GM Connected's Failure Wasn't NHL Fans' Fault

[garyjr33]

All of this is very true. There were so many things missing from this mode and the menus were so laggy. It was ridiculous. I love playing an online season with my buddies but we never did it b/c the mode was unplayable.

[actionhank]

This line of thought drives me insane. All i heard about GM Connected was that it was slow, and didn't work well. I never tried it, and wasn't really into online play at the time.

But, if I could get a community of guys like the people here at OS, i feel like a really fun sim-type league could be thrown together.

EA just seems to look at only the numbers, and not the reasons behind them. Sure not a lot of people will play a game mode that is poorly executed. But if you don't even try to improve it, then why bother in the first place? GM Connected could be huge. I would love to take control of the Blues (or whoever else) and have an actual live community to play in.

[blueandwhite]

Really great article that touches on lots of key points.

I was in a very active league that made it through three 82-game seasons in NHL 13 and two seasons in NHL 14. Had an absolute blast playing games, but the real fun was building a roster, making trades, doing all the things that GMs do. We had lots of GM turnover, but had a core group of about 20 guys that were committed. The other teams filled in easily enough. Very rarely did we have more than 4-5 CPU controlled teams. Obviously we were the exception rather than the rule.

The mode had obvious limitations (the no game-to-game fatigue particularly egregious) but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. Negotiating trades with other league members via Twitter direct messages was just too much fun.

The lack of GM Connected in the PS4 version is a huge, huge sore subject for me. I acquired my PS4 (and traded in my PS3) for the expressed purpose of moving our league to next-gen. Then it didn't happen.

I was angry when the mode didn't make it into NHL 15. Now just disappointed to see that it won't be in 16. There's already a GM mode in the game. And there's already an ability to play online games. Is it really that difficult to combine the two? It's not as if it hasn't been done before.

[zoom zoom]

Dead on. It was, by far, the worst designed franchise mode in any game I've ever played. It was terrible from top to bottom. Yes, I played in a league that didn't make it to 20 games in NHL 13. It was too painful.

I wish, wish, wish, wish that developers for sports games would include simple online league modes. Lets draft or sue real teams and play in leagues of 6-12 teams if we want. We can have 10-20 game seasons.

Seriously, I played with a group of guys in APFB 2K8 in which we finished 5 seasons. Sure, each season was a complete restart, but it was 10 games and championship. Rinse repeat. We loved it. We even help offline drafts for the bronze, solver, and gold players we used so that no one used the same players.

We don't need a bunch of AI teams. Hell, we don't really have to have a ton of free agency and stuff. I mean, options to have those are great. But we definitely do not need full season lengths. I have a group of friends that would like the crap out of NHL if we could run a 6-12 team league of 20 games.

[Cletus]

The funny thing is that EA didn't need to really add a lot. If you allow people to play with custom rosters in an online season, the people that want to play will find a way. The NHL series shows how much fans of a series can do with so little. There are online seasons of Tecmo Super Bowl but yet the guys that want to play a season of NHL with custom rosters can't.

[canucksss]

Corporate BS, IMO. If they REALLY LISTEN to their fans, how come no player/team differentiation (i know it sounds like broken record or cd); group "hugs" when a teammate score; NZ pressure, and now player edit?

Yea you dont want your team spread thin, and you just decided to concentrate with HUT so you could squeeze more money.

[Hongkongphooie]

We are going on to our 5th season in GM connected mode on NHL 14. Hopefully they will not disconnect their servers anytime soon. It is the only mode we play. May consider moving on to NHL 15 on last gen console. No GM connected on next gen then no hockey for us. GM connected mode or bust.

[Skyflame21]

I loved them the GMConnected feature though it did lack a lot as mentioned above. Like the auto draft. I am also someone who does not want to play with strangers. I had 5 friends and I in a league and it was great. To be able to play against your buddies for NHL supremacy is great thing. I loved that we had the option to having the other non selected teams controlled by the computer. Please don't go back to just a round robin using the selected teams for a season. My group of friends still are playing our NCAA online franchise 12 years deep in and on a game from 2 years ago. So if it works like that we"re all in on NHL again.