Desktop Edition Build Plan

Still to come

• Fights are not simulated; on-ice altercations don't happen in games yet.
• 4-on-4 situations, like early overtime under some rules, aren't modeled as their own distinct play style yet.

Still to come

• No penalties can be called once a game reaches overtime, so overtime power plays don't happen.

Still to come

• An injured skater can still be sent back out for shifts after getting hurt instead of being pulled from the lineup.
• The lineup doesn't automatically adjust to play a man short when a player is hurt mid-game.

Still to come

• Even-strength and power-play goal rates are currently a little too high and need to be tuned down.
• Faceoff win rates aren't fully calibrated to real hockey yet.
• Shot distribution across a team's lines, top line versus fourth line, doesn't yet match realistic usage patterns.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Shift charts showing each player's exact shift-by-shift ice time are still being checked for accuracy.
• A farm or junior game keeps its score and feeds season totals, but has no box score of its own.

Still to come

• Advancing straight to the next event, like the next game or decision point, is still being checked for reliability.
• A real calendar view, not just a running list of days, is still to come.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Whether every key league date, like the trade deadline, draft, and playoffs, is correctly pinned in every scenario is still being checked.

Still to come

• The draft currently happens later in the offseason sequence than it should relative to other moves.
• Moving the draft would change how an already-played season plays out a second time, so it is being done carefully.

Still to come

• College levels of play are not yet part of the starting league.
• The current Juniors world still needs to be checked for reliability across many seasons in a row, not just one.

Still to come

• Teams can't yet have multiple affiliation agreements at once, such as separate deals at different levels.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• No playoff-odds percentages are shown anywhere in the standings.
• No magic number tracking for clinching a spot, a division, or a bye.
• No visual flag for teams that are mathematically eliminated.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• No lottery odds, ball draws, or lottery night presentation exists.
• Draft order for non-playoff teams cannot be finalized under league rules.
• No lottery results screen or history of past lottery outcomes.

Still to come

• No screen lets you view the league's cap and rulebook settings.
• No way to edit these settings from within the game.
• The settings preview promised at new-game creation, where you could look but not change anything, is not built yet.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• This page still needs work to look better, run faster, and take player feedback into account.

Still to come

• You cannot pick the starter for one particular night, only the standing order.
• Coaches are all alike for now, so no club rides its goalie harder than another unless you say so.

Still to come

• Waivers do not exist, so no player ever has to clear waivers.
• There is no long-term injured reserve, so a long injury does not free up cap room for a club.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Below the top level no ice time is recorded for a skater, so a farm or junior line has no minutes beside it.
• Some farm and junior numbers still read further from real hockey than they should, level by level.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Lines and pairs have no chemistry or familiarity rating.
• Keeping a line together or breaking it up has no performance effect yet.
• No way to see which combinations are clicking or which are not. The game already tracks how players do with and without each other on the ice, but nothing uses it for lines yet.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• While you are re-signing your own players, your cap space is not fully worked out.
• Salary a club keeps behind in a trade is still being checked.
• An older career can still carry a contract offer that nothing closed, left over from before that was fixed.
• The cap books are not fully squared up at a few points in the season.
• What happens when signing bonuses push a club past the cap is not finished.

Still to come

• Salary arbitration cases are not modeled, so no arbitrator sets a contract number.
• Rival teams cannot send your restricted free agents an offer sheet.
• No offer sheet mechanic exists for you to use against other teams either.

Still to come

• Some free-agency screens and panels still have polish and layout improvements planned.

Still to come

• Performance bonus clauses, like games-played or award bonuses, cannot be added to contracts.
• No bonus overage cap consequences exist yet since bonuses themselves are missing.

Still to come

• Contract termination behavior is still being checked for accuracy in unusual cases.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Agents are not modeled as individual people with their own personalities.
• Negotiations happen without a named agent representing the player.
• No agent relationships, reputations, or negotiating styles to learn and manage.

Still to come

• There is no side-by-side comparable-player tool yet.
• A club has no scouting knowledge of its own to price from, so two clubs cannot yet honestly disagree about what a player is worth.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Salary retention terms in a trade are still being checked for correctness.
• Conditional pick language, like 'if the pick lands in the top ten', is still being verified.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• No tool reveals a team's true private asking price for a player.
• Finding the real price still means making offers and negotiating back and forth.
• Putting scouts on a target, or asking for a deep dive before you make an offer, is not something you can do yet.

Still to come

• Deadline day has no countdown, special presentation, or added drama yet.
• No deadline-specific news coverage or buyer-versus-seller framing exists yet.

Still to come

• How many years deep the pick inventory tracks correctly is still being checked.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• The overall draft-day experience feels thin beyond simply making your picks when it's your turn
• Trading picks during the draft itself is still being checked for problems
• More draft-day atmosphere and pacing, like a proper war-room feel, is planned

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• There is no draft lottery yet; picks go out in straight reverse-standings order
• Lottery odds, the drawing itself, and any pick movement from it are not built

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• The formal record book, single-game and single-season marks, is still thin
• Goalies are not in the career leaderboards yet, so the all-time lists are skaters only
• Milestone alerts and record-chase storylines are not built yet

Still to come

• No Hall of Fame exists yet for any player to be inducted into
• No induction voting, ceremony, or gallery of past honorees is built

Still to come

• No way exists yet to take a number out of use to honor a franchise legend
• Retired numbers are not displayed anywhere, like a rafters banner list
• No number can be set aside, and a player does not carry a number of their own that a club could retire

Still to come

• No way to choose a training focus or development plan for a player yet
• Players develop generically rather than along a direction you set
• No visible payoff yet for steering a prospect toward a particular skill

Still to come

• No team names a captain or alternates
• A player does not carry a number of their own, so a number means nothing from one game to the next
• How numbers and the captaincy should carry over through trades, call-ups and retirements is still to be decided

Still to come

• Locker room chemistry effects from your personality mix are not built yet
• Veteran mentorship of young players has no in-game effect yet

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Goalies cannot be injured at all yet, an unrealistic gap
• Whether injuries leave lingering effects on a player after recovery is still being checked

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Not every kind of career milestone or honor a long career should earn is tracked yet
• Coverage across different achievement categories is uneven, so some noteworthy moments can be missed

Still to come

• Material scouting reports, report history, and club-earned private certainty are not built yet
• Some expandable detail panels still need polish

Still to come

• Deeper comparative analytics between franchises are still limited in scope
• More advanced breakdowns for judging one franchise against another are not built yet

Still to come

• The tier bands are basic and don't yet capture finer distinctions within a draft class
• Public rankings still need to build up in stages over the season rather than appear as one flat list

Still to come

• A fuller amateur scouting portfolio, covering the whole draft-eligible pool the way a real scouting staff tracks it, is still coming

Still to come

• No browser for looking back through past draft classes and the picks made in them
• How complete the stored draft records are for seasons already played has not been checked

Still to come

• Amateur Scouting and Professional Scouting are not yet split into separate departments
• There is no visible reliability rating showing how much to trust a scouting department
• Named individual scouts and staff-level scouting gameplay are not planned at this stage

Still to come

• There is no view of how many scouting work slots exist or how busy a department is
• There is no queue, forecast, or pause and cancel control for scouting work
• Scouting deadlines don't yet exist as something a GM can see and track over time

Still to come

• There is no way to commission a scouting department with a specific hockey question and a deadline
• Requesting an extra deep dive on a single player is not available yet

Still to come

• Dedicated draft-day scouting coverage does not exist as its own feature yet
• Dedicated pro-roster decision coverage does not exist as its own feature yet
• Both are meant to share the same team-knowledge rules once they exist, but neither is in place to test that against

Still to come

• Written scouting reports explaining why a view changed are not in place yet
• Clubs do not yet earn different private certainty through scouting work

Still to come

• Scouting judgments don't yet factor in a player's ice time, role, or the strength of opponents faced

Still to come

• No written scouting reports or department dossiers you can browse for a player
• No history view to look back at what a prospect was rated in past seasons
• No way to see how past scouting projections compare to what actually happened once a player developed
• Scout grading is not in yet since it needs a real way to act on quality, not just a number the department gives itself

Still to come

• Clubs do not yet earn distinct private player knowledge through scouting work
• An exact version of Usage, and the private scouting edge behind it, are both still unfinished

Still to come

• Scouting department costs are not tied to team finances yet
• This waits on the owner and team budget systems being built first, so there is no temporary money cost for scouting

Still to come

• Until a player has played, no part of that rating comes from anything they have done
• The write-up explaining exactly how the public rating is calculated has not been published in the game yet

Still to come

• A follow list is kept on the machine you play on, so it does not travel with a career you copy somewhere else
• Whether following holds up everywhere it should is still being checked

Still to come

• No analytics staff to hire, manage, or assign to your team
• AI-run teams are designed to rely only on the public rating model and will never hire this staff, so this stays a human-GM-only feature still to come

Still to come

• Whether and how a team could build its own private rating model, separate from the public one, is still being worked out
• This would depend on first hiring the analytics staff who would build and run that model

Still to come

• No side-by-side view comparing an old scouting report to what a player actually became
• No department accuracy grade, since that needs a real way for you to act on scouting quality and a fair method for scoring it

Still to come

• Knowing your own players better than rival clubs know them is not in the game yet
• There is no way to work a player of your own to sharpen the picture of them
• Practices, games and deployment do not feed you extra information about your own players

Still to come

• Some filter options and search angles a GM would want, like combining several advanced criteria at once, are still missing
• Not every report format is available on every screen yet

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Only one default coaching approach exists so far; teams don't yet have their own distinct coaching styles
• Whether the approach correctly matches lines and pairings to the players it has is still being checked

Still to come

• AI teams don't yet weigh their own overall plan and strategy when they negotiate a deal
• AI teams do not yet actively hunt the league for trade targets or counter-offer opportunities on their own

Still to come

• Hiring and firing a head coach is not possible yet
• Coaching contracts do not exist
• Assistant coaches and goalie coaches are not in the game
• Coaches do not vary in quality or coaching style

Still to come

• No pool of available coaching candidates to browse
• No way to evaluate a coach's strengths or fit before hiring
• No coaching interviews or hiring process of any kind

Still to come

• Whether a GM's career record carries over between jobs is still being verified
• No confirmed way to view a GM's history as a persistent character in the league
• Whatever the game already keeps about a GM's career, there is no screen a GM can see it on

Still to come

• No system generates new staff candidates over time
• Staff do not age or retire
• Retiring or underperforming staff are not automatically replaced

Still to come

• No end-of-season review grading the GM's performance
• No sense of the franchise or job becoming more or less appealing
• No way for the owner to fire the GM
• No way for the GM to quit and hand the franchise to someone else

Still to come

• AI teams make no coaching calls, because hiring and firing a coach is not in the game yet
• AI teams make no money calls beyond the cap, because there is no budget to spend yet

Still to come

• A couple of narrow personality traits aren't active yet

Still to come

• The fuller strategy experience still needs more of this reasoning shown across decision screens
• Handing off more decisions this way, beyond just posture and needs, is still future work

Still to come

• Clubs do not yet earn different private information through completed scouting work
• The complete system for that private scouting knowledge is still unfinished

Still to come

• No unified checklist covers believability across trades, free agency, draft, and lineups together
• This judgment currently relies on hands-on review rather than a documented standard

Still to come

• No rumored or speculative trades show up before a deal is finalized
• Notices has no rumor section at all

Still to come

• Notices doesn't yet prioritize which events actually matter
• Each notice still needs more natural, readable wording

Still to come

• The full game, draft, and offseason cycle can be played through decades by hand, but has not been proven to hold up at that same scale
• Long-term league health for the complete season-to-season game, not just population, still needs the same kind of decades-long testing

Still to come

• Goalies do not yet appear on career leaderboards
• Goalies are not yet eligible to be recognized as retired legends

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• No owner-set spending envelope exists yet outside the salary cap
• This broader money layer is planned for later, beyond the demo
• The related question of what the owner expects from you is tracked separately

Still to come

• Scouting and staff spending is not yet tied to any budget envelope
• This is broader long-term direction, not scoped for the current demo

Still to come

• Team money does not yet rise or fall with how well the club is doing
• This is broader long-term direction, not scoped for the current demo

Still to come

• No finance screens exist for the GM to review money matters
• This is broader long-term direction, not scoped for the current demo

Still to come

• There is no way to replay or watch a game once it has been simulated
• No playback screen exists for reliving a game's key moments

Still to come

• Running a binge across multiple full seasons in a row has not been measured for reliability or pacing

Still to come

• Coverage and polish of what belongs in each mode is still being filled in

Still to come

• A mid-season trade offer still requires your own answer, it cannot be handed off
• A returning injured player who would push the roster over its limit still requires your own call

Still to come

• With-or-without-you (WOWY) impact numbers are still being checked for accuracy
• Zone-start numbers are still being checked for accuracy

Still to come

• Depth and coverage of the event browser are still being filled in
• What each notice says and how it is presented are still being refined

Still to come

Nothing outstanding noted.

Still to come

• Setting a difficulty level for your career
• Choosing a starting era or a different league template
• Other new-career setup options, such as season length or league size

Still to come

• Choosing a ready-made starting history to begin from
• Choosing a freshly generated history built just for your world
• Choosing to actually play through the league's earlier seasons before your career starts
• Any screen that explains what kind of history your career is starting with

Still to come

• Switching from one open career to another without going back to the launcher first

Still to come

• A clear, stated promise to players that saves will always survive future updates
• Testing every kind of save, not just the common ones, to be sure no update can silently damage a career

Still to come

• A way to switch from the career you are in to another one without closing the game first
• Having more than one career open at the same time

Still to come

• A tutorial walking a new GM through their first decisions
• In-game explanations attached to screens that are not self-evident
• Any general help system a confused player can turn to mid-career

Still to come

• Clearing out older seasons' game records, which waits until an old game's box score can survive without them

Still to come

• Importing a custom set of players and teams when creating a career
• Any file format or process for bringing outside rosters into the game
• A clear warning when an imported roster has a problem

Still to come

• A clear opt-in screen asking whether you want to share crash reports or usage data
• A way to see or change that choice later without reinstalling
• A plain explanation of exactly what would be collected if you opt in

Still to come

• A Windows installer, so the Windows build does not have to be unpacked by hand
• Automatic updates that install without you fetching a new file
• A store listing where the game can be bought and downloaded

Still to come

• An in-game editor for adjusting individual players and their attributes
• An in-game editor for league-wide details like teams and divisions
• Rules for what an editor can safely change without breaking an ongoing career

Still to come

• A clear choice between a protected career mode and an open sandbox mode
• Rules for what a sandbox mode is allowed to reveal or change that a career mode must never allow
• Any warning when an action would cross from one mode's boundary into the other

Still to come

• An in-game way to browse, apply, or swap customizations without editing files by hand
• Clear instructions, written for players rather than developers, explaining what can be customized and how
• A clear list of which customizations the studio actually supports

Still to come

• A public, written reference describing what creators can rely on when building tools or content
• Clear guidance on which save and league files a tool can safely read and write
• A promise about what stays stable between updates for anyone building on top of the game

Still to come

• Not every kind of save, from every past version of the game, has this same automatic checking yet
• Some updates are still checked by hand instead of automatically
• Older or less common kinds of saves still need their own automatic checks written

Still to come

• A playable demo build a new player could download and try
• A published Early Access plan describing what ships first and what follows
• A store page with the description, screenshots, and details a buyer sees before purchasing

Still to come

• Older studio notes still describe an earlier version of the plan
• Bringing all of them up to date is not finished

Still to come

• Some planned screens in the inventory are not built yet
• The desktop layout and navigation structure are not finalized across every screen
• Consistency in how screens are organized and reached still needs work

Still to come

• Sorting, filtering, and what a screen shows when it has nothing to show are inconsistent from screen to screen
• Some screens still need to be brought up to the same standard as the best ones
• Making every screen's layout and readability match the best ones is still unfinished

Still to come

• Settings for when an advance should stop for you, and how fast it runs
• Accessibility options beyond text size, such as colour-vision and motion choices
• Backing up a setting to a file, or carrying your settings to another machine

Still to come

• The legal review of team identity content is still being double-checked for completeness
• Confirmation that no real team names, logos, or marks slipped through is not finished

Still to come

• Settled rules for how the game lays itself out as its window changes size
• Settled rules for several monitors and different screen resolutions

Still to come

• The check doesn't yet compare what you'd actually see on a screen against how it's supposed to look
• A screen could point to the right design and still look wrong without being caught
• This gap has been confirmed and is still open

Still to come

• Screen load times and responsiveness have not been measured
• No time limit is set yet for how quickly a screen should open or update
• Slow screens would not currently be caught by any measurement

Still to come

• A clean way to capture a screenshot from within the game
• Exporting a screen or view as an image file
• Copying a screen to the clipboard to paste elsewhere

Still to come

• A known set of dead ends remain where a GM can reach a screen with no clear way forward
• These remaining dead ends still need to be identified individually and fixed