Franchise draft classes/player retirement/free agency question

[disk]

I have to start off with a nice little brag, been playing franchise mode in The Show and OOTP for years but I finally drafted a player who broke the HR record. Not even remotely possible in previous version of The Show, I played him from 19 to 38, he'd be useless before he got to even 600 HRs in previous versions...

Slowly but surely The Show has been moving away from the super decline of players in their 30s and early retirements. I can remember a time when players would become useless when they hit 32 and everyone without a contract over 34 would automatically retire. I see more and more players not only being productive but having MVP caliber seasons in their mid to late 30s (maybe too many, TONS of late bloomers as you get 10+ years into a franchise). But however the game decides who retires and when still needs to be tweaked so the guys who are 35+ but still good don't retire and those 35+ but like 50 overall do.

Anyway, on to my question.

I have always thought the first couple drafts are the best, super deep and you can find studs in just about every round. Fast forward a couple of years and the draft is full of 25 year olds and only has 1 or 2 truly good rounds. This coincides with free agency being flooded with older players who are all well below even the AA talent level but don't retire until they hit 38+, so you basically have a huge chunk of the games player pool sitting around in free agency for sometimes 10 years before they retire.

Has anyone tried signing these guys and editing their attributes all down to 0, releasing them and seeing if they retire at the end of the year? I would think this would keep the draft classes pretty deep correct? I seem to recall reading somewhere (I think it was here) that the game generates draftees based on retirements, that the player pool can only be so big.

[335TDC]

The draft pools in this game suck. As does player progression FOR THEM.


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[tapout8302]

I’m only midway through my 2018 season right now, but I know the players who retire are decided at the draft. It’s somewhat random. I sim through the the season after the draft to see who’s going to retire. I noticed a lot of retirements after the 2018 season of guys that were still good and 33-35 years old. So I went back before the draft about 3 days, enough time for players to clear waivers, and released older players with lower overall ratings. Then added them back on their teams after the draft.

Also, I know that not every free agent retires, I tried lowering certain players overalls to all zeros and it didn’t seem to matter. I think 0 ovr Jared Weaver made it through 2018. Anyway, I edited all the free agents ages that I could to 45 years old and that guarantees that they retire.

I got pretty much all the guys I didn’t want to retire to stick around another year but I’m not sure if it’s a sustainable method