It worked for Madden so here's to hoping that it might do the same for MLB The Show. As many of us franchise gamers know, MLB The Show's franchise has been essentially left to rot and has seen very little in the way of actual improvements for well over a decade now. While we get some small additions year-to-year, there's been so many glaring issues with the mode for so many years is becoming borderline unbearable. I know I read years ago that San Diego Studios literally has one developer that works on franchise mode each year. One.... dude.... Meanwhile there is no telling how many people they have working on Diamond Dynasty. Given, this mode generates millions of dollars for them because 12-year olds love to have all 99 diamond teams to go along with their neon uniforms and ridiculous logos and team names. All the while us franchise gamers are left with the scraps that fall off the table. And we're the ones that essentially paid for MLB The Show to become the success that it is today.
I've long said that until gaming developers find a way to monetize franchise mode we're just going to be out of luck. But at the very least I have to know that I put it out there and hope that the mode will be updated to where it should be. There's so, so many things in the mode that I could list, many of which I'm sure have been mentioned countless times on here before. But for the sake of this post, I'll list just a few of the ones that give me the most problem and what I'd love to see fixed.
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Prospects ages are wrong. Since the incorporation of the, "full minors," a couple years ago into the base game, their ages have not been touched. So many top prospects are now two years younger than they should be. If MLB 22 comes out and this is still not addressed we're then looking at players being three years younger than they should be, which is a pretty big deal for top prospects. This may or may not have been updated, so if it has, my point is mute.
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Please, for the love, devote some time to CPU management, in-game. The same relievers often pitch in multiple games in the series and there are plenty of guys that are rarely, if ever utilized by the CPU. What's worse is that in the playoffs the CPU team still uses their fifth starter.
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Postseason rosters are a mess. You're not able to select anyone from the 40-man roster to be on your postseason roster. And much like the previous point, no teams reduce their pitching staff and add a bench player like teams do in real life.
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Make drafting, scouting, developing much, much better. See what Madden is doing in regards to scouting. And don't allow guys that end up not in the draft to re-enter over and over so we're drafting 24 year old players.
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Have international signings. Players from the Dominican or from Japan are not drafted in the MLB amateur draft.
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Get alternating interleague schedules instead of playing the same interleague teams year in and year out.
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More realistic trades. Even though it's in the game, it just doesn't work. Teams don't go into, "rebuilding," or a playoff push. If a team is 15 games out of first in late July and they have 2-3 guys that are free agents at the end of the year, they need to be traded for prospects.
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Complete overhaul of awards. Gold Gloves especially. Whatever configuration is used to determine awards is just not good. It's too heavily weighed on certain stats.
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Give us the ability to edit coaches and base coaches and completely get rid of the ridiculous B-, D-, C+ ratings that don't even make sense. Why is a coach C+ for velocity and D- for speed? What does that even mean?
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Stadiums should be updated with divisional banners, World Series banners, etc. Give the user the ability to move those around the stadium where they want them and allow the user to create their own advertisement in the stadiums.
Again, I could probably come up with 100 of these. And I also am completely aware that it's not always simple to incorporate ideas like this. However, the fact that the ages of prospects are two years off where they should be simply shows the state of franchise mode and how little San Diego Studios really cares about the mode.
#fixtheshowfranchise