Increasing a player's potential before you start your franchise (it is possible)

[kcarr]

While I am very strongly in favor of the potential rating I realize there are those out there who think it should be 99 for all current players or who think it should be higher for certain players. I have found a way through editing players to increase their potential before you start your franchise.

1) go to the player management screen from the main menu
2) go to the player you want to edit and go into his edit player screen
3) go over to the ratings portion and increase a few of his ratings to increase his overall to whatever you want his potential to be (it may be helpful to write down his initial ratings in the areas you increase so you can change them back)
4) exit the edit player screen doing the "keep changes without saving" option
5) go back and edit his ratings back to their original ratings

Now if you save that file and use it for your franchise then when you go in you will see that the player has a potential equal to the level you had raised his overall to.

[Dianwei32]

Good to know. Additionally, you can increase a player's potential during franchise if you get the "Star Player" accelerator (one of two I've gotten), it will give the player max progression for the season and raise their potential to A, even all the way from D-F. It can be used once per year and resets when you move from the preseason to the regular season (so you can technically get 2 in the first year as long as you do one before you finish the preseason, no progression but it still raises potential to A).

[Glorious Arc]

Nice workaround. Thanks for the info.

[goldrush]

Those are both great pieces of information! Thanks guys.

[PuddleMonkey]

I messed with two young players overall ratings before I started my franchise... they never progressed at all. Fluke? Possibly. Tread carefully.

[imskykid]

I assume the answer is "yes", but does this work the other way around? Can you lower their potential so all the 1st round rookies (Stafford, Curry, Orakpo, ect) don't all have A/B potential?

[kcarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by imskykid

I assume the answer is "yes", but does this work the other way around? Can you lower their potential so all the 1st round rookies (Stafford, Curry, Orakpo, ect) don't all have A/B potential?

No, sadly, you cannot. The thing that causes you to be able to raise potential is that it is a hard coded single number unlike the actual overall rating. It is also programmed to increase if the overall goes above that number for any reason (editing a player's ratings or their position). Nothing changes if their overall lowers. This is why you can take matt stafford and move him to LG and he will be an A potential offensive lineman. Just another thing EA did wrong but it does help with some things that they didn't allow you to edit where they really should have (didn't they say at one point we would have full ability to edit players in this game including in franchise?, I'm just saying...)

[kcarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by PuddleMonkey

I messed with two young players overall ratings before I started my franchise... they never progressed at all. Fluke? Possibly. Tread carefully.

I Don't know, I never got that far. I will test.