Join senior game designer Gurn Sumal for a deep dive into the Franchise Mode of NHL 25 in this latest trailer for the upcoming sports game. The trailer showcases the changes as the Franchise Mode gets a revamp, including a breakdown of the new streamlined navigation in the Franchise hub for access to easy-to-digest information, like an updated league ticker, box scores, player stats, and more. We also get a breakdown of the overhauled Contract Negotiations system and the Conversation Engine. NHL 25 is launching on PS5 (PlayStation 5) and Xbox Series X|S on October 4, 2024.
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00:00Hey everyone, this is Gurren Sumo, Senior Game Designer for NHL 25.
00:06Today I'm here to talk to you about Franchise Mode.
00:08So there's a few new things going into Franchise Mode.
00:10Everything from a brand new streamlined hub, box scores, game logs, and split stats, contract
00:15clauses and CBA updates, revamped player and coach conversations, and some community requested
00:19tuning changes that we did.
00:25Over here we have our brand new streamlined hub.
00:28It's a unique change from previous years.
00:31The goal here was to make less tabbing and surface more information for you as users
00:36to be able to get the most information possible to make educated decisions.
00:40So you'll see a brand new quick links on the left hand side here.
00:44Everything that's really important is showing up here.
00:46So all that stuff that needs to be done on a more regular basis is there at your fingertips.
00:51You'll also notice a bunch of new widgets that are on the screen.
00:53You'll have the projected goalie widgets that'll show you the goalies that are about to start
00:56for that game, as well as on that right hand side, a matchup widget showing you how you're
01:01matching up against the opponent you're about to play, as well as the conference standings,
01:06division standings, your team leaders from forward points, defense points, all the way
01:12down to rookie and goalie wins.
01:13And then you have your league leader stats as well.
01:16And then on top of that, we've added the ticker that's in the Trade Deadline mini game at
01:19the bottom, which will continuously feed you information as you go from screen to screen
01:23as well.
01:24You're able to access the calendar and then also tab through to go through all the various
01:28tabs that you would have had access last year, in addition to a few new tabs that allow you
01:32to talk to players and coaches.
01:35Going into box scores, we'll bring up all the games that are played in the NHL.
01:41So all 1300 plus games, or if you have a custom league, all however many games you've chosen
01:47to do.
01:48You can go to any game, not just your own teams.
01:50You can go to any game and select a game and view the box score for that game.
01:55I can view the events that are from that game, who scored, what penalties were there, as
01:59well as the stats for each individual player on both teams, and including the three stars
02:06as well.
02:07So you'll get a really good snapshot of every single game that happens in the NHL.
02:12And to feed into that stats motif that we got going on, we also have added new game
02:18logs and split stats for each individual player.
02:21So if I go into Elias Pettersson here, I can check out his full career stats, and you'll
02:25notice that there's a new filter that's shown here, which is full career stats.
02:29Now you've got game logs and split stats.
02:31So if I go into game log, I can look at every single game that he has played in this year,
02:36the standard stats that we track from minutes, shots, goals, assists, points, the date of
02:41the game, and the opponent of the game as well.
02:43So you can see how that player is doing against every single team on a per game basis.
02:49In addition, you can also see the split stats.
02:51So you can see their last 10 games, their home split, their away split, their division
02:56split, conference, and on top of that, their monthly and then their per team stats.
03:02So how they have done against Florida, how they've done against Edmonton, Chicago, etc.
03:06And then lastly, we've also added an awards tab to the player info, and you'll be able
03:11to view any award that that player has won throughout their entire career.
03:16So it's not just the last five years.
03:18If you have Alex Ovechkin, it could be something that he won back in the 2010s.
03:22All that shows up on this screen and for you to play and look at with throughout the course
03:27of Franchise Mode.
03:33One of our biggest fan requests is we added no move, no trade clauses to the game.
03:38In addition, we also overhauled our contract negotiation system to fit that in.
03:43So now you'll notice when you come into the free agency screen, you'll see an org interest
03:48bar.
03:49Every single player has a contract interest bar and an organization interest bar, and
03:55those will now dictate whether or not a player will want to sign with your team.
04:00So if a player has a very low organization bar, you may need to convince them to actually
04:07join your team.
04:08Those two bars now dictate and change who you target in free agency because it may not
04:13be possible for you to get the best free agent because they may not like your organization
04:18because of the taxes that you have, the market size that you have, your status as a contender.
04:25If they want to be playing on a championship team and you're a rebuilder, they may not
04:29want to join your team.
04:30Now you can offer them other incentives.
04:33You'll see that you'll see promises on the bottom right hand corner and player requests.
04:38Certain players will have requests that they would like to have, like playing on the top
04:41line power play or playing in the first line.
04:44You'll also be able to give out clauses.
04:46So you'll see that you can give out no movement clauses, no trade clauses, modified, no trade
04:51clauses.
04:52You can give out different structures, whether reduced, full, it'll change the number of
04:55teams that you can or cannot be traded to.
04:58So we've added a lot of depth and a lot of fidelity to the contract negotiation engine
05:05that wasn't there before.
05:08I'll go into a player that doesn't want to sign with my team currently, give you an example
05:13of what I mean in terms of you have to persuade that player.
05:16Now Sam Bennett here doesn't want to join my team.
05:20You're able to do certain actions to potentially win them over.
05:24You can charm them.
05:25You can gain some organization interest if they take to it.
05:28So in this case it did, which is great.
05:30Now you can now talk about the contract or go into the organization and kind of pitch
05:34them on the organization.
05:36So if I go into here, I can now pitch them on the market size and the team status and
05:40persuade him into wanting to join my team and forego his expectation of preferring to
05:47play in a smaller market like Florida.
05:50So in this case, it's very risky to do so.
05:52It may negatively affect the organization, which may basically mean I'm out of the running
05:57completely.
05:58But if I do persuade them and it is successful, I can get him to join my team.
06:03So in this case, it's successful.
06:04And then if I go into organization, you'll see the bar go up to full.
06:08So now I have persuaded him into wanting to potentially join my team, which is huge.
06:13So he went from not interested at all to being persuaded into joining my team.
06:18And now I can go and offer him a contract.
06:20The first offer that you see here, the number of years will always be what that player wants.
06:24You can go through and select different years.
06:26They may or may not accept a one year deal.
06:28So if you do select one year or two years, they may say, I'm not interested in that and
06:33just end the conversation there.
06:34But if you go into the four years, they will let you go in and start negotiating.
06:38So negotiate, we'll try to make a more team friendly deal.
06:42So the higher your organization bar, the more likely you can negotiate a player down in
06:48salary.
06:49You can also improve the offer if you like.
06:52This allows you to add extra money, clauses, promises to your contract offer.
06:57So if I want to increase the salary here, I can increase it up by a lot or a little.
07:01So I'll add two million to the salary.
07:03But I can also improve the offer further by adding in a clause.
07:06So I can give him a full move, no trade, whatever it may be.
07:09I'm going to give him a full no move clause as well as I'll promise him first line minutes.
07:15So he will more than likely now want to sign because I have given him the world.
07:19You can also table the contract as well.
07:21So if you think you've negotiated a deal with the player to a sense, but you want to
07:26try out and sign another player just in case, you can table the deal.
07:30There is a risk to this.
07:31Obviously, if another team steps in and offers a contract to them, they may get taken and
07:34may sign with another team.
07:35So it's kind of a risk reward on your aspect of it too, whether or not you're willing to
07:39take that chance.
07:42So in this case, Sam Bennett accepts your offer because it was so good.
07:45I gave him a full no move.
07:46I gave him two million more and I also gave him a first line promise.
07:49So he's now on my team.
07:50So I can literally convince him from not wanting to join my team to joining my team through
07:55the power of the conversation engine.
07:57So next step with the addition of no move and no trade clauses, obviously when you want
08:02to go and trade a player that has a trade clause, you're going to need to figure out
08:06what team they can or cannot be traded to.
08:08So if we go into Aaron Eckblatt here, you'll see he has a modified no trade clause and
08:12you can go into the new contract info screen that shows you the trade clause, the years
08:17that are left on the trade clause and the teams that you can trade that player to.
08:20So on the right hand side, there's a tradable team list.
08:23He can be traded to 20 teams and there's 12 teams that he has a no trade for.
08:26So if I go to Anaheim or Boston or Buffalo, he is an eligible player for me to actually
08:32put on the trade block.
08:33If I put him on a team that he doesn't have a trade clause for, I would need to actually
08:38convince Eckblatt to waive his no trade clause.
08:41You can go into the proposed trade screen, select the player that you want to trade and
08:45it'll automatically have you initiate a conversation with him.
08:48You'll see that I'll have to persuade the player into waiving their no trade clause.
08:52If failed, which means I can no longer have Eckblatt be eligible to be traded to the Carolina
08:57Hurricanes.
08:58The other way to get them to talk about their clauses or their options is to actually go
09:02in through the new franchise hub.
09:03So if I went into Matthew Kachuk here, I have different options to have him potentially
09:09waive his clause or change his clause for the year.
09:11I'm able to get him to maybe give me a list of one team, two teams, three teams or outright
09:16waive his no trade clause.
09:17So I'm going to ask him to maybe give me one team that he would want to potentially go
09:21for.
09:22In this case, he actually did.
09:23So now I can go into Matthew Kachuk's player card and figure out who he actually wants
09:28to be traded to.
09:29Now you can see that he has a modified no trade clause, but going to his contract info,
09:32he wants to go to the Montreal Canadiens.
09:34So I can now add him to the block for the Montreal Canadiens and then you'll be able
09:38to make a trade.
09:40Conversation engine allows you to kind of have a little bit of flexibility and how much
09:43you want that player to waive, whether it be a fully waive their clause or to kind of
09:47select a certain amount of teams.
09:48It allows you to pick a riskier or less riskier option to give the player still some agency
09:53as well.
09:59Another new feature that we've added is our brand new conversation engine.
10:02You've seen a little bit of it in the no move, no trade, but we want to make every conversation
10:07feel important and have a meaningful impact on your team.
10:11So gone are the ice time conversations where players are complaining about things.
10:16It's now more of a proactive system where you are now assigning players goals or trying
10:21to make that player better or try to fit into your system as you need to.
10:25If I go into Porchinski here, you'll notice that there's two options for me to select
10:29from season goal or on ice play.
10:31Each of these has their own subset of items that you'll be able to select through for
10:35season goals.
10:36This actually influences player development, something that in the past you as a user didn't
10:41really have a lot of influence over.
10:43Now you will with season goals.
10:45So you can select a season goal.
10:46You'll have two options of short term goals.
10:48So these are half season goals.
10:50They're shorter goals and they give you less of a reward potentially.
10:54And then we have long term goals, which allow you to perform a stat challenge, an award
10:58challenge and an X factor challenge.
11:00These challenges allow you to give a player potentially an X factor ability, whether it
11:04be a zone or a superstar ability.
11:06Award challenges are asking a player to win an award and by winning that award, they may
11:10gain attribute points as well.
11:12And then you have stat challenges, which you may ask a player to score X amount of goals,
11:17assists or plus minus or block shots and they will gain potential ratings impact onto themselves
11:23based off of completing that goal.
11:25Now it isn't that it's a hard line.
11:26So as long as I'm close, he'll get some of that reward to passing, but he may not get
11:31the full amount.
11:32So it is really forgiving in that sense, but you do want to get as close as you possibly
11:36can to that marker to help influence that player.
11:40So in this case, I'll set a goal to have him score 40 assists.
11:44And then once that's in there, you'll be able to check out the goal in the morale screen
11:48as you sim through a season and look at their stats and see how they're doing.
11:51Now that I've assigned a player goal to that player, I can also go into the on ice play
11:57and potentially have them change their play style or the position.
12:02You'll notice on the upper right hand side of the screen that you have something called
12:06adaptability.
12:07Every player has adaptability rating.
12:08This adaptability rating allows us to control how likely a player will potentially adhere
12:15to being able to change to a new playing style or a position that they play.
12:20The younger the player, it'll actually make it a little bit more easier for that player
12:25to be a little bit more malleable and a little bit more easier for them to learn that new
12:28play style or position.
12:30So an older player will be a little bit more set in their ways and may not be able to switch
12:34to that position or play style, but true to real life as well.
12:37So in this instance here, we're able to look at these two options of play style and position.
12:42I'll select to change his position.
12:45It'll give me options to be either straight up, change him out of left defense.
12:49I can move him to right defense as well.
12:51These are both persuades and they have different factors that weigh in.
12:55So in this case, I want to add a secondary position.
12:58The lower his defensive awareness rating, the harder it will be to convince him.
13:03If I want to change his position, players with higher defensive awareness rating will
13:07be harder to convince.
13:08So players that are really good at defense, they probably don't want to move out from
13:12defense, but if the player has a lower defensive awareness, you may be able to get them to
13:15change to a forward.
13:17Here I'll ask Korchinski to change his position.
13:20So in this case, that persuade failed.
13:22In many cases, the persuade may or may not work, but you do have the ability to change
13:27a player's position and play style.
13:29It all has a multitude of different factors that go into it.
13:33Again, we really wanted to give you as the user the ability to have more fidelity, more
13:38control over the players to fit within the system that you're trying to build.
13:42So in addition, you can also talk to your head coach.
13:45You can talk about your preseason or your game plan for the team.
13:48And these essentially are buffs to your team that you get for the season, whether it be
13:54conditioning, strength training, skill training, five on five focus, power play, penalty kill,
14:00video session.
14:01So all of these will have different buffs and debuffs.
14:04I've selected power play.
14:05This will give my team a buff for the power play, but also have a debuff on my penalty
14:12kill.
14:13So in this case, I got him to adhere to that preseason focus.
14:17I can go back in and talk to him also about the game plan that he has.
14:21So we can talk about preferred lines as he is locked until the regular season, and I'll
14:25get into that as well.
14:26Ice time allocation is also locked until the regular season, but this will allow you to
14:31allocate whether or not you want your team to roll four lines, three lines, top heavy.
14:36It allows you to kind of manipulate that and have the best possible situation for your team.
14:41So now that we're here in the regular season, I'm now able to chat with my coach.
14:45So if I'm in that align screen, I can hit the Y button to go into strategies and then
14:49bring up the coach card from here.
14:51I can go into this meeting availability and then chat with the coach about their game
14:56plan.
14:57So I can now talk to them about their preferred lines or ice time allocation as that's no
15:01longer locked.
15:02I can get them to potentially change those things.
15:04So in this case, I want him to reorganize or lock players into certain lines.
15:08I can now do so.
15:09I've persuaded them into being open to it.
15:12If in the instance where it fails, you can still force the coach to go through this flow.
15:17You will lose morale as a trade-off, but at the end of the day, you are the GM and you
15:21hire the coach.
15:22So you are able to brute force your way through it.
15:25So in this case, I want to look at my forwards and I want to have my line two center be Elias
15:31Pettersson.
15:32So if I go into line two and center, I can now lock in Elias Pettersson as the center
15:37for that line.
15:39Now I can also make his left wing and in this instance, I'll just put Jake DeBrusque.
15:43And then if I go into that align screen again, you'll notice that when I hit best lines now,
15:49those players should now get into that slot.
15:52You now see Elias Pettersson and Jake DeBrusque in that role.
15:56So if I move Pettersson down to the fourth line here and then I repin best lines, it
16:00will always lock them into that line.
16:01So if he gets hurt and comes back into the lineup, it will remember that and put them
16:05back into the fight spot.
16:07So you can lock all your lines exactly how you want it and really help the usability
16:12for playing with injuries on.
16:14So you're able to have your lines always constructed in the way that you want them.
16:17And the coach will make sure that they do best lines in that manner.
16:21It is quite a cumbersome thing.
16:23So this was our way with the power of the conversation engine to allow you to actually
16:27lock in players into those lines.
16:29Another feature that we added to really help the roster sharing community was the addition
16:34of draft picks to the player movement screen.
16:37Now you're able to trade five years worth of draft picks in the player movement screen
16:42to keep up with the real world as you're waiting for the latest roster update from us.
16:46So in this case, I can trade Anaheim's and Edmonton's first round pick to the Buffalo
16:50Sabres and then you'll be able to go in and see that Buffalo has a draft pick.
16:55And you're able to upload this roster file to roster sharing and then you'll be able
16:58to have others download it with the correct draft picks and you can then start your franchise
17:02mode when the latest trade comes out and you're waiting for the roster update.
17:06You'll be able to make the adjustment yourself and then go into franchise mode and start
17:09your franchise mode if you need to.
17:10That's a big change there as well as we've added a few more elite potential prospects
17:15into the draft.
17:16Make the league as you get later into later years.
17:19So you're able to make the league as you get later into later years.
17:21We added a lot to franchise mode this year.
17:24We had a lot of fun working on the game and we can't wait for you to pick up Early Access
17:28on September 27th.