NHL 23 Franchise Wishlist! [ Edited ]

[AEZ1]

So I throw this out there every year, and sometimes maybe someone reads it and an update gets made (I was throwing Create a Team out there for years back in the early 2000s, and they finally added it! I know, it wasn’t me, but it felt like a win), and this year they finally corrected the font on Claude Giroux’s “C”! You’re welcome.

And they cut the pregame, didn’t think I’d miss that as much as I do. I liked the Play Now version where they’d come running from the dressing room, show them warming up, the goalie equipment. It’s almost too quickly ‘back to the action.’

So is it just me or do the faces look more cartoonish that ever? The game play is way slicker, but I play solely in Franchise Mode (all about roster building) and practically nothing has changed.

I miss Be a Pro letting you play in the CHL for years, that was fun. I wish it allowed you to play just as one player in Franchise Mode, so you could just play as your avatar, while still managing the roster and signings, etc.

Player Editing: We should be able to edit CPU-created players in Franchise Mode. Especially now that they've blocked being able to change Player Roles or Position. You luck out with a draft pick who's a Medium-Elite at 18, but his potential is an Elite Grinder? What even is that? And too often they have these goofy hairdos or are 19 and have grey hair, or you can wind up with three draft prospects that have the same default face (they still haven't even given actual faces to players like Travis Konecny or Ivan Provorov, who've been in the league for years, yet kids in the CHL look spot-on). We should have the same edit access that we do at the Main Menu level.

The Stanley Cup celebration: The handoff of the Cup is so random as to seem pointless (watching Claude Giroux snub Sean Couturier to hand the Cup to…Connor Bunnaman? Thrilling). How about a setting in Edit Lines where you can set the handoff order, like you can with Shootout, or even just an edit so that the C hands to an A, him to the other A, and then the starting G? Since they only do those four.

I love that we got Career Totals back, and that they added Team Abbreviations as to where they played, but can't that be added for AHL stats as well? I know they keep track of them, as they show when they score their 100th AHL goal etc, so why not a running total. I'll get 10 years into Franchise Mode and some career AHLers will retire and nothing. You play 1,000 AHL Games…that’s something.

Ability to decide awards: Too often, in Franchise Mode, if you’re playing your best players to pad stats, you’ll win the Hart or Norris every year, even though another player would be the obvious choice. It would be great to decide winners so that the highest scoring defenseman doesn’t win the Norris every year, or the Hart going hand in hand with the Art Ross more often than not, or Connor McDavid winning the Selke based on whatever algorithm they’re using.

Choose retirements/unretire: I play Franchise Mode with Auto Save off so I can decide injury length (I won’t accept anything longer than three weeks because that’s just so fun when it happens in real life) and also who I accept retiring. I’ve had the game try and retire 26-year-old minor leaguers who had no injury history (something Madden actually takes into consideration), and I’ve had the game drop 38-year-old veterans several overall rating points towards the end of the season, only to NOT retire them, when (in the storyline) it would have been ideal for them to hang them up. Or retire a 38-year-old veteran who's still rated 86 and just scored 90 points. It would be great to be able to select players for retirement, or deselect them from the proposed list shown on View Retired Players.

It would also be fun to elect retiring players to the HHOF, and Retire Jersey numbers for your team with Franchise Mode. Pipe dreams, I know, but still…this is a wishlist. And while we’re at it, a banner raising ceremony at the start of the season following a Cup win?

The Draft: I still don’t get why we can’t just see players’ ratings like you can in the Main Menu’s Rosters section. So before you start a Mode, you can see that Tyson Foerester is a 62 Medium-Top 6, but on Draft Day it’s a bunch of question marks and “Possible” Top 6? You can see exact ratings in Free Agency, why not on draft day? I auto draft every time because it doesn’t matter what criteria I try and go by, they never work out. I turn Fog of War off for this reason, it should extend to draft picks.

Franchise (Owner) Mode used to have a screen that displayed your team’s seasons, so you could see your history: 103 Points, Third Round; 98 Points, Lost Final; etc. I’d like to see that back.

Winter Classic: I miss the Winter Classic venue they created a few years back. You could only play a single game, but wouldn't it be awesome if the team you select in Franchise Mode got to play the Winter Classic every year? Just make it the first game you play in January and you get that outdoor setting with weather selections like they have in Madden, or just default cloudy skies with flurries. They used to have the All-Star Game jammed in there, so can't they just use that same approach for the Classic?

Anyway, maybe the CEO will read this and realize all my genius suggestions, but most likely we’ll just get NHL 23 with extra duffel bags full of merch in CHEL to unlock! (Never even been in it)

[IrishOwl]

Okay, my turn:

1: Training Camp: In the off season, let us set the Be A Pro weekly training sessions for our players. Let us really push the players toward what we want. Do it by position if individuals are too much, but let us try to develop our players.

2: Coach Mode: Add this mode, so we can play "GM" mode without all the hoopla, and so we can edit our line strategies. It might be cool to go to the GM and ask for a 1st Line Sniper and see who the computer can get for us.

3: 25 Scouts Please!

4: A better distribution of players in the world. I mean 3 players in USA East between 1 and 220, but 15 in DEL seems really off. I know there are some licensing issues with College, but turn up the number of USA East/West, ICE Allsvenskan prospects and down SHL, LIIGA, and all Canada.

5: X-Factor Scouting: Make this something we can actually scout. And FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS, no more Bottom 6 Fs with X-Factors. I actually had one with 3 superstar abilities. The guys overall was 62 when drafted (no fog of war) after 3 seasons he's 71 and has all 3 Superstar abilities... Why?

6: Update Team Logos: I mean, after 10 seasons, Teams change things up. We should be able to do this as well.

7. Additional Teams: 33 Teams is cool, but I'd really like to add 4 teams, 1 to each division. Stagger their arrivals over a 10 year period in Franchise, so we have to do protection lists and so on, as we go.

8. Custom Player Saves: Can we be allowed to save 10 or 15 generated player files, that we can select from when drafting?

9: Prospect Faces: I want to see pictures of my players, even computer generated ones, rather then Sillouettes, its just annoying to have NO PLAYER pictures after 15 years lol.

10: Ending Video: How about a montage of all the trophies we won, or clips from of our players doing something. I know its an RPG thing, but it'd be nice.

[Bluffer518]

Waste of breath since they obviously do not care what their paying customers want to see in the game. There was almost no changes to franchise mode at all this year, it disgusts me they couldn't even update the conversations to something different when interviewing players/coaches. 

My suggestions I posted in 2019: 

 No trade clause / modified no trade clause
- Performance bonuses in contracts
- Rehaul the contract negotiation system (that doesn't mean just change the wording once in a while, rehaul the whole thing, it's time!). We sometimes have no idea why a player suddenly is not interested in extending their contract. Let's have that chat system built into the prospect/coach system in play with players so we can truly negotiate contracts. Including performance bonuses or signing bonuses or NTC/NMC would be a plus. Or maybe have us negotiate with the player's agent (as in real life) instead of with the players themselves.
- Rehaul of moving players between CHL/NHL, we need better control over this. Not knowing whether to have AHL depth or not going into the next season is frustrating because if the guys that are in junior end up available for your NHL/AHL team the game will automatically cut some players to put your roster at 50 players. To my knowledge, you don't even know who the game cuts from your team, is it the worst trade value players, worst overall players? Chosen at random?
Or at the very least let us choose the players it cuts from the team?

- Reassign players to other leagues (IE: SHL/Liga/Russia/CHL/etc) especially those who end up as depth in the AHL. Would be cool to have this interact with the morale system too so the player doesn't always react positively to being sent back to Europe and their attributes grow slower or decrease (and they turn into a bust) or they see it as a positive thing and their attributes grow faster (and possibly turn into a gem) . As it stands now we have no control whether a player is sent back to the CHL or not once they are AHL eligible, this is done automatically and it shouldn't be!

- Coaches system isn't perfect but it's a great improvement from previous years, what we are missing though is the "trainer" and the better your trainer the less frequent injuries are or the faster they heal.
This should be a no brainer!

[EA_Blueberry]

@AEZ1 

Appreciate the very in-depth write up on improvements across various modes and features in the game. I went ahead and added Franchise mode to your post title since a lot of what you suggested can benefit in that mode. I'm going to toss your post up at the top of these Franchise boards so others can start chipping in with their top requests.

Thank you for coming to the forums! 

[pvm0760]

@AEZ1 Love all these suggestions. The only thing I’ll say is, as a frequent attendee of Phantoms games, HOW DARE YOU SLANDER CONNOR BUNNAMAN

[johum2886]

As someone who plays a lot of franchise mode, there are many things I want to see done in NHL 23 Franchise. Firstly, the biggest thing is that devs at EA actually pay attention to the problems that exist within the mode. If that happens, this game mode might not become mind numbingly boring quite quickly.

1- The ability to edit NHL team jerseys in franchise, or even in the main menu. Whether it's the colour scheme or the jersey template, it would be cool to change some of them to have some variety in the game. This could also (potentially) help with some of the errors that we find every year.

2- Faster simulation and menus. It's been a problem for a while and needs to be fixed (I'm on PS4 so this could have been rectified on old gen but I don't know).

3- Bring in the NCAA/NTDP/KHL leagues. I understand that there is a rights issue, but it would be great to have these leagues in the game. Not only would it bring in actual prospects (Owen Power, Kent Johnson, Matvei Michkov, etc.), but it could also bring in Undrafted Free Agents from those leagues (Panarin, Shipachyov, etc.).

4- Better custom logos, or the ability to create logos or have a created logo vault from the community.

5- No-Trade and No-Move Clauses, and the modified versions of them

6- Have players request trades in-season. I know that morale has an impact on this, but the morale system has been so broken that I don't trust it to even try it. Either way, if players requesting trades is added, I feel that their trade value should be lowered the longer you hold onto the player, or even have the effort the player puts into their play get lower the longer they stay on the team (see Dubois).

7- Having the ability to edit draft classes, and having custom draft class vaults.

8- Real NHL coaches. We have the players and teams, why don't we have the coaches?

9- HHOF inductees at the end of each season would be cool

10- Ability to retire numbers, get it done.

11- Some form of advanced analytics would be a great addition, and would add another element to franchise and what kind of GM you want to be and what team you want to build. These analytics don't need to be anything huge, "simple" ones like Corsi, xGF, xSV% would be cool

12- Free Agency needs a revamp. Simple as that. If it's similar to the trade deadline, that's fine, but it needs to be different. Most contracts are signed on the first day of FA, yet in Franchise mode, most players don't start signing until July 5/6/7

13- Conditional picks in trades would be a great addition, especially since they're becoming more common in real trades

14- Make adjustments to the trade value. It was a good idea to revamp it, but there are a few criticisms I have for it: young players don't have enough value being the main one

15- bring back elite forward and defenceman player types

Other things I want to see added to NHL 23 include the following;

-player tendencies: Claude Giroux should not be hitting 300 shots on goal in a season with Sean Couturier not even hitting 200. Created players also have their shot tendency jacked, so if you want a college/international prospect, they are going to hit 300 shots every year regardless of position.

-dual archetypes: X-Factor is cool, but I would really like to have the ability to have more than the standard sniper/playmaker/2-way forward, some of my suggestions,

• Pure Playmaker/Sniper
• Playmaking Sniper/Sniping Playmaker
• Offensive/Defensive Two-Way Forward/Grinder
• Pure OFD/DFD
• Offensive/Defensive Two-Way Defender

- more face scans, simple

- winter classic/WJC/Olympics/World Championship (again rights issue with IIHF, but would be a cool element in the game)

- Custom Goalie masks

- Larger spread of overalls, and a minor revamp of how overalls are constructed. Have McDavid as a 99 and work your way down.

• maybe consider having players be able to have individual statistics above 99, ex: giving McDavid 103 speed, Alex Ovechkin 105 shot accuracy, or Patrick Marleau 110 durability. This is not something that should be easily acquired by players, but could help impact gameplay/simulation when combined with X-Factors.
• also, have defenceman and forwards have separate overall builds. Connor Bedard should not be a 69 overall defenceman when he's a 72 overall forward

- Lastly, I'd like to see either new commentators or (my preferred option), multiple broadcast crews, each with their own unique lines. This could be a multi-year plan by adding a crew in every year, or add them all in at once

[henryclay1844]

Great lists and wishes. Eventually they need to integrate all leagues into Franchise and give us the options to play with Europe or CHL teams for a different experience.

Hopefully with the game back on track it will produce more revenue and EA can add some more leagues, number is national teams which need integrated into Be a Pro too, complete waste we only have Canada Finland (with wrong jerseys) and Austria now. We need Juniors too.

Also need to work a way to include USHL and NCAA with the options for paying players now there. More from Europe and Russia being the dream.

Edit fake players. What is the reason for having roster share to have fake player with black silhouettes ruin it? Get rid of the silhouettes and use the player faces as placeholders!

Outdoor games. Why is this wasted in HUT?

Better presentations utilizing Frostbite for celebrations, locker scenes, post game, award ceremony and the draft. Show our picks putting on the jersey! 

Full roster control and the ability to make any trade I want. I don't want the AI deciding that trades that actually happen are not allowed in Franchise. 

[CoozterWarden]

At least give us the option back to replace NHL teams with existing teams. The most interesting and fun franchise mode/be a GM I've played was when I created this European Super League back in NHL 14 as an alternative universe where the NHL never existed.

[Beauts90]

I usually take my time and make a well thought out wish list every year, I don’t even have to do that this year because my wish list is identical to the one I posted last year.

The funny thing about that is I actually think this years game is a major improvement over last years, they just didn't include anything I wanted except much needed changes to chemistry and player separation. 

[ccleme20]

Please delete my response - topic moved to appropriate area.