36 or so, but maybe just needs some finetuning.

Truly great input in this topic. The last v1.0.2 update fixes the issue with unrealistic promotion contracts. I'm also going to have a closer look at player happiness and take more things into consideration. Thanks.

Ok, so first of all this post is witten out of my own experience of this onlinegame (which I love and see a lot of potential in) and my seasons I´ve played,what I´ve tested, tried out and learnt but also from comparing with other sportsims I´ve played online. 
And that is quite a few, from hockeysims as Hockeydynasty, to great soccersims as Hattrick and a few more and on to some other ones like horseracingsims and so on. You see, What I´m just trying to say is that if I come to a few conclucions it is out of hanging  round a lof of games and those gameforums and communitys.
Anyhow, my mainpoint with this post is that in the most succesfull of those games the thing that drives most people and that most seems to enjoy, what makes them stay and love the game, is the feeling of building your own team, your own club and lead them to glory! ( well, or at least try it   )
 
 
Now, looking at Mitts and a few other worlds I´ve played in I see one big challenge in this game. It is in trying to combine the classic "european hockey " or soccerbased league system with promotions/relegations (as many online sportsims)  with the american idea of a more closed league, and as in NHL with the salarycap.
 
The problem I´ve seen in this that seems to occur in a few gameworlds is that the game, for a few reasons, won´t encourage long term squadbuilding when starting in lower leagues; (and try follow me now  )
The basic problem I think is there is to much unbalance between the factors of salarycapspace for lower-league teams, happiness and the, happinessrelated, matchperformance for players.
To me the contract-unhappiness, and hence the worse playerperformance, happens to fast, especially when related to the salarycapspace-differences that now is way to big between teams in the next tier above. Like between BHL to SHL and from SHL to GHL.This makes it almost imossible to start a season with more than,say, 5-7 good prospects for each respective leaguelevel without it turning out the way that midseason, when your prospects hopefully developed, u have no capspace and a bunch of whining Drouins     
 No matter playingtime, keyroles etc ... now happiness is about if players are having to low salary compared to ratings (modified by mentals) and also when the unhappiness-spiral starts it goes down and down waaaayyy tooo fast!! (  especially If we are supposed to have so little capspace). 
This gets especially frustrating since om the other hand higher-tier teams, and most of all GHL-teams, can reap the benefits from this as they can sit with loads of talents that hardly play, and many if playing only playing 4th-line, and they are still happy and fine.
All in all this results in GHL-teams having 60m capspace having to much benfits, being able to keep players, keep talents, plunder SHL-teams for talents AND having financial power in FA-market. 
 
______________________________
 
As of now an SHL-team can have a max of about 5-7 good prospects in the 80-82:s region if they want to have some depth in the rest of the squad, while my top GHL-team in Gino had 10 players with OA 87-94 and still managed to have a bunch of prospects and depth-players. This just to let you consider the huge benefits of the GHL-teams.

I Can think of two suggestions worth considering:
 
1) Maybe then it should take a little longer, say 1 season from happy to frustrated or wants to leave and also role and playingtime should influence happiness more, All to make it possible for lower-ranked teams to keep prospects a little longer.
 
2) To me capspace for i.ex. BHL and SHL should be increased. A more logical capspace would be 10m and 30m to at least encourage and give managers a chance when they try build slowly and longterm. It would still be a huge difference between leagues.
 
 
I really think this is an issue as to me this seems like a big problem in the long run if you want to attract new players. 
 What will you think of a game where you build a team and still has to let go of a few of "your guys" like say every second season if you don´t gain promotion? Of a game where you way to often will feed the SHL or GHL-teams just to have even less chance of surviving once you yourself get promoted?
 
Maybe I´m wrong but to me as of now there is a risk that the game doesn´t inspire and encourace those who wants to play it just in the way that so many sportnerds loves to play it. The way you play football manager, the way yuo play many other online-sims. Where you try and start from lower leagues, building your own team, your own club and lead them to glory!
 
Well, that was my "case"   and I sure know we all may see things differently but this is my thoughts out of my experience with this game and many others. Thank you for your time reading if you managed to get this far   

(edited fonts etc after a kind "remark" below. Sorry for messing things up)
 
 
 
 

Ok, so first of all this post is witten out of my own experience of this onlinegame (which I love and see a lot of potential in) and my seasons I´ve played,what I´ve tested, tried out and learnt but also from comparing with other sportsims I´ve played online. 
And that is quite a few, from hockeysims as Hockeydynasty, to great soccersims as Hattrick and a few more and on to some other ones like horseracingsims and so on. You see, What I´m just trying to say is that if I come to a few conclucions it is out of hanging  round a lof of games and those gameforums and communitys.
Anyhow, my mainpoint with this post is that in the most succesfull of those games the thing that drives most people and that most seems to enjoy, what makes them stay and love the game, is the feeling of building your own team, your own club and lead them to glory! ( well, or at least try it   )
 
 
Now, looking at Mitts and a few other worlds I´ve played in I see one big challenge in this game. It is in trying to combine the classic "european hockey " or soccerbased league system with promotions/relegations (as many online sportsims)  with the american idea of a more closed league, and as in NHL with the salarycap.
 
The problem I´ve seen in this that seems to occur in a few gameworlds is that the game, for a few reasons, won´t encourage long term squadbuilding when starting in lower leagues; (and try follow me now  )
The basic problem I think is there is to much unbalance between the factors of salarycapspace for lower-league teams, happiness and the, happinessrelated, matchperformance for players.
To me the contract-unhappiness, and hence the worse playerperformance, happens to fast, especially when related to the salarycapspace-differences that now is way to big between teams in the next tier above. Like between BHL to SHL and from SHL to GHL.This makes it almost imossible to start a season with more than,say, 5-7 good prospects for each respective leaguelevel without it turning out the way that midseason, when your prospects hopefully developed, u have no capspace and a bunch of whining Drouins     
 No matter playingtime, keyroles etc ... now happiness is about if players are having to low salary compared to ratings (modified by mentals) and also when the unhappiness-spiral starts it goes down and down waaaayyy tooo fast!! (  especially If we are supposed to have so little capspace). 
This gets especially frustrating since om the other hand higher-tier teams, and most of all GHL-teams, can reap the benefits from this as they can sit with loads of talents that hardly play, and many if playing only playing 4th-line, and they are still happy and fine.
All in all this results in GHL-teams having 60m capspace having to much benfits, being able to keep players, keep talents, plunder SHL-teams for talents AND having financial power in FA-market. 
 
______________________________
 
As of now an SHL-team can have a max of about 5-7 good prospects in the 80-82:s region if they want to have some depth in the rest of the squad, while my top GHL-team in Gino had 10 players with OA 87-94 and still managed to have a bunch of prospects and depth-players. This just to let you consider the huge benefits of the GHL-teams.

I Can think of two suggestions worth considering:
 
1) Maybe then it should take a little longer, say 1 season from happy to frustrated or wants to leave and also role and playingtime should influence happiness more, All to make it possible for lower-ranked teams to keep prospects a little longer.
 
2) To me capspace for i.ex. BHL and SHL should be increased. A more logical capspace would be 10m and 30m to at least encourage and give managers a chance when they try build slowly and longterm. It would still be a huge difference between leagues.
 
 
I really think this is an issue as to me this seems like a big problem in the long run if you want to attract new players. 
 What will you think of a game where you build a team and still has to let go of a few of "your guys" like say every second season if you don´t gain promotion? Of a game where you way to often will feed the SHL or GHL-teams just to have even less chance of surviving once you yourself get promoted?
 
Maybe I´m wrong but to me as of now there is a risk that the game doesn´t inspire and encourace those who wants to play it just in the way that so many sportnerds loves to play it. The way you play football manager, the way yuo play many other online-sims. Where you try and start from lower leagues, building your own team, your own club and lead them to glory!
 
Well, that was my "case"   and I sure know we all may see things differently but this is my thoughts out of my experience with this game and many others. Thank you for your time reading if you managed to get this far   

(edited fonts etc after a kind "remark" below. Sorry for messing things up)