CAGLS: Official NHL 14 Online Franchise - Random Rosters - Play ALL Human Opponents - Schedule Section #5 Due 4/9!

It seems there was a roster update posted yesterday. Has anybody had a chance to see what changes it made? At this point, does it make more sense to just wait for an opening day roster?

 
I would hold off till the opening day or maybe even the next week.  Seems like teams are still making cuts.  

 
Hopefully opening day rosters are released soon. People on the EA forums don't think they'll be out by this weekend, but we'll see. I'm ready to get this thing started.

 
I think I might also try to find another league with Random rosters. Just seems like a lot of fun not knowing who you will get.

 
From what I heard, the random rosters aren't really random. They have certain sets of randomized rosters, and you randomly get one of those sets. I'm assuming this is so that you get the correct number of players/positions
 
Good.  Maybe I will have my new router by then.  With the one that I have now I never know if a connection is going to drop or not.  

 
Ask and ye shall receive. The roster update is now out! I'll get things set up soon and start sending invites out. I'm scared, lol.

 
Setting up the league now, and thought this was funny. When I put the game style on "hardcore simulation", it sets the post whistle rules to "relaxed". When I change those to "authentic", it changes the game style to "custom", lol. Oh, EA.

 
Ok, invites have been sent out to everyone on my friends list (all the game will allow me to do). If you don't have an invite, you can search for the league and send a join request. Just search for "CAGLS" and you should find it.

***REMINDER***

We're only playing conference games.

If you're in the Eastern Conference, you DO NOT play games against Western Conference teams.

If you're in the Western Conference, you DO NOT play games against Eastern Conference teams.

Also, I need to add some play style policies to the OP, but the biggest one that stands out is going for cheap rebounds all game long. Obviously, rebounds are a part of hockey. But it has been blatantly proven that this game is susceptible to the same tactics that last years game was. If you are skating into the zone, and immediately throwing a shot on net...and you continue to do this over and over again...as your only means of a mounted offense...for the duration of the game, you will be handled accordingly.

We should all be trying to play with a realistic style, and if the only way you can figure out how to get some shots and score is to get 0.2 seconds of attack and chuck it on net from a mile away, hoping for the goalie to kick it to your forward crashing from the other side, then this is not the place for you.

If anybody else can think of ultra cheesy tactics that people abuse in VS play (which admittedly, I haven't played as much of), let's hear them. We will have a strike policy similar to what I use in the Madden league. So, it won't be a one violation and you're out thing. But having to enforce legitimate play is definitely something that has become an issue with the NHL series.

Outside of that, I'm excited to get this started! Let's hope it works! lol :lol:

 
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CAGLeagueSports said:
If anybody else can think of ultra cheesy tactics that people abuse in VS play (which admittedly, I haven't played as much of), let's hear them. We will have a strike policy similar to what I use in the Madden league. So, it won't be a one violation and you're out thing. But having to enforce legitimate play is definitely something that has become an issue with the NHL series.

Outside of that, I'm excited to get this started! Let's hope it works! lol :lol:
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The rebounds are really the only thing I've noticed through 100 games or so of HUT.

The only other thing I've dealt with won't apply since it involves International ice and cherry picking.
 
mvp828 said:
The rebounds are really the only thing I've noticed through 100 games or so of HUT.

The only other thing I've dealt with won't apply since it involves International ice and cherry picking.
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Yeah, cherry picking and rocket passes down the ice are awful too...but I've never known that to be much of a VS problem. I guess you could just take one skater and keep him past center ice, then when an AI grabbed the puck and you took control, just try to rocket it down before your "former self" skates back into position where you should have been in the first place, lol. But man, that seems like a lot of work just to cherry pick one guy. Plus, that's a way more obvious thing that people should know is wrong.

The rebounds is just something people have to be aware of. It's not bad to take a shot from the outside if it's all you've got. And yeah, sometimes people are going to get dumb bounces. Those things happen. But it's different when it's the ONLY thing you're doing. Anyone who has played online at all has seen it. Some people...every time they cross the blue line just throw it on net and crash. There's no cycling the puck. There's no set up plays. It's just straight garbage and hope for a lucky bounce.

We'll have to be fairly diligent with watching out for it too, because while I want to say doing it "sometimes" is ok (like I said, sometimes that outside shot is all you have), if people start showing patterns of "oh crap, I need a goal...better start going for rebounds", they'll be subject for disciplinary action as well. Ultimately, it's just not something you want to develop a reputation for. People will notice. And I encourage others to contact me and give me a heads up if someone is trending in that direction. No one needs to be crucified for doing it once. But if multiple people are calling you out on anything, then yeah...it's probably true.

 
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Matt Young said:
Nate, I got an XBL message telling me to join the league, but I received no invite in game. I put in a join request, anyway.
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Yup. That's how NHL 14's "Invite" system works... When I was setting up the league, it asked me if I'd like to invite friends. I chose yes...and then went to each person's gamertag...and it created an XBL message... You know it's bad when I wish that the NHL team sat next to the Madden team in class so they could copy off their paper. My expectations are extremely low. I'm just glad the menus seem to be somewhat faster this year. It still feels like CompuServe dial-up...but it's an improvement.

 
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CAGLeagueSports said:
Yeah, cherry picking and rocket passes down the ice are awful too...but I've never known that to be much of a VS problem. I guess you could just take one skater and keep him past center ice, then when an AI grabbed the puck and you took control, just try to rocket it down before your "former self" skates back into position where you should have been in the first place, lol. But man, that seems like a lot of work just to cherry pick one guy. Plus, that's a way more obvious thing that people should know is wrong.

The rebounds is just something people have to be aware of. It's not bad to take a shot from the outside if it's all you've got. And yeah, sometimes people are going to get dumb bounces. Those things happen. But it's different when it's the ONLY thing you're doing. Anyone who has played online at all has seen it. Some people...every time they cross the blue line just throw it on net and crash. There's no cycling the puck. There's no set up plays. It's just straight garbage and hope for a lucky bounce.

We'll have to be fairly diligent with watching out for it too, because while I want to say doing it "sometimes" is ok (like I said, sometimes that outside shot is all you have), if people start showing patterns of "oh crap, I need a goal...better start going for rebounds", they'll be subject for disciplinary action as well. Ultimately, it's just not something you want to develop a reputation for. People will notice. And I encourage others to contact me and give me a heads up if someone is trending in that direction. No one needs to be crucified for doing it once. But if multiple people are calling you out on anything, then yeah...it's probably true.
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Yea it is absolutely ridiculous the cherry picking and rebound spamming you see being done in HUT once you get to the higher divisions.

I went through divisions 10-5 usually only losing 1 or 2 games. I hit division 4, and suddenly it became spam shots and flip the puck down on International Ice because someone on my team has a faster speed than anyone else.

On a HUT related note... I feel like a cheap whore. I actually spend money on the promo pack that is up this weekend. Even worse was that of my 20 rares, 8 were a mix of jerseys, change team cards, and a logo. I also a Backstrom and Bobrovosky even though they do me absolutely zero good since they are rated 85 and 84 and I already have Hiller who I bought on Auction for 9,000 pucks.

 
Ok, all join requests that have been sent through last night have been accepted. There's still several people who haven't joined yet though. Let's get this done in the next couple days so we can get this thing started, guys. Again, all you have to do is go to "Search Leagues" and type "CAGLS". Once we get everybody joined, we can take a look at the first section of the schedule and figure out a good timeframe for advancement.

 
All right, everybody is in, and we have now advanced to the first section of games! I looked at everyone's schedule and CONFERENCE games (the only ones we play...just trying to stress that until everyone gets used to it) range from teams having 0 (NY Rangers) to having 5 (Buffalo, Philadelphia). But no team has more than 3 human opponents (Detroit) they have to play. So, that should make things easier. I think for this first section of games, putting a deadline of one week is reasonable...but if it stays around 3 human games maximum that people would need to schedule, I'd like to quicken it to a 5-6 day advance if possible.

The schedule advances in 2 week increments, and if we stayed with a 1 week advance, simple math would tell you we'd be lucky to get through 2 seasons. I'm hoping we can do better than that. This is where even playing a 40-50 game schedule is daunting. Maybe after this week we just go to the 5 day advance and ask everyone to do the best the can...and just keep this thing moving forward so we can actually maybe enjoy the team building stuff like drafting, free agency, player development, etc. this year.

If anyone has any other thoughts, feel free to share. But for now...let's put this first deadline at 10/25 (last day to play your games).

 
moojuice said:
I am assuming Conference CPU games are OK to play?
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Yes, indeed. That's why I'm hoping it'll actually help us keep things moving. Just like last year, again, we're better off not having a lot of members so people won't have so many games against human opponents to schedule. It's funny seeing the range in schedules though because the Rangers opened up the first 2 weeks with a west coast road trip, so Rob has zero games to play. I guess some teams will just have times like that, while others will be very busy.

Also, just a reminder to everyone, remember Detroit and Columbus moved to the Eastern Conference, while Winnipeg is now in the Western Conference.

 
Yeah....so here's some fun news...when EA prompts you to download the roster update before you play a game, and then asks you if you want to save it...and you say "Yes"...it doesn't actually save it. I realized this tonight while going over the rosters. I noticed some oddities, then checked with some other members, then looked in the "load roster" menu only to find nothing. To actually download rosters for GM Connected/Be A GM/Season play, you have to go to Customize > Roster Managment > Download Roster...and THEN save it. Then, when you start your gameplay mode of choice and choose "current roster", it loads the correct one.

Long story short, we're restarting the league because waiting to start accomplished nothing with the current league since the game just gave us the out of the box rosters anyway.. I would feel stupid about this, but EA really didn't make that intuitive or helpful at all. The new league is already set up and I named it the same thing. So, to avoid confusion, just do this.

1. Remain in old league.

2. Search for CAGLS again

3. You should only get one search result. That will be the new league.

4. Send join request.

5. Load up old league, go to "League Members", press A on yourself, and choose "Leave League".

After that, we'll all be ok, and will have survived the first of what I'm sure will be many EA induced nightmares, lol

Again, sorry for the inconvenience...but God dammit, EA. lol. :)

 
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Looks like EA is off to a great start.  I'm starting to want to go back to 13 more and more.

EDIT:

Just sent in the new request and did the switch.

 
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sendme said:
Looks like EA is off to a great start. I'm starting to want to go back to 13 more and more.

EDIT:

Just sent in the new request and did the switch.
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Meh, there was nothing better about 13. The game is just in a state of mediocre and that's the way it is. This was an annoying turn of events, but I guess on the positive side, it gives us a fresh start with the newest patch updates and tuner set. The divisions will now be named properly, rosters will actually be complete, salaries will be accurate (all of this was screwed up in our initial league).

For me personally, I had an issue where I had a TWF as my 3rd line LD...and he was rated 48 OVR. I tried calling up a 75 OVR D from my AHL team, but the game wouldn't let me because I only had $0.267 M of cap space. I tried sending the TWF down to my AHL team, and the game wouldn't let me do that because it would put me below the minimum skater requirement. :wall: DarkTower's (Colorado) salaries were also messed up as he had at least two players making double of what they should have been making for this season.

Once we figured out that it wasn't any of the four roster updates, but the default roster that came with the game, it explained a lot. I had never seen that option to download regular rosters though. It's so buried in the menus, you probably wouldn't find it unless you knew to look for it. But regardless, we're on the right path now. Just gotta catch back up to where we were and get this thing started again. At least none of us wasted any time playing games.

 
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Thanks Ramjagbama.

Sendme, we wont be able to get our game in until we get simmed to the first week, so I guess we'll have to reschedule for a weekday. I'm pretty much available after 7pmEST.

 
Yeah, obviously the deadline will be readjusted accordingly. We'll still do a week for the first set of games...whenever we're able to get everyone rejoined and get the league advanced. I sent out PM's to everybody who hasn't mentioned rejoining, so hopefully it won't take more than a day or so.

 
Just let me know what day moojuice. I'm good most nights. Tuesday and Thursday are a little bit of an issue but all other days are fine.
 
Rejoined a couple hours ago.

Also a heads up Nate... Once I get to my laptop I'm going to make a post updating my availability.
 
All right, we've got 8 people joined in the new league. Just waiting on the last 4. garrett007, Matt Young, Panoramic15, and Vulcan2422.

Reeeally hoping we can get this squared away by tomorrow.

 
jza1218 said:
Maybe I'll be able to play my first game around Thanksgiving lol.
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It could happen. Pretty sure we're just waiting on Gary, unless he put it in after I got off last night...can't say that I noticed, (#stopurturningmeon) and Panoramic15...who said he was going to send his join request 2 days ago, lol. So, yeah...either Thanksgiving or one of the eight nights of Chanukah :lol:

 
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I haven't actually looked, but we can't do anything right now with rosters or anything, right? And if people can join mid season, couldnt we just advance to week 1 for now, so that people who are in can play their games, but just wait for Fary and Panoramic to advance to week 2?

 
Just start with out me. I'm not sure how many games I'll even play and when I was in a league last year it just got way too time consuming playing a whole season. 

 
moojuice said:
I haven't actually looked, but we can't do anything right now with rosters or anything, right? And if people can join mid season, couldnt we just advance to week 1 for now, so that people who are in can play their games, but just wait for Fary and Panoramic to advance to week 2?
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Yeah, that's probably what we should do. I was going to put a "join deadline" of tomorrow. But at this point, nobody should be shocked if things start moving without them. And yeah, people can join at any point. So, if Gary, or Panoramic15, or anyone else decides they want to play, we can add them down the road.

My only concern with waiting was screwing over with potential CPU roster moves since we had to restart the league and everyone was technically in the first league. But if we're hoping for people to play 3-5 games in 5-7 day stretches, not sending a join request in a 4 day stretch doesn't bode particularly well.

 
And on that note, I'm advancing us now. Again, we'll take one week for this first set of games...and then see if quickening the pace is feasible.

The deadline (last day to play games) will be 10/31! The new HHH! Happy Halloween Hockey!

 
Um yeah...can anybody check and make sure the rosters aren't STILL default before I snap my disc in half...this shit is getting retarded...

 
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Nope, GM connected rosters are fucked. Michael Sauer is listed on their third D-line, but they did not extend him a qualifying offer over the summer and he's a free agent I think. 

 
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