Sports Mogul Wish List 2008

Baseball Mogul and Football Mogul

by Dave McAwesome

I felt a little bad about bugging Sports Mogul's Clay Dreslough about new game features. I meant well. When it comes to making a great sports sim, I'm squarely in his corner. But, hey, I could see endless suggestions being a pain in the rump. Because I think about these games much too much, I'm compiling my own personal list of suggestions for game improvements. For the most part, they have nothing to do with "ease of implementation." It's just about gameplay. The following suggestions apply to both Baseball Mogul and Football Mogul. There may be a few instances where the suggestion obviously only applies to one or the other.

I strongly endorse the idea that the player ought to be able to toggle on/off as many game features as possible, especially when it comes to some of the features suggested below (coaches, free agency, sponsors).

• First of all, it barely needs mentioning that Football Mogul should incorporate all the same features as Baseball Mogul (the ability to play historical seasons comes to mind). I still enjoy Football Mogul very much, but it is currently the red-headed step-child to BM.
• Ability to customize the league's playoff system. Choose the number of games in each round of every playoff series. Select the number of wildcards. For each round, determine the number of home games the higher seeded team gets. (Why? If I want to penalize the wildcard teams for failing to win the division, I want to be able to do so.) Choose how the seeding plays out. I might, for example, want to give division winners a bye while wildcards play a short series to advance.
• Undo button for sorting players. Personally, I tweak my lineups and favor playing younger players over burnt out veterans. Or sometimes I want a bigger bat in the lineup while sacrificing a good defensive glove. While I like the auto-sort button to get a rough starting point, I'd also like an undo button so I can quickly return to the lineup I had. The auto-sort often makes strange decisions (particularly wasting young players on the bench who would be better served spending more time in AAA). I'd like to be able to go back and forth between the auto-sort and my last selection.
• Hire/fire coaches, managers, assistants. Coaches will come from the pool of retired players. Like players, the coaches will have attributes. There are two ways to do this: simply or complexly.
  • Simple. The attributes are: Offense, Defense/fielding, Motivation (as well as an overall ranking). These attributes will mildly influence player performance.
  • Complex. For baseball, the attributes are Infield, Outfield, Pitching, Bullpen, Batting, Clubhouse demeanor. For football, the attributes are QB, RB, Receiving, Offensive Line, Defensive Line, LB, Secondary, Special Teams, Motivation. Position attributes, such as QB or Infield influence the performance only of players at that position. The owner will hire a full complement of coaches. The highest attribute for any position will be the one that affects the position. For example, a baseball manager may have a 68 for pitching and 89 for batting. His pitching coach may have a 92 for pitching and a 47 for batting. The team's players will be influenced by the 92 pitching and 89 batting. Clubhouse demeanor and Motivation will affect the performance of the team when playing from behind. Alternatively, they can affect team chemistry. Or it can affect both.
• Negotiating corporate sponsorships. Let's not get too crazy. I'm thinking of a simple mechanic similar to the way sponsors were handled in EA Sports' NASCAR Thunder 2004. The higher the team's prestige, the better (and more lucrative) the sponsors to sign. Depending on the team's prestige, sponsors may have certain expectations. A low prestige team may be expected to place 3rd or higher in the division or win at least 82 games. A high prestige team might be expected to win 95+ games and get to the ALCS (you can imagine similar expectations for football). If the team fails, the sponsor bails and the team prestige drops. Secondly, allow users to customize the sponsor names and logos.
• Option to automate Baseball's amateur draft without a prompt window. While I love checking out my minor leaguers, I can't be bothered to scout 18-year-olds. Currently, when I sim a season, it stops to give a prompt for the amateur draft. The prompt should not appear when I choose to sim an entire season.
• Full minor leagues. This might be too much. I kinda like the way Baseball Mogul simplifies the minor leagues. Maybe a full AAA team with simplified AA and A teams? That might be a good compromise. It'd be nice to develop coaches through the minors too. Hire one for A and AA and hire a manager, pitching coach and bench coach for AAA. Might be nice, but I could easily live without it.
• College Football. Incorporate college football into Football Mogul. I would kill for this feature. Well, I would tell O.J. to kill for this feature. He might do it, too. Sure, college football could be a separate game, I suppose, but I'd prefer it be fully incorporated into one game (with an option for the user if he only wants to play college or only wants to play the pros). At the heart of the game, the user has the option to control a collegiate team as well as a pro team. As the athletic director, he recruits high school players, tries to keep the university's prestige up while improving his own reputation. Improving one's own reputation allows him to seek a job at a better university. EA Sports' NCAA Football 2004 did a good job in their dynasty mode. (Later versions of the game added tedium to the process.)
  • Top college players would fuel the pro draft.
  • College coaches could fuel the pool of pro coaches.
  • Users recruit players from high school and juco by assigning a number of points (determined by university prestige/resources) towards a pool of scouted recruits.
• Customizable HTML output. I love the HTML output pages. However, users who how to code HTML should have the option to modify templates to customize the output. There's also an issue with playoffs. They don't appear to be supported very well by the HTML output pages. Users should be able to navigate to the 2007 playoffs, the 2006 playoffs, etc. Each year should have a playoffs page (or at least the full playoff results on the yearly standings pages).
• Import standings, history, Hall of Fame, statistics, etc. from the previous year's game into the new game. Users who have played 34 seasons in Mogul 2007 should be able to import their saved game and full league history into the 2008 version.
• Training camp. I'm on the fence on this one. It should be simple, if it's incorporated at all. Do it like Front Page Sports. The user assigns a level of attention to various positions. If he assigns 0%, all players at that position decline a little bit in their attributes. If he assigns 5%, nothing happens. If he assigns 15% or more, all players at that position improve a little bit in their attributes. For example, I might assign 20% to QB, 25% to RB, 30% to LB and 5% to everything else for a total of 100%. As long as their position receives 5%, young players (under 25) will progress as normal. Alternatively, Training Camp could be another coaching attribute which influences the rate and amount a player improves.
• Custom playbooks and gameplan for both offense and defense. Users pick from a huge selection of plays and the subsequent stats generated are affected by the playbook, i.e. a run and shoot type offense would generate different stats than a run control offense. A comprehensive gameplan would allow users to edit a situational template. Select a different list of plays for different situations. Teams will dip into a different pool of plays for 3rd and short than they would for 3rd and long. Leading the game with 5 minutes to go? Run the ball and stay in bounds.
• Play editor. Assign receiver routes, blocking responsibilities, gap responsibilities, coverage types, blitzes, etc. Use existing plays as templates for custom plays.
• Improve free agency. On the one hand, I hate Madden's bidding simulation that takes forever to do. On the other hand, it's more realistic than signing whatever player you want. Is there a compromise? Yes. When the user tries to sign a QB, for example, the AI should run check of the other teams who also need a QB and try to counterbid the user.
• Improved awards display. Awards, such as MVP or Championship rings, should be displayed on the same page as the player's career stats. Less clicking that way.
• Rule 5 draft? No, no, a thousand times no. I do not want to waste time clicking on 40 players to protect each season. If it is implemented, I hope users have the option of toggling this feature off.
• Add all-time stats per team. You can compare your current first baseman with all-time batting records for your team.
• Luxury tax. User should be able to customize the amount of the luxury tax in order to better balance rich/poor teams.