Hi timmy_t
Bare with me....this will be long. We have been waiting for the questions to come. In the interest of transparency, I will tell you all.
Believe it or not...I thank you for your questions. I was wondering when someone would ask them. I did not think what we did with the rules could be perfect. We sure fought about them when we were working on them behind the scenes.
First off, all of the rules come from suggestions in this thread...blacklists were out, and only having a certain # of trades were bad too (WE tried both-wanted to give flexibilty, without people having the same super-team every year. I know I was somewhat guilty of that, in particular with Nittymaki. Sutherby and Gaustad.
I understand that the rules are a little more difficult, and may in some ways seem over-the-top. But really they are not. Still a ton of flexibility for you. Honestly, give it a try and you will see. And you were invited to the party in this thread for some time. I was thinking you actually contributed some ideas, but without looking back I am not sure.
The reasons we changed the rules were because it was getting so silly. It was so easy to win everything, we decided to make it more difficult. If after we try out the rules, we feel we need to make things a little more liberal we will.
Let me address the issues you brought up:
1. 2 UFA signings: You can sign your own guys no problem. In general we felt that there were too many people remaking their team entirely all the time. No REAL LIFE NHL team does that so fast. Yes some get more than 2 guys in per year. But we felt that this was a fair number. This was something we discussed, and when we tested the rules out...we found it actually worked out well with 2 guys. With the limited budgets we have, more than 2 is not going to be plausible very often anyway. (We actually argued between 1 and 5 over and over and over). When we tested we decided on 2 as it seemed reasonable given all the other constraints.
2. This was because with the rules we are trying to build teams slower. We don't want people trading picks every year for superstars etc. Again just something to make things more of a "challenge". With the "homegrown" player people have to develop prospects on their own anyway. This way helps you do so. You can trade up in the draft prior to draft day if you wish.
3. The no draft day trades are simple. ...The AI for trades on this day is much easier to play with. You can sit their for 24 hours in real time, working to get the best "Steal" of Ovechkin you can find. This is not the way it works in real life, and we wanted to make things more like real life.
4. Oh and before someone else asks I will answer...the no trades in the summer (jul 15-Sep 14 beginning of training camp). Again, just to help us actually develop our own players...to not have people remake the team before the season even starts. Trade AI is again, more lenient during the off-season than the regular season.
5. Hey you still have trade deadline day...we talked about banning it too....
It is the easiest day to make big moves in the whole game.
We totally understand if this is not how you wish to play the game. No doubt, some people like to go out and do what they want to do...and we get that. However, others...as you read through this thread were looking for a change to the challenges.
This is the idea we came up with..We hope you give it a go, and see how enjoyable it is. In the test I learned alot. One thing in particular. There are players in the CBJ system, that are actually pretty darn good that you would not expect to be. B72 got a Calder Trophy for some guy named Marc Methot when he used him as a Homegrown. I screwed up with Gilbert Brule, and had him play too many games...so ended up using another guy who turned out to be a solid player in my game (Mark Flood)...Methot as well (no rookie of the year for me). Also Tim Konsorada turned out to be a good 3rd line checker and pk guy.
I have no doubt there were other guys--Fritsche was awesome in Syracuse, just I never gave him a shot.
And Pascale Leclaire...well he turned out to be one heck of a starting goalie in year 3 for me. 17 Blocker, 18 glove and all attributes were above 15. I was amazed. We all were shocked about that. He finished 3rd in Vezina voting in year 3.
Normally in challenges I would have dumped those guys faster than anything. Nitty would have played goal ... and my defense would have had noone under the age of 25 on it. In shorter challenges I probably still would. But we are making the challenges a little longer to help us all learn more/be more challenged and work more like real-life GM's. So...I want to develop guys.
Again, we get it if it is not your cup of tea. But Bruins, Arch, Calv, CatchUp. Minstrel and I were all shocked at the stuff we found out about guys that we normally do not give the time of day too. And it was more interesting, because we had to work for it, instead of picking up our usual guys and making outlandish trades.
Oh and BTW--Freaking B72 won the test-challenge. I am so glad we did not bet "schoolatars" on that.
Sorry for the long winded message...hopefully it maketh you at least a little less
](./images/smilies/wallbash.gif "Brick wall")
EDIT: WHOA!! EVEN LONGER THAN I THOUGHT...sorry
These things are always so much fun when you've got a lot of people participating in them. If you're feeling really inspired, you could do a blog to go with your challenge team. I know I'm planning to do one.