I originally sent this as an email to someone back in April, for some reason. But given that SDS does monitor these, I’m just going to go ahead and repost these wishes and requests here. Some will be the ones everyone wants, but I think some are things I haven’t seen requested on here before. This is long - because I over-explain, but… it’s worth the read (?) You can always put it into ChatGPT and ask it to condense it down for you! 
Seating is my first thing I have to rant about. I don’t know about anyone else here, but when I’m doing stadium creator, I try to picture myself walking and moving through the stadium like it actually exists. (Minus food courts and stuff because they usually aren’t worth the storage space)
KEY POINT TO ALL SEATING COMMENTS/ ISSUES/SUGGESTIONS: Essentially, seating done well - in my eyes - aligns the seats by two metrics: Aligning the front to the fence (or slightly back for the people who build it that way to avoid the other placement issues), and then aligning the walking pathway between the front and back sections of the lower level. Seating done excellently would also adjust the concourse and back of the stadium so there aren’t any weird gaps.
1. How is it that the seats that come with the stadium creator don’t actually align with the field?
I don’t mean the corners or outfield (different point later), but even just the first two or three parts. Modern Stadium S1, placed behind home on a blank canvas, does NOT align to the field. You can work very hard to get the points even with the dugouts, but if you zoom in behind home, there’s a space between the backstop and the seats with grass, because the seats don’t even follow one of the few parts of the stadium we can’t move. That’s not cool, or acceptable. Come on, now.
2. Same point, but for the next section of seats.
That would be the seats behind dugout. Same issue. One set goes far wide, and creates the space for what would be a camera well, except there isn’t that available. Also, that’s a huge section with no aisles. Stadiums don’t have those long seats where you have to walk past 30 people to exit. They also don’t align to the back of the dugout when auto aligning, owing to the next part…
3. Why does a door on the back of the dugout stick up above ground?!?
The seats try to auto align to this. Show me one stadium where the seats don’t come up behind the dugout. And they instead have a gap of several feet where the stands end, there is grass, and the dugout begins. You cannot, because it doesn’t exist in real life!!
4. Down-the-Line and Corner seating.
I have two suggestions for these parts.
- I don’t know how hard the code would be to write to make this happen. It would be amazing if those could align, like when we set to another piece, to the front and the walking pathway, mentioned earlier. Perfect placement early on makes this more possible but it’s still really tricky. And if the back side of the stadium made that adjustment too so there aren’t any gaps.
- Do the same for sections that are trying to curve and follow the fence line. Using smaller pieces creates a sawtooth pattern, but using the bigger ones often ends up where when you place the outfield seats, they’re not parallel with the outfield wall. They either angle in and can’t be placed or angle out and there’s a 25 foot gap between the seats and the fence at the end of the section closest to center.
SUGGESTION TO FIX/APPROACH THIS: Perhaps there can be an option where the seats are “auto filled” between two sections. So, the last section parallel to the 3rd baseline wall, and then if we place the first section of the outfield walls, having the game autofill the seats around the curve. It can keep them aligned to the fence and keep the pathway and back of the stadium aligned. Heck, we could use that method in a lot of places - such as getting the dugout to dugout seats wrapping around home to actually be all the way up to the fence.
5. Seating elevation over time.
In that last section I mentioned, the ramp - or concourse - at most ballparks goes up in elevation, because the wall height down the line and in the outfield is higher than it is next to the dugout. It would be a great bit of realism if the seats in Stadium Creator did this - adding a Z-rotation I believe it would be. Otherwise, assuming the outfield walls are higher than the walls near the dugout, any seating that takes me down the line and around the corner will be “off.” If I place seats high enough for a concourse to connect, then it will all be at outfield fence level height, and look ridiculous down the line. If it’s based on the line, then the first section of rows in the outfield aren’t even above the fence line to see the game. If I make each section fit to the fencing, the walkway down the line eventually literally goes into a concrete wall. Maybe one big change or lots of small incremental ones. Either way, I know it’s there, and it’s bothersome.
6. Can we PLEASE have the bullpens movable?
I don’t care if it’s custom. But only two stadiums have bullpens on the field now. Having a left/right field option, a both-in-center option, and maybe one other from another stadium would be great for the realism aspect. The Giants and Diamondbacks have nifty bullpens, for example.
7. Might as well suggest domes or retractable tops while I’m writing this.
Not much to add to this, other than it’s becoming more prevalent, and seems likely to be used in most of the stadiums possibly built in the next decade.
8. Wall Markings and Advertisements
For us fans of realism, even though I hate them in real life, having outfield walls barren is weird. Outfield walls have advertisements. Even Wrigley has them (on the doors, but still). Walls also have distance markers on them, which is another aspect that isn’t too hard to add but is missing from the game. Also, the yellow HR line!!!
9. Team-branded bits and pieces around the field.
The tops of the dugouts. The batters circle. Part of a scoreboard. We’re missing out on the small things.
10. Components from the Minor-League fields.
There are some great bits in these, like the press boxes, themed roofs, etc. We have the components for Kaiju and Dino stadiums… why not Minor League parks? Even things like the sloped hills that so many stadiums have are nearly impossible because of we used landscaping pieces they would cross onto the field or not have the right slopes.
11. I would love if you guys went out on a limb and had a “futuristic” style of stadium, since contemporary and modern are already taken.
Edit: They did this since my email, though further than I was thinking. I am going to use the term “ultra modern” instead for what I was attempting to convey.
This is the design style that has largely been used for stadiums in other sports in the past decade, but the smooth, clean exterior look of glass and/or metal. The Raiders stadium is a good example of this. The BOK Center in Tulsa and the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City are lesser known good examples. Sofi Stadium would fit into this. Chicago Bears have a few renderings now too.
Compare these to proposed baseball stadiums and you can see the clear pattern design is going towards/staying in. Look at the renderings for the A’s stadium in Vegas that now looks shakier than ever. Voters went against KC’s referendum, but there were a pair of renderings for that stadium. That makes three renderings. I believe Salt Lake City has a pitch for one (no pun intended), and Orlando tried to lure the Rays so there’s at least one rendering for those too… and then the White Sox. That’s about 6 realistic renderings, not to mention others I’m surely unaware of. There are a lot of renderings for what will be modern stadiums. Examine those, incorporate them into the templates. Jump ahead of the curve!
12. Ability to have some props line up on top of the wall, just as far forward.
Right-field at Minnesota and left-field in Cleveland both have scoreboards that are part of the wall, above the padded area. Pittsburgh and Boston have scoreboards that are the wall. Baltimore and Philly have digital scoreboards that are part of the wall too. Being able to align ours like that would be great!!
Target Field even has the porch area that seems to jut forward over the fence in right field too (a fun part of the park in real life!)
Ending:
People LOVE customizing things. I love getting to customize my team in DD, and me in RTTS. I appreciate the additions to stadium creator, but people have been clamoring for some of these - different bullpen location options, ads and distance numbers on outfield walls, domes, etc - for years.
From a business standpoint, it’s far more cost effective to retain customers than acquire new ones. So, make the base happy! Based on the likes of posts already made on here, users would, on the whole, gladly sacrifice those Dino, Kaiju, and Alien bits for the aforementioned bullpens, ads on the walls, domes, flags, etc. in a heartbeat. Take a poll or something. Of the people who use stadium creator, I guarantee the trade off would be an easy one.
All of that being said:
Thank you all for the hard work but PLEASE take this to heart. I appreciate the work you’ve done and the fact we actually get to truly customize stadiums, unlike some other games focused on football, for example, where we get three templates to choose from and like 5 customizations after that. It’s amazing. But fantastical doesn’t always beat “truly realistic.” The more realistic you make this, the happier people will be. People will always want more. Some of what I want probably isn’t realistic. But when people have clamored for something for 4 years, like, cmon now.
