- There are countless "cheesing" things that the user can do like dropping your player ratings right before the off-season, signing him to the cheapest deal possible, and then setting him back.
This can already happen by changing a players position. eg: Taking a CB and moving him to OLB or S. I already do this because some of the contract AI is wacky. 73 OVR CB's asking for more than a 84 OVR HB/WR. Or old guys on in the last years of their career asking for big bucks. Lawyer Milloy wanted like 10mill/2yrs from me!!!! So this shouldn't be a factor.
- Your save file can easily be rendered non-functional if you change enough CPU team's player's ratings where they can't re-sign any players. At this point the mode typically crashes or hangs and won't be recoverable from.
Hopefully with some TLC this can be fixed. If it can't I'd rather be able to manually adjust the potential ratings on the roster file before entering franchise mode. Just for the seahawks- Aaron Curry, Golden Tate, Anthony McCoy, LeRoy Hill, and Babs are all too high. And Mike Williams, Cameron Morrah, Red Bryant, Chris Clemons, Walter Thurmond, Roy Lewis, and Cam Chancellor are all too low.
- We also don't display that potential rating in the edit player screen now, and if you were to edit the actual player's overall rating to be higher than his potential rating, the game has a chance of crashing in many different spots. We'd have to add it in and always force it to be higher than the OVR I guess.
Personally I don't have a problem with this, MLB the Show does this and they've got one of the best franchise modes around.
What is your overall specific intent with wanting to edit these players?
As the real NFL season progresses I won't have to restart a franchise just because I can now have updated rosters.
Are there certain time frames we can lock it to?
Not exactaly clear on what you mean... But they ratings should be editable during the regular season but not the playoffs. It would be nice to edit them after the super bowl though.
Are there certain specific changes you could only be allowed to make instead of full league-wide control?
It would be nice to be able to update contracts also, Davone Bess got a new contract a couple weeks ago but it's still not in the game. If there could be a line drawn between the GM of the team and the "Franchise Overlord" that would be ideal. The GM could do everything that is in the game now but the "Overlord" could change things like contracts and ratings.