Some Ideas for How to Improve Be a GM

[Simple Mathematics]

I just posted this over at the EA NHL forums too so hopefully the devs can see it. Tell me what you guys think.

Hopefully these things can be patched into NHL 12. The game seems like it is going to be awesome, and with these few minor additions to Be a GM, the game would be absolutely incredible.

Some ideas that could improve Be a GM:

1. PLEASE give us the option of full control over all 30 teams. That way, if some of the following problems are not fixed, we can at least fix them ourselves! The other 29 teams should still run by themselves, this would just give us the ability to edit all of the teams' lines, stop unrealistic trades from occuring, adjust player attributes mid-franchise, and sign free agents to different teams that should not sit in free agency for an entire year.

2. Create a larger gap in attributes and overalls between superstars, 1st liners, 2nd liners, 3rd liners, 4th liners, AHL players, CHL players, etc. This would help the superstars and good players stand out more. Players are given attributes on a scale of 1-99, but right now it seems like they are on a scale of 50-99. In my opinion, I think superstars' overalls should be in the 90's, 1st liners in the 80's, 2nd liners in the 70's, 3rd liners in the 60's, 4th liners in the 50's, AHL players who are borderline NHL players in the high 40's or low 50's, and AHL players in the 40's.

3. Make player progression slower. Right now, young players progress too fast and end up becoming great players before the age of 25.

4. Make old players have larger decreases in ratings. Right now, too many old players are remaining great players. There are only a rare few that are Lidstroms.

5. Make the occurence of players developing into good players/superstars more rare. Right now, after a few years into Be a GM, there seems to be a big clutter of players ranked in the mid 80's or higher.

6. Don't let players get "stuck" in free agency who should not be there. Right now, there are still players who are ranked in the mid to low 80's who do not get signed in free agency. I think this has something to do with too many players being ranked too high. If ideas 2-5 are addressed, I think it would help solve this issue.

7. Make the CPU teams play their best players. Right now, CPU teams will play players who are rated lower than some of their scratched players. In some cases, these better players may also get sent down to the AHL. For example, a player ranked 82 overall might be in the AHL while that same team is starting a 74 overall player at the same position.

8. Smarter trade logic. Some unrealistic trades still exist.

9. Real life budgets. (Thanks to bwiggy33) Right now, any team can spend up to the cap limit. This is unrealistic because teams like the New York Islanders, the Phoenix Coyotes, the Colorado Avalanche, and others simply are not given this kind of budget to work with. This could be implemented in Be a GM. In NHL 12, teams should earn bigger or smaller budgets based on their performance. They could tie this in with the owner's goals given to you in the beginning of the season. If you achieve the goal, you get a slightly bigger budget. If you fail to reach the goal, you receive a smaller budget.

[ChrisDanger]

A lot of good ideas here. A lot of it reminds me of EHM's GM play.

The players are rated too high to begin with. It seems there's a huge group in the 80s even when you start.

I would like to see something like EHM where you have the option in the trading block to offer a player to all teams.

You had a choice of 5 positions you were looking to acquire and 5 different options of how you went about it. Building through the draft, young players, balanaced approach, veterans, and win now.

depending on what you had selected different teams would offer different options.

I have little faith that the trade logic EA uses would actually accept the Campbell trade to Florida. Florida would say that don't want his salary regardless of being below the floor.

Again good ideas.

[Qb]

This is the kind of stuff we like to see around here. Someone sees flaws in the game and posts constructively on how they feel the issues should be addressed. No outrage, no rhetoric, no 'shame on you', or any of that junk.

Good job.

[Simple Mathematics]

Thanks Chris and QB. Now hopefully the EA devs agree that they are great ideas too.

[pennywise]

All good ideas. Especially the need to have a wider spread on player ratings because it's even worse than what you posted.

While players can be rated anywhere between 50-99, in reality at the NHL level the spread is reduced to about 78-90 with a handful of outliers on either end ( above 90, below 78 ). This effectively means that there's little real difference between lower-end first line players and fourth liners.

[Tide311]

I really wish they would fix all the above, plus add an online dynasty component. Would be great to play a few fellow GM's online.

[Simple Mathematics]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tide311

I really wish they would fix all the above, plus add an online dynasty component. Would be great to play a few fellow GM's online.

Online Dynasty would be a lot of fun, but I think they should fix all of the issues with offline BaGM first before adding another game mode.

[bwiggy33]

One other thing that I think should be added that I posted an idea about a month or so ago is to add in real life budgets with the option to turn them on or off. I hate not being restricted financially. Not every team in the league spends to the top of the salary cap. Actually most teams don't. Hell there's a few teams who barely even go over the salary floor. I just want that option in. Then depending on team success the owner will give you X amount of dollars so that you can spend more money. It would make building up a lower salary team so much more fun. As it stands now you can trade whoever you want and sign whoever you want because of the salary freedom and build a team that would take years to build up, into a stanley cup contender. The joy of playing with a low salary team is winning the cup with non-superstar players.

One thing that I may try this year is to stay at my own salary cap in BeAGM. So if I take a team like the Isles I will keep the salary at 44 million dollars because that's basically where they are in real life. Depending on how much success I have, then I will think about increasing that amount. This would help building them up a lot more challenging and exciting. It's just hard doing that, knowing I do have the ability to spend to the cap. If there was an option for real budgets, then it make it a lot easier to not spend money.