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jumpSeat · 11-11-2022, 04:40 AM

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The current National Hockey League season opened on October the seventh, and now just over a month in, Franchise Hockey Manager 9 has finally released. While the original plan called for an October release to coincide with the start of the regular season, the month long delay was due to an ongoing licensing issue with the National Hockey League.

The previous agreement expired after FHM 8, and the series developer (OOTP), had high hopes to negotiate a new deal over the course of this past summer. Alas their hopes were destined to be dashed in the face of harsh new corporate realities. Realities birthed in the grim days of the pandemic, where a great many businesses became severely impacted due to major shifts in the workforce. The effects were so far reaching, that even to this day, many corporations are still struggling with having to operate in a state of chronic under staffing. This is a circumstance to which the National Hockey League is not immune.

The other major factor contributing to the delay, is that 'Out of the Park Developments' is a relatively small developer, and as such, was never likely to receive a high priority. The simple fact of the matter is the NHL had bigger fish to fry, so OOTP was destined to be low man on the totem pole in terms of getting a new deal done.

Over the course of many weeks, the talks went fairly well, with good progress being made, until the time came for a final review. Notwithstanding the fact that both sides had reached an agreement in principle, the NHL couldn't close the deal until it was green lighted by their in house legal department. This caused an additional delay of three to four more weeks.

During the course of this time, there were a number of questions raised, such as whether OOTP should consider releasing without the license and simply add the NHL logos and trademarks at a later date. Like it or not, as the calendar rolled on in to November, this had to be considered as a serious possibility with the developer now facing the ever growing reality of missing a significant portion of their initial purchase window. In other words, the longer the delay, the less excitement and buzz over the dawn of a new season, which could only mean a greater potential loss of interest in FHM 9.

For better or worse, OOTP decided to stay the course and wait it out, mostly since all of their promotional materials had already been prepared with full NHL branding. In their judgment, to go back and remove everything at this point represented too many lost man hours for them to absorb. And so, after a lengthy and at times agonizing wait, the NHL license was finally granted in early November with the game being released within the week on November the eighth.

So much for the back story. The game itself is now available on Steam with a 10% introductory discount. I have a great deal to say about the game itself, but I'll save that for a future media piece. In the meantime, here's the official change log from FHM 8 to FHM 9.

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New For FHM 9:

Major New Features

-US College Hockey is now playable. Since college hockey has some unique challenges, we've added a number of special mechanics to college team management, including a unique player recruitment system, details like managing scholarships and academic eligibility, qualification for the postseason tournament, etc.
-added Injury Deferral: you can now choose to defer injury treatment for some types of injuries until after the season ends. That will let you keep the injured player in the lineup with reduced performance and a risk of making the injury worse. That will allow you to keep the player in the lineup for key games at the end of the year or in the playoffs, but you'll need to balance that against the possibility of getting the player healthy as soon as possible
-the team harmony system has been completely redesigned: "problem" players will now potentially create many more headaches for their General Manager, who'll have to keep a careful eye on their team as off-ice incidents can lead to the formation of divisive cliques and inter-player conflicts that can send player morale plummeting
-added all-star games (in multiple formats) to leagues outside the NHL, as well as older formats (like the defending champion playing the rest of the league's all-stars) for the NHL in historical mode.
-added of the World Junior Championships tournaments to historical mode, going back to 1974
-bonuses can now be included in player contracts, using the the real NHL bonus mechanics (also works in historical after 2004)
-KHL players can now buy out their own contracts if they get an NHL offer, making them easier - but potentially more expensive - for the NHL teams to sign
-historical mode now includes pre-set injuries and suspensions, so players who were injured or suspended at the beginning of your first season will begin the game like that
-new Player screen: made a number of interface changes, to make data easier to find with fewer clicks, and fix some omissions, redundancies, and inconsistencies.
-the Tactics screen will now provide much better feedback on whether or not the players in your lineup are a good fit for your chosen tactics, showing which players are particularly good or bad with each tactical option
-trading now includes a "Make this Work" option that will instantly tell you which player(s) you can add to a deal to get the opposing general manager to accept it
-players with No Trade and No Movement clauses now have individualized lists, displayed with their contract data, of which teams they're willing to waive their clause for, allowing them to be traded
-traded draft picks can now be given Protected status, which will defer the pick to the following season if it's higher than a specified level - so you can trade away your first rounder but be secure in the knowledge that you won't have thrown away the #1 overall pick if your season ends in disaster
-owner expectations and feedback have been overhauled; in addition to telling you where in the league they expect to finish in this season, they'll also tell you what they anticipate next season's outlook will be.
-player histories now include seasonal averages over the course of the player's career
-player popups now show stat projections for the current season
-added league Notes (second tab on the League-League Notes screen, after Rules), which provides a text description of the league's background and unique rules

Historical Changes

-adjusted import procedure for extra international players in historical db, it had been adding guys it shouldn't have
-historical random debut games started on July 1 in 1994 will no longer fail to get an initial draft
-fixed crash in historical when clicking on retired players from some screens (player search, team stat history, etc.)
-fixed crash in historical when switching to the "College Leagues" league
-adjusted the way injury ratings are imported for players in historical games, they should match the actual database settings now
-lowered scoring in pre-90's all-star games
-fixed a couple of potential crashes in historical
-fixed missing 2020-21 staff in historical
-re-rated thousands of historical players
-added more drafted players who never played in the NHL; every player who was ever drafted in rounds 1 and 2 is now in the game, working on round 3's
-added a large number of international players to post-1970 historical to help fill out the world junior rosters where necessary
-ex-WHA teams are now back to drafting last in 79 draft, something had moved them to picks 1-4
-players will no longer appear at ages <17 when playing a random debut historical game (aside from a couple of guys who played in major leagues at 17 and need to debut at 16)

Custom League/Editing Changes

-custom playoff formats now have a 32-team round option
-lowered starting ability of new junior league players in custom games
-adjusted generation of new players in custom games to create greater splits in offensive vs. defensive ability in some players
-the Hall of Fame now works in custom games
-the rule that attaches temporary no-movement clauses to players acquired via waivers can now be deactivated in the game options
-all staff in a league can now be released at once on the League Edit screen (in addition to the existing option to release all players
-in the player award icons (the ones shown after the name on the player screen), the Sportsmanship, Dedication, Leadership, and Player's MVP awards) now have their own icon instead of using awards_goal.png
-AHL is editable now
-when creating a new custom game or adding expansion teams to an existing one, the new arena created for the team will now have its city set to the same location of the team
-when editing draft picks on the team edit screen, the drop down list of teams is now in alphabetical order
-when "use historical finances" is turned on in a custom game, the financial benchmarks (budget, salary, etc.) for farm and junior leagues are now set proportionally, instead of being the same as the top-level league
-"Use Entry-Level Contracts" had been added as an option in the custom league setup (Edit League Playoffs and Rules popup, Contract Rules section), on by default
-if Entry-Level Contracts are turned on in a custom game that begins in a year prior to 2022 or activated in-game in a season prior to 2022-23, the entry-level maximum will be set to league minimum salary*1.25
-fixed some issues with free agent acquisition in custom games
-minimum age for the draft in custom leagues is now as of December 31 instead of September 15 like the NHL - was creating a problem where late-year birth date players were graduating from junior before entering the draft, so they never passed through the draft and became eligible for the major league
-significantly increased starting ticket prices for custom major league teams
-national broadcast revenue for the custom major league should now be set to an NHL-like level
-adjusted salary cap for the major leagues in custom games to match the current NHL cap
-lowered base salary levels in custom game
-adjusted code that keeps salary levels in line with cap/floor size, should produce lower baseline salaries now
-decreased likelihood of checking-template forwards with 4-5 star ratings being generated on July 1 in custom games

2D Mode Changes

-added some set-play mechanics, particularly on the power plays, to 2D mode so you can see your offensive tactics unfolding as you intended.
-introduced some new internal mechanics to 2D mode to make player movement look a little more smooth and natural
-added option "enable text to speech" to the 2D in-game options menu; it will read the play-by-play to you in 2D mode using the Windows speech system (which will sound pretty awkward, but it's a first experimental step towards audible play-by-play.) For the best results, you should have the language "English (United States)" installed; you can check that in the Windows Speech Settings (see "installed voice packages" at the bottom of the settings)
-teams now switch sides at the start of a new period (can be disabled in the options)
-fixed 2D stat bug where players were not getting their shifts counted in some circumstances
-fixed a 2D bug during clearing dump-outs that was causing the forwards on the team without the puck to go deeper into the offensive zone rather than retreating
-made some adjustments to increase likelihood of passing in the offensive zone
-made some adjustments to make it more likely for the puck carrier to dump the puck into the defensive zone from the neutral zone to get a full change instead of carrying the puck solo while his teammates change
-fixed a memory leak in 2D mode that was likely causing some crashes
-if the user switches from Full watch mode to one of the highlights modes in 2D while play-by-play text is displayed, the text no longer remains present until something in a highlight changes it
-2D highlights will no longer repeat parts of the highlight shown just before it
-fixed poor 2D color combinations for Red-Blue teams in the all-star game
-made additional adjustment to prevent more of the situations where defending players go past the puck and wait for icing
-puck handler will no longer stay immobile in one spot when waiting for an offensive zone play to develop
-improved readability of jersey numbers in 2D mode, particularly with fit to screen
-adjusted a number of on-ice decision-making mechanics to give a human less of an advantage against the AI
-fixed 2D issue where player icons could remain on the ice after OT, when shootout is underway
-in 2D, the popup for the "Goals" feedback type should now be delayed until after the goal happens, regardless of highlight mode used
-fixed 2D issue with the goal total occasionally shown to increase before the actual goal highlight is shown

AI Changes

-the AI will now more actively seek to trade its players if they're holding out for a new contract
-when determining AI spending for monthly finances, if the team has no games scheduled for the current month, Game Promotions/Arena Operations will now always be set to the lowest (0) level and Team Morale no higher than the third (+3) setting
-the AI now weighs players' off-ice attributes more heavily when evaluating their trade value - teams may now be a little more reluctant to take a difficult player off your hands
-season outlook mechanics for AI-run teams have been upgraded, allowing the team to go into a more aggressive Win-Now or Rebuild modes ("Win Urgently" and "Total Rebuild")
-World Championships roster AI has been adjusted to reflect the large number of players, particularly Canadians and Americans, who opt not to participate in the tournament
-adjusted AI trading behavior when trading to get a better starting goalie; AI will also no longer try to dump goalies for draft picks
-increased tendency of teams to go into rebuild mode in mid-season
-adjust 2D icing mechanics to avoid situations where defending players have to wait for the puck to reach the end of the ice
-fixed roster AI issue in leagues that require teams to play a certain number of prospects
-AI teams should now value their own draft picks a little more highly, it had been a bit low as a result of database changes over the years
-made teams a little more likely to make major deals at the trade deadline
-added additional safety check to prevent AI under-valuing of 1st-round picks
-adjusted AI's behavior when attempting to trade players on its trading block, should be a little more aggressive now
-adjusted trading AI when looking for depth players, hadn't been aggressive enough in adding forwards
-fixed issue with one trade type that was resulting in teams trading for defenseman when they wanted a forward
-fixed excessive trading of NHL rights for WHA-contracted players in historical
-fixed problem with one trade type leading to first-round picks being traded for too small a return
-made a number of adjustments to season outlook mechanics for junior teams
-when commissioner mode is used to edit an unsigned player to give him a contract with a team, the "0" salary fields will no longer be treated as a contract year (except the first one)
-junior teams will no longer put all graduating players on the trading block at the deadline, and will not trade block guys under age 17
-fixed AI issue with teams trading excessively to clear cap space before free agency begins
-fixed error in mid-season Outlook calculation that was putting some teams that should've gone to win-now into rebuild and vice-versa
-emergency cap-dump trades by the AI will no longer result in them acquiring 1st round picks cheaply
-fixed problem with some upcoming UFA's not being added to the trading block during trade deadline week when they should have been
-fixed issue causing some European teams to release good non-foreign players at the start of a new game
-European teams will no longer release young (<=22) foreign players (who are presumably in their system to develop) rather than sending them to a farm team
-AI will now offer to retain salary in trades (both with the other AI and human-run teams)

UI Changes

-added new options to the player filter: Hand, Special Ability, Major Role, Supplementary Role, Local Popularity, International Popularity, Min/Max Weight, Min/Max Height
-added a "Recent" button to the League/Tournament schedule screen that switches to the last day with a completed game (this season) in that league or tournament
-changed the default view on the Bio tab of the player screen to "Complete History" from "Career Highlights"
-fixed crash when right-clicking on players listed on the Free Agent Centre screen or League Transactions Free Agents
-the Minutes total for goalies is now being calculated correctly in the "Total" line of player career stats instead of being 0
-goalie GSAA now has a total in the player career stats tab instead of being 0
-in the PM's you receive when one of your players play in an international tournament, the day of the week will now be shown in English, not your system language
-messages notifying the user of his players participating in international tournaments will now show the correct GR for the player instead of 0
-in standard games, the team transaction log drop down no longer includes 20-21 and 21-22 options
-multiple changes to text of all-star game roster announcements; also changed the all-star game roster announcement title and removed some redundant text
-the "Select Color" popup on the team edit screen no longer has difficult-to-read white text on a light grey background
-all trade announcements will be reported in the news (had been skipping smaller trades)
-added the player's nationality icons to the player's image (top-left) box
-the Select Playable Leagues screen at the start of a new standard game now has a "Cancel" option that returns to the start screen
-added team logo for Mongolian national team and updated NHL playoff logo
-removed "0/0" before the team names before the team names (or the "no parent teams" text)
-when a player gets a "Total" line in the player career stats screen because he played for two or more teams in the same league that season, it's no longer always displayed as "NHL Total" instead of the actual league abbreviation
-split Birthplace into two columns, Birthplace and State, on the roster screen's Biography view
-the "Picks in this Draft" line in the Team Info section of the draft page no longer gets cut off at the end if there are too many picks
-removed the "Award Nominees" event as an autoplay option (didn't work properly because the date changes based on the season end date)
-the Stanley Cup tournament logo is no longer showing up on the Winter Olympics History-(season)-Standings screen

Miscellaneous Changes

-Challenge mode is no longer required to get achievements (aside from in historical challenges, which always start in challenge mode)
-updated NHL jerseys (in both standard and historical games)
-increased the permanent impact of serious injuries on a player's ratings
-players who have been recently acquired now have a 60-day cool down period before the "shop player" option can be used for them
-deactivated the Seattle re-draft option if you start as the Kraken
-preset the Coyotes' new arena to appear in 2026-27
-tactical roles now have a minimum role rating of 5 for players who have a template compatible with the role
-removed the "(Draft Name" is Now Complete" PM (was redundant with new draft summaries)
-the league stats-team attendance screen now counts games where attendance is above capacity (due to standing room) as sellouts (it hadn't been doing that before, so there were teams with >100% attendance and no sellouts
-fixed several issues with the creation of hidden ratings for database players who didn't have them set already
-the Annual Budget owner profit-taking amount is now always 0 for teams in leagues with the College Junior Type
-fixed issue where players on the NHL starting rosters who should be subject to the NHL-CHL agreement could not be sent back to junior
-redefined "leader" player personality, was leading to too many "leaders" in lower-level leagues
-increased tendency of Canadian players to choose to play college hockey
-Russia and Belarus will now return to the top level groups in international play when they resume play (as per IIHF announcement)
-increase frequency of retirement for players in the Senior and Semi-Professional generic leagues
-removed an old system that could cause NCAA players to leave the team in mid season
-the Season-Ending Performance Evaluation for Fan Happiness now applies the proper value, instead of always being 0
-added another level of Special Owner Contributions to monthly finances
-the monthly finance settings can be altered in online leagues if the current date is <7 days from the end of the month, so the league doesn't have to work around the month start date not aligning with a weekly schedule
-when a user takes over a team (during a game or at the start of a new game), the "AI Set Roles" option will automatically be run on his team (to avoid all players being set to the default value, Screener)
-the auto-zipping of league files in multiplayer will now exclude the logo_leagues and logo_teams folders so the process doesn't fail if any of those have unicode characters in them (so any logo changes in the league will have to be handled manually if you want all users to see them)
-Special Owner Contributions when a team is in financial trouble (negative monthly total) will now be larger
-European players with the major junior preference (i.e., everyone taken in the CHL draft) will now be a lot more willing to sign with CHL teams
-fixed issue with shop player being unavailable at the start of a game for players who should have that option
-changed the mouse over popup text for the "All-star" icon beside a players name so it's now "All-Star Game" instead of just "All-Star" to avoid confusion with season-end AS teams
-world database has been updated - fixed a few regional designations, corrected some spelling, made some adjustments to talent level generation for a few countries, particularly low-level ones
-adjusted typical owner retirement age upwards
-player development will no longer be affected negatively if the player is on a junior/developmental team that is normally considered too good for him if it were a regular league
-adjusted player merchandising sales (jersey sales) criteria
-added retirements to the team transaction logs
-the auto-play to date popup now has a later maximum year (so you can set it to 2022 from a 1917 start)
-fixed issue leaving some real staff with 0 ratings and reputation at the start of a new game
-arena graphics now support year ranges
-deactivated player generation in a couple of countries that no longer compete internationally or have an organized senior-level league
-added new national teams
-added some missing attendance data for the last three seasons
-updated historical jerseys for recent changes
-modified the Leadership award calculation slightly to give captains more of an advantage
-fixed issue with generating missing staff ratings in the quick starts
-significantly increases staff salaries in junior and college leagues
-the mock drafts no longer exclude human-run teams
-players contracted to NHL teams but playing in the CHL are no longer occasionally being traded multiple times (as many as 6-7 trades) on their junior league's trade deadline day
-adjusted Mental Training bonus for goalies, was producing too many goalies with very high stamina, which in turn was having an effect on goalie starts
-initial draft pool is now adjusted to include any players in the game not already present in it (e.g. due to the user importing/adding them to custom games and making them free agents)
-Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish U14 players should now properly transfer to the UK U14 league
-fixed incorrect reporting of the other team's cap hit on the trading screen
-slowed goalie fitness recovery slightly
-reduced frequency of the facegen "1/4 image" bug (but still not completely eliminated, unfortunately)
-added some routines to clean out older scouting reports in very large saves, which should improve stability in long-term games with a lot of leagues
-made improvements in memory handling that should significantly help with stability and playability in long-term games
-added a search screen filter for Junior Preference

Quote:4278 Words

***luke*** · 11-11-2022, 07:36 AM

I can copy and paste from their forum as well

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/show...p?t=341696

***Frenchie*** · 11-11-2022, 09:40 AM

11-11-2022, 07:36 AMluke Wrote: I can copy and paste from their forum as well

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/show...p?t=341696

ooooooooooof

***Caleb*** · 11-11-2022, 10:30 AM

LOL

*AgentSmith630* · 11-11-2022, 10:41 AM

***brickwall35*** · 11-11-2022, 10:46 AM

These are the kind of things they warn you about in college.

grok · 11-11-2022, 10:59 AM

I'm moving this to SHL discussion. SHL Media is meant for original work that directly relates to the Simulation Hockey League and promotes its players, users, or simulation events. This post fails to meet those conditions for a few reasons:

1. This post is (primarily) not original work. The bulk of the post is a changelog of FHM9 features posted by an OOTP community manager. While we offer a data grading scale for derived or manipulated data, the data scale does not apply to directly copied text.

2. This post is not directly promoting the SHL's players, users, or sim results. While we use FHM, and media about how FHM interacts with our league is generally approved, this post makes very little attempt to contextualize these FHM changes back to the SHL's operations. General information about the vendor products SHL uses are not inherently SHL-centered--we are a very small subsection of OOTP's user surface for this game. This is clearly different than media talking about builds, test simming, or other SHL-centered ideas that use FHM as a tool. With no contextualization or development, I don't believe the original work in this post meets the standard for SHL media.

I notice you said that you had thoughts about the new sim engine in FHM9. Your thoughts on the new version and how its changes would impact SHL would be excellent SHL media. This post is not SHL media.

grok · 11-11-2022, 11:08 AM

Also a side note--it's moved and dealt with. Any more of the pithy sniping about the origin of the post and I'll have this thread locked.

***CampinKiller*** · 11-11-2022, 02:21 PM

11-11-2022, 11:08 AMgrok Wrote: Also a side note--it's moved and dealt with. Any more of the pithy sniping about the origin of the post and I'll have this thread locked.

We're not in your domain anymore!!!!

G2019 · 11-11-2022, 02:54 PM

I ain't reading all that I'm happy for you though or sorry that happened.

Shylo_Moxii · 11-11-2022, 03:52 PM

yeah not a media but a good discussion for improvements that have been made. I don't expect SHL to make another jump for at least 2 more installations of the game if not 3 or more.

grok · 11-11-2022, 04:42 PM

11-11-2022, 02:21 PMCampinKiller Wrote:
11-11-2022, 11:08 AMgrok Wrote: Also a side note--it's moved and dealt with. Any more of the pithy sniping about the origin of the post and I'll have this thread locked.
We're not in your domain anymore!!!!

i have removed you from my domain but i will do everything in my power to ruin a motherfucker's day

Shylo_Moxii · 11-11-2022, 04:51 PM

11-11-2022, 04:42 PMgrok Wrote:
11-11-2022, 02:21 PMCampinKiller Wrote: We're not in your domain anymore!!!!
i have removed you from my domain but i will do everything in my power to ruin a motherfucker's day

looks like he went from media grader to the keyboard warrior security detail

***aleks*** · 11-11-2022, 05:00 PM

Pay the man!

Shylo_Moxii · 11-11-2022, 05:04 PM

11-11-2022, 05:00 PMdmuda11 Wrote: Pay the man!

wait how much for copy and paste? @grok you should give him half of your media grading pay for this media.

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