Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

[Funkycorm]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I don't get stuck on accurate real life stats or accurate rosters. I sim into the future to play a season because I do not want any real correlation to what is happening in baseball now.

I have played the last few years on all-star difficulty for pitching and hitting with auto fielding and manual throwing using buttons only so those annoying throw bars don't pop up and I don't have to see the ball markers on the ground.

I am going to start new in 21 and sim a new franchise forward then tweak my sliders and play it out on hall of fame. I won 100+ games in my last 2 seasons playing them out between 19 and 20 and want a little more challenge.

Because of that I will continue to not worry about matching what happens in baseball.

Remember, over a 162 game season, the law of averages come into play and stats will balance out anyway. Also keep in mind, that .250 average hitter can have a single breakout year and hit .330 then revert back to his norm. It's what makes baseball great. I love watching that long term ebb and flow over years and not just a single season.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I focus on feel first, and stats second. Personally, I've found that razor focusing on stats alone can cause as many problems as it solves. I'm comfortable with getting unrealistic numbers as long as I feel like the results match up with a player's given attributes and the possibility of failure still exists.

I also refuse to force realistic stats when I know that most of my team's slashes would drop at least 50 points if the CPU would just utilize the slight shift. it's a huge problem. I've tried to switch over to the other team, set the shift, and switch back, but the CPU just goes back into a straight up shift as soon as I give up control.

For example, my #2 hitter right now in my 2014 carry over (Jarome Mauzoul) is hitting .371. But a lot, and I mean a lot of those hits are solid grounders that thread the gap between SS and 3B. If the CPU would just play the slight shift to the left when he came to the plate, I'm not even sure if he'd be hitting over .300. He can hit oppo, but almost never down the line, and would struggle with a push-based strategy. He also can hit for power, but only when he pulls.

Not all of my players are that extreme of an example, but I hope you get my point. I'm getting too much success on hard grounders due to the CPUs incompetence.

The worst hitter in terms of average on my team right now is due to the fact that the CPU shifts against him effectively since he's an extreme pull hitter. He is not the worst hitter on my team.

[JoshC1977]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I'm going to offer up a portion of the opening post of my slider thread to explain my feelings.

I lose interest if I get any hint that player ratings aren't mattering as much as they should. As a consequence, I GREATLY prefer operating with zero slider adjustments (to maximize the player rating influence); but MLB The Show always seems to need a little tuning. So, we need to do this very carefully...

I'm not interested in a slider setup that makes the game look/play a particular way or that yields certain statistical outcomes. I just want the player ratings to be reflected in a believable manner in their on-the-field actions. If every player kinda feels the same, well...why bother building a team?

What is the goal?
The goal is the same this year: to maximize the impact of player ratings. If ratings don't matter, then it is pointless to play franchise mode.

What does this mean?
Well...let me give you an example. Playing every game in my Reds franchise, I had a player with 99 contact/78 power (vs righties) and 60 contact/42 power (vs lefties) and with mid-60s vision hit .402 with 40 HRs vs righties and around .280 with 1 HR vs lefties. Think about that for a second...a 99 contact hitter (which is essentially HOF-level for that season)...he should be pretty darn good at hitting, right? A max-rated contact hitter with a lot of power in a small home ballpark hit just over .400 vs that handedness. That's not unreasonable, right? Does it change your opinion that the player in question was Scooter Gennett? If it does, than this is the wrong thread for you.

Many people will say, "That isn't realistic!! Scooter isn't that good!!!!" That's a biased assessment based on real life; not an assessment of what could happen based on that player's ratings. But many folks will look at that and adjust things because it is "too easy"...but if one biases the game/sliders to the point where that can't ever happen to a player with those ratings, that is NOT believable either!

[MetsFan16]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

My franchise strategy is to play all 162 and have realistic stats for each player. I am pretty competitive in DD (Consistent WS player in ranked) so my difficult is set to Legend but there are some aspects of the game that are not fit for me with default sliders. I tend to always decrease my contact/power/pitcher accuracy to get more realism. Or else every game is a slugfest and I pitch a shutout.

It takes some time to get the sliders right where I like them but I also know that I will never lead the league in walks, strikeouts, I seem to always lead in GIDP.

I tend to always have a player go off each ear (2020 Conforto hit .330 with 60 and 140) and that was a lot of fun for me even if it wasn’t realistic because I still lose games, I have to make epic comebacks and my year end numbers looks somewhat similar to real life.

To answer your question, I think it’s good to find a difficult that is challenging but not overwhelming that takes away from the fun. And for the inbetween stuff sliders okay a big factor.

[KnightTemplar]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

30 team control. Keep the ML rosters accurate, don’t care about the minors. I’ll play one season in franchise mode, then shelve it and start anew. Clean screen, generated pitch count, can’t steal or bunt for crap, so use quick manage. Love a good loss as well as a win. No slider adjustments, AS vs. AS seems to work for me.

[canes21]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I swing at almost everything lol


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My issue is I don't swing enough. Sure, I draw plenty of walks, I also take too many hittable pitches and allow pitchers to get me into 2-strike counts where I then make weak contact when I put a ball in play unless they make a mistake.

I've never been one to hack away and I don't guess that will ever change. It's partially why I like simming as much as I do also. The player tendencies matter more when you sim more than not.

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[Armor and Sword]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

The way I franchise is clearly explained and laid out on my Slider thread. Plenty of detail, settings, approaches to pitching and hitting.

I am a pure clean screen sports gamer and player ratings are the driver.

When developing sliders I am all about the “feel” of the game and never ever get hung up on “stats”. Being that I play every pitch of every inning and all 162 in my main franchise’s the stats take care of themselves naturally. And they have always been a product of my league and the evolving player ratings and now five years in prospects that I drafted in combination of the full minors roster we go with.


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[Blzer]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

One other thing I do before I start franchise when it comes to "testing" (but really I'm just waiting on updated rosters from the community haha):

• Play games as a stacked team (ex: AL All Stars) vs. a weak team (ex: AA team). I need to make sure that I can basically crush them every time out.
• Flip that script and play as a weak team against a stacked team. I need to make sure that I can basically get crushed every time out.
• Play as some team, against that same team. Try heavy offensive teams, strong pitching teams, etc. Just seeing the balance/competitiveness that I get on that front.

I can get plenty of games in this way when waiting on rosters, but these are good ways to kind of test sliders out.

[canes21]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

One other thing I do before I start franchise when it comes to "testing" (but really I'm just waiting on updated rosters from the community haha):

• Play games as a stacked team (ex: AL All Stars) vs. a weak team (ex: AA team). I need to make sure that I can basically crush them every time out.
• Flip that script and play as a weak team against a stacked team. I need to make sure that I can basically get crushed every time out.
• Play as some team, against that same team. Try heavy offensive teams, strong pitching teams, etc. Just seeing the balance/competitiveness that I get on that front.

I can get plenty of games in this way when waiting on rosters, but these are good ways to kind of test sliders out.

This is how I tune my sliders for every sports game just about. I play a ton of play now games because I find it fun and it let's me use a variety of teams and get the sliders ironed out in a way I don't think I could achieve just playing as my favorite team repeatedly.

It allows me to see all the different teams, players, stadiums, etc. while also being productive with the slider work. Plus it is also fun to be the Dodgers and just beat up on a team like the Orioles.

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[TotesMaGotes]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I play to have fun with baseball. Sometimes that is a realistic game that is a little stressful but rewarding. Sometimes that is a game where Nick Castellanos goes yard 5 times and has a 6-6 game with 11 RBI. The end results don't matter as much as "Did I have fun while I played the game?"

[Blzer]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I play to have fun with baseball. Sometimes that is a realistic game that is a little stressful but rewarding. Sometimes that is a game where Nick Castellanos goes yard 5 times and has a 6-6 game with 11 RBI. The end results don't matter as much as "Did I have fun while I played the game?"

Once you strike the balance, you can take those prized possessions with you. I won't question that unless it starts happening every game or something.

But ever since sliders became a thing, I began having fun in authenticity. Back in the day, you wouldn't want to know how I liked to play sports games, but basically even if I beat my opponent 100-0, I wouldn't care (and yes, I'm talking about baseball video games haha).

I've scored so many runs on games in MLB 99, that I lost. That's right, my run total turned negative! I think it was after scoring 128 runs or something like that. It has to do with computational storage (and powers of 2).

[ninertravel]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

Hopefully he meant that in jest. That's what I was assuming but I did a double-take when I saw that you said you played every pitch for every team and obviously for most of us that task would be near impossible, even in Madden in a 16-game season; but I think that stuff like this is just awesome. I wish I had the patience to play out a whole 162 game season but I always trail off somewhere and I hate it. The cool thing about The Show is that it allows the user to not have to start their season from scratch each year. Although that feature never does much for me because I am an absolute stickler for accurate and up-to-date rosters and ratings (I think I have sports game OCD).

Honestly, I would love to see your end of season statistics from this. It would be absolutely fascinating to see that much user-determined data across an entire league. I do something similar but I only play each game for my own team while I individually sim each game to mostly mimic real-life for all the other teams, it slows me down every year and is probably the culprit to why I've never made it to playing all of my regular season games.

Well in starting my (pretend 2021 season on 2020 schedule that never happened) I am where most teams have played 7 or 8 games right now. I started this in Feburary. I think once I get a month in it is better to post stats then.

I can tell you now lots of really good players are off to terrible starts DJ for yankees is 2 for 29!!! Juan Sotto and tatis are off to awful starts as well.

I love how that I have controlled every stat.. also if a big transaction happens in real life I will update it in my franchise (yeah you can call me even more crazy now too lol)

and Yes I used to play all the games with madden at one time too. that was much easier however I could play 3 or 4 madden games a day which meant I would finish one week of the season in 4 days back in the day. I stopped playing madden and gave up on it back in 2012 though. I used to just control the team offences and let the CPU do all the defense plays and swap controllers but I tried to play as though I wanted to win. back in PS2 days I had so much fun playing this way this is how it all started for me to play this way

see how I said I gave up with madden in 2012?? because that was the year 32 team control was taken out... then they kinda tried to bring it back since then it takes like a 1 hour to set up 32 team profiles and set up rosters the CPU messes up.

[Caulfield]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I play to have fun with baseball. Sometimes that is a realistic game that is a little stressful but rewarding. Sometimes that is a game where Nick Castellanos goes yard 5 times and has a 6-6 game with 11 RBI. The end results don't matter as much as "Did I have fun while I played the game?"

amen, this can't be stressed enough. I think this is what part of what drives the success of Diamond Dynasty. you don't get bogged down by trying to recreate IRL MLB. DD isn't my cup of tea but it's still baseball at it's core, just not MLB sim baseball. nothing wrong with that, just not for me. as for the enjoying a game, I've played my share of seasons struggling to win 70 games but even losing 90+ games can still provide plenty of entertainment. and theatrics. but I'm also the kind of guy who enjoys a good nightmare while I'm asleep. it's like getting to watch a good movie, for free lol

[tessl]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I use manage mode exclusively and getting the stats right in this game has to be the heaviest lift in any sports game.

They do an excellent job under the circumstances. They were near perfect until someone instituted the strange ball curving foul dynamic which threw an monkey wrench in the stats but they have attempted to increase offense in other areas since.

Seems to me user input with a controller would wreck havoc on the stats but I can't verify that since I'm manage mode. I set the controller down on a table and only pick it up when I need to make a move.

[HolyStroke3]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

No thanks.. I don't need help I am happy with 2 kids with a family and to spend my free time at night to myself playing 2 or 3 games a night of a season. it's not like I sit on it 24-7

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