1) Get rid of the training games.
At worst, people find them impossibly hard. The frustration of not being able to do them, combined with the dread that you won't be able to compete at later stages of the Legacy really puts a damper on the excitement.
At best, people (ie. me) find them far too easy. After 15 fights or so, the training games become a necessary evil and really detract from the pre-fight drama because they're so boring and monotonous. They also have another effect, which leads me to...
2) Get rid of the stat progression altogether.
If you're one of the people that find the training too hard, you likely never finished a Legacy, or if you did, you did it on a difficulty level easy enough that it wouldn't mattered if you trained or not, so this isn't for you.
For those of us that found the training games easy, stat progression is a joke. By the end of all 3 of my Legacies, I had over 90 in every stat. I wasn't a counterpuncher, or a stick-and-move guy, or a knockout artist. I was a superhuman hybrid of ALL 3. It's far too easy to dominate in the late Legacy because not only are all of your stats high, you don't really have any strengths or weaknesses that you need to plan around. Which leads to...
3) Scouting reports!
For all of the ridiculosity that is the stat database in this game (it literally keeps track of everything), it's overdone. Yes, we want "sim" but we don't want a mathematical simulation, we want a GAME. When I click on my next opponent, or when I'm scheduling a fight and looking for somebody to fight, all I see are numbers. I want to see INFO. Is he a southpaw? What are his tendencies? Is he going to run away? Or is he going to come at me fists flying? Does he have damage previous fights that I can exploit? For all of the talk about "styles win fights" the styles in this game are horribly shallow and poorly implemented (see #2).
4) Upgrade the email system, we don't run terminals anymore.
I'm not sure why they even have this. It's a series of "Hey, something happened, hit the B button 6 times and open the Legacy menu and wade through stats to see if you can find something cool!" When a belt changes hands, tell us who it was. Who did he fight? What was the outcome - a decision or a KO? This one should be VERY easy to do.
5)Undercards - integrate the Legacy calendar with the in-game action.
If you got a fight night on the calendar and open it up, it lists all the fights happening at a certain location that night. It's cool to see who else is fighting on your card. The atmosphere would be SO much better if that carried over to the ring action. But as it stands now, every fight I fight is the main event. There's nothing like checking the calendar the night of my fight to see that I, the #31 Flyweight, am fighting on the undercard of a televised heavyweight championship bout, only to hear Joe and Ted welcome me to tonight's Main Event.
6) Fix the little cosmetic bugs.
Has anybody fought Donny Li, or Donny Kim, or Lee Kim, or Hugh Li? They all look the same (Asian) and they're ALL from Atlanta. Weird.
For whatever reason, the game does a really GOOD job of matching ethnic names with faces. And no, I'm not being racist, I'm just being honest. Guys named Alvarez aren't generally African-American in the game, and guys named Kim usually look Korean. Unfortunately, the game DOESN'T do a good job of picking names in general. In one of my legacies, there were ELEVEN guys with the last name Li in the top 50, in MY weight class alone. And of course, they're all from either Atlanta or Baltimore.
6) Unlockable items don't have to be stupid.
Instead of making me beat Cotto to be able to wear his trunks, make me win fights to get an endorsement contract with Reebok. Little things like this really improve the immersion aspect of the game. I REALLY want those new two-tone Grant gloves. So make me buy them. Or better yet, let me get the attention of a marketing exec and Grant and let them give them to me.
7) Going back to #1 and #2 above.
I would really like to see 2 things replace the pre-fight training mechanic. One of them would be permanent and the other transitive.
First, I'd like to be able to hire trainers. Certain trainers might give a bonus to hand speed, some might improve defense, but none of them would improve everything. Make the player pick and choose how they want to fight. Even better - let the player hire a different trainer SOLELY because he knows that to win the next fight (see #3 above) he needs to improve his hand speed.
Of course, better trainers would cost more money, so fights would need to have purses. The enhancement effects of a trainer would be permanent, as long as the trainer is retained. There are other things that could be added in the "permanent" boost category, but trainers would be the big one.
On the transitive side, you could add per-fight bonuses using nutrition, workouts, and several other things. More importantly, this mechanic could be used to give the game a real STORY, instead of just making it an integer-based progression to 100%. If I decide to go out partying instead of hitting the gym, give me a popularity boost and dock me some stamina points. Maybe all the beer causes me to not make weight? But by failing to make weight, I get the chance to book a different fight worth more $$$. You could even have different choices for workouts, like speed vs. strength, but make them give bonuses that go away after the fight.
That's all I have for now. Please feel free to add to it.
At worst, people find them impossibly hard. The frustration of not being able to do them, combined with the dread that you won't be able to compete at later stages of the Legacy really puts a damper on the excitement.
At best, people (ie. me) find them far too easy. After 15 fights or so, the training games become a necessary evil and really detract from the pre-fight drama because they're so boring and monotonous. They also have another effect, which leads me to...
2) Get rid of the stat progression altogether.
If you're one of the people that find the training too hard, you likely never finished a Legacy, or if you did, you did it on a difficulty level easy enough that it wouldn't mattered if you trained or not, so this isn't for you.
For those of us that found the training games easy, stat progression is a joke. By the end of all 3 of my Legacies, I had over 90 in every stat. I wasn't a counterpuncher, or a stick-and-move guy, or a knockout artist. I was a superhuman hybrid of ALL 3. It's far too easy to dominate in the late Legacy because not only are all of your stats high, you don't really have any strengths or weaknesses that you need to plan around. Which leads to...
3) Scouting reports!
For all of the ridiculosity that is the stat database in this game (it literally keeps track of everything), it's overdone. Yes, we want "sim" but we don't want a mathematical simulation, we want a GAME. When I click on my next opponent, or when I'm scheduling a fight and looking for somebody to fight, all I see are numbers. I want to see INFO. Is he a southpaw? What are his tendencies? Is he going to run away? Or is he going to come at me fists flying? Does he have damage previous fights that I can exploit? For all of the talk about "styles win fights" the styles in this game are horribly shallow and poorly implemented (see #2).
4) Upgrade the email system, we don't run terminals anymore.
I'm not sure why they even have this. It's a series of "Hey, something happened, hit the B button 6 times and open the Legacy menu and wade through stats to see if you can find something cool!" When a belt changes hands, tell us who it was. Who did he fight? What was the outcome - a decision or a KO? This one should be VERY easy to do.
5)Undercards - integrate the Legacy calendar with the in-game action.
If you got a fight night on the calendar and open it up, it lists all the fights happening at a certain location that night. It's cool to see who else is fighting on your card. The atmosphere would be SO much better if that carried over to the ring action. But as it stands now, every fight I fight is the main event. There's nothing like checking the calendar the night of my fight to see that I, the #31 Flyweight, am fighting on the undercard of a televised heavyweight championship bout, only to hear Joe and Ted welcome me to tonight's Main Event.
6) Fix the little cosmetic bugs.
Has anybody fought Donny Li, or Donny Kim, or Lee Kim, or Hugh Li? They all look the same (Asian) and they're ALL from Atlanta. Weird.
For whatever reason, the game does a really GOOD job of matching ethnic names with faces. And no, I'm not being racist, I'm just being honest. Guys named Alvarez aren't generally African-American in the game, and guys named Kim usually look Korean. Unfortunately, the game DOESN'T do a good job of picking names in general. In one of my legacies, there were ELEVEN guys with the last name Li in the top 50, in MY weight class alone. And of course, they're all from either Atlanta or Baltimore.
6) Unlockable items don't have to be stupid.
Instead of making me beat Cotto to be able to wear his trunks, make me win fights to get an endorsement contract with Reebok. Little things like this really improve the immersion aspect of the game. I REALLY want those new two-tone Grant gloves. So make me buy them. Or better yet, let me get the attention of a marketing exec and Grant and let them give them to me.
7) Going back to #1 and #2 above.
I would really like to see 2 things replace the pre-fight training mechanic. One of them would be permanent and the other transitive.
First, I'd like to be able to hire trainers. Certain trainers might give a bonus to hand speed, some might improve defense, but none of them would improve everything. Make the player pick and choose how they want to fight. Even better - let the player hire a different trainer SOLELY because he knows that to win the next fight (see #3 above) he needs to improve his hand speed.
Of course, better trainers would cost more money, so fights would need to have purses. The enhancement effects of a trainer would be permanent, as long as the trainer is retained. There are other things that could be added in the "permanent" boost category, but trainers would be the big one.
On the transitive side, you could add per-fight bonuses using nutrition, workouts, and several other things. More importantly, this mechanic could be used to give the game a real STORY, instead of just making it an integer-based progression to 100%. If I decide to go out partying instead of hitting the gym, give me a popularity boost and dock me some stamina points. Maybe all the beer causes me to not make weight? But by failing to make weight, I get the chance to book a different fight worth more $$$. You could even have different choices for workouts, like speed vs. strength, but make them give bonuses that go away after the fight.
That's all I have for now. Please feel free to add to it.
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