Power Pros Forum

You're the GM, do you play the games or care if your team is winning *too* much.

The main fun of Season Mode (for me at least) is the GM stuff - salary, trades, draft, and contracts.

The fun of season mode is dominating the over teams.

that, too. I love putting up 90-0 scores racking up 20 K's and 5 HR's a player - Rookie settings (lock-on 5 and auto-base-running and fielding).

I'm also in the camp where gambling below about 15% just isn't worth it to me. First and foremost I play this game for fun, and I'm not going to metagame it to the point of sheer tedium and boredom. If that's what others like to do, more power to them. I don't even reload over and over to get the gambler's ring out of Annie's surprise bag on most occasions. While I know I *could* make better players than I do, I'm also one that models players after real-life players (either MLB Hall of Famers or friends/family) - so I intentionally leave weaknesses where they should exist or try to match the stats to the player.

For example, someone of the other board asked me why I stopped Ozzie Smith at PWR E instead of raising it to C. Well, Ozzie Smith had 28 career home runs in 18 years in the majors. If I gave him "average" (C) power, it would not be Ozzie Smith anymore. So that's kind of my general philosophy on it.

exactly, we're not here to give the historical players a "hero's boost", we'd prefer to give them a plausible version of themselves at their peak.

Besides, it's possible to get a powerful B/C + abilities player without the ring or save/load. Just look at the exchange.

I'm kinda doing the fantasy family team thing like a few of you are. I may consider creating an all-star caliber player, but I doubt I'll have the patience/time for it.

That is what I have been doing, and it has been alot of fun. It is amazing how close to a real life player you can get out of each character. I made one meat head whose only purpose is to mash homeruns, and even he isn't all that great beyond hitting. So I made a defensive replacement for him after that.

I think constructing a real team with realistic type players that fit well together is harder than making super players. Case in point, can a few good Success Mode characters make KC a decent team that can win a Series? There is a challenge.

Yeah I also am finding it a bit more fun making players a little more realistic then what you can achieve by exploiting the hell out of the system.

In all reality almost zero players have had the abilities most of these uber characters have at the start of their careers, baseball is one of the hardest sports for rookies to even make an impact in.

"I think constructing a real team with realistic type players that fit well together is harder than making super players. Case in point, can a few good Success Mode characters make KC a decent team that can win a Series? There is a challenge."

I agree and you will be surprised what a few good players can do. I am sort of trying that same approach with an expansion team right now and they help a ton obviously. Micky Mantle is leading the league in RBI's and one short of homeruns. My uber SS is leading in hits/steals/obs. And My two pitchers dominate the competition.

Some of the expansion players aren't half bad either, with some training I already have a quality 2nd baseman and catcher.

The pitchers are mostly terrible also except one starter who is a knuckleballer with B's in stamina and control.

Setting a slaray cap for your team seems to be a nice challenge too.In 2005 the White Sox payroll was 73 million and they won the World Series. They had the lowest team salary entering the playoffs and won.

I'm trying to keep mine under 60000 points and see what happens. It's easy to spend 180 million on a team and win.

I wanted to do the same thing; put success players on a crappy team and win the WS. Its not hard at all. I put Ultimate on the Nationals (thought the division would bring the toughest competition) and after a month of playing the games myself I was 7 games ahead in first. I decided to simulate the rest of the season and ended up winning the wildcard and then the WS. My payroll was 47,000.

For me, it gets old pounding the tar out of the competition with unrealistic players, but I find it fun to an extent. I like the idea of putting a couple of beefed up guys on the roster and then seeing just how good I can be with them. At the same time, I don't see the point of reloading your season to make sure you win every game, but some people do. Whether you want to play that way or not, that in itself is a challenge until you're successful at it. And if someone wants to step up to that challenge then so be it. My point is, there are countless ways to play this game and each provide their own challenges; whether it be hitting 1000 HRs in a season or simply winning the WS with a realistic team. Different strokes for different folks, right?

The first season mode I went through was with the Astros, and after a month Berkman already had 40 something homers. I was sitting him 4 or 5 days a week just to keep things as realistic as possible, but my bench guys were putting up starter numbers too. I had a Success mode player with a D in power that already had 20 HR's!

I can jack up the AI and handicap myself to the max, and still put up realistic numbers. And imagine if I had a superman with maxed out power, contact, running speed ect.

I enjoy this game for the many features it has and the game play really is very good. One of the best baseball sims I have played. And hence why I am on the forum. Some people like the idea of a 300 HR season, and that is cool, but after awhile the novelty wears off and I want something that challenges me.

Sorry to beat the dead dog over and over. No Mike Vick joke intended.

Honestly.... yes! It does get really boring. That's the thing though - last season the contracts for all my pitchers expired and naturally they all wanted big raises. I let them all walk and went with some other pitchers who had been kicking around for the past couple seasons with salaries of 400. The team was originally an expansion team so they all sucked at the start. I figured this would make things more interesting.... but my team keeps winning! There are only 3 success mode players on the team total. The weird thing though is that pitchers who were on my team and had an era of 2.0 go to another team and their era jumps up to 6.0.... what gives?

Bad Defense?

I like the winning.
The only downside for me with super teams is that the games take forever with all the runs scoring - unless I get out on purpose, which would make it boring.

Maybe I'm just competitive like that. I get disappointed when my team loses its first game 80 games into the season while being simmed, for Pete's sake.

As for expansion players, I hated it so much that I went with the Dream Draft - which was awesome! Like Fantasy Baseball, except there are more teams and you can get Pujols, A-Rod, and Utley all with your first three round picks!
But I did end up drafting some expansion players and one guy, now my swingman, had two A's and a level 2 2-seamer and two other level 3 breaking pitches.

This has turned into more Season Mode discussion than Success Mode.

I love loading up on super success mode guys so I can see just how good their stats can get when simulating the games. You don't have to save and reload to win every game, it's quite easy actually. For all of my success mode guys, six or so hours of actually gameplay is the norm for them.

The success mode is pretty well balanced in this game if you just play it straight without save/load gambling. After you learn what to avoid doing and the basics of training, depending on your luck you can get between a star and superstar level player every time, that is, A/B/C in power and contact, decent fielding, and several good blues. These players are also much younger than other players with similar stats and almost always end up being the best in the game after 5 years. You can also make players that can bat .600 by bunting and then steal 2nd and 3rd 90% of the time.
If I were going to gamble cheat for super players I would rather just use passwords or edit the rosters. The random variance of the events and not being able to max your player makes success mode at least somewhat challenging. The only time I would save/load is before the tournament games. The tournaments have way too much influence on the quality of your player, especially since you can't even control the result all that much. It's hard to win the title every time in your second year, especially if you aren't captain or are a pitcher, and losing early in the 3rd year basically just ruins any player you make and by that time you've spent a few hours already. In general the success mode has too much text and not enough baseball. For example what happened to the hitting challenges and the duals with alvin that were in all the japanese versions of the game? I usually only get one hitting challenge per game now. And why can't I skip the useless dating events with sarah and becky? Ugh.

Well thats whats so good about the game really. You can play it anyway you wan't as long as it's fun who cares?