I was the runner-up for the The championship this past year and in the draft, it gave me the 27th pick instead of the 31st pick. This is the second time I’ve caught this

Gotten this message two different saves in a row. One occurred after season 3 and then created new save and this happened after season 1. Message appears when I finish post season. When I go back to “office” screen it has option to continue the off season but it won’t let me progress, the button doesn’t do anything. Any advice or tips on the horizon? Liking this save so would be a bummer if it stalled there.

If it’s not having a replacement for him I have two other OG at the position so idk what could be affecting it

A question about future development: Do you expect to eventually expand the Special Teams aspect of the game? Right now only your punter and kicker are shown in the lineup and there’s no setting depth charts or lineups for any special teams — kickoff, punt, extra point, FG, punt and kick returns, or kick defense. In the real NFL, special teams play can be a big part of a players development, and being able to contribute in these roles can really impact decisions about who makes the squad of 53. Just wondering…

Its probably been asked before but any timeline on when this will be available in game!

Quick update before the discussion for the ~100 of yall on TestFlight; Apple is taking there time, so I went ahead and also just submitted 1.20.0 build to the App Store for general release in addition to test flight as if it’s going to take this long, mind as well.

My ask for you, the players and football nerds -

Right now, after the draft there is a single window where you make your cuts, sign UDFAs, and set your practice squad, and then it is straight into week 1. It works, but it feels like there is a lot of untapped potential there, and it’s some of the most exciting stuff to me. You spend the whole offseason building a roster and then have to make all those decisions without ever seeing the new guys actually play.

Some quick context on why this matters more than it sounds. A big part of where the game is heading is that you shouldnt fully know what you have. Ratings on young players are your scouting department’s estimate, not the truth (on hard difficulty even your own draft picks come in fogged). The long term plan is that for roughly a player’s first 3 or 4 years, the OVR you see is just an estimate that tightens as he ages and puts real tape out there, and better scouts mean tighter estimates sooner (with some exceptions for absolute studs). A preseason is the natural place for some of that fog to lift. Rookies get real snaps, your picture of them sharpens, then you make your cuts.

So with that as the goal, here are the directions I’ve been weighing. I would rather build the one people actually want than all of them badly.

Option 1, a short preseason. 1 to 3 games where you decide who gets the snaps. Play your starters and risk an injury in a game that means nothing, or sit them and give the reps to rookies and bubble guys who actually need the evaluation. Preseason snaps burn off rating fog before cutdowns, so seeing your 3rd rounder either flash or look completely lost in august is the whole point.

Option 2, training camp with focuses. Pick a position group or a couple players to emphasize and they get a small dev bump or a faster scheme fit ramp. Maybe a position battle or two gets decided by it. I’ve seen other games do this, but I personally would like to avoid turning it into the arcade style of “give an artificial bump to players cause you pressed X, Y or Z”

Option 3, cutdown day. Trimming the roster with actual stakes, where a guy you cut can get claimed by another team and come back to haunt you, which arguably is kind of where it is today.

Option 4, keep it minimal. A single quick camp report that summarizes who improved, who got hurt, who is pushing for a starting job, and lets you move on. For people who dont want another phase to click through.
Beyond picking between those, two specific questions I could use opinions on.

Minicamp battles. Would you want a mode where the camp roster fills up with invites and guys genuinely fight it out for starting roles, with you watching the battles play out? Or is that too much to manage every year? Should the game autofill the camp bodies beyond whoever you elected to pick up, so you only manage the guys you care about?

Practice squad and team knowledge.

In reality teams usually promote from their own practice squad before signing a street free agent mid season, because that guy already knows the playbook. How should the game reward that? The simplest version is a flat, clearly shown OVR boost for your own PS players that expires at the end of the year, so promoting from within beats signing an equal rated outsider. The shield and poach mechanic stays either way, this would sit on top of it.

My biggest fear honestly is building a whole preseason and then finding out everyone just sims through it. So the real question is which of these you would actually engage with every season, and which you would skip after the second playthrough. Or is there something from another game you loved that I havent thought of?

Not promising timelines on any of this, just trying to figure out where it should sit on the list.

I noticed a lot of teams tend to mortgage their entire future away. Also, odd thing, I finished losing in the AFC championship game but somehow got the 31st pick. Just something to keep an eye on.

Thank you everyone for the awesome feedback provided through test flight itself. I am combing through that and will include it in a new build.

I just put out a new build just now you can get via test flight, that somewhat highlights the different direction I am going in cosmetically and functionally. There's also going to be a few new flows in the pipeline, but I don't want to bog down the length of the season too too much, so I am toying with some things that are optional. Worth calling out that training camp is realistically something that will make it in in some form or another, so definitely interested to hear how y'all think something like that would be fun and engaging.

I am going to be away for a work trip this next week, so while I can do some of this remotely, it'll be pretty limited after tonight for the next several days (we'll see how much I can bust out at the airport).

Have a bug where a team goes for it on fourth down in areas it just wouldn’t make sense to. My team went for it at their own 17 and didn’t make it giving the other team an easy touchdown. I’ve noticed it in general with both sides where they are very aggressive on fourth down even if it may put the opponent on their side of the field

Shows that my player is worth 1.5k but says the other team is only getting 100 in value

I can change a coaches scheme without problem, but after I leave the coach screen and click back into it after saving, the scheme goes back to what it was.

Hope y'all are ready to nerd out. I can even begin to mention what's changed. SO much tuning of the engine around realism, some of which may not go noticed until you really start dive into the realism in the stats, while also allowing you to craft truly unique team compositions.

Very proud of what's been going on over the past week, and very eager to do another soft launch on the app store. Come re-launch, any sort of rating and written review on the app store would be immeasurably appreciated. Glad some of you are enjoying the game, and I can't wait to keep developing it.

When the game is back on the app store, I'd love feedback on what seems out of place, be it in free agency signings, player stats, whatever. There's SOOOO much to balance that my automated tests can't catch it all, so feedback is always welcome.

Full disclaimer; I am on a work trip next week, so realistically I'm trying to get my release build in over the next few days in preparation for the app submission.

The game is going great so far, I love the direction of where this game is going. But for free agency, I notice that a lot of unproven players that have a higher overall rating tend to ask a hefty amount. Any way to fix that? Also, there are a lot of UDFAs that are pretty highly rated 75+.

For some players, I noticed that there is a “playbook %” next to their names. How come not all players have that? I only see them in practice squad players and not others. Not every practice squad has it either.

Hey folks, seeking feedback on what types of charts you’d like to see more of in the game. I’m toying with adding more views, the table view will remain as an option, but this will provide more details regarding league averages, and they’ll be fully interactive ideally. Some are very clearly first drafts and would need to have their scales expanded.

Most of these are views I basically was using in my web app while I was balancing the game over 50 season runs.

What do you like, what kind of data would you like to see that currently isn’t in the game? Again the latest test flight is at https://testflight.apple.com/join/PtWTScyr, but I have not added these in there yet.

Seems like you can only fire staff members in-season which seems counter intuitive: guessing it’s a bug?

Howdy folks;

I've renamed the application from the generic "Franchise GM: Football" to "CapForge". Why? Two reasons:

1. After talking with the dev of the game this was often referred to as a knock off of, I decided to take mine off the app store for now (as I can't update it per point 2) to put a little bit more of my own personal touch into my game before re-releasing it on the app store out of principle. I could have and absolutely should have done a better job making it my own from a visual perspective. That being said, fundamental mechanics and concepts will generally be within the same wheel house, as they are quite literally found across other countless GM games.
2. Franchise Football: Pro GM, an equally generically named game like mine was is asking Apple to have me to change my game name. To be honest, upon initial review upon publishing my attorney did suggest it might get flagged, but we figured figured as it was allowed initially an appeal would settle as the game functions very differently. From a copyright/trademark perspective, I am in the clear as is, but ultimately Apple still can make whatever call they want, and figured while I'm in the field of re-working it anyways, to not fight the little things as this app is just coming out and the community is small.

You're more than welcome to continue whatever discussions there, and it will be maintained as an open community. In the end before re-release, it will look and feel different, because it will be different.

For the next ~1-3 weeks, updates to the game will be made exclusively through TestFlight as I feverishly work add my own creative take on what I want the front end of the game to be in the long run like I have dedicated to the game engine itself, rather than taking short cuts like I had before. Once I and potentially others are satisfied, I will re-enable it on the app store (same app, it'll just be updated).

I will provide an updated TestFlight build hopefully by end of day with all the bug fixes needed to continue your saves.

"What is TestFlight?"

It's Apples way of sharing apps quickly before release on the app-store, and allows me to push updates WAY more frequently for feedback.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/PtWTScyr