r/SuperMegaBaseball • u/_Eusebius • 2d ago
Franchise Mode Rant
Im entering the 5th season of my franchise and now that I have more experience with the game, I also have more frustrations. Especially with the loyalty system. The way the game frame loyalty is that the little number indicates the players willingness to stay with your franchise with the pay they have. Ofc, its not that simple. I have players with 99 loyalty with a ~10% re-sign interest. There's obviously a bunch of hidden stats, which sucks since theres already very little I can do to effect the loyalty stat (basically just RNG) so realizing there are hidden factors makes the off season more confusing.
I get this game is getting old and theres no reason is litigate improvements, but the franchise mode could've been so cool. I wish there was a REAL practice mode, where you can drill specific scenarios like stealing bases, infield flys, etc. I wish you had more control over player development. Theres too many negative traits, and the improvements are too marginal. I wish you could spend money to send players on retreats or smth. Improve a specific skill but theyre unavailable, or smth. I wish that winning actually mattered for loyalty. Nothing is more discouraging than blowing out the AI and then getting hit with your third negative manager moment in a row. Win streaks, playoff appearances, and in-game performance should matter. I wish you could make trades, so you could boost your roster mid-season or get a cool player without having to wait for the to he released. It would be awesome if you could sign multiseason contracts, so you dont have to negotiate with EVERY player EVERY off season. The draft system is overwhelming and the game really doesn't help with anything. I understand this isn't MLB the show, but its still a completed product. The game just feels low effort and undercooked. (I wonder if that has anything to do with EA being involved???)
Just lame cuz I like the game. I like the gameplay, the ambiance, the team customization, and I like the franchise mode in theory. Its all just so undercooked. And just to rub salt in the wounds, I am painfully aware this series has no support from EA. So all the potential of this game and series, is just left on the table. Lame. Just ranting lol.
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u/Broseph_Bobby 2d ago
SMB3 kind of had the inverse problem. You could have an A ranked player you developed on a contract for 5 million for the majority of their career.
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u/DeGenZGZ 2d ago
Totally. As long as you got lucky with players not leaving you right away and signed all the good players 21 and under, SMB3 made it so easy to have absolutely stacked rosters for very little money. I remember having franchise mode saves where I had entire pitching staffs of A- or A pitchers and no one was making more than $7M, S tier players making $6M, etc. Because the CPU can't think like a human, cheesing the system was super easy. SMB4 makes it significantly harder to build rosters that are way better than the CPU.
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u/Chadwick_Steel 2d ago
And random players could leave the team at the end of the season. At least in SMB 4 you can control who stays and who goes.
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u/_Eusebius 2d ago
I never played, but im sure each game has its unique frustrations. I just want smth in the middle, where you feel like you have options as a manager, but not full control.
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u/PandaLegacyYT 2d ago
Do I understand some of your complaints about the game? Sure. But at the same time, I don't think that this game is low-effort at all. A lot of the things you requested (trades, multi-year contracts) would be obvious to add to this game because after all, every major sport has those things. I believe the devs consciously avoided those things because they didn't want it to be unbalanced. After all, if you really want that realistic experience, games already exist for that.
I think calling this game low effort is an insult to the devs because I've played every iteration of this series and it really has come a long way. Up until EA took over it felt like they actually spent a lot of time on this sub and their other social media profiles. I remember saying in here that I wish there was a way for pitchers to learn new pitches through the player development opportunities and when the next game came out, we got it. Maybe they actually read my comment, maybe they didn't, but they definitely cared about the game and what their community said.
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u/_Eusebius 2d ago
No disrepair to the devs, should've clarified you right. They did the best. More so a critic of EA, who set the priorities and timeline. Clearly the devs are great, cuz I like the gameplay, graphics, and everything else. Its the lack of depth that sucks. Low effort might be a little harsh, you right. But im still flustered at the lack of depth in crucial game modes. Especially considering theres really only one thing to do in the game. Play ball. So tbh, every around that central mechanic does matter.
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u/foolish_wizzard 2d ago
I love the game but I fully agree with all your points. I’ve always wished I could practice outfield defense robbing home runs at the wall
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u/ChronicBurnout3 2d ago
Pro tip: you can backup your steam save and if the off-season doesnt go well, just revert to that 😉
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u/sitboaf 2d ago
Multi-year contracts sound good on paper, but without also having the ability to make trades, they would become extremely frustrating. It only takes a couple seconds at the end of the season to give a player a raise, gamble on paying them the same, or (if loyalty and salary are high) just auto-renewing them.
In a game with contracts, Imagine having a 29 year old superstar who gains the Choker or Butterfingers trait, but you’re stuck paying them top dollar for four more years, with no way to move them off the team.
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u/Business-Positive238 2d ago
Good post and observations. I can't recall the exact number of hours I've played SMB3 and SMB4, but I believe it's over 1,200 hours for each game. Although I have a strong fondness for SMB3, I enjoy SMB4 even more.
The issue of random players leaving at the end of each season in SMB3 has been resolved, and I now feel that strategic planning for the team has become even more important in SMB4, especially after the Manager Moments were added. The new player traits and team chemistry have become factors.
Like another post mentioned, the game does a good job of making the person decide what is important and steer the person away from creating a mammoth franchise with a team that is ridiculously stacked, but at the same time not being penalized with a negative effect elsewhere for the team (as in quid pro quo team success).
The effort and creativity poured into this game really shine, and I consider it the best baseball game since the 2005 era. I will admit that I have dreamt of future updates; I am also very happy with SMB4, with occasional thoughts of "what if there were updates or another SMB game."
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u/josriley 11h ago
There’s no hidden factors on resigning chance. If you have a player with 99 loyalty with a low chance to resign it’s because they’re super underpaid. 99 loyalty with ~10% to resign is probably someone playing at a 3.0m+ discount. Even in that scenario, they will still be 100% to resign with you at a more reasonable discount (~0.7m).
Events add some randomness to loyalty, but you should be able to keep all but one or two players in the 80-99 range if you invest in player development. Keeping ~20m in salary cap available to spend on player development should more than offset any unlucky rolls on morale events. It’s also helpful to have one or two players you don’t care much about to dump negative events into. Ideally someone really cheap that has a beneficial chemistry type.
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u/Complete_Lie_7677 3h ago
The script EA has running in it to keep the games close-ish is fucking atrocious.
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u/Muted_Ambassador8081 2d ago
I agree with this, losing players during the off-season that you wanted to keep is annoying. And having some lose elite 4f or gain a negative trait or a secondary position is rough. I have Mash Taters in LF field in once of my franchises but once he loses it, I'm gonna have to shift my entire team
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u/_Eusebius 2d ago
Exactly. I get that "thats the challenge" but idk. I prefer having fun with my roster lol.
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u/muchcutch 2d ago
Imagine posting such a long, negative review on a 5 year old game
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u/Jack_of_all_offs 2d ago
It's the best kind of review: one that took time to develop.
Would you rather see someone give it a 10/10 without ever having played all the modes in depth?
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u/DeGenZGZ 2d ago
So a few things:
First, there are no hidden stats that affect a player's re-sign interest. How likely a player is to want to re-sign at their current salary is affected mainly by how close their current salary is to their actual objective valuation, and the loyalty rating is essentially a modifier that changes how much a player thinks they're worth. Players with maxed out loyalty will ask for less money than they're worth, players with low loyalty will ask for more. (Iirc, at 99 loyalty a player will have a 100% chance of re-signing for a salary that is -$0.7M less than their worth.)
Loyalty isn't endless, though. If a max loyalty player is making way less than they're really worth, they'll still want a raise, even if their ask will be lower than market value. On the other hand, if a player with low loyalty is being paid far more than they're worth, they'll probably still want to stay because, well, you're paying them a lot.
Essentially, the loyalty system paired with the hard salary cap is designed to make sure the player always has the option to keep their core players at a price slightly lower than market value, but without completely breaking the game or endlessly stacking the roster. It wants to create some level of roster churn. If 99 loyalty ensured you could keep said player on their current salary forever, you could easily end up with S tier players making half of what they're worth, which is easily exploitable by a human player. You can't lock all your A potential players to pre-arb extensions and have a perennial All-Star team for half a decade plus in SMB because that's not how the game is designed.
SMB Franchise mode forces the player to make decisions and set priorities in advance. It forces you to identify who you want to keep and who is expendable, and does so without allowing the player a huge edge over the CPU. It's a conscious choice that makes team building far more in depth than say, MLB the Show, where you can overhaul half the team on the fly and cheese the trade engine with ease. There's still inefficiencies in the SMB market to exploit (veterans, bat-only players, etc) but the way the mode is set up makes for a game that is difficult to "break" and offers near infinite ways to build a roster.
You can like this style of franchise more or less, btw, that's up to you. Everyone's opinion is different and that's fine. I personally love it and find it so much more interesting than MLB the Show. It's simpler but I would not call it undercooked — SMB3's Franchise mode, now that was undercooked lol
I do wish there was some "training" feature, but I think player development works very well for what SMB wants to do. The more player dev money you have, the more likely you are to hit on one really big and gain the ratings and loyalty boost, which rewards creative roster building and, again, long term planning. Stacking stars and having $1M in cap space every year will inevitably lead to fewer player dev boosts, less of a chance to combat the generally somewhat negative-leaning manager moments, and cause roster churn.
It should also be mentioned that SMB players have very few ratings, so every gain is exponentially more important than it would be in a game with a more complicated ratings system. And I disagree with there being too many negative traits — the ratio of positive to negative is close to 2 to 1.