Amaroq
Posts: 1100
Joined: 8/3/2005 From: San Diego, California Status: offline
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Wow, the overwhelming majority are in favor of axing it - I wouldn't have thought that. Beach23BoyP's point about not really needing it for 'real' players is a good one; its a feature most valuable for those of us playing with fictional players. I find myself currently almost entirely unwilling to draft very high-potential players, as its too much of a long-term commitment and I have nowhere to put them to get experience. So, I love the idea of a 100-man roster. My personal ideal would be to see us go to a real-life setup, implementing all of the player-movement rules of real-life baseball: the 40-man roster, minor league free agency, the rule 5 draft, etc. Having taken the time to study them, they seem to me to be a very nicely designed system of checks and balances designed to prevent a single team from stockpiling talent or keeping players below the level they ought to be playing at. So, the abstract minor league tiers was always a compromise solution, in my mind. I can understand why you'd need it: but more detail would suit me more. I don't think all customers would want to track all 100 players, which is why I think we need the ability to delegate minor league development to our scouts and youth coaches. That said, the AI right now still doesn't truly challenge me, and I think giving me the ability to hoard 40 more players would make that situation worse, not better - I'm thinking of playing a 35-player league next to see if that reduces my ability to stockpile talent. So, I personally might not miss THIS incarnation of the expanded minors - but I do think that in the long term expanded minors are the way forward. Incidentally, this is why I like the 'real' player movement rules, conceptually: I think implementing them would force improvements to the AI, and limit my ability to hoard players. ... Finally, have you considered this from a business perspective? I think your posters here are all saying "I like the game, and I just want improvements to it." Which makes sense - your existing customers are happy with the game, and would be happy to see a game 'good' in their eyes already get better. But it feels to me like 'expanded minors' was the biggest-ticket item on your feature list, the bulletpoint at the top of your sales list. Its the feature, of this year's features, which was going to bring in some of the OOTP crowd, and might bring new users to the table. That's why you thought it was worth doing in the first place. Has that changed? Really, the questions to ask yourself are... Do I think I'll make more sales by adding 'expanded minors', missing Opening Day, and coming out after OOTP with a game that feels more roughly balanced and missing a few of my polish features? Or do I think I'll make more sales by axing my big-ticket item, but beating OOTP to market, and hitting Opening Day hype with a game that feels more balanced and has more polish features? Ultimately, that should be your driving force. Honestly, both have risks and benefits; the latter relies more on your existing fan base 're-upping', while the former relies more on catching new customers with the risk of losing out on the hype, or to a competitior.
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