Power Pros Forum

Hey all, I'm very excited in seeing My Life mode in this iteration of Power Pros. I've played the Japanese Pawapuros in the past, and even though I had no idea what I was doing most of the time in terms of choices since I can't read Japanese, it was the most fun sports mode I've ever played. Watching your player's career unfold and creating his own story in your head as he progresses is an awesome experience, even without understanding what the hell I was doing most of the time (I figured out some basic stuff, like training regimen choices, whether to make a promise to a girl or not, whether to go out on the town with your teammates or not - but most of the time I had no idea what my choices were for something). It will be even more fun now that I can read the text. If MLB Life is anything like what I'll be describing below, everyone's in for a real treat.

My most favorite player I ever had was a starting pitcher back in Pawapuro 10 (this is around 2003). Nothing too great in stats - 23 year old with a fastball maxed out in the mid 80s, a 2 rated slider, B rated control but just C rated stamina. I had a bunch of other attributes, more good than bad, but I dunno what they were since I couldn't read the text. He started out in the bullpen naturally, and I didn't get called in that much early in the season. When I did get in the game, I was mainly used as a long reliever if the starter got pulled early. After doing well in this situations, I got pushed back to late inning relief, as our bullpen wasn't that great, and eventually became the setup man. Just after the halfway point of the season, I got a shot at being the closer. I ended up with around 15 saves or so with a sub 1.00 ERA and earned rookie of the year. Sweet stuff. My popularity slowly rose along the way, and I began talking with a girl during the season as well. The team itself didn't do too great - the offense was good, but the starting rotation wasn't, so we ended up around the .500 mark.

Second season comes along, and I'm the closer from the start. I wasn't sure if I missed a choice to try and push to get into the starting rotation or not, but that's where I was put. Did relatively well that year, ending up with a 3-1 record with 35 saves and a sub 1.5 ERA. Again the team didn't do that great and we ended up in the bottom half of the standings. During this season I started talking to another girl, and my popularity continued to rise partly because I started to get more post-game interviews. I also scored a TV commercial contract because of the higher popularity rating.

Season three comes and I get my shot at the starting lineup somehow. Throughout the last two seasons, I had been focusing my training in two areas - improving my accuracy and stamina, and improving my breaking pitch. I would throw in a few training stints on improving my max speed, but not much in comparison to the other two. By this time I had accuracy in the high Bs and stamina in the low Bs, increased my max speed to the high 80s, got my slider up to level 3, and picked up a sinker though it was still level 1. I did pretty well that season, but ended up with a lot of no-decisions because my bullpen couldn't hold a lead...if only I could clone myself so I could retain the closer spot. I think I ended up with a 12-6 record with 8 or 9 no-decisions or something like that, with a low 3.00 ERA. My strikeout total was okay, but not top ten in the league or anything yet. I get a decent amount per game thanks to (I'm guessing) some of my player attributes, but I need to improve my breaking pitches more to up my K count.

Season four comes around and I'm blindsided - I got traded to the rival team! Well, there's a chance I picked the wrong choice somewhere along the way, or pissed off the front office during contract negotiations over the past couple of seasons from choosing too many random items in the wrong order or something - but either way, I'm traded to the worst team in the league. By this time I'm around 90 mph max speed, rated A in control and high Bs in stamina, still with a 3 rated slider but I got my sinker up to level 2. This is my player's breakout year, as I ended up with a 14-3 record with a couple of no decisions, mid 2.00 ERA, top 5 in strikeouts, numerous pitcher of the month awards, and a pitcher of the year award as well. Unfortunately, our team has the worst offense in the history of baseball, so even though we had an okay pitching staff we couldn't score enough runs to move up the standings.

By this time my player has reached superstar status and always gets TV commercial offers after a season. By this time I've saved a good amount of money, so I upgrade from an apartment to a house and from a regular compact car to a sports car (no idea how this affects anything in the game really). By this time I have relationships with 3 different girls, but in order to successfully get married you need to max out the relationship meter with one of them before you propose. Otherwise, there's a good chance she'll reject you. I can't remember what the consequence was for being rejected, but it was something pretty big (something like you lose your relationship status with all the current girls you were talking to and can't start new ones for a while, or maybe even you become so distraught you retire completely...I can't remember what it was). In any case, I decide that next season I'll start focusing on one girl. That will also give me time to start saving money for an engagement ring.

So season five is when my player starts his dominance over the league. By this point I have a low 90s fastball, 4 rated slider, 3 rated sinker, a bunch of good attributes I likely picked up from all the good games I've pitched over the past 4 seasons, A rated control and A rated stamina. If my pitcher is in good to excellent condition, he can easily throw a complete game shutout with 10+ strikeouts as long as I pitch smart. This is great for me, as there are times where you can make promises to a girl, such as not allowing more than 2 runs in the next game you play, or striking out at least 10 batters. Succeeding in these promises provide a good boost to your relationship. By the halfway point of the season I max out the relationship meter, propose, and get accepted. Woohoo, marriage!

I end the year with similar stats as the previous year, again earning pitcher of the year and this time leading the lead in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. Our offense has improved a bit, but we're still not playoff contenders yet. The next year is my contract year, so I'm hoping to maintain my performance numbers so that I can get my pick of contract offers when free agency hits.

Season six starts, and expectations are higher. The team has made some offseason moves to shore up the lineup, so I'm hoping we can make a run for the pennant. My first son is born this season, and a cool touch in the game is that your player gets a condition boost to excellent if you have a game on your kid's birthday. My player continues his dominant performance, leading the league in all major pitching categories. I've noticed at this point that stat progression is noticeably slowing down - it's taking longer for stats to increase to the next level now that my pitcher is 29 years old. At some point in the next few years training will not be done for increasing stats, but more to maintain my stats where they are as they'll start to decline if ignore them for too long.

Anyways, my team does relatively well the first half of the season. They're in striking distance of first place most of the time, but never take the lead. As the second half evolves though, the top teams of the league start to slump, and we start making a run. Remember, in the Japanese majors only the 2 pennant winners advance to the playoffs and then play for the championship. While my pitcher is still doing well late in the season, there's a lot of added pressure here as every win counts. If I try to rush through my innings without pitching with a good strategy, despite my pitcher's stats I'm going to be hit all over the place. I really take the time during this stretch to play out each at-bat properly, and not get too predictable with my pitch selection and location during the later innings of a game. Ironically enough, by this point my original team is languishing at the bottom of the standings as my current team is making a penannt run. We end up clinching the pennant in the last week of the season, and end up winning the title in 5 games. I pitch two complete games, the first a shutout, to earn MVP honors of top of my other season accolades. Woo!

The offseason arrives and I get a deluge of free agency offers. The highest offers are from other teams in the other league, and I entertain the notion of winning the title in both leagues. But I decide to stay with my current team's offer. The total salary wasn't as high, but they offered more years, and I felt a little obligated to stay with them as they did try to win and improve after trading for me. That and I wanted to continue to make my original team regret trading me away.

I started season seven and only got a few months in before I stopped playing this particular player - I think either the next Pawapuro had come out or I got distracted by a different game. But of all the players I've created in the past, this particular one stuck out. Perhaps it was mainly due to the huge success he became due to the sheer amount of time and effort I put into him (playing a starting pitcher is the most work in My Life mode, as you'll pitch several innings each game as opposed to just a handful of at-bats for a position player or an inning or two for a relief pitcher).

If MLB Life mode can give me this experience again, I'll be more than satisfied.

Sweet I can't wait.

Like the idea of getting traded, though it would suck if my Jays traded me.

Few questions: how long did it take you to play a year? as a starting pitcher how often did you pitch, every 6 days? you said you made other players, how different was the playing expericance for a fielder?

What you discribed is exactly what I am hoping for if not better since that was back in 03.

Awesome in depth man. Thanks. It sounds like this mode will be exactly what I hope it will be. I was hoping that you could get randomly traded just to spice things up. Wouldn't be much fun to be on the Yankees or BoSox dominating every year and never get the experience of building a contender out of a team like Royals or Pirates. Can't wait.

Yeah, it was about every 6th day or so, since japanese teams usually have a 6 man rotation, but occasionally they'd skip the 6th pitcher depending on how the offdays work out. Playing out a full year took a bit of time, maybe 5 game hours or so on average if you play through every game like I did (can't remember if you can sim through certain games, but it's likely available. I can't read Japanese text after all). Games themselves didn't take too long, depending on how many innings I pitched and how many batters I faced each inning but the average time was about 8-10 minutes for a game where I go at least 7 innings. The Japanese baseball season is shorter than the MLB one by about 18 games, so I'm assuming it'll be a bit longer to go through a year in the MLB game.

The main difference in playing a fielder is length of playing time. You'll get 3-5 at-bats or so a game, so if you're having a poor game it might only take a few minutes to get through a game. There's definitely a different feel than pitching, since you really can't control the situation as much - when you go up to bat, you could have people on base with no outs, or noone on and 2 outs. You didn't play defense at all in the earlier versions which speeds things up considerably, dunno if that's the same in the new MLB game we're getting. Whereas as a starting pitcher, it's really your fault if you let people on base and have a bad inning. Being a relief pitcher is much more similar to being a position batter. Hardest of all, of course, is when you're not a starting position player yet, so you might only get 1 or 2 at-bats every couple of games if you're lucky.

As a regular position player, a year would take about 10-12 hours of game time if you played through every possible game since you play more games than a starting pitcher would.

I'm sure you could demand a trade or something. There was a ton of front office stuff I glossed over in the japanese games because I wasn't sure what the heck I was choosing from. I know during contract negotiations you can ask for different bonus incentives, such as a bonus for leading the league in ERA, or for winning the championship MVP, etc. Hopefully we see these things in the MLB Life mode as well.

I like how the older you got the slower your stats rose. When you start pushing 10yrs in it will be really intresting to see how well we can maintain the levels we were at. Eventrually we will all begin to wonder how players like Greg Maddox and Nolan Ryan continued to pitch well late into their years.

Wonder who many of us will start our carrers off in a starting role after playing through success? Like the idea of having to earn that spot after a year or two.

Fantastic post, TC. Now I really can't wait.

man you write to much
Well I guess I could use some summer reading

Think I'll try using a position player first.

When it comes around I'm going to go with a pitcher I can't make em in sucsess mode but I know how each pitch works due to careful study and what pitchers go with what speeds and how some pitches work better with others

I am going with whatever my Jays need. We have a need at SS, a speedster, a good thowing C. If we still have Glaus or Thomas maybe I will go with a power hitter and try to replace them. I could make a pitcher to fill at the 5 spot but pitching was our strong suit last year..

Amazing post, Thanks for the info, I am definitely looking forward to this mode even more than before because of this write up.

pawapuro is a little off on his playoff info. In 2007 *after PP10 ,this started in PP 14*the Japanese league started the central league playoffs. That's how my dragons won it in 2007. The dragons beat the tigers and giants both higher seeds in the playoffs or what the japanese call the climax series.


This is how the playoffs works

1,2,3 makes it
then 3 takes on 2 winner takes on one and meets pacific champ.
in the event of a tie the higher seed gets the win.