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]

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]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dolenz

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Quote: Originally Posted by ninertravel

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...