Lack of attention to franchise mode..thoughts?

[Madden08PCgmr]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoshC1977

I picked up NHL for the first time in years and was amazed at how solid the franchise mode was. I go to various NHL forums...it's nothing but whining about how it is "stale" and "never gets attention". I picked up NBA 2k for the first time in a couple of years. My league is a very deep mode with options. I go to various 2k forums....it's nothing but whining about how "broke" (sic) it is. Why am I saying this? Because when you play the same thing year-in and year-out, it's going to be very familiar. It's very easy to overlook how many "little things" have been improved upon over the years. It's not a coincidence that many of the same people saying "I only play franchise mode" are also saying "It's stale". At some stage, no matter how much a developer works on one particular mode, it's going to get stale if you do nothing but play that one thing. No matter how much you might love it, if you eat the exact same meals every day, you're going to tire of it eventually. It is therefore incumbent upon yourselves to find your own ways to freshen it up or (gasp!) branch out and try other things. I'm not saying that MLB's franchise mode doesn't need some minor tweaks here and there, but I also don't agree with the mindset that it needs some dramatic overhaul.

To generalize, I'm pretty much with you on all of that.

But on the flip side, there's just too much low hanging fruit everywhere.

No historic stats = no meaningful records chases, in a season, or long-term
No Single A ball = 90-man rosters don't truly mean anything
There's hardly any team/player personality
Create-a-manager
Create-a-stadium, improve-a-stadium
Jersey design/creation

.. how may doubles in the alley shall we name here?

I think that is the issue for the "complainers"

I can't presume to know how many man-hours it would take to implement these things.. but stuff like stats/records?... I've done that leg work before in Madden. Its a matter of hours to populate that stuff. Hours = less than 10. The lowest hanging fruit there is.

[goillini03]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoshC1977

I picked up NHL for the first time in years and was amazed at how solid the franchise mode was. I go to various NHL forums...it's nothing but whining about how it is "stale" and "never gets attention". I picked up NBA 2k for the first time in a couple of years. My league is a very deep mode with options. I go to various 2k forums....it's nothing but whining about how "broke" (sic) it is. Why am I saying this? Because when you play the same thing year-in and year-out, it's going to be very familiar. It's very easy to overlook how many "little things" have been improved upon over the years. It's not a coincidence that many of the same people saying "I only play franchise mode" are also saying "It's stale". At some stage, no matter how much a developer works on one particular mode, it's going to get stale if you do nothing but play that one thing. No matter how much you might love it, if you eat the exact same meals every day, you're going to tire of it eventually. It is therefore incumbent upon yourselves to find your own ways to freshen it up or (gasp!) branch out and try other things. I'm not saying that MLB's franchise mode doesn't need some minor tweaks here and there, but I also don't agree with the mindset that it needs some dramatic overhaul.

I think that is the point though for many. The vast majority are not saying that it needs a dramatic overhaul. Would be people love stadium builder and relocation? Absolutely. The issue that most people have is that fundamental elements of Franchise have been terrible implemented, ignored, or kicked down the road. I cannot name a truly innovative thing that the team has done with Franchise mode in years.

Many of the things that need fixed, mentioned above, are not groundbreaking activities. Other developers do the same things. Small team, or not, it is just not a great look.

The issue I also think is that if you look at the stream schedule, Franchise is a footnote. A major mode that many people play, that helped build the game that others play today, is a footnote.

I understand where you are coming from with the trying new things, but I can also see why people look at the other things and see them as a waste of time.

[Therebelyell626]

Quote: Originally Posted by underdog13

Are you sure it changed? I didn't notice a difference in rtts with CPU players. And production based progression is always worse. It makes no logical sense. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Yes I am sure. I ran at least one franchise with each team at least once, at least five years each. I made sure to pay attention to every aspect of each franchise doing my own call ups, checking stats, and making sure to track the progression. Training had little no effect on progression, and production seemed to be the extreme outlier. That is why guys in single A progressed in every statistic and never decreased unless because of age. I had A potential players decrease despite A potential due to poor statistics (at least hitting) and had C potentials increase as high as 10 points in certain attributes due to tearing the cover off the ball. The only time potential rating seemed to have the bigger effect is when I stashed players in single A ball. Due to the games not being played A's will mostly increase around 3-4 points per attribute, b's at 2-3, and C's at 1-2. They never decrease in A ball unless they hit the age regression limit because he games aren't played. Stick them in AA or higher and a player can fall off a cliff if they slump for just a couple of months.

In one franchise I did last year with the Padres Renfroe increased plus 12 in contact and power vs lefties. But did not increase in any vs righty attributes. His splits were .286 with 14 homers against lefties, and .215 with 8 homers against righties. I think renfroe was an A potential last year so realistically he should have progressed even slightly in his vs righty attributes being that he was 25 and A rated potential.

Trust me I did a lot of franchise testing last year and feel confident that last year production was the highest factor of the progression equation. And I sim a lot so my testing was without much user input as to not influence my results.

[tessl]

Quote: Originally Posted by Therebelyell626

I like the idea of the March to October mode. My problem is they state in the stream that the mode was birthed from the fact that they set out to make improvements to franchise and decided to put all of those "improvements" into a new mode. I guess my question is why? If you added all these improvements to franchise and then decided to make a new mode featuring those "improvements" I am cool with that. But if you scrapped improvements to franchise completely just for the sake of having a new mode then I definitely have a problem with that. I honestly think they tried to add these improvements to franchise but couldn't find a way to account for all of the variables in franchise to make it actually work. So they said screw it and just threw these new features into a new mode. I know for a fact that had they just stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and did something like revamp the draft, scouting, or player training engine there would have been a lot of happy franchise people.

Because they consistently listen to the wrong people when deciding what to focus on.

[TheWarmWind]

Yikes, I could go on for ages about what needs to be done in franchise mode. I think I've already spoken at length about it in other threads.

There is a large disparity between what I want done and what I'm willing to accept. So far what I've seen this year is below even that low threshold, mostly because they have made changes that I see as downgrades this year.

New out of position logic. They made the argument that you can't put Buster Posey at short because it would take time for him to adjust, which makes a lot of sense in an environment like DD, but what if I have him at the position for a week? A month? A year? I hope it's a different system for offline franchise, but I highly doubt it.

The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all.

And the new pitching tier system is a disaster for franchise players. Again, it makes a ton of sense in DD, but lots of pitchers grow and evolve their secondary or tertiary pitches into their best pitch over the course of their career. But now, what you draft them with will always be their best. Such a stagnant system.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Operation Sports mobile app

[goillini03]

Sounds like real life contracts according to the new Game Informer video. (In other thread)

[JoshC1977]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWarmWind

Yikes, I could go on for ages about what needs to be done in franchise mode. I think I've already spoken at length about it in other threads. There is a large disparity between what I want done and what I'm willing to accept. So far what I've seen this year is below even that low threshold, mostly because they have made changes that I see as downgrades this year. New out of position logic. They made the argument that you can't put Buster Posey at short because it would take time for him to adjust, which makes a lot of sense in an environment like DD, but what if I have him at the position for a week? A month? A year? I hope it's a different system for offline franchise, but I highly doubt it. The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all. And the new pitching tier system is a disaster for franchise players. Again, it makes a ton of sense in DD, but lots of pitchers grow and evolve their secondary or tertiary pitches into their best pitch over the course of their career. But now, what you draft them with will always be their best. Such a stagnant system. Sent from my Pixel 3 using Operation Sports mobile app

One note on the secondary position fielding rating hits, they do vary based on where they are on the defensive spectrum. So a guy going to LF from RF will have less of a fielding hit than a guy going from 1b to SS.

I do agree that I’d like to see some dynamicism in positional changes within franchise as that is the biggest thing missing from the game .


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[BigOscar]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWarmWind

The one that really scares me is the whole right field/left field fiasco. Oh, you put a right fielder into his secondary position of left field, and suddenly he's going to get bad jumps on balls. WTF? Those aren't very different positions... At all. p[/url]

Yup, made worse by the fact SDS sets a lot of players primary position as the one they are playing right now in real life, not their actual primary position. So a 3B can be used at 2nd by a team (like Travis Shaw), SDS makes him a 2B and then gives him an attribute penalty at 3rd