They need to cut owner mode and streamline scouting, trading, and line fits. Why have FOW like you said. Why not just tell me the players line characteristics like when I scout for the draft. Why is scouting soooo tedious.
Yeah I remember it how is this a new feature it seems like when they switch engines it takes them a while to get back where the game was prior to the switch. NHL 21 Ignite to NHL 22 Frostbite
@zestplays It's not a new feature 😂 it was an option in NHL 23, 24 and however many years before that. It hasn't changed, if anything all it does is prevent loading up on coaching staff since when it's disabled you can get majority of your coaches B's or higher without worrying about budget limit
They do this with EVERYTHINGGG it’s sad 😂 They’ll take it out for a couple years then add it back like it’s something we haven’t seen. They’ll do it with winter classics again soon
Owner Mode player here. There are actually some cool things in there, specifically the budgets for scouting and coaching. If you don't have these on you can just hire any coach and scout that you want, which isn't easy mode, but it's easier. My buddy and I play one season each time we hang out, and they take us probably eight hours per season. He runs the owner stuff and scouting, I run the GM stuff with heavy input from him, and we collaborate on coaching. There are times when we simply can't afford the coach we really want. One year we opted to fire our coach and hire Jason Spezza as our head coach because he was much cheaper, and we actually won two cups that way. It was wildly satisfying to not only pilot a team to a cup as a GM, but also navigate the coaching and scouting budgets. Now, I agree that MOST of Owner Mode is kinda meh. I'm not sure they should get rid of it but, like so many other parts of this game, it needs a major overhaul to move from "This part is kinda cool" to actually being good.
for owner mode they should have more aggresive goals that have actual outcomes, for example a bottom 5 team owner goal should be acquire two elite prospects within 2 years if its accomplished all prospects grow a bit better atleast 5+ and the elite prospects 10+ or for a team on the verge of winning it all have a goal of acquire a superstar which will boost the moral of all players and improves all line chemistry , or a goal of keeping a vet happy whos been there for a long time the benefit of doing that would mean its cheaper to resign players because hes a good teammate or leader and people wanna play with him.
After selecting to go into the owner menu, its all the same menu since NHL 17/18 but with a blueish-hue. Absolute joke. Just remove morale and owner mode
@@Hurricanesfan123 That's a weak excuse. EA made $7 billion in the last fiscal year. They can absolutely afford to put the time into bringing NHL to PC. There is an audience for it. Most of their other sports titles are on PC. For them to skip out on the NHL games there is a disgrace.
Fog of war makes some sense, I mean we don’t have player attributes in real life do we? Everything is based on statistics which the game allows you to observe. So you might not know a player’s overall but who cares if they produce?
Yeah but there’s metrics, charts, and graphs that read all the advanced stats to calculate a grade or in other words an “overall” for a player in real life that I’m sure general managers look at. It’s much different than this video game obviously in the sense that there could be an offensive weapon that dominates on the power play, but then they are brutal in their own zone and turn the puck over too much, so the lack of defensive traits is calculated equally no matter how good their offensive traits are. Say they’re the best offensive player but worse defensive player in the world, they’d probably be like a 50 overall. This example isn’t accurate at all obviously, but I’m trying to make an example out of the weighing system that it uses on how it evaluates a player to their full ability rather than catering towards what they excel at.
@@thepowerwithin9865I agree with your general take but it just shows how much ea sucks at making these games. So many counting stats aren’t even in the game like blocked shots let alone advanced stats
@@CoffeeBeerHeals Overalls or x-factors aren’t bad pieces of information to have, but the games’ system should cater to the more well rounded players than simply the offensive juggernauts. I understand offense is always the most fun for a lot of people, but does that mean it’s fair to rate players that way? The stats and ratings should reflect clearly the differences between players. McDavid should far and wide be able to burn a vast majority of the league with his skating, but he shouldn’t be a stud physically and defensively just for the sake of getting his overall to where it looks good. Instead, the game wants to make ratings to get to their final overall of a player instead of make all the individual ratings accurate which will reflect the overall later. I’d be okay with putting Barkov and McDavid both at a 95 or 94 overall. That being said, McDavid should have way more points than he normally simulates with his offensive power. The simulation will typically give him less than 120 points every season which isn’t accurate at all if we’re going off of his last 3 years. However, his +/- rating should be close to Barkov’s even if Barkov only is around a point per game. Last year, Barkov and McDavid finished extremely close in +/- rating despite McDavid having 53 more points. Why is this? Well the team they’re on could play a role, but it’s obvious that Barkov’s two-way game holds great value and makes up for not having McDavid-like offensive production, and McDavid’s offensive power makes up for not having Barkov-like defense. I guess what I’m trying to say is I want the game to make a player like McDavid’s offensive stats even better and defense worse, and I want a player like Barkov to have even better well-roundedness to his ratings, but nothing too crazy to where he’s putting up McDavid numbers offensively. These ratings should help reflect the clear differences between the players better instead of everyone feeling the same. They should also make the simulations more realistic in franchise. Don’t make an area of a players game better which they may be lacking generally in order to make the areas that they’re really good in look better. But also capture those areas they’re good in and be sure to separate those players from others. If some players are overpowered in certain situations, good. That’s how it is in real life. Players will play to their strengths, not their weaknesses. So make their strengths stronger, and make their weaknesses weaker.
@@thepowerwithin9865 I agree, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I’m not talking about player ratings when I say counting stats. As far as I know blocked shots aren’t even shown in the game. You were mentioning advanced analytics which I think should impact player ratings and I agree they shouldn’t make players good at defense to make them a better overall but I really don’t think that the devs know hockey, they just look at the scoring leaders. We were talking about fog of war, and I think the game should be able to calculate just as many stats and advanced analytics as real life and then the fog of war wouldn’t be that big of a deal because you don’t need to know player ratings when you have reliable stats to look at.
Johnny it would be cool if you left GM firing on. So after you bring aa team to glory over and over again you can switch teams. It would make interesting story lines to play your former glory teams and see how the new GM runs the teams you've built
the problem with an EA-style owner mode is that it’s purely cosmetic… it has little to no effect on gameplay. it could be really cool and meaningful, but year after year it still feels very empty of purpose.
I wish EA would make expansion like 2k I wanna make Houston come into the league in 3 years not this year. I wanna make Atlanta come back in 7 years after Houston like I shouldn’t be only held to make 1 expansion team and have to create a whole new league just to keep doing expansion teams over. Also why can’t we build new rinks for our teams I’ll never understand … we need new presentation for opening night hockey games bring back playoff presentations … let’s make the rinks look like IRL not just team branding slapped everywhere
The thing is we need staff budgets. Only way to have that is with owner mode. Also would be good to have player salary budgets for when salary cap is turned off.
The way I run my stuff is owner mode on Sometimes firing on sometimes off But every thing financial and what not I have automated and auto assign promotion night And I just ignore owner goals I like being able to join different teams after either getting fired for taking too long to rebuild or joining different teams after winning cups
After finding out FIFA 19 got it's shut all online servers down already (I do consider 5 year old games having online support shut down bullshit and stupid since competent and important video games have online support going on for at least 10 years already), i now know these yearly EA releases are a bunch of useless crap. See NHL 26 released and then suddenly you can't play online on NHL 25.
I always play with owner mode on, I personally like it alot accept that you have to put all of your money into maintenance all the time which is expensive, so all of your money goes into maintenance. I hoped that they would change that from NHL 23-24 which Im playing alot, but I see the owner mode is still the same with all the maintenance STILL cost so expensive, that is a big huge NO for me, and that the ''OWNER'' wants you to upgrade stuff in your arena and you only get 40k $, like WHAT!? Dont think Im gonna buy the game and just gonna stick to NHL 24 and wait for NHL 26.
Owner mode has always felt to me like a president of hockey operations.. Like the promotions and arena upgrades and budgeting very much feels like a presidents job or purview compared to the GMs job.. So you can be the president and GM or just the GM..
The last game I seriously played was NHL19. Used to play owner mode until I got tired of all this pointless garbage. Watching this video, absolutely nothing has changed. Exact same menus and options in owner mode, EA sucks
The owner mode has its moments. The upgrading part is kind of fun and the setting the prices is ok, but I typically leave it to defaults. The hiring of coaches and scouts along with the scouting budget, I think, is fun to manage. Typically, I play about 1 game a week on the schedule and try to mix up home and away games. I find it fun mixing in playing the game and testing my decisions against the sim engine.
Some of the comments in chat alluded to owner mode having an auto-owner option to handle the micromanaging. I think that would lead to just having cool little tidbits like bobblehead nights showing up for storyline purposes.
The only thing owner really adds is the ability to lose your job for underperforming. The problem though is that firings are based off their goals, which are usually financial or otherwise unrelated to what a GM actually does. Stevie Y isn't gonna lose or keep his job because of a parking lot or concession stand. As for fog of war (FoW), I do like the concept of it for realism purposes, but a 7 overall difference for a player that is theoretically 75% scouted is insane. It should instead be a range of maybe +/- 3, with star players only having a variance of MAYBE 2 since everyone knows who McDavid is. I do think that player "type" like TWF, SNP, etc should always be known once a player reaches... say 50 NHL games, since by then any GM would have an understanding of their basic role on the team. While I'm ranting about franchise, morale needs to be implemented in a different way. Ice time/individual performance seems to be the only thing that matters, and there's virtually no leniency on that. As an example, I'll use Pittsburgh with Crosby and Malkin. Historically, chel lists both players as first line players, which skill wise (in their prime) would be accurate. However, since Malkin plays 2C, he isn't always playing 20+ mins a night. In real life, 18-20 mins is plenty, but because his role is hard coded based off OVR, there's a VERY good chance Malkin complains about ice time in game. Hopefully the new conversation system helps mitigate that but if not, morale will continue to be broken. I think player dev and potential needs revamped too, but that's a whole 'nother story.
I play franchise mode religiously. I play all games on top of doing building upgrades and setting the food prices ect. I usually have it turned it on auto. But then the AI would make food prices ridiculous. So ridiculous that I wouldn’t be making much profits. I jumped in and changed the food prices the prices of jerseys and tickets and I was making pretty decent profit and climbing up the rankings in profits made for the year. Also John when you go to say ticket pricing and jersey sales ect. At the top it shows you what people are saying about the prices if they’re too high or what not. I don’t think it’s their as it’s own game mode. It’s just an added feature
To me, stepping into games manually and playing the actual matches shouldnt even be a possibility in Franchise Mode. That literally makes no sense and takes out the whole point of the mode. The whole point is that youre the manager of the team and you watch your creation unfold in the simulation and see how good your decision making is as a GM. If you can just play the actual game, then the results from your team are solely dependent on your skill at the video game. Makes absolutely no sense to play it like that
I’d like to make Owner mode smaller. I really like the idea of getting fired or leaving after your contract is up. Cut out the ticket prices and budgeting stuff but maybe keep Owner goals as apart of the main game. “I want to be a playoff team” so you have to speed up your rebuild. Just so it maybe adds some story elements but it’s not a massive burden on you. Maybe they could say no to paying a big UFA. But keep all that as part of the main game and use it to tell a story
It’s weird because in ‘Owner Mode’, are you the owner or not..? you have the goals that the owner gives you, so are you just signing up to have a boss? 😂 why would anyone want that
always thought fog of war was a really cool addition cause even if you dont want to use it in the sense of scouting nhl players, you have a more realistic way of judging a players value. That means instead of having a "gameified" overall rating, you need to base what you think that player can bring to your team based solely on stats and have to take into account their teammates/linemates/chemistry.
owner mode is similar to more detailed sims like fhm or ehm. its fun if you simulate everything you dont need to do anything really its essentially a gm mode with the potential of relocation and firing... the convos suck but i dont mind it. with the contract negotiations now it makes it a bit more useful to talk to players and keep them happy.
The conversations is really the only thing that is new as it appears and that would just get boring and annoying real fast. It certainly does in be a pro mode. No reason it wouldn't here.
You can turn auyo owner mode on and firing off and none of this matters. I think you can do this so that you have a firm budget for coaches and scouts and you can choose to sign with another team and keeo rhe universe alive but fresh!
You run through the league every GM mode because CPU drafts rookies based off projection while you scoop up every high potential player No more manual scouting rookies, leave it on auto Also turn tog of war on, let’s see how good you really are
This idea is way too far out of EA Sports’ capabilities as developers, but if I was to create owner mode, I’d want to not only have the abilities to change what I wish around the arena and what not, but I would actually want to create an avatar that can free roam around the arena and see the changes for myself. This would give so much life, character, and immersion to the game if you could actually roam around real NHL arenas as an owner that you create. You could find the general managers, coaches, and scouting department offices around the arena and walk to them to where you can then interact with each section of the team. If they were able to add decent voice acting and good dialogue as well for the conversations, it would be an absolutely unreal experience. Let me walk around and see the concessions, parking lots, etc. in a GTA-style free roam perspective. I also would like to be able to watch the game up in an owners suite, and if I leave to go somewhere else in the arena, the game continues still and I hear a roar of the crowd as I’m exiting a room or something. The owner should also be responsible for after-the-game events that take part in the locker room or on the ice in which they’ll get popularity for how they handle certain promotional or post-game situations. You should have the ability to report to the arena as you please, like if it was the night of a game and you wanted to jump in to watch, or on an off-day where there isn’t a game being played, that’s where you can talk to all your departments and staff. I have unlimited ideas with this that have all the potential in the world, but this will obviously never happen even though it would be the only way to make owner mode work.
@@WesternBlockparty I appreciate you reading it though and listening to my ideas. EA should hire me as their head game designer. Although most of my ideas would probably get vetoed knowing them.
Johnny, please assign Howie Morenz from the Montreal alumni to the Canadiens. He was the first NHL celebrity, broke his leg in game, then died "from a broken heart" a few days after he was told he will never play again.
The promotional nights are actually pretty cool, you can do bobble heads for players and then at some point in the game if you jump in you’ll get a little cutscene showing off the bobble head
Cutter Gauthier is a much better prospect than EA Sports has him rated. I think he's definitely gonna score more goals than Celebrini (but probably with fewer points).
Playing with owner mode off is like playing with salay cap off. I play with owner on for the risk of getting fired and to see the team prestige ranks, cuz I start with expansion teams with minimum spending and 1 star arenas. It's better to use just 4 coaches, ignore editing the prices to save time, and upgrade the seats to 5 stars, than merch, than concessions, than parking spot, in that order to max the upgrading profits so u can have more to spend. The only owner goals u need to worry about are the arena upgrades, the rest will take care of itself if you're able to be a top team
Saying to just delete owner mode is no different then the logic of only focusing on HUT and neglecting other modes. Just cause you or even the majority of people don’t play doesn’t mean it is bad. Sure maybe you don’t have to spend all your time upgrading it but to just delete a mode that is atleast functional because you don’t like it doesn’t make sense
Very confused by the criticism of fog of war. Yeah, i hate it, but you can literally just turn it off woth 1 click when you start which youve been able to do for years. Just dont use it like usual and people who want a challenge can choose to use it
They need to have a piggy bank getting money after every win etc so you can do you can add on to the arena and the way they do it with no way getting cash was terrible
