Hi Bigant Team and everyone, first of all want to say love the direction of the game both in improvements from day 1 release but also opening up future development, add-ons, and improvements to the community of players and fans - I know the game will get to where we all want it to be soon enough!
I have been active on twitter but wanted to start posting here, and through my time playing AFL23 on PS5 since day 1 here are some suggestions that might opening up some discussions; also sorry if they have been previously convered as I know a lot of suggestions have already been made.
I mainly play management mode, as trying to live the dream of owning and managing an AFL team, in which I love the list management, trading, and general club and player management areas of both real life AFL and AFL and general sports games; as I also play a lot of Madden NFL games. Plus being a stats nerd andsoftware and AI engineer I love the player stats and improvement and creating the ideal team and possible future dynasty.
Some add-on areas which I think could add some general realism into the management mode which might be easy to implement are:
CPU player trade requests such as an inbox system, such as a opposing team player sending an indication that they want to come play for your team based on opportunity of role, team structure, salary cap, or win record.
User created and edited draft classes, which would be the ability to edit what players appear in the end of year national and mid-year rookie drafts allowing players to create this years new crop of rookies and the ability to draft them for some added fun.
User customisation recovery of players such as when a player is injured you can choose what amount of recovery time should be provided and based on that the chance or re-occurance of the injury should be reduced. Such as rushing a player back may result in the injury happening again at a greater level. This can also be players saying they have some general soreness or players being a test allowing some more focus on how to manage players.
Players decrease general fitness with age, but increase other areas this can come in the form of as a player ages they loose some speed, endurance, and strength but may gain some awarness or other softskills with the gained experience over the years. This can also be shown in the decrease level of stats such as decline potential when looking at the player stats, which may help in trading and general list management choices.
Players increase injuries and recovery time with age, such as keeping around a player who is a star until they are 37 may increase some risks of long-term injury and problems with management
Free agency, supplementary rookie draft, and delisting menus having better UI, as currently there are a large amount of bugs in the free-agency menu, and drafting menus with ability to draft players multiple times and also some players chosen in free-agency do not appear after the trade period in your team. It would be great to see some seperate menus and functionality for each period within the end of year such as a free-agency menu with better UI, trade menu, rookie drafting, and then SSP rookie drafting menu.
Ability to delist players anytime in the season to open spots up on list.
Ability to manage training of players, which would be selecting weekly training for the whole team as well as focused areas for players to help improve certain stats or skills, or ability to execute tactics.
Ability to edit the VFL, WAFL, SANFL line-up, which is ability to choose what the seconds look like in terms of their lineup and having players improve their general stats through playing in the seconds.
Ability to do mega trades between 3 or more teams, which would be a fun function in navigating how to get pick 1 or a star player
Hopefully these arenāt too hard to add in, but also I know there is probably a large features and testing backlog already in place. Hopefully in the future can see some of these additions as I think management mode is such an amazing experience within sporting games.
Has anyone felt that online is unnecessarily challenging and some aspects of it is unplayably broken?
Whenever I play an online game it feels like I get tackled before I get the chance to dispose of it, sometimes even getting pinged for HTB. Online opponents constantly pump goals from 70m+ and no matter what ātacticsā you set up, it never stops them from doing it.
Is one player the āhostā of an online game and do they get a shorter ping for aspects of the game?
*My internet quality is definitely strong enough and shouldnāt affect the quality of online gameplay
Weāre facing a difficult balance to get all platforms on the same version so that they can all play online together.
Itās taking longer for testing than weād like on PS platforms, this means we need to hold back the Steam patch to the point of the last PS submission.
PS: not related to this post - it would help us if people put the platform the are playing on in posts.
Hey big ant.
Would be awesome to see when playing management you can accept to go and coach another team and if your performance is poor be dropped to the state league
Iām 3 seasons in and havenāt been able to draft anyone in 2024 and 5 (midseason drafts). Went into 2024 with 44 players, 2025 with 43. Do you only get a pick if you have less than 42 or something? Not sure how it works as I see some teams get 4-5 picks in the mid draft
Firstly wanna say game has come along since day 1 so well done on that. Game has a lot of potential and can see in future instalments will get to where we all want it to beā¦
One question for now not sure been mentioned but with the tactics every time play against the AI it seems each club is set to default and same Tactics, was hoping each club was setup to almost replicate there real life styles.
Obviously further down the line would love to see more in depth team tactics and would love to see individual tactics similar to what can be done on FIFA. Love to instruct the ruckman for example to either push forward or fill the hole in defence.
Iād be more concerned about getting the current product where we need it to be for now without worrying about whatās happening in 8 months time when a new season rolls around.
Team updates are relatively easy when in comparison to other tasks. We have done a number of updates with patch releases that will make small modifications to line-ups and players. Even I do them, it doesnāt take away any resource away from the specialised game devs working on other things.
Hey @JNT_BA , appreciate you canāt provide updates on where management mode is forecasted/will be soon, but I was just wondering if I could get some clarification on the current state of list building in management mode (if there is some sort of write up already). Happy to open a new thread if this doesnāt fit the megathread requirements. A few queries from my save are below, but any overall info on top of that for working the drafts/contracts/FA etc. would be great! I play on PS5 just for clarity:
Seasons 2024 and beyond I donāt get any picks in the mid-season draft with squad sizes of 44 and then 43 (2025). Do I need to have less than 42 players to get a pick - and if so, do I get 1 pick per player <42 I have?
Same with the post season rookie draft - Iāve never received a pick in that so not sure how to get onto that.
State league players and/or delisted players that Iāve added to my watchlist donāt appear in the draft after I add them. Will be there some that just donāt opt in to the draft ? (eg. Alwyn Davey was delisted by Essendon at the end of 2024, didnāt nominate for the draft but I couldnāt trade for him, so heās now just playing in the VFL until he hopefully nominates for the 2025 draft). But if I want to offer a contract, it tells me to trade for them even though theyāre in a different league. Iām guessing this may be a bug but just thought Iād check
Is there supposed to be some form of penalty for breaching the salary cap (I believe I chose the strict option when setting up my management mode)? Iām over mine by about 100-200k but seem to be able to sign new contracts - I did however get a warning at the end of the last season but I think I just skipped past it and all was fine. Have seen people on Bigfooty mention they can literally go millions over
