Any tips from sim and watch Franchise players?

[Kalkano]

Re: Any tips from sim and watch Franchise players?

Forgot to mention that I also watch all 3 All Star games, and the Futures Game. I only watch at bats from players on my teams (although, it's hard to use the fast forward function, guessing when they'll come up), and one batter for each pitcher on my teams.

[GreenGlen]

Re: Any tips from sim and watch Franchise players?

I don't do Manage Only Mode. You could probably think of my playstyle as "GM Only Mode". I scout, draft, sign free agents, send players up/down, set lineups/rotations, and watch a few games. I know there are others here that do the same, but I don't remember anyone's screen name.

My typical season is:

1) Sign free agents
2) Set rosters (time consuming, but seeing numbers for stats may speed up my decision making process)
3) Set random Sounds of the Show for all new players (at all levels...time consuming)
4) Set lineups/rotations (time consuming, but much improved, lately)
5) Every couple weeks (throughout the entire season), update scouting assignments
6) Watch Opening Day for all 3 teams (AA, AAA, MLB) (1 - 1.5 hours each)
7) Simulate 2 months
8) Draft somewhere around here
9) Check each team's record, and all player's stats
10) Decide if anyone needs to be sent up/down
11) Decide if any batting orders need to be tweaked
12) Check the trading block for anyone I might be interested in
13) If I trade anyone, edit rosters/lineups/rotations again
14) Simulate 1 month
15) Repeat steps 9-14, until the regular seasons are almost over
16) If the last game of the season has major playoff implications for one of my teams, watch it (1 - 1.5 hours each)
17) Simulate playoffs, until one of my teams is one game from elimination, or one game from winning the championship
17-a) If one of my teams is one game from elimination, watch all games in the series until they are eliminated, or come back to win the series
17-b) If one of my teams is one game from winning the championship, watch all games until they win, or lose the whole thing
18) Restart process for the next season

There's just a LOT of stuff to do every year, and it takes a REALLY long time to get through a single season, even though I'm simulating most of it.

I just thought of another thing that impedes my enjoyment. Since we can't trade draft picks in baseball, I'm always at the bottom of the barrel in the drafts. I never have a chance at drafting high, because my team always does well. Basically, I'm forced to be a Yankess-type team. In other sports, I trade my way up the draft, so I can get some prized prospects. I really prefer that to signing high-priced free agents.

It may seem cheap and easy, to have a great, winning team, and also be able to draft top talent, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of that playstyle. I can then start to lock up my own draft picks, long-term, instead of going all-out Yankess style on the free agent market.

Basically, the draft is almost useless to me, and I hate that.

I do most of those things except I only watch the majors and never any of my minor league teams, and I never sim through my majors games. I just refer to the stats for the farm teams. Why do I watch a video game instead of playing? Because I enjoy the management and team building aspect of it and for me the little that I give up from text based games is made up by the great atmosphere of watching the games in the show. I let the CPU adjust the lineups, being that most GM's do not fill in lineup cards for their managers. One area that I am having difficulty in is in 30 team mode is setting house rules on what is a "realistic trade". Building a competitive team and keeping them that way on a small budget is no easy task. This is especially true when you give up the control of button mashing to the CPU.