Community Forum

I think the point is no one can predict who will have a good or bad year. However, in franchise mode, you have a lot of options to affect that. You can promote or demote players if they are not over or under performing at their level. You can set training options to address attributes that are dropping. You can change positions, which can increase or decrease their rating. You can look at morale to see if they are wanting more money or playing time or whatever which will change their rating. Sometimes players just want to be close to home, or have enough players from their country on the team, so a change of scenery can greatly affect their performance.

I get not everyone wants to deal with all that and being able to shut it all off would help some people and not hurt others. But seeing as how there are so many mechanics built around player progression, I can see how they don't want to disable the majority of the mode's mechanics.

I think he thought you were a troll because most people have played around even a little have found the options settings. I've only ever bought the basic, cheapest option for the game, so that shouldn't have anything to do with your options.

Go to User Settings > Pitching (use L1/R1 to toggle between batting/pitching/fielding) > Pitching Interface.

Classic = buttons with no windups
Pure Analog = uses both joysticks, with windups
Pulse = don't even bother
Meter = uses the left joystick for location and buttons for release with windups

You can also go to Options Explorer under Mini Modes to play around.

I've occasionally challenged plays. It seems to happen about 25% of the time I actually want to challenge. So it's not frequent, even when the manual reply shows the call was clearly wrong. But it does happen. I don't think there's any setting to change the frequency.