Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

As just stated in the IGN Moments (47min) Video! Their (Design Philosophy) is based on research that tells them to create a faster version of Season mode! I wonder where they are getting all of this data from?

Anyone that plays The Show and has their console connected to the internet are sending them data on the way they play. the modes they play the most. What they were doing when they stopped paying a mode. How often they restart a mode before quitting the mode. From gaming standpoints, they not only know how often and long you game per session, but what other games you are playing.

And that's just the telemetry. They also run focus groups, where they bring in average gamers, from people with no experience, to those with a lot, and watch them pay and then interview them. This is separate from Gamechangers and Community Days guys, as those are for marketing, not improving the game.

I'm not sure why you doubt them.

[tabarnes19_SDS]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

Last year 75% of the equation WAS performance based and 25% potential based. This was good and bad. It rendered training useless as your players would regress if they weren't hitting even if you were training them in certain attributes. Overall it was a pretty good change but you had to be very careful with your minor league players progress because they could fall off of a cliff if they slumped for a couple of months

Where did you hear those numbers from? The formula for progression has never been disclosed before, as far as I know.

I believe performance is a small percentage of progression, as it should be, you don't suddenly get better tools because your average went up with some nubbers down the line.

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[Madden08PCgmr]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

I picked up NHL for the first time in years and was amazed at how solid the franchise mode was. I go to various NHL forums...it's nothing but whining about how it is "stale" and "never gets attention".

I picked up NBA 2k for the first time in a couple of years. My league is a very deep mode with options. I go to various 2k forums....it's nothing but whining about how "broke" (sic) it is.

Why am I saying this? Because when you play the same thing year-in and year-out, it's going to be very familiar. It's very easy to overlook how many "little things" have been improved upon over the years. It's not a coincidence that many of the same people saying "I only play franchise mode" are also saying "It's stale".

At some stage, no matter how much a developer works on one particular mode, it's going to get stale if you do nothing but play that one thing. No matter how much you might love it, if you eat the exact same meals every day, you're going to tire of it eventually. It is therefore incumbent upon yourselves to find your own ways to freshen it up or (gasp!) branch out and try other things.

I'm not saying that MLB's franchise mode doesn't need some minor tweaks here and there, but I also don't agree with the mindset that it needs some dramatic overhaul.

To generalize, I'm pretty much with you on all of that.

But on the flip side, there's just too much low hanging fruit everywhere.

No historic stats = no meaningful records chases, in a season, or long-term
No Single A ball = 90-man rosters don't truly mean anything
There's hardly any team/player personality
Create-a-manager
Create-a-stadium, improve-a-stadium
Jersey design/creation

.. how may doubles in the alley shall we name here?

I think that is the issue for the "complainers"

I can't presume to know how many man-hours it would take to implement these things.. but stuff like stats/records?... I've done that leg work before in Madden. Its a matter of hours to populate that stuff. Hours = less than 10. The lowest hanging fruit there is.

[goillini03]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

I picked up NHL for the first time in years and was amazed at how solid the franchise mode was. I go to various NHL forums...it's nothing but whining about how it is "stale" and "never gets attention".



I picked up NBA 2k for the first time in a couple of years. My league is a very deep mode with options. I go to various 2k forums....it's nothing but whining about how "broke" (sic) it is.



Why am I saying this? Because when you play the same thing year-in and year-out, it's going to be very familiar. It's very easy to overlook how many "little things" have been improved upon over the years. It's not a coincidence that many of the same people saying "I only play franchise mode" are also saying "It's stale".



At some stage, no matter how much a developer works on one particular mode, it's going to get stale if you do nothing but play that one thing. No matter how much you might love it, if you eat the exact same meals every day, you're going to tire of it eventually. It is therefore incumbent upon yourselves to find your own ways to freshen it up or (gasp!) branch out and try other things.



I'm not saying that MLB's franchise mode doesn't need some minor tweaks here and there, but I also don't agree with the mindset that it needs some dramatic overhaul.

I think that is the point though for many. The vast majority are not saying that it needs a dramatic overhaul. Would be people love stadium builder and relocation? Absolutely. The issue that most people have is that fundamental elements of Franchise have been terrible implemented, ignored, or kicked down the road. I cannot name a truly innovative thing that the team has done with Franchise mode in years.

Many of the things that need fixed, mentioned above, are not groundbreaking activities. Other developers do the same things. Small team, or not, it is just not a great look.

The issue I also think is that if you look at the stream schedule, Franchise is a footnote. A major mode that many people play, that helped build the game that others play today, is a footnote.

I understand where you are coming from with the trying new things, but I can also see why people look at the other things and see them as a waste of time.

[Therebelyell626]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

Are you sure it changed? I didn't notice a difference in rtts with CPU players.


And production based progression is always worse. It makes no logical sense.

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Yes I am sure. I ran at least one franchise with each team at least once, at least five years each. I made sure to pay attention to every aspect of each franchise doing my own call ups, checking stats, and making sure to track the progression. Training had little no effect on progression, and production seemed to be the extreme outlier. That is why guys in single A progressed in every statistic and never decreased unless because of age. I had A potential players decrease despite A potential due to poor statistics (at least hitting) and had C potentials increase as high as 10 points in certain attributes due to tearing the cover off the ball. The only time potential rating seemed to have the bigger effect is when I stashed players in single A ball. Due to the games not being played A's will mostly increase around 3-4 points per attribute, b's at 2-3, and C's at 1-2. They never decrease in A ball unless they hit the age regression limit because he games aren't played. Stick them in AA or higher and a player can fall off a cliff if they slump for just a couple of months.

In one franchise I did last year with the Padres Renfroe increased plus 12 in contact and power vs lefties. But did not increase in any vs righty attributes. His splits were .286 with 14 homers against lefties, and .215 with 8 homers against righties. I think renfroe was an A potential last year so realistically he should have progressed even slightly in his vs righty attributes being that he was 25 and A rated potential.

Trust me I did a lot of franchise testing last year and feel confident that last year production was the highest factor of the progression equation. And I sim a lot so my testing was without much user input as to not influence my results.

[tessl]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

I like the idea of the March to October mode. My problem is they state in the stream that the mode was birthed from the fact that they set out to make improvements to franchise and decided to put all of those "improvements" into a new mode. I guess my question is why?

If you added all these improvements to franchise and then decided to make a new mode featuring those "improvements" I am cool with that. But if you scrapped improvements to franchise completely just for the sake of having a new mode then I definitely have a problem with that.

I honestly think they tried to add these improvements to franchise but couldn't find a way to account for all of the variables in franchise to make it actually work. So they said screw it and just threw these new features into a new mode.

I know for a fact that had they just stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and did something like revamp the draft, scouting, or player training engine there would have been a lot of happy franchise people.

Because they consistently listen to the wrong people when deciding what to focus on.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

Yikes, I could go on for ages about what needs to be done in franchise mode. I think I've already spoken at length about it in other threads.

There is a large disparity between what I want done and what I'm willing to accept. So far what I've seen this year is below even that low threshold, mostly because they have made changes that I see as downgrades this year.

New out of position logic. They made the argument that you can't put Buster Posey at short because it would take time for him to adjust, which makes a lot of sense in an environment like DD, but what if I have him at the position for a week? A month? A year? I hope it's a different system for offline franchise, but I highly doubt it.

The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all.

And the new pitching tier system is a disaster for franchise players. Again, it makes a ton of sense in DD, but lots of pitchers grow and evolve their secondary or tertiary pitches into their best pitch over the course of their career. But now, what you draft them with will always be their best. Such a stagnant system.

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[goillini03]

Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

Sounds like real life contracts according to the new Game Informer video. (In other thread)

[JoshC1977]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

Yikes, I could go on for ages about what needs to be done in franchise mode. I think I've already spoken at length about it in other threads.

There is a large disparity between what I want done and what I'm willing to accept. So far what I've seen this year is below even that low threshold, mostly because they have made changes that I see as downgrades this year.

New out of position logic. They made the argument that you can't put Buster Posey at short because it would take time for him to adjust, which makes a lot of sense in an environment like DD, but what if I have him at the position for a week? A month? A year? I hope it's a different system for offline franchise, but I highly doubt it.

The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all.

And the new pitching tier system is a disaster for franchise players. Again, it makes a ton of sense in DD, but lots of pitchers grow and evolve their secondary or tertiary pitches into their best pitch over the course of their career. But now, what you draft them with will always be their best. Such a stagnant system.

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One note on the secondary position fielding rating hits, they do vary based on where they are on the defensive spectrum. So a guy going to LF from RF will have less of a fielding hit than a guy going from 1b to SS.

I do agree that I’d like to see some dynamicism in positional changes within franchise as that is the biggest thing missing from the game .


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[BigOscar]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all.

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Yup, made worse by the fact SDS sets a lot of players primary position as the one they are playing right now in real life, not their actual primary position. So a 3B can be used at 2nd by a team (like Travis Shaw), SDS makes him a 2B and then gives him an attribute penalty at 3rd

[moTIGS]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

A lot of the kinds of changes people are mentioning are subtle tweaks that aren't necessarily the sexiest things to market a game.

Those with more year-to-year experience than I have (18 was the first version I've played in a while) have more perspective than I do, and I get that there have been plenty examples of franchise being seemingly ignored. But I'm still holding out hope that a lot of little things have been addressed and simply aren't viewed as the kinds of updates worth highlighting to advertise a stream.

Contract extensions is also a small update, but it's something that requires active player involvement. Tweaking stuff in the back end to adjust how teams manage prospects, how draft classes are generated, free agent signings, etc. are important updates to dedicated franchise players but maybe not the types of things SDS thinks are worth emphasizing in advertising a stream that is itself an advertisement to drive preorders.

[adamj2281]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

If and it's a big if they nailed the real life contracts and logic that goes with it, that would be a huge boost to the game. Hopefully they made the budget analysis a bit more user-friendly as well. If they implemented this correctly (along with Morale) I'm plenty happy with Franchise.

[BigOscar]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

I'll be glad to see real contracts and more realistic wages, as really contracts play such a huge part of real life baseball. Hopefully this also means we won't see players retiring with 3 years of $30m left on their deals anymore as well! (looking at you Albert)

I just hope they implement it properly and properly test it. If they've just edited the values and not the financial system around it then the game will break, just as it does if we do that ourselves.

[ninertravel]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

I have given up on any major improvements.

god remember MLB 12 when we used to have the newspapers?? then we had the radio show which has been the same for the past few years. what is the bet that is taken out now?

They just better not pull a EA and wipe franchise out like they did with madden 6 years ago. that means they would take out 30 team control and strip it down and it will never recover just like that CFm crap has done. I am really nervous for the future of franchise in PS5 that they might just do that.l completely delete it start it from scratch then day 1 it will be a single team only mode that is designed for online only (like CFM which is why 32 team control takes 1 hour to create because it is designed this way) then it will be built around stubs and all that crap for DD that you can use.

[newhope1000]

Re: Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

At very least make scheduling different not same teams every year more logical cpu trades doubleheader’s


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