Ideas to make the game more realistic

[philipahoward2]

I've been playing the Show for years and just wanted to share some ideas I had on how to make it more realistic in future iterations. I will preface this by saying that this year's game is amazing and I'm not criticizing it; I just think that things could get better with the PS4 capabilities.

Three of my biggest gripes with the game is how it handles retiring players, progression/regression and spring training.

I realize that the game has to have players retire in RTTS and Franchise modes because there's only so much memory for the game to keep track of so many players, but it can make some really unrealistic decisions on who to retire. It seems once a player reaches age 34, every year after that he might retire. In real life some players do retire at 34, but not players coming off a good year. It would be nice if the logic for this took into account how good a player has been in the last couple of years in order to decide if he should retire. If he's been severely below his career average and/or has been injured a lot, go ahead and let him retire. If he's still producing, he should stay in the game. Then again, there are players in real life who stick around as bench players when they know they don't have starting talent late in their career (Thome, Konerko, Giambi, Ichiro...). So I think something that would be really nice is the option to let the user have the final decision on retirees. At the end of the season the game can get rid of all the players it thinks should retire due to "ability" and "poor free agent market" and then give us a list of 100 or so players that it thinks might retire. Then we can decide what's realistic for ourselves. Obviously the better they tune the logic, the easier it would make it for us. If the logic is good then maybe we'll only have to look at 20 or so names and just pick a few that we think wouldn't retire in real life.

Progression and to a much larger extent regression is something I think a lot of big time franchise players have had a problem with the last couple of years. The game seems to think anyone past their prime (31 or 32+) must regress every year and regress at a higher rate each year. There are certainly many aging players that take big steps back (Todd Helton and Derrek Lee both seemed to go from all-stars to decent to bad in a 2 or 3 years), but we also see many players contributing very well to their club well into their late 30s. I think it would be awesome to see progression and regression tied into how they perform on the field. If David Ortiz is still driving in 100 runs, he wouldn't be regressed. I really think this should also affect minor leaguers. If I have a stud prospect who's struggling at AAA, or the major league level maybe keep him stagnant. Then if I demote him and he gets his confidence back he can start progressing again. That's pretty much Alex Gordon's career path. I also think progression and regression should have little to no effect on players in the 26-32 or so age range. Anyone can have a bad year and bounce back from it, but most players are pretty consistent in their prime.

I could be wrong, but I think most people thing Spring Training is pretty useless as it is in the game. In real life teams go to camp not only with their full 40 man roster, but with another 50 or so players; a whole crop of minor leaguers and a dozen or so non-roster invitees. However, with the way the game works, there would be very little point to doing this. Even if I invite 12 veteran guys to camp and all of them dominate spring, that has zero effect on how they would do in the regular season. I would still choose my 25 man roster based on ratings and to some extent player options. My fix for this is to give players a range of ratings. Instead of giving a player a 75 speed rating, give him 75 +/- 3. Every rating for every player should have a range. The more consistent a player plays, (similar to progression/regression) the lower the range is. A player like Miguel Cabrera might have no range for anything while a player like Grady Sizemore might have +/-10 for most of his ratings; he might be terrible, he might be amazing. At the end of spring ratings can reset based on how they played (I suggest using the RTTS method of good at bats and poor at bats as opposed to basing everything on stats because that's what coaches really look at in spring). So let's say Player A is straight 80s at every rating +/-6 going into spring and the game determines at the end of spring based on how he's played he should be straight 83s at every rating. Then when the regular season starts his ratings would change to 83+/-6. Progression and regression would only affect the base rating, not the +/-, and the game should show us their adjusted rating at all times.

One last thing I'd really really like is to split the Durability rating so that injury and energy aren't linked together. A player can be very injury prone but still be able to play every day when healthy. A player can also be very un-injury prone and need to take a day off once a week.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'd love to see what you guys think about them and if anyone knows what the chances are of any of these things making into the game are.

[TonyMoraco]

I agree with you on the durability and injury splits!

[PhlliesPhan6]

I've always hated how they handle September call ups. They're not so much call ups as 40 man Roster players automatically added to your active Roster. I'd like to be able to pick and choose who to call up.

I haven't played Franchise Mode this year so maybe this changed.

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[BrianM207]

I know baseball tend to like to "tuck things away", but I'd like to see fights again. They were in MVP(before the Show for you young'ns), and they made sense. If you hit a couple people, the batter would charge the mound(there were other situations thats just an example)the benches would clear, but they wouldn't show the fight, which is fine. But after there would always be 2-4 people ejected, and the possibility of them being suspended for their part in the brawl.

You could also argue calls with your manager. Depending on when in the game you did it, the intensity of your argument(there was levels!)and if your manager got ejected or not, it would give your team a boost!

Also in MVP(wow, guess EA got something right huh?)there was rain outs and double headers.

Just a few small things I missed/still miss once MVP left and The Show took over.