HLM25 Feature Reveal

Now that the daily feature reveal is over, it’s time to announce the complete list of new features coming to HLM25.

HLM25 will be released on September 7th 2024. You can pre-order right now on:

• Android
• iOS
• Steam

Patreon subscriber have access the beta starting August 24th

Primary Features

Hall of Fame

• The new Hall of Fame page is accessible from the Honors page, now combined with awards.
• Each offseason, you can take part in the Hall of Fame voting process. You have the opportunity to nominate and vote for who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame each year.
• You can browse inductees by position and induction year.
• Inducted players have a Hall of Fame badge on their profile.
• Hall of fame players can be added from the roster editor

Contract clauses

• Added three new contract clauses:
  • No Movement Clause (NMC): Players with NMC can’t be sent to the minors and can’t be traded.
  • No Trade Clause (NTC): Players with NTC can’t be traded.
  • Modified No Trade Clause (M-NTC): Players with M-NTC can’t be traded to a certain number of teams.
    • M-NTC can be awarded in increments of 5 teams (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.), depending on the number of teams in the league.
• Players will be open to lifting their clause in the last year of their contract if traded to an interesting team. The details of a contract clause can be seen on the player profile.
  • In the case of an M-NTC, you can see which team the player refuses to be traded to.
  • On the trade page:
    • The contract clause will show in red if the player can’t be traded to a team.
    • It will show in green if the player can be traded to a team.
• Contract clauses can be added through the roster editor.
• Offering a trade clause to a player who doesn’t ask for one will lower the asking salary. Not offering a trade clause to a player who asks for one will increase the asking salary.

Three team trades

• Added the ability to add a third team to a trade.
• Added the ability, in a three-team trade, for a team to retain salary on a player as a middleman (e.g., player goes from team A to team B while having his salary retained by team C).

Trainings

• The Player Development section is now organized into three tabs:
  • Development: A summary page featuring current trainings, completed trainings, a progression recap section, and a top 5 list of the most productive developing players (25 years old and under) in the organization.
  • Players: The existing page listing all players in the organization along with their potential/overall differentials.
  • Stats: A stat list of every developing player in the organization. For each player, you can see their age, league, and stats.
• Added a new “Trend” indicator
  • The trend indicator shows the effect of the player’s season on their development. It is influenced by:
    • The quality of opposition relative to the player (league strength).
    • The number of games played.
    • The number of playoff games.
    • The number of games missed due to injury.
    • Here are a few examples:
  • The trend has 4 levels: Very slow, Slow, Normal, Excelling, and Outstanding.
    • Very slow and Slow will reduce the player’s development for the current season. The player is also at risk of having their development ceiling lowered.
    • Excelling and Outstanding will increase the player’s development for the current season.
• Added a new development focus concept.
  • You can choose which aspect of the game you want the player to focus on:
    • General Focus: Balanced, Offense, Defense.
    • Attributes Focus: Shooting, Passing, Offensive Awareness, Shot Blocking, Hitting, Defensive Awareness.
  • Concentrating on a specific attribute or category will expedite the development towards the selection. Other attributes will progress at a slower pace.
  • The focus is also visible from the Players tab (mentioned earlier) and from the player profile.
• Your coaches and Head of Player Development can now train players:
  • Head of Player Development: Has 3 training slots and can train any players in the organization.
  • Head Coaches: Have 2 training slots and can only train players on their team.
  • Assistant Coaches: Have 1 training slot and can only train players on their team.
  • Here are the available trainings:
    • Secondary Position: Adding a secondary position to a player.
    • Player Type: Changing the player’s type.
    • Rating: Increasing a selected rating by +1.
      • These trainings are only available to developing players.
• Potential drops will happen much later in player development and less frequently.
• Added an individual rating increase (+1, -1) next to the rating on the player profile.
• Goalies will develop until 28 years old (compared to 26 for skaters)
• A player’s training can be paused, but progress will be lost if the player starts a new training.
• Trainings are only available during the season and are paused during the offseason and preseason.
• Training can be disabled or auto-assigned.
• Increased the impact of the draft quality setting
• Lowered the overall of players drafted past the 1st round

Inbox

• The inbox acts as your personal email inbox for every notification throughout your seasons.
• Multiple new messages and notifications have been added:
  • Awards Result: View all the award winners from the major league in a single email.
  • Buyout: Sent when any team buys out a player.
  • Daily Signings Recap: Sent every day when there’s at least one contract signing (user team excluded).
  • Family Birth: Sent when a user player welcomes a child.
  • Head Coach Firing: Sent when any major league team fires their head coach.
  • Jersey Retirement: Sent when a team retires a jersey.
  • League Changes: Sent when there’s a rule change for the major league (expansion, divisions, schedule, etc.).
  • Lottery Result: Sent after the draft lottery with the lottery result.
  • Salary Cap Increase: Sent when the salary cap increases.
  • Monthly Draft Preview: Sent every month showing the current rank of every prospect in the projected first round, also tells the quality of the draft (below average, average, above average).
  • Monthly Progression: Sent every month when at least one player overall in the user organization improves.
  • Monthly Prospect Recap: Sent every month showing the stats of every prospect in your organization.
  • Tournament Recap: Sent after a tournament showing the stats of your players.
  • Tournament Start: Sent before a tournament showing which of your players are invited.
  • Daily Trade Recap: Sent every day where there’s a trade with the full list of trades for that day.
  • Vacant Leadership Role: Sent at the beginning of the season when your team has a vacant captain or assistant.
• For each message from this list, you have the option to choose how important they are to you:
  • Silenced: The message will not be visible by default in your inbox.
  • Inbox: The message will be visible in your inbox, but you will not be notified.
  • Notified: You will receive a notification while simulating.
• You can then personalize your experience to what is important for you to see during the season.
• Multiple existing notifications have also been updated:
  • The season-ending notification now includes the list of first-round matchups.
  • The contract negotiation notification will now show which team a player signed with when not signing with your team.
  • The retirement notification will now show which players from your team have retired, plus any players that played for you and the most notable retirements.
  • The notification that reminds you to sign your players right before free agency will now show the list of unsigned players.
  • The notification that reminds you to sign your staff will now show the list of staff set to expire.
  • The waiver notifications have been merged into a single notification. You can also claim players directly from the notification.
  • There’s a new notification before the start of the season that shows every rookie set to make their major league debut.
  • Your most recent emails are visible from the office page.
  • The number of unread emails is visible in the navigation bar.
  For each message not included in the notifications settings from previous iterations of the game (General, Trade Offer, Injuries, Contract Result, Championship, etc.), you can choose.
• The number of unread emails is visible in the navigation bar.

Secondary Features

Simulation Speed

• Improved the simulation speed on PC:
  • Career creation is 42% faster
  • Average monthly simulation is 37% faster
  • Full season simulation is 44% faster
• Improved the simulation speed on Mobile:
  • Career creation is 55% faster
    • HLM24: 22s
    • HLM25: 10s
  • Average monthly simulation is 63% faster
    • HLM24: 17s
    • HLM25: 6s
  • Full season simulation is 60% faster
    • HLM24: 3m29s
    • HLM25: 1m23s
  • Tested on a roster with multiple leagues and a mid-level device with autosaving off
  • Complete season with the default roster on a high-end device takes:
    • HLM24: 55s
    • HLM25: 23s

Trades

• AI teams can reject offers even if the value is fair based on their current needs (e.g., a contending team will reject offers where they have to retain salary as a middleman or acquire a bad contract; a rebuilding team will reject offers where they have to trade away bad contracts or first-round picks). Teams, however, will be open to trading those assets for an overpayment.
• Added player potential to the trade view.
• Added an autocomplete button to the trade view, allowing you to let the AI add the missing assets to complete a trade.
• Reduced the effect of negative contract value on players that are still developing.
• Reduced the effect of negative contract value for players over 87 overall.
• Increased the effect of negative contract value for contracts extending past the regression age.
• The trade list ordering will remain active when changing teams.
• Reduced the value of late-round picks.
• Reduced the value of older players.
• Reduced the value of the user’s expiring contracts on the trade deadline and on draft day.
• Retaining salary will be worth more value.
• Players clearing waivers will temporarily loose most of their value
• Added an expiring filter to the trade list during the trade deadline.
• Enhanced trade finder to discover more potential trades.

Roster Editor

• Added a new setting that allows modification of positions, player types, attributes, and contracts of players during a career.
• Added an in-game league editor which allows editing of the name, abbreviation, color, divisions, conference names, and trophy names.
• Added the ability to add awards to teams, players, and staff.
• Added a “Date Modified” column to the active roster list.
• Added team championship history to the roster.
• Added major league trophy history to the roster.
• Added the ability to link retired numbers to a player.

Simulation League

• Added Commissioner Mode, allowing you to switch easily between teams during the season and take control of every team during the draft.
• You can also choose which teams are controlled by you and the AI.

Draft

• Undrafted players who are still draft eligible will return for the next draft.
• Added age to the draft list.
• Added a “Sim Pick” button to skip to the next pick.
• Added a position filter to the prospect list.
• Added a setting that allows changing the generation of each position for the draft (from -50% to +50%).
• Reduced the odds of a draft-eligible player leaving their country to play in a stronger league elsewhere.
• Added the draft hosting city on the draft page.
• Players drafted in the first round will have their picture generated (if pack installed). The picture will also be visible on the draft page when selected.

Nationalities

• Added Belarus, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, and Poland to all second division tournaments.
• Updated first division teams for tournaments: Canada, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Germany, USA, Russia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Denmark.

Settings

• Added a setting to hide player potentials.
• Added a setting to choose the number of rounds in a fantasy draft.
• Added a setting to remove all pre-determined expansion drafts and league changes in history mode.
• Added a setting to retain the last 1 to 4 autosaves simultaneously.
• Added a shot frequency setting.
• Added an option to set the number of playoff games per round.

Other

• Added the ability to import/export saves.
• The winning history of an award will now show the team or player at the moment of winning instead of their current team.
• The profile of every retired player from a roster is now available in your career.
• Added 2023 as a historical mode date.
• Goalie stats are now visible from the office page.
• Records, Milestones, Rankings, and Draft History are now combined in a single page named “League.”
• The All-Star Game hosting city will have its logo on the center ice.
• Added the list of retired numbers on the team profile.
• Improved the performance of the in-game team editor logo selector.
• Added the name of the roster used to create a career on the About page.
• Improved the performance of the expansion draft planning page when handling thousands of teams.
• Added Coach of the Year trophy to the three junior leagues.
• When the maximum contract setting is turned off, the number of contracts a team has will still be visible.
• Added “Most Downloaded” and “Most Recent” filters to the community roster view.
• Major rivalries are now limited to 3 per team, with a total of 6 including minor rivalries.
• Fixed incorrect relocation dates in history mode.
• Goaltenders can now win the playoffs MVP award.
• Players under 20 years old playing outside of the major team organization will not count toward the contract limit.
• Increased the amount of penalty minutes.
• Reduced the impact of the clutch attribute.
• Added a graph showing the standing history of a team on its profile.
• Included playoffs wins and losses on the team ranking page.
• The contracts page is available in read-only mode between the trade deadline and the contract extension period.
• Added a new schedule page where you can view the results of every game for a team. This page is connected with the calendar, allowing for direct simulation from the schedule page.
• Added the established season of a team to the team profile.
• Added Playoffs and Finals banners to the play-by-play rink for playoff games.
• Added a settings shortcut on the lineup page for editing AI behavior towards your lineup.
• Picks in the trade history will show the selected player in brackets.
• The salary cap will scale with the strength of the major league when using a custom league.
• Teams will now fire their head coach based on their season results.
• Short-term injured players will now count towards the salary cap in the offseason.
• It is now harder to sign a player with Low or Very Low signing interest towards your team.
• Reduced the frequency of injuries.
• You can now press on a retired player jersey from their profile to retire/unretire their number.
• Added advanced search functionality to the search bar.
  • Search players by positions by typing “LW”
  • Search players by player type by typing “PLM”
  • Search players by overall by typing “86-88”, “-88”, or “+88”
  • Search players by status by typing “active” or “retired”
  • For example, typing “LW PLM 86-88 active” will display the top 10 playmaking left wingers between 86 and 88 overall who are not retired.

Filters

• Added a position and status filter (retired, active, draft eligibility) on the created players page.
• Added league and team filters to the created staff page.
• Staff and player filters and ordering will remain active when updating a staff or player.
• Added position filters to the fantasy draft page.
• Added a draft eligible filter on the player stats page.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where selecting first overall automatically drafted the pick.
• Fixed a bug where the game-winning goal was incorrectly attributed.
• Fixed a bug where injured players’ numbers were reset during the season.
• Fixed a bug where created staff were ignored when starting a fantasy draft.
• Fixed a bug where the draft class quality setting was not applied to the following season.
• Resolved issue where teams could exceed their contract limits when making trades.
• A few other bugs were fixed