musketeer22 is a quality hbd user

This is what, the 3rd time in the past 12 years that "new ownership" or "new management" has promised "changes" and "updates"? How hard is it to just update team colors? Add a simple stat like WAR? Show more than 5 players in the Player Records and Prospect Reports? Give private leagues the option to dial back or even eliminate injuries?

I'd also propose that (new) leagues be reorganized into three divisions of 5 teams. This will structure more like 2024 MLB and reduce leagues from 32 teams to 30 teams which will quicken filling.

Posted by shobob on 11/16/2024 9:31:00 AM (view original):
musketeer22 is a quality hbd user

Played with him in Cooperstown, took over his team in Moonlight Graham. High quality owner.

Posted by the_mad_monk on 11/16/2024 2:24:00 PM (view original):
This is what, the 3rd time in the past 12 years that "new ownership" or "new management" has promised "changes" and "updates"? How hard is it to just update team colors? Add a simple stat like WAR? Show more than 5 players in the Player Records and Prospect Reports? Give private leagues the option to dial back or even eliminate injuries?

I'd also propose that (new) leagues be reorganized into three divisions of 5 teams. This will structure more like 2024 MLB and reduce leagues from 32 teams to 30 teams which will quicken filling.

Except for the leagues where everybody wants to stay, as they'd have to boot 2 teams from the league. True WAR requires some additional stats that are not currently tracked - mostly on the fielding side. The hitting side, it's all there and just a formula that could be added; same with pitchers. I'm not aware of what colors are not outdated.

Posted by the_mad_monk on 11/16/2024 2:24:00 PM (view original):
This is what, the 3rd time in the past 12 years that "new ownership" or "new management" has promised "changes" and "updates"? How hard is it to just update team colors? Add a simple stat like WAR? Show more than 5 players in the Player Records and Prospect Reports? Give private leagues the option to dial back or even eliminate injuries?

I'd also propose that (new) leagues be reorganized into three divisions of 5 teams. This will structure more like 2024 MLB and reduce leagues from 32 teams to 30 teams which will quicken filling.

It went from WhatIf -> Fox Sports -> (Was there someone in between? Maybe more than one someone?) -> Sportshub

Not ridiculous for a tech company thats been around 18 years. But nobody has put the work into it that the original WIS did.

Freking Sports Really

if his real name, it would be great

if not, like i said, sense o humor

Surname Freking

I am an on again off again user. Here are a couple of my "wishlist" items:

1. Injuries (just like everyone else). I feel like managing injuries is what separates repeated WS champs from barely make the playoff kind of owners. And that is a shame. The game should not be an injury management simulator. While injuries do happen IRL, almost all are fully recovered from without significant loss of ability. One early career injury in game can take that #1 pick that you are planning on building a franchise around and make him just another platoon SS. This should be the #1 item on the agenda.
2. Injury Report - Even if they are fixed, I need to be able to see a comprehensive list of who is injured at what level and when they are expected to be healed. Also what their DL status is, and when it is up. The numbers used on the player card are confusing and unintuitive.
3. Some form of WAR being implemented, general stats overall. We are all here because we are baseball nerds, and more stats are better.
4. Can I please see a players arbitration year on his player card, or some indication that ARB is coming up for him.
5. I feel like budgeting could use a hard look. None of the numbers make sense. I am very ok with everyone having the same budget, and I like the transfer penalties, but scouting and medical should be looked at.
6. Coaches Coaches Coaches. It should never be the case that I cannot find a bench coach for my AA team, IRL there are literally thousands of folks who would be ok at that job.
7. I kind of wish the crazy decisions at the start of the season were a little more spread out. If you have a vacation the weekend coaches go live, and you come back two days later, you are screwed.
8. The cost - $25/season is a serious barrier. I think the ideal price is around $15/season. Anything they can do to increase the userbase and bring down the cost would be appreciated. I know it needs to pay for itself, but I feel if we increased the userbase overall, a lower price would still net more $ and would help in in game experience for owners who often have a to wait a while for worlds to fill.

Thanks,

JD

I don't think drastic changes are needed to many things. I think a drastic change is needed for one thing -- injury recovery.

Some other things that are less important, but ive heard multiple people say they want are below, but injury recovery needs to be #1 priority.

1. Injury Rrecovery

The Rest:
a. Extreme stadiums. Even if the stadiums are fictional or based on historical stadiums like the Polo Grounds, it'd be cool to have more choices of extreme hitter and extreme pitcher parks. Many people find it fun to build a team around park factors and as much as the latest stadium update made the stadiums more like their real life counterparts, it certainly diluted the experience because now most of the stadiums are close to neutral.
b. Ability for commissioner to choose if an NL league has the DH or has pitchers hit.
c. create a player: this is two fold -- i. a fun and optional thing to add to pre-season activities; ii. second round picks that make it past arb1 in the mlb are a rarity in hbd, this could help fix that. Obviously hbd owners would manipulate it so it would have to have a cap on the number of players each owner could create (i.e. 3), a cap on the overall rating of each player created (i.e. under 65 overall, under 60 overall under 55 overall) and a cap on max ratings (i.e. 85). This can be further discussed.
d. adding a withdraw and return to the coach contract negotiations screen to avoid the extra clicks.
e. increase supply of fielding instructors by 25 to 40 percent.
f. Adding true AI teams and giving commissioners the ability to start a season with up to X amount of AI teams
g. 26 man mlb roster

OK, my list.
Things to be done soon:
1) Coach hiring. The best plan would be for coaches to have only salary demands and not level nor position demands, at re-hiring and hiring both. [courtesy MikeT23]
2) Patchwork injury fix where players get as many recovery cycles in the off-season as needed, up to 3.
3) Free agent re-signing demands need to be more realistic. Guys who would get a max contract on the open market need to demand a max contract to re-sign.
4) Allow more than 5 minor league FA and tryout camp to be selected for offers at once.

Major, long-term issues
5) Development engine needs an overhaul; development has to be way less predictable.
6) Re-do the injury engine; the above fix reduces the urgency but need to do even better.

OK, my list.
Things to be done soon:
1) Coach hiring. The best plan would be for coaches to have only salary demands and not level nor position demands, at re-hiring and hiring both. [courtesy MikeT23]
2) Patchwork injury fix where players get as many recovery cycles in the off-season as needed, up to 3.
3) Free agent re-signing demands need to be more realistic. Guys who would get a max contract on the open market need to demand a max contract to re-sign.
4) Allow more than 5 minor league FA and tryout camp to be selected for offers at once.

Major, long-term issues
5) Development engine needs an overhaul; development has to be way less predictable.
6) Re-do the injury engine; the above fix reduces the urgency but need to do even better.

I think you forgot Universal DH, I'd imagine that's an easy one to correct.

1) I think I'd rather see no changes than having coaches with only salary demands. If you are going to dumb it down that much, just go with budgets instead of actual coaches. Part of the level demands comes with finding coaches to promote for cheap at higher levels than they are demand. Not everyone looks a level or two below for someone who might be just as good as a position.
2) Agreed, and agreed on redoing the injury engine. I get that there's a chance anyone could become injured but if a team is carrying $20M in training and the player is a 98 health - no way he should get hit with two injuries in a given year.
3) Agree slightly - while I could agree a guy who would get a max shouldn't resign on a 5/$30M deal; I don't think the extreme of pushing him to a max is the answer either. It takes out the reward for signing that player - and people trying to run smaller budgets. This favors high budget teams; though it might mean more trades. For now, I think this should be left alone.
4) Sure why not.
5) Obviously this is a fine line, you also don't want it to random. Perhaps the growth could be more directly tied to other things - like budgets set or their minor league coaches or training? That forces people to rethink how they run their minors as well.
6) Agreed.

Easy and universally welcomed fixes IMO:
1) Universal DH

2) Naming Engine (The names can get rather repetitive and I believe I remember someone mentioning that the Japanese and Korean names were sometimes being mixed together).

Middle of the roadmap changes
1) Coaching - ML coaches that are willing to stay should demand close to league minimum or at least re-sign for what they initially signed for. The only one that works that way is the fielding coach and that is one reason why they are so sought after. There is nothing like rolling over and seeing that the fielding coach that you shelled out 5M for last season is willing to stay for 750k this season, meanwhile the pitching coach that you got on the last day of the signing cycle for 800k now want 2.5m to stay.

2) Marking prospects so that AI can prioritize PT - Perhaps a weight system in lineups and pitching rotations that tells the AI to prioritize Playing time for players if health is above a thresh hold. Nothing like checking on your minor leagues after a couple of days and seeing that your top prospect has been made inactive because sparky is waiting for the guy with 80 durability to hit zero for two consecutive days...

3) Injuries - I probably fall in the minority as injuries really are not on the top of my list. I would honestly be happy with them doing an honest audit of the injuries and letting us know "hey the injuries are balanced". Its hard to mimic real life simply because we are able to actually see the player ratings so this is one situation where its needs to be addressed as a simulation rather than real life. BTW ML players absolutely do get their careers derailed by injuries. I mean i get it, nobody wants to spend 25 dollars on a season just to have you best players rating get ravaged by a long term injury but... that is a part of the game.

Further down the road\ more diverse opinions

1) Overhaul engine - I mean some of the results that happen are very improbable.... but then again the Dodgers just won the WS in real life while scoring 5 unearned runs in an inning. Bring on the 3 triples in a row

2) Noob Raping detraction - This is my one pet peve and its hard to police and you end up coming off as a jerk or a cry baby for bringing awful trades up to WC. I would love to see a rumors section where players that are being talked about or are part of a proposed offer can be identified and thus allow the rest of the league to make an offer and drive the price up etc... let the free market do its thing, but the free market can't work if there is insufficient information. Another thing that would be cool, would be some sort of AI that evaluates trades and gives some sort of grade/analysis. I mean it would be hard to code, but something that identifies a bad trade when the team with a .290 winning % trades their first round pick or their 23 year old rookie for the 33 year old vet that has 4 more years left on his 10m a season contract.

3) Tanking - I happen to think its a very nuanced issue as bad teams absolutely need a way to get better at the same time there should be a some mechanism in place to push teams to improve, maybe tie tanking to a budget, where bad teams that have been bad for a while face lower revenues or face higher frustration from their prospects that lowers their patience etc... which would lead to worse arb outcomes or players electing free agency when they typically wouldn't.

Your #3 Tanking - is somewhat solved in private worlds. I wouldn't change all worlds. Perhaps a check box for the Commish to apply to their league type of thing. Some enjoy the freedom to run teams how they see fit and are okay with others doing the same.

Also remember that the previous ownerships reduced the resources they put on the games -- not just HBD, but all the other offerings. All were corporate. From what I know, Bob is just one of us who has the means to rescue the game we have some level of loyalty to. Last I knew, there was one coder working on just simply updating all of the old code to something more recent. I have no idea where that project is or what it will take to complete it. But that would seemingly be one of the first things that needs to be finished before making major changes. Sure, there can be some cosmetic changes -- stuff that doesn't affect coding -- in the meantime, but I have confidence that he will have more folks trying to improve HBD and the other games. It will take time.