Which Year Had Best Franchise Mode?

[patsen29]

I know we like complaining about how bad franchise mode has gotten, but when did they get it right? Trying to see what we can learn from earlier editions.


Seems a lot of people like the PS3 era of '08 to '13, but '17 and '19 also have great reviews in the PS4 era.


What are people's favourites, and what were the best features of those years?

[patsen29]

Seems I found an old thread, and 12-15 seems to be the peak in this community at least. Let's hope that means best franchise/RTTS modes as well.

[countryboy]

The best is 24 hands down easily for me. It takes what previous years did right and expanded upon them.

Adding the PPI list, adding that free agents signed can’t be traded until June 15th, the Rule 5 fix, improved draft, individual awards on player cards.

A lot on “not back of the box” additions to franchise mode this year that improved it’s quality of life tremendously


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[Ghost Of The Year]

19 was my last favorite, one, because I't doesn't have the 3 batter faced minimum rule and two, I can call up fifteen players to the majors in September and not limited to callip up just two players in September.

[patsen29]

These are good points! The complaints about franchise modes being worse than "before" have been going on the entire time, but I couldn't find anything special the old versions did that were lost. That combined with the QOL and sim to highlight features really do make the new ones strong.


The main issues I was finding was how there's a weird disconnect between struggling MLB players, and the spread of minor leaguers. You'd often see MLB players on the 40-man roster with overalls under 50, which unfairly made them easy cut candidates, as they'd often have D Pot as well.


There was a change when they went from generated minor leaguers to real minor leaguers, which clumped the minors way too close together. I did want to see how they were lined up in earlier versions, and there's a much wider swing in the 14 version, which I used for my study. One thing I noticed is that minor league fielding got put on the same level as MLB in 24, where it was lower in 14. Maybe that accounts for the Ovr differences.


Regression has always been complained about, but the newer depth chart features gives an idea of how Ovr is meant to grow or decline with time. There are some differences from the traditional aging curves, but the decline phase doesn't seem that out of line. I'd have to do multi-year sims to confirm those still hold, as Pot also varies over time.


Thanks for the input!

[tessl]

I don't own 24 but for me 23 is the best franchise mode using manage only mode.

Not perfect but the best.