EHM The Blue Line

Agreed with CatchUp and B72.
It makes it more fun, I know I have to constantly work towards making my tactics work. Heck all of my players are changed game to game. Bit time consuming but I win quite a few games out of it
Makes it more rewarding.

And if we had that option to trade first year, everyone would be getting Crosby, Malkin, Ovi... all the players that just dominate in the game. It just would make it kinda boring and less challenging. My $0.02 anyways.

bruins72 wrote:It's something we can take into consideration but it's highly unlikely. We've done it that way in the past and it gets to the point where anybody that knows how to play the game will be always winning the Cup and there won't be much of a difference between the person that comes in 1st and the guy that comes in 8th. That's what's lead us to the point we're at now.

Yeah I remember, but IIRC we didn't really have any significant trading rules back then, I'm not 100% on this, just an internal cap, so that didn't really prevent people from trading for the likes of Marleau...or Nitty or tossing away draft picks and prospects left and right. As far as I can remember only the top picks were protected, nothing/nobody else.

Plus, the CHALLENGING part of the game is practice settings, tactics and drafting. AKA Player Development. Anybody can make a trade or 17.

It might be more challenging but trading and signing players is still an integral part of the game. Just because something makes the game more difficult doesn't mean it's automatically a good idea.

And if we had that option to trade first year, everyone would be getting Crosby, Malkin, Ovi... all the players that just dominate in the game

Sure, it's pointless to allow people to make deals without any kind of limitations, maybe I was too vague on that. But I don't think having a tight budget and being forced to hold on to two or three overpaid veterans until their contracts expire makes it all that easy to acquire Crosby or Ovi.
I just didn't want to waste too mich time to go deeper into detail before hearing what the staff has to say about it.

Danny wrote:

Plus, the CHALLENGING part of the game is practice settings, tactics and drafting. AKA Player Development. Anybody can make a trade or 17.

It might be more challenging but trading and signing players is still an integral part of the game. Just because something makes the game more difficult doesn't mean it's automatically a good idea.

I'm not advocating just adding ANYTHING that makes the game harder. What I am saying is that it doesn't require any skill to sit there on trade deadline day and go back and forth with offers until you get the player you're after. I agree that trading and signing are an integral part of the game, but it's not something that you can improve on over time. Once you know how to click a mouse button, you can make a good trade.

Tactics on the other hand are something that I'm still learning new things about as I play the game. Practice settings to get the most improvement out of the players I have is another area where I'm still figuring things out and trying new stuff. Scouting and drafting is also something that requires a deeper knowledge of the game and how it works.

I'm afraid that opening up the trade restrictions would see one guy trade for Ovechkin and Malkin or something and then tear it up. The next season, EVERYONE trades for Ovechkin and Malkin just to stay competitive with the first guy. We've seen it before in Challenges and IMO, it makes things boring. I don't see how trading can be a competitive part of the game - everyone is able to make the same trades for the same players. It doesn't matter how good you actually are at the game, which is the whole point of the Challenges.

Sorry for the essay dude - can you tell I don't think it's a good idea?

Yes I'm aware of the potential problems. I get the feeling people are really misunderstand my suggestion. I wanna see anyone trade for Ovi when you've got a max budget just over the floor, have to respect the current rules (no HFBoards-like 4 garbage players for a superstar trades), can't sell the farm and are limited to getting all your trades and signings done in a period of 1-2 weeks at some point during pre-season.
Again, I wasn't suggesting to go back to the old days where the only rule was to stick to a certain budget while trading the entire roster.
Anyway, lets leave it at that then. Was just curious about the opinions, since it's really a bit too much of a fun killer for me right now not even being able to pick up some career AHLer off waivers or swap a 7th Dman for a marginal prospect or something.

Danny wrote:...Was just curious about the opinions, since it's really a bit too much of a fun killer for me right now not even being able to pick up some career AHLer off waivers or swap a 7th Dman for a marginal prospect or something.

I agree with Danny especially when it comes to the fun of trading - acquiring players and trading for them is the most fun part of playing EHM (for me at least) and in these challenges most of it is cut off. It's not the most challenging part of playing it, but still fun. And while the challenge teams are normally chosen amongst the poorer teams of the leagues (and it's OK, I'm not questioning that) which have less depth or no depth at all, challenges can turn to lotteries when one looses half of his top two lines for long term injuries and has no way of getting any new players to replace them. IRL in those cases all GMs are acquiring new players for sure - no Ovechkins or Marleaus, but Holmströms or Fritsches. Depth players. Maybe the restrictions of acquiring players could come from the reputation of them just like it was in UFA Pyramid some challenge back.

Interesting idea with the reputation based trades. Maybe it's something we can look at.

I'd be for it. Also there would have to be something about not trading for players who are injured long term.

Quick question, if I place a player on waivers and he gets picked up, does that count against anything? I had to place Hensick on waivers to call him up to my nhl squad and he got picked up in my first season

Nope. You're allowed to place players on waivers at any time. It's probably going to hurt you though. There's not a lot of ways to acquire players, so you should try not to lose any.

Quick question, I am onwards season 2 soon and I was wondering, is 1 July the earliest that I can sack my second coach?

Yes. July 1st starts the new season.

Thanks, I know that the season starts then I just wanted to make sure that the rule also referred to the coaches.

Everything is tied to that. Just remember, you can fire just 1 assistant per season. You can fire your head coach at any time but his replacement must have been with the team for at least 6 months before being named head coach.

What does the rules say about re-signing coaches to scout or similar? It is noting that I have done, I get this stupid things in my head sometimes. I don't know if the coaches are willing to do so, but if they are you could re-sign then to scout and then you have all coach positions free to add new good coaches. I haven't found anything in the rules about it, but my guess is that it isn't allowed or shouldn't be allowed.

I had something else also but my mind is to old to hold my thoughts longer then it takes to write two sentences.

You're also limited to firing 2 scouts per season. So if you signed all of your coaches to become scouts, you'd be stuck with them as scouts. Besides that, it's a dirtbag move. It's an attempt to skirt the rules by finding a loophole. It's really going against the spirit of the challenges.

I'll go ahead and make a call on it now. Staff juggling like that to allow the hiring and firing of extra coaches is not allowed. You could fire your Assistant GM and hire a guy that could someday become head coach... if he agrees to the job change when the time comes. That's fine. But to shuffle all of your assistants into scouting positions so that you can hire all new coaches? No way.

My thoughts also, I just pointed out something that I saw as a hole in the rules. It makes it much more realistic to have these rules. I actually finds this hole challenge thing much more realistic as it keeps my team more stable for a longer period! I believe I only will play challenges from now on as I have got bored before I started this and hadn't played for over 1 year almost, due to my problems keeping it realistic.

I agree. Without some sort of rules in effect, it's just too easy to get away with too much in the game. There are flaws in the AI that are just too easy to exploit. I know when I play games between challenges (we usually try to get a new one started shortly after one ends but we wanted to wait for the Lidas rosters for this challenge) I still play by challenge rules.

I posted the 60-82 games plus playoffs too early so there's no screenshots that are required. Could you please delete that post. I will post the correct one when I get to that point.

I quess it's just too long from the last challenge to remember these "little" things

Question regarding the UFA pyramid. So, when it says salary, does that mean the actual salary per season or cap hit ? The reason I'm asking, signing bonuses do not count as salary, but count against the cap hit. What if I give a guy a 2m p/a salary and a huge signing bonus ? I understand I'm within the rules since it doesn't say anything about excluding bonuses and his salary is not over 2m. And if the rulebook means cap hit and not salary then I assume front/backloading is fine ? I'm actually quite a bit away from free agency and I'm really not looking for loopholes, rather eliminating misunderstandings

eternium85 wrote:I posted the 60-82 games plus playoffs too early so there's no screenshots that are required. Could you please delete that post. I will post the correct one when I get to that point.

I quess it's just too long from the last challenge to remember these "little" things

I have deleted your post.

Danny wrote:Question regarding the UFA pyramid. So, when it says salary, does that mean the actual salary per season or cap hit ? The reason I'm asking, signing bonuses do not count as salary, but count against the cap hit. What if I give a guy a 2m p/a salary and a huge signing bonus ? I understand I'm within the rules since it doesn't say anything about excluding bonuses and his salary is not over 2m. And if the rulebook means cap hit and not salary then I assume front/backloading is fine ? I'm actually quite a bit away from free agency and I'm really not looking for loopholes, rather eliminating misunderstandings

That's a good question. Normally, I'd say the yearly salary that you are offering the player but because of the excess of cap room and the financial flexibility of the Avs, I can see how this might be abused. We should probably go with Cap Hit. Let me confer with the other mods and see if we can get a consensus though. I don't like changing rules in the middle of a challenge but I can definitely see how this could be abused.

watts555 wrote:Quick question, if I place a player on waivers and he gets picked up, does that count against anything? I had to place Hensick on waivers to call him up to my nhl squad and he got picked up in my first season

I had the same problem, so I bit the bullet and let him in the AHL all season rather than lose him.

If I make a trade in the off-season and it is accepted on the 14th of July and will go true on 15 July is that OK with the rules or not? The rules says no trading 15th jul -15th oct, but if the accept is on the 14th the trade will go true and show 15th?

ie99jro wrote:If I make a trade in the off-season and it is accepted on the 14th of July and will go true on 15 July is that OK with the rules or not? The rules says no trading 15th jul -15th oct, but if the accept is on the 14th the trade will go true and show 15th?

Take a screenshot showing that you're accepting the deal on the 14th and you'll be okay. What we don't want to see is people using that as a way to stretch out negotiations.

So any update on the issue I brought up ?