Understanding The Show 17 Franchise backlash - thescoop's Blog

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Understanding The Show 17 Franchise backlash

Posted on March 9, 2017 at 01:15 PM.

On Monday this week, Gamestop's "The Show Mondays" finally featured franchise mode. After it was viewed, a lot folks in the forums, myself included, felt a little underwhelmed by the video.

This led too many expressing their disappoint, some in constructive ways and some in far from constructive ways. It also led to some attack people for not being pumped up and expressing their disappointment. After a bit of negativity, one of the mods decided to shut the entire forum down for a bit so everyone could cool off. Based on the tone since the shutdown was lifted, I'd say he made the correct call.

But what created the backlash in the first place? To understand it, you must first understand why fans of MLB the Show love the game in the first place.

MLB The Show is an event release. Now as the only baseball game in town, it holds the interest of all baseball video game fans and not just fans of the series. It has been great for several years running so folks expect nothing but more greatness each and every year.

Also, The Show's development team has taken active interests in communities like OS. They have come to these forums to seek advice and sometimes even come up with ideas to help improve and expand on the game. When it comes to a development team, few can argue that this is one of the best there is when it comes to listening to the fans.

Because of this positive, however; a negative has been formed as well. Gamers that have seen their ideas used in The Show before have a strong sense of entitlement. A lot of us have devolved the feelings that because they've added our suggestions in the past, they should always add what we want. Somethings just can't happen in a year timeframe. Other requests maybe long overdue, But the entitlement feeling is one that can form a cancer inside an online forum and could even run some developers away from the boards.

The other side of this is those who are blindly loyal because these developers have shown up on our boards and feel anything other than praise is an insult. Those people are just as bad as the entitled group. They attack even a simple "I was underwhelmed" post. Instead of understanding that not all criticism is bad, they feel these developers should be protected no matter what. And once they start clashing with positive criticism and the entitled crowd we are left with an ugly scene.

The other reason we saw some backlash over the Franchise video is the other videos seemed to go over some truly cool things. As it closer to the mode a lot of us here play the most, we had very high expectations. And based on things The Show team had done in the past, we had reasons to have them high.

The video released on Monday was more about ways to speed up play. This is something that I believe, even if we've not seen it requested here on OS's forums a lot, is something the team has heard from serval folks. But since it wasn't the area of focus we wanted, folks expressed displeasure.

For myself, I was underwhelmed by the video. I do realize today's live stream my correct some of that but it also may not. I will be getting The Show no matter what though because I know it will be a solid game. But I did feel I should express my disappointment, however; I did not attack anyone or any new thing that was being added.

Another reason some feel upset is the last couple of years Franchise mode has not changed much. I think a lot of people got it in their heads this was going to be a big change year for the mode. That may not be the case as it appears a lot of other things got more attention and that could have taken away from the focus. And to fans for the mode they feel they are getting slighted. The development team should really make sure they take a year to make Franchise the major focus because a lot their hardcore base have been expecting it for some time. But even if they did, something would still be missed and some would still remain unhappy.

The Show has a great reputation. In large part this is because of how involved the development team is with the fans. They do not have the reputation of EA's Madden team. This helps set the high and sometimes unrealistic expectations of us fans.

The fact they are the only baseball game in town ramps up the expectations but we should also remember that this is not a team that has ever taken the "it is us or nothing" mindset. I truly believe they want to make the best game out there. And even if they nail everything I want to see in a Franchise mode, there is always going to be room for improvement.

I am looking forward to today's live stream with hope of something cool we haven't seen yet to be announced. I fear that because of many of the factors I laid out above that no matter happens, we will see a fair amount of negativity on the boards tonight. But I hope not.

Just remember this: we are blessed to have a team that does care and seems to want to improve each year. We could just be getting another "roster update" yearly release game. But this team does attempt to make things better. And their involvement with us on the boards, even when they don't agree with what we suggest, does help prove that fact.

Maybe by taking the time to understand the backlash, we can also avoid a repeat of all the negative things we saw after the Monday video.