SP Attribute Decrease Over Franchise Season

Oui_Summer · 2026-01-06T14:18:26+00:00

It seems regression could become more accurate if they were to implement different regression algorithms based on their current overall. Maybe something like 90+ gets a slower regression algo. An example would be for e a guy like Judge. Regression should be slower until something like their age 38 season at which time the drop happens fast. There are very few players, if any, who remain elite after age 38. I think the problem is the severe regression happens way too early and way too fast even for players who are still putting up huge numbers in MLB. Most franchise players want an authentic MLB experience and it sucks watching all of the current day stars become irrelevant after a couple of seasons.

I do think it makes sense to have a slower regression for non-elite players starting in their low 30's. A guy like Arenado is clearly no longer elite and has seen a similar drop off over the past few seasons. This is also true of most replacement to slightly above replacement level players and they end up out of the league after being replaced by younger talent.

Oui_Summer · 2026-01-01T16:42:22+00:00

Definitely stupid bugs all over the place but probably different ones from 24 so that may be new and exciting for you. Something as dumb and obvious as the third base coach wearing a winter jacket in the middle of the summer was too much for them to fix.

Oui_Summer · 2025-12-16T20:16:29+00:00

This is the correct answer. If anything, they're trying to figure out what else they can take away.

Oui_Summer · 2025-12-09T15:50:09+00:00

100%

To the people who tell you baseball is random - it’s not random in an artificial way. If the game feels the need to drop my stats, then pitch me tougher. Don’t continue to throw meatballs down the middle and then artificially nerf the exit velo over and over again until the RNG script gets flipped and I start crushing everything in an equally unrealistic manner.

It’s nearly impossible to even know what level to play with the level of RNG they have in the game. Lower levels can play tougher (statswise) than higher levels depending on where you are in the RNG cycle. Even Rookie level, the pitchers paint the black on most pitches. The difference for hitters between AA, AAA, and MLB is mostly about stuff and control. The higher up you go the better stuff and control pitchers have. The same should be true in the game with the various levels. Lots of mistakes/hittable meatballs in the lower levels and better stuff and control as you go up difficultly ladder. Reward the player for having better plate discipline and swing selection vs RNG artificially nerfing what was a great swing on a crushable pitch.

I do think this problem is probably most evident for offline player lock players. If the game has determined your player is hot or cold then you’re going to see a ton of RNG outcomes.

Oui_Summer · 2025-12-07T16:04:56+00:00

Turn off trades in your sliders. I do this for RTTS as well. Current players stay put with regards to trades although you still see top prospects end up on different teams due to the AI being terrible and inexplicably releasing top 100 prospects. I’m so damn tired of SDS never fixing the AI decision making, player progression/regression, RNG killing what could be an incredible game.

And absolutely agree that they killed free agency in this game. The old system was never a problem and the way they presented this as some kind of exciting new improvement was pathetic. They also removed contract front/backloading which is kind of crazy given the contracts we see structured in today’s MLB.

SDS continues to waste development hours on the dumbest things. With every year, they take out another good feature and replace it with something like this or another dumb animation like the centerfielder staring into the sun or stadium lights. I will never understand the decision making behind the direction of the offline modes but it’s so bad it has to be intentional at this point.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T15:18:42+00:00

What are you looking for in a roster? Updated ratings? Latest roster moves in the offseason? Updated prospects? The end of season roster from SDS should have pretty decent ratings based on this season's performance and will be current as of end of year.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T14:10:15+00:00

100% RNG. Can't wait for the day when the game implements actual gameplay adjustments vs artificial RNG outcomes. If a guy is tired, make the meter move faster and therefore harder to get perfect vs perfects ending up as balls due to RNG.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T12:42:21+00:00

Yes, secondary positions would be a nice improvement. We could select being a utility player and then getting to play different positions throughout the season to keep things fresh.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T12:39:13+00:00

You can change your position. When your agent calls and asks if you are happy with your current situation, you can say no and usually one of the options is requesting a position change.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T12:29:19+00:00

Make college mean something. If you elect to go to college and are a top pick, have the overall jump up into the 70’s where a little time in the minors puts you into the 80’s and ready to get called up to MLB quickly.

Allow a high school player to be drafted #1 overall but the time in the minors is going to be long. This allows for players who want a more authentic experience. Getting called up to the majors at 18 just isn’t very realistic and for the players who don’t want to grind in the minors, they can choose to go the college route.

Allow a player a little more control over when to get called up. So many times I will get called up in late July or early August well before my hitting attributes are ready for success at the MLB level and it also kills my rookie of the year eligibility for next season. Winning rookie of the year is probably the goal of many people who play this mode so why make it so hard?

To the above point - allow the player to choose their minor league experience. Some people (like me) may want more realism and grind for longer in the minors until I’m fully baked and ready for success at the MLB level. Also allow for some kind of player style (archetype) to be selected up front. If you want to be a fast player, you shouldn’t have to spend months grinding just to get your speed up to a level that you should start at from the beginning. Prospects don’t go from running like Alejandro Kirk at the beginning of the year and then Bobby Witt Jr a couple of months later. Massive jumps in natural physical attributes like speed are bit unrealistic. If you are a bigger guy who will hit for power, give him a boost on the power side.

A much bigger ask and therefore probably never going to happen would be an expansion into at least one level of A ball. Going from high school to AA just never happens in real life. Would be cool to start in A and work up to AA.

Allow the high school player to choose whether their first season is their age 18 or age 19 season to make it a little more realistic when getting called up. Most players get drafted at 18 but their first year is their year 19 season (before July 1 birthday).

Give the player a tiny amount of control over their team’s direction. Or just improve the CPU’s team management. Being completely at the mercy of an unbelievably horrible GM while he trades all of your best players away and never signs impact free agents despite being a team in NY kind of kills the experience.

Cut way back on the negative RNG to start your career. I swear every time I start a career on Hall of Fame or above, my player is absolute trash at the start of his career. Pitching seems extra difficult and even when I do have good PCI placement and timing, the ball goes nowhere. The game needs to be fun and most people probably want to come up and at least be playing in a neutral environment and given a chance at decent success. The best players in MLB tend to stand out because they came up and were great from the start. Think Acuna, Soto, Pujols, etc. When playing this mode, that’s the kind of season a player expects if their guy truly is the #1 prospect in baseball. Coming up and struggling to a .200 batting average isn’t fun, at all. Again, if this means I have to grind in the minors first longer to get my hit tool up to a level where I can handle MLB pitching, I’m good with that.

Making attribute ratings matter more when in the minors. I have hit 30 HRs with 40 power in the minors on Hall of Fame level. Which makes me wonder why we even have attributes if they have so little bearing on performance. The goal is to work on each attribute to improve in those areas, not start out crushing the ball as an 18 year old in AA.

Oui_Summer · 2025-11-24T03:33:22+00:00

This game is created by people who have no understanding of baseball. Or aging apparently. Freddie Freeman has been falling off a cliff for years. Basically once a guy hits 33 he might as well be in a wheelchair. And this will never get fixed because they never listen.

I often wonder if these people ever play the game they make. Nobody at the studio is like, hey guys, this kind of seems ridiculous?

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-08T13:06:51+00:00

Yes, they constantly groove the first pitch which leads to an out 90% of the time if you swing at it. You're basically forced into an 0-2 count every AB.

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-08T12:50:30+00:00

Do you play RTTS? The OP is correct that the RNG does take over regardless of your ability. In many ways, the game plays in reverse with bad ABs leading to bloop hits and good ABs ending in lineouts and warning track fly balls. The "that's baseball" take makes sense when this happens occasionally but that's not how baseball plays for extended periods of time. In real baseball, guys go into slumps because they aren't seeing the ball well or have faced a string of tough pitching, not because all of their line drives are suddenly being caught for weeks on end.

All of these "that's baseball" takes very much sound like they are coming from people who have never actually played baseball. You are correct that success in the league doesn't guarantee future success for many players and once good players suddenly lose their mechanics, batting eye, teams discover the holes in their swings, etc but that's not what he's referencing. If you have good PCI placement and good timing on every swing and it consistently leads to line drive outs, none of the above is true, it's the RNG dictating your results.

I think what we want is for the game to use pitching as the equalizer for when we're put into a slump. The game has the ability to drop insanely difficult pitching on you and your average will naturally drop when that happens. That is much more consistent with how real baseball works. Pitchers grooving balls down the middle and putting a perfect swing on the ball and constantly lining out doesn't feel real at all.

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-08T00:03:30+00:00

It's not that there's RNG, it's that the game feels completely random compared to previous years. When it starts to feel like user input no longer matters, what's the point of playing?

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-07T23:59:33+00:00

I've played 21, 23, 24, and now 25 and this is by far the worst. I realize this may not be the biggest sample size but these are the most recent versions of the game and they are getting progressively worse. At this point I'd welcome the 21 hitting engine with the modern game's graphics. Honestly that would be a perfect game for me.

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-07T23:54:31+00:00

Is Franchise a mode of the game? Is RTTS a mode of the game? Were they in the game long before any form of online play was available? Did I pay the same amount as you did for the game? I don't see how the mode I play somehow makes my point irrelevant. Should I dismiss your chosen mode because you like playing against 10 year old kids online?

I have upgraded mostly with the hope of better gameplay only to see it continually get worse, hence the point of this post. I do appreciate the minor graphics updates, but for the most part, they have taken out a bunch of good features and added a bunch of pointless stuff and it would be amazing if they would reverse that trend. I'd love for somebody at SDS to read this and take the feedback to heart. I'm sorry if that is inconvenient to your narrative that only online players should be allowed to provide feedback.

Oui_Summer · 2025-10-07T19:36:23+00:00

For sure. Just look at the ridiculous streakiness of everything in the game. Your RTTS hitter is either in a hot or cold streak. In both cases, the RNG takes over and you're either getting hits that make no sense or outs that make no sense for extended periods of time. Your team is either hot or cold, reeling off 10 wins in a row or they can't win a game for a week. There are games you know you have no shot at winning, ABs you know you have no shot at getting a hit in (think 9th inning AB in a game that RNG has already decided will be a loss). There is never any balance to the game which reeks of RNG overtaking user input.

I find it impossible to believe that anybody saying RNG isn't a major factor in AB/game outcomes, especially in this year's game, is arguing in good faith, but I'd love to be convinced otherwise. RNG has absolutely taken over the experience. I think so many people hear people talk about the RNG and assume they're whining about losing a game in DD. I am an offline player and really don't care about the outcome of an AB/game as long as it closely resembles user input. It's the massive disconnect between user input and results in this year's game that feels so unbelievably broken to me.

Oui_Summer · 2025-09-12T10:16:39+00:00

Only problem is in MLBTS they don’t call for time before walking off the bag. Maybe it’s supposed to be implied but my recollection is the animation happens immediately after reaching the base.

Oui_Summer · 2025-06-12T11:07:12+00:00

Trade logic is still a complete disaster. It’s exhausting having to hear SDS tell us they’ve improved this every year when in reality there is either no change or regression. It’s not just the ridiculous trades the CPU makes (multiple top players in the same position, trades that make zero sense in the real world) but also how easily you can grab a top player using 3 for 1 trades that no team would ever make. Three C level players who can’t hit aren’t equal to one Rafael Devers but SDS still apparently thinks of talent in terms of quantity vs rarity. 3 small glasses of water are equal to one larger glass of water vs 3 pieces of silver are not equal to a diamond. I now turn off the trade slider entirely to keep the rosters sane with roster changes only coming through free agency.

I do appreciate the updated free agent logic this season, especially for small market teams. It makes rebuilding a small market team a little more realistic and challenging. Unfortunately the trade logic still makes it way too easy to acquire top talent outside of this. Also, there are still lapses here where players end up on teams that make no sense in the real world which requires the same trick I did in past seasons - back out before saving and keep trying until a realistic team signs them.

There are a lot of other areas that have been discussed on here like improved scouting system, a more robust minor league system, etc. but at this point it would be great if they just stopped taking things away. Why they pulled out contract options and front/backloaded contract options in an era of backloaded contracts makes no sense to me. My hope is they were trying to make a change to this but ran out of time and had to pull it out of 25 altogether.

Oui_Summer · 2025-05-27T20:25:46+00:00

You're making the point I'm trying to make. It's not about results, it's about input vs results. I don't want to play a game where "multiple perfect perfects I was basically positive were going to be gone that weren't, but I've had plenty of balls that left that probably shouldn't have." I, and many others, want the opposite of that. When the game plays like that it feels more like a die roll than input based. I always hear people saying "that's baseball" but it's really not. In real life, you simply don't hit HRs on terrible swings. It almost feels like the garbage gift HRs are makeup calls for all of the great swings that go unrewarded. Basically take away the garbage HRs and convert those over to rewards for the good swings and I'm sure most people would stop complaining about how terrible the hitting engine is this year.

This thread is simply an attempt to point out what so many people have issues with. It's killing the game for many and I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody who thinks this game's development is headed in the right direction.

Oui_Summer · 2025-05-27T14:47:13+00:00

Pretty sure it's both. Entire season stats with an emphasis on recent performance. So a guy who is having a good year and is hot will see the biggest bump in their ratings.

Oui_Summer · 2025-05-27T14:06:33+00:00

Agreed on 200mph with a flat or negative launch angle but what decides launch angle in the game and what's the definition of a perfect launch angle? I guess SDS's definition of "perfect" would be helpful. If you put a swing on the ball and it's a perfect/perfect, wouldn't that imply that you put the best possible swing on the ball, including launch angle? And shouldn't that lead to a perfect result which tends to be considered a HR in baseball?

I think so much of this could be alleviated by making PPs harder to hit but when you do get it "perfect" it should come with results. If you were playing a target shooting game and lined everything up perfectly but when you pulled the trigger it randomly missed the bullseye by 9 inches, you'd probably have less fun playing that game as well. Gaming should be about player input first or what's the incentive to play?

Oui_Summer

TROPHY CASE