Maintain Interest in Franchise

[PowerofRed25]

Just a little background. I generally play RTTS the majority of the time. I am coming off about a month straight of that, developing my SP into an Ace, which I have in a short 3 years. Since I'm a big player development/draft guy in real life, I decided RTTS wasn't immersing me in the baseball experience so I decided to go to a franchise. Previously I only did fantasy draft franchises, but I wanted to work on developing a full, as current, MLB franchise. I picked the Diamondbacks since I have the most understanding of their organization top to bottom in real life.

I started it, went through the set up of 30 team control (select all 29 other teams, put them on one profile) and then went through and turned off mail notifications for all of them except my team. Originally I planned to play one game every turn through the rotation, alternating the pitcher I played with. So I played opening day with Ian Kennedy, simmed through one turn through the rotation, played game 7 with Daniel Hudson, simmed through the next turn, played game 13 with Joe Saunders, etc all the way through June and I am honestly already burned out.

1) It seems like I'm having to adjust rosters/rotations at each level almost every day. Seems like I couldn't go a day without a guy being hurt and me needing to make a move, either just a roster move or DL a guy and promote someone.

2) I could barely go a week without an e-mail telling me vendors are getting sold out and prices are too high, even after buying more vendors and lowering prices.

3) It is just tough to continue keeping up with the no-name AA/AAA guys. I know most of them but some of them just don't cross my radar. When I fantasy draft, I usually go through and draft at least through AAA and some AA guys so I know who is there and how I want to develop them.

4) I can't seem to figure out scouting. I assigned my scouts to the positions they are more proficient at scouting, I get e-mails constantly about a new player having been profiled but very few of them are any good at all. Leading to...

5) The draft. I just finished the draft and couldn't even get through the first round because of 30 team control. I don't want to draft for every team and when I selected best available, the first 9 picks were closers. When it came time for me to pick, I couldn't find the player I was interested in. When I went to sign my draft picks, I sign them for incredibly cheap. The draft was the most disappointing part of this.

6) Trading block/pending transactions are overwhelming. It is a slow process checking transactions every day and some times even then, transactions slipped past me and I had to trade the guys back to their original teams (Gerrit Cole and Josh Bell, 2 of Pirates top 3 prospects for the Jays' JP Arencibia was one I had to fix). A few others I let go because they seemed fair enough and filled needs for each (Dan Haren to Detroit for Jose Valverde and Nick Castellanos). It seems like very good players who are under contract for many, many years get added to the trading block all the time (Pujols, always).

7) Promoting/Demoting players and development. I eventually worked out an every two weeks system where I'd check stats/performance of players and promote/demote accordingly. But I never seemed to see much development. I do manual development and have selected various areas to develop my guys, but guys that sucked week one are inevitably sucking two months later. I want to keep this somewhat realistic in that I'm not going to call guys up to where they'd get a year of service time and I don't want to call guys up that would never see the field in real life this year, despite the numbers they are putting up.

8) Trades. I have a number of players I'd be interested in trading for and trading out, but I don't even know where to start. I want to keep it somewhat true to real life and most of the guys that are being placed on the trading block just aren't guys that you'll see traded (Robinson Cano for one).

I guess I just am not getting much joy out of doing it this way. The disappointment of the draft really put it over the top for me. I don't even feel like continuing. Is there some sort of trick every one does to keep it fresh and interesting all the way through and some how make the draft worth while?

[Darck]

I play single team control and play every game and I'm in August of my first season right now. I never really get bored or mad at it except for the rare case of the CPU "cheating" in games.

As for the draft, I don't know what everyone complains about. Maybe I just got lucky but I was able to get 3 A potential players, one even as late as the last round of the draft. The way I scouted was only scouting players that are 18 or older and only scouting them for as long as it took to get their potential rating. Seems to me I was able to get through quite a few guys that way. Who knows, maybe I just got a good random draft class for my first season and next year's will be a lot worse.

I can't handle 30 team control though, so I'd personally advise against that but I'm not a total purist like some guys are. I don't really care who gets traded where. And I rarely adjust my minor league teams. I just find all my A and really good B potential guys and make sure they get in situations that will help them do good. All the other players are just filler IMO.

[Bobhead]

I don't know what you're looking for, or why you decided to do 30-team control in the first place, but my preference is to just play baseball. I don't care about the Atlanta Braves or Brandon Guyer's broken wrist. Just give me my MLB team. Draft? Nah, I don't drink beer. You want more vendors? Go to Walmart. I'm still making profit, thanks.

Franchise mode is only as time consuming and monotonous as you make it out to be. Everything can be set to be processed automatically by the CPU, or safely ignored. 30-team control is a tool, not a requirement, and you can easily play the mode without it. If you don't want to drag through all the side stuff, then don't. Start a 1-team franchise and just play baseball. Simple as that.

[IK720]

Hopefully I can help you out with some of these issues. The key to maintaining interest in franchise is to use a team you are going to have fun with. Maybe that is the team you know the most about, or maybe it is a team in the dumps (I use the Astros to rebuild), or possibly a team with a bunch of young budding stars.. perhaps a tough division. Once you have that team ...

1. Yes adjusting rosters every day is annoying. One thing that can help is to set injury management to MLB only. That way when all those AA and AAA guys get hurt (usually minor anyway) the CPU takes care of it. Also whenever a AA or AAA lineup is messed up just let the CPU fix that as well if you don't want to take the time. I would recommend checking it every once in a while though (maybe not adjusting the order because lets be honest .. who cares if they win .. but perhaps just to make sure your future players are getting playing time).

2. I'm not sure about this because I don't think I get these e-mails that often. You could always set this to auto as well, because in my opinion it is a useless part of franchise. After a season or two you will have enough money to max out all your vendors.. and the pricing thing is always adjusting anyway so auto seems to work.

3. Just pay attention to the high potential guys if you want. And to be honest you really don't have to pay all that much attention to the minors except guys you plan on using in the future. So to take some strain off knowing your whole minor league system just focus on the top commodities you have.

4. Scouting is pretty simple. Scout guys who are 18 years old or higher. The people younger than that won't be in the draft. Beyond that only scout players until you can see their potential and move on to the next. This way you can scout the most player possible (you just have to check back every few days). And yes.. a lot of the guys you draft will suck, but that is probably pretty realistic.

5. This is the one downfall of 30 team control. It sucks going through and picking for each team.. that is that. However doing the auto pick thing (often the highest rated player currently) works, or you could actually check teams weaknesses and draft that way (which takes a while but i do for a while).. Remember not everybody you scout will be in the draft. Lastly it has been said several times that the first draft in franchise has pretty low quality guys.. Also yes you sign those draft picks for incredibly low contracts because often they will be in the minors for a few years before they are MLB ready. You won't come across any Bryce Harper's in the draft unfortunately. However grabbing a couple A prospect guys to develop over a few years is pretty nice. If you want to draft the "bryce harper's of the world" you could always edit their stats to make them "progress" faster.

6. Checking transactions can be a bit annoying, but if you care about the CPU sending the best prospects in the game for a 40 year old closer then 30 team control is a must. You could always turn off trading (under the CPU control set trading to manual) except for a couple weeks before the trade deadline to alleviate checking it every day for the whole season. This will give the CPU a chance to send trade offers but reduce the chance of missing a trade as well as the time spent checking for crappy deals.

7. Development is a season long thing and you don't really see the results week by week. I change training assignments once a month and sometimes if you go to manage roster you can see what stats are improving (+). I don't know that call ups and send downs are all that important. I do them, but i don't have a big strategy behind it. If looking it over every two weeks works for you then that probably will work out fine.

8. It does seem that big name guys are always on the trade block which is weird. I have a feeling the Angels will never trade Pujols yet he is on the block every year. Poor logic I suppose. I rarely look at the trade block. I look through and find players I want. Then to keep it true to life I post it either in the trade discussion thread on here (usually a pretty quick response) or the OS Arbitration Panel where people are assigned specific teams to "trade for"


I hope this helps you a bit or at least gives you some kind of direction. I personally think 30 team control is a must because it kills me to see great prospects traded for some over aged over performing guy just because the team is trying to make the playoffs. Does that happen? Yea, but when MLB teams do it in real life the value they get back is much higher. However if you don't care about all that then try a franchise with single team control as this will probably make the draft a bit more tolerable for you.

Good Luck!

- IK 720

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bobhead

I don't know what you're looking for, or why you decided to do 30-team control in the first place, but my preference is to just play baseball. I don't care about the Atlanta Braves or Brandon Guyer's broken wrist. Just give me my MLB team. Draft? Nah, I don't drink beer. You want more vendors? Go to Walmart. I'm still making profit, thanks. Franchise mode is only as time consuming and monotonous as you make it out to be. Everything can be set to be processed automatically by the CPU, or safely ignored. 30-team control is a tool, not a requirement, and you can easily play the mode without it. If you don't want to drag through all the side stuff, then don't. Start a 1-team franchise and just play baseball. Simple as that.

The problem is, I don't want random CPU trades. In fantasy draft franchises it didn't matter since everyone was jumbled up, but after playing years of RTTS where guys were all over the place, I didn't really want Mike Trout on the Twins or Stephen Strasburg on the Braves year one, which they were in my RTTS.

I had everything set to the CPU for 30 team control so it wasn't a problem until the draft. The draft killed it for me because I have no interest in going through and doing that.

If there were a way to make sure non-idiotic trades were made any other way, believe me I'd do it, but I just don't see a way. At this point, from a pure baseball perspective, I'd be better off going back to a fantasy draft where I didn't need to worry all that much about Albert Pujols getting traded one year into his contract or Mariano Rivera being a Royal. That kills the game for me more than anything else could.

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by IK720

Hopefully I can help you out with some of these issues. The key to maintaining interest in franchise is to use a team you are going to have fun with. Maybe that is the team you know the most about, or maybe it is a team in the dumps (I use the Astros to rebuild), or possibly a team with a bunch of young budding stars.. perhaps a tough division. Once you have that team ... 1. Yes adjusting rosters every day is annoying. One thing that can help is to set injury management to MLB only. That way when all those AA and AAA guys get hurt (usually minor anyway) the CPU takes care of it. Also whenever a AA or AAA lineup is messed up just let the CPU fix that as well if you don't want to take the time. I would recommend checking it every once in a while though (maybe not adjusting the order because lets be honest .. who cares if they win .. but perhaps just to make sure your future players are getting playing time). 2. I'm not sure about this because I don't think I get these e-mails that often. You could always set this to auto as well, because in my opinion it is a useless part of franchise. After a season or two you will have enough money to max out all your vendors.. and the pricing thing is always adjusting anyway so auto seems to work. 3. Just pay attention to the high potential guys if you want. And to be honest you really don't have to pay all that much attention to the minors except guys you plan on using in the future. So to take some strain off knowing your whole minor league system just focus on the top commodities you have. 4. Scouting is pretty simple. Scout guys who are 18 years old or higher. The people younger than that won't be in the draft. Beyond that only scout players until you can see their potential and move on to the next. This way you can scout the most player possible (you just have to check back every few days). And yes.. a lot of the guys you draft will suck, but that is probably pretty realistic. 5. This is the one downfall of 30 team control. It sucks going through and picking for each team.. that is that. However doing the auto pick thing (often the highest rated player currently) works, or you could actually check teams weaknesses and draft that way (which takes a while but i do for a while).. Remember not everybody you scout will be in the draft. Lastly it has been said several times that the first draft in franchise has pretty low quality guys.. Also yes you sign those draft picks for incredibly low contracts because often they will be in the minors for a few years before they are MLB ready. You won't come across any Bryce Harper's in the draft unfortunately. However grabbing a couple A prospect guys to develop over a few years is pretty nice. If you want to draft the "bryce harper's of the world" you could always edit their stats to make them "progress" faster. 6. Checking transactions can be a bit annoying, but if you care about the CPU sending the best prospects in the game for a 40 year old closer then 30 team control is a must. You could always turn off trading (under the CPU control set trading to manual) except for a couple weeks before the trade deadline to alleviate checking it every day for the whole season. This will give the CPU a chance to send trade offers but reduce the chance of missing a trade as well as the time spent checking for crappy deals. 7. Development is a season long thing and you don't really see the results week by week. I change training assignments once a month and sometimes if you go to manage roster you can see what stats are improving (+). I don't know that call ups and send downs are all that important. I do them, but i don't have a big strategy behind it. If looking it over every two weeks works for you then that probably will work out fine. 8. It does seem that big name guys are always on the trade block which is weird. I have a feeling the Angels will never trade Pujols yet he is on the block every year. Poor logic I suppose. I rarely look at the trade block. I look through and find players I want. Then to keep it true to life I post it either in the trade discussion thread on here (usually a pretty quick response) or the OS Arbitration Panel where people are assigned specific teams to "trade for" I hope this helps you a bit or at least gives you some kind of direction. I personally think 30 team control is a must because it kills me to see great prospects traded for some over aged over performing guy just because the team is trying to make the playoffs. Does that happen? Yea, but when MLB teams do it in real life the value they get back is much higher. However if you don't care about all that then try a franchise with single team control as this will probably make the draft a bit more tolerable for you. Good Luck! - IK 720

1. I'll probably do that. I didn't realize you could set it for MLB only rather than just on or off. It got dull dealing with those minor league injuries.

2. Makes sense. I like doing those things and setting prices and promotions and all that, but it seemed like every other week something was over priced or sold out.

3. I'll probably do that. As I started going, I was just focusing on the numbers of guys like Bauer, Skaggs, Corbin, Davidson and the key prospects. The problems would come when I would promote/demote within the system and lineups and rotations would get messed up. Or someone would get hurt and I'd have an invalid roster somewhere and didn't trust the CPU to auto-fix because I had a lot of guys playing somewhat out of position. Stephen Drew was in AA since I didn't want to call him up since he's currently rehabbing and my best hitter at AA was the existing SS, who I moved to LF.

4. I think where I went wrong was that one of my A prospects was 16 and I didn't realize I couldn't draft him. That explains why I couldn't find the kid. He was perfect too.

5. I guess I'll have to just deal with it if I go back with 30 team control. This one was the deal breaker to me, but I think if I did single team control, the deal breaker would be guys getting traded for nothing.

6. So manual trading won't stop the CPU from sending trades but will prevent them from being put through without my say?

I may see if I can figure out a better way to go about this. See if I can take the strain of a lot of the mundane things off and focus on just the major league roster and then the key prospects.

[IK720]

Quote: Originally Posted by PowerofRed25

6. So manual trading won't stop the CPU from sending trades but will prevent them from being put through without my say?

Manual trading Will stop the CPU from sending trades altogether. I was just saying if you want the CPU to be able to trade, but don't want to check pending transactions every day of the season (after april pretty much) then you could always set it back to auto for a couple weeks before the deadline or whenever you want for that matter. Then you would only have to check for trades during that time frame making it much less of a pain.. then you could set it back to manual so the CPU doesn't make trades again.

And yea.. the drafts (Rule 5 draft as well) are the biggest downfall of 30 team trading. However if you can get through that then its pretty much smooth sailing.

Glad I could be of a little help at least. I know I love franchise mode because it is so deep, and RTTS just doesnt offer that to me.

[msuboy11]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bobhead

I don't know what you're looking for, or why you decided to do 30-team control in the first place, but my preference is to just play baseball. I don't care about the Atlanta Braves or Brandon Guyer's broken wrist. Just give me my MLB team. Draft? Nah, I don't drink beer. You want more vendors? Go to Walmart. I'm still making profit, thanks. Franchise mode is only as time consuming and monotonous as you make it out to be. Everything can be set to be processed automatically by the CPU, or safely ignored. 30-team control is a tool, not a requirement, and you can easily play the mode without it. If you don't want to drag through all the side stuff, then don't. Start a 1-team franchise and just play baseball. Simple as that.

You can also have it where you turn computer trading off, but you dont control all of them. I've been thinking this might be the best way, because you dont have to worry about their stuff and bad trades!!!

[pistolpete]

I find the key to maintaining interest in a franchise is to play at an appropriate pace. I play 1-2 games per day in my franchise most days and just relax as I advance. I also hit only, so these two games take maybe 40 minutes total. This gives me 20 minutes to look at my team and look around the league and get into it.

You have to pace yourself and limit your moves and how much you mess around with it.

30-team control sounds like a job, not a video game. If you're getting hung up over who is hitting lead-off for the Padres, you probably have bigger issues than enjoying franchise mode.

Let it sink in. Let the game dictate the franchise. Don't play baseball God and enjoy how everything develops around you.

This approach has been a life saver to me for franchise mode.

[LowerWolf]

If you don't want to deal with minor league teams and promotions and that sort, then try Season mode. It's like Franchise lite. You can still play multiple seasons, but you only have to worry about your 40-man roster and don't have to mess with training and marketing and all that stuff.