Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

[Dolenz]

I know the majority of this forum are franchise players so I thought i would ask here.

I recently went back and forth with someone on The Show Nation about realistic stats. Not batting .400 with a career .250 hitter for example. My take is that once you put a real person on the controller that it is hard to accomplish realistic stats simply due to the sheer skill gap that can exist between gamers. Our discussion though was more DD based.

It made me wonder how franchise players who play games out and control the players deal with this issue. Are you shooting for realistic numbers? If so how do you compensate for your skill or lack thereof? Do you just play them out and let the numbers fall where they may?

Am I overestimating how many play out a chunk of their franchise games?

[ninertravel]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I aim for realism I play every single game of the season every at pitch (yes every game on the schedule not just 1 team) so every stat is created by me.. Sliders play a huge part in getting the most realistic stats.

I don't want to be hitting 400 or hitting 80 homers in a season with 1 player. so I am to have it as close as baseball as possible. bad teams beating good teams at times. all those sort of 'random things' that happen in baseball..

most sports games can't deal with realism they can only deal with attributes and good always beats bad where this game is good at balancing out the realism.

[wisdom less13]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

It made me wonder how franchise players who play games out and control the players deal with this issue. Are you shooting for realistic numbers? If so how do you compensate for your skill or lack thereof? Do you just play them out and let the numbers fall where they may?

For me? A little bit of everything here. Sure, I'm striving for realistic numbers, but have to understand that some things just happen. I'll never lead the league in walks. My lack of skill is balanced off with sliders. Then, there's just guys I flat out suck with. No matter what. I try and find a balance between fun and torturing myself...

[bcruise]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

There are a few ways to balance gameplay with realism. One is to go heavy on the random factor so that user skill cannot lead to overpowering the CPU (or being much worse than it, for that matter). Slider sets that feature classic pitching, directional hitting and other rating-based approaches aim for this - because no matter how good you are at the game it's going to be very hard to put out results that are significantly better or worse than the CPU.

The one that I prefer, personally, is to balance the game's difficulty to the point where even the heavily user-input based controls, like Zone hitting, can lead to results that reflect player ratings. What I mean is, the harder I make the game, the more skill I need as a user to make those results realistic. It makes me feel like I'm more "in the game". And, if you find the right balance of difficulty, the differences between individual players will still show up naturally.

There's no one size fits all to this, especially with the approach I take - since we all have different strengths and weakness at the game one person's exact settings are likely not going to work for another. For example, I can't really use any of the user-input based throwing controls because they're all too easy for me to use without making errors (and have been since they de-coupled difficulty level from those interfaces). So I have to use the "Button" throwing - the most ratings-driven option there is - to produce a realistic number of errors. Others might be able to use Button Accuracy or analog and still make errors, but that approach doesn't work for me.

[Caulfield]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I'm on the lower end of the skill spectrum when it comes to stick skills so this is why dynamic difficulty fits my style so perfectly. usually I'll see real life numbers (outside of walks when I'm batting or stolen bases, but that's my lifestyle choice) though I have also turned Carlos Rodon into a Cy Young candidate and 20 game winner but I also almost forced Freddie Freeman into early retirement because there was a time when I tried to do too much with him, always pressing to hard. I had the same problem with Adam Jones. thankfully I adjusted and haven't looked back. but there are other guys like Alfonso Soriano that I couldn't hit water with him even if I were the captain of the Titanic (what? too soon?)
but yeah, dynamic difficulty. that's the only way for me, the good, the bad and the beautiful

[countryboy]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I just play. I find a difficulty setting that fits my skill level where I get a challenge, and I just play. Whatever happens, happens. Whatever stats occur, occur.

I understand that baseball is a game of streaks and slumps, and each year they seem to balance out over the course of a 162 game season for me where I feel the statistics at the end of the year are "realistic".

[Dolenz]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Seems to be a mixed bag of approaches which is cool.

In the end I think it is great that the game has enough flexibility to handle the different approaches.

[HolyStroke3]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I aim for realism I play every single game of the season every at pitch (yes every game on the schedule not just 1 team)

Seek help...

[ninertravel]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

Seek help...

No thanks.. I don't need help I am happy with 2 kids with a family and to spend my free time at night to myself playing 2 or 3 games a night of a season. it's not like I sit on it 24-7

[BodamEscapePlan]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

Seek help...

No thanks.. I don't need help I am happy with 2 kids with a family and to spend my free time at night to myself playing 2 or 3 games a night of a season. it's not like I sit on it 24-7

Hopefully he meant that in jest. That's what I was assuming but I did a double-take when I saw that you said you played every pitch for every team and obviously for most of us that task would be near impossible, even in Madden in a 16-game season; but I think that stuff like this is just awesome. I wish I had the patience to play out a whole 162 game season but I always trail off somewhere and I hate it. The cool thing about The Show is that it allows the user to not have to start their season from scratch each year. Although that feature never does much for me because I am an absolute stickler for accurate and up-to-date rosters and ratings (I think I have sports game OCD).

Honestly, I would love to see your end of season statistics from this. It would be absolutely fascinating to see that much user-determined data across an entire league. I do something similar but I only play each game for my own team while I individually sim each game to mostly mimic real-life for all the other teams, it slows me down every year and is probably the culprit to why I've never made it to playing all of my regular season games.

[canes21]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I always played with classic pitching, timing hitting, and auto fielding. I then tried to tune my sliders to make every game a challenge, yet keep balance. If I am the much better team, it should feel easier. I don't want to artificially make the other team better just for the sake of a challenge.

Usually with those play styles in combination with my sliders would lead to results that never felt unrealistic. With good sliders and timing hitting, I never found myself hitting unrealistically above a guy's ratings. With classic pitching and the right sliders the great pitchers felt great, the bad ones felt bad, the wild ones were wild, the control guys had control.

I still play that way when I play the games, but my approach to franchise mode is now playing every game 1 of each series I play, then simming the rest of the series and only stepping in if one of the moments pop up that allow you to come in with whatever the scenario is at the time. Some times you still join in blowouts and are just trying to get a guy a triple so he gets the cycle. Sometimes you jump in down 3 with 9 outs to go. There is plenty of variety.

By simming my stats are even more realistic and I avoid a lot of the issues that plague The Show like pitiful CPU pitcher management. That kind of stuff is minimized, I still feel I play enough to feel engaged with my franchise, I get more games in over time, simming makes the GM side even more important in my opinion, and most of all, I just have fun playing that way.

Anymore, I want to take on the GM role in sports games and have that be my main focus. By simming my GM moves are more important than ever, but me stepping in for whatever moments pop up plus playing game 1 of every series allows me to get immersed with some on field action to keep my world feeling alive.

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[Blzer]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I first aim for realistic mechanics (run speed, throw speed, pitcher stamina), then I aim for competitive play. If I feel like something else becomes way out of whack (homerfests, too many strikeouts, etc.) I'll consider a slider tick one way or the other, but this is a rarity.

Often times, me changing the pitch speed is what can affect my offense the most.

[Gosens6]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

I just play the game. Hitting and pitching on legend difficulty and just play.


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[SirManBoy]

Re: Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

This dilemma is one of the reasons I don’t play and instead treat my franchise play through like it’s a stripped down version of OOTP. There’s no way that I could do my players justice if I tried to control them, especially in terms of hitter’s discipline and pitcher’s location and pitch selection. My fielding and base running would probably suck too.

[Jeffrey Smith]

Franchise Players: A Question I have always been curious about.

20 was the first year I’ve ever played on hall of fame difficulty and it was awesome. Played with the Jays in franchise and I felt my stats stayed pretty accurate. A lot of HR’s and a lot of K’s. Though I’m always last in the league in walks.

This year I’m planning on using dynamic difficulty starting off on HOF and letting things play out.


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