2. No More Fixed Potentials
General Manager mode has made a vast amount of improvements in a short amount of time. What started off as a simple draft and trade frenzy among gamers has reached as far as making new teams, relocation and virtually anything an owner or general manager would have to do.
There’s still some big flaws in it, however. Player development is the biggest portion of being a general manager in any NHL game. The squad needs to have good individual overall scores, or the chances of making the playoffs are pretty slim.
EA has incorporated a system of different player potentials in the game. In a nutshell, these potentials are already pre-determined, which means a player’s overall score is already set for the rest of his career.
Connor McDavid, for example, is listed as a franchise player within the game. The Edmonton Oilers captain will always hover around a score of 90-95 in a NHL GM series. On the other hand, lower depth players sometimes have the potential of an AHL Top 6 forward, which means that they have to produce something amazing to even get past a score of 75.
The system’s biggest and most simple flaw is that players averaging around 30-40 points a season could still generate a low score the year after.
Obviously, that’s not very realistic. FIFA leaves the form of a player up to the gamer, or in other words, the gamer’s virtual play will determine how high of a score his/her squad can achieve. Another great feature within FIFA’s Manager Mode is that training the players has recently become an option. This allows more freedom to the gamer to decide which players need to be boosted.
The same exact thing needs to happen in NHL. More freedom to the gamer and the players that they’re managing. To add off that, EA could also have stats upgraded on a monthly basis in game time, instead of season-after-season.