I think HBD is a median product between the handful of baseball gm games out on the market. I have played Out of the Park Baseball and it is even more intricate than HBD. I have played the franchise mode in MLB the Show and that is a much more dumbed down version of a gm game. It is more about building a franchise from an ownership perspective, but it has things mentioned above regarding cost cutting. There are a handful of GM games on the market that I have not tried. However, I like HBD.

In OOTP, there is a lot of work you can do to find efficiency, but other owners can just check gm mode to see actual ratings and this undermines all the work you do.

In MLB the Show, you can do interesting things like relocate an MLB franchise, but the intricacies are nowhere near to what hbd offers. Also, with mlb the show, the servers get disconnected every two years because they want you to purchase the new version of the game.

I would be all for them creating a scaled down World for Newbs where injuries are turned off or limited in some capacity, but that's it. Also, the record in this dumbed downed World would not count towards regular HBD.

A bit late to this thread. Some great ideas. My suggestions:

1. Fix UI that works poorly on touch devices -- draft ranking, the MLB service time number that is only seen by hovering on a link on the player page, seeing which players are Comp A/B from the FA list.
2. Fix world chat -- longer posts getting broken up awkwardly, clumsy bad word filtering. Disable the submit button so people can't click it two or three times when they think they haven't.
3. Fix coach hiring.
4. Fix award algorithms. Plus and minus plays have way too much weight in MVP and ASG lists and squeeze out guys who would never be left off IRL, like 60 HR guys on playoff teams. So many 500+ HR guys with zero award resume for HOF voting.
5. Loosen up on strict PC when an SP is throwing a no-hitter or even a shutout late in the game.
6. Reveal draft pool immediately after budgets are locked. Would be nice to account for a poor draft pool when deciding on re-signing one's own comp FA, rather than waiting 40 games to find out your comp picks are worthless.
7. 20 draft scouting in either HS or College should mean you see all prospects of that type.

Posted by mattyjim on 1/5/2021 4:06:00 PM (view original):
A bit late to this thread. Some great ideas. My suggestions:

1. Fix UI that works poorly on touch devices -- draft ranking, the MLB service time number that is only seen by hovering on a link on the player page, seeing which players are Comp A/B from the FA list.
2. Fix world chat -- longer posts getting broken up awkwardly, clumsy bad word filtering. Disable the submit button so people can't click it two or three times when they think they haven't.
3. Fix coach hiring.
4. Fix award algorithms. Plus and minus plays have way too much weight in MVP and ASG lists and squeeze out guys who would never be left off IRL, like 60 HR guys on playoff teams. So many 500+ HR guys with zero award resume for HOF voting.
5. Loosen up on strict PC when an SP is throwing a no-hitter or even a shutout late in the game.
6. Reveal draft pool immediately after budgets are locked. Would be nice to account for a poor draft pool when deciding on re-signing one's own comp FA, rather than waiting 40 games to find out your comp picks are worthless.
7. 20 draft scouting in either HS or College should mean you see all prospects of that type.

Big +1 on item one above. I have to fire up the ole desktop to see service time.

1. Fix UI that works poorly on touch devices -- draft ranking, the MLB service time number that is only seen by hovering on a link on the player page, seeing which players are Comp A/B from the FA list.

List Top 5 finishes for CY Young, MVP, ROY and Fireman under Awards and HOF Voting.

We should be able to adjust our budgets down by however much we want. For example, if you decide you want to go all in this year, you should be able to take your high school scouting down from 16 million to 8 million or something like that. I understand not being able to increase the budget but you can "fire" a staff and clear house pretty quickly if needed. Maybe there are consequences to this that I don't understand thought, that was just my thought.

Posted by mborden308 on 1/5/2021 7:45:00 PM (view original):
We should be able to adjust our budgets down by however much we want. For example, if you decide you want to go all in this year, you should be able to take your high school scouting down from 16 million to 8 million or something like that. I understand not being able to increase the budget but you can "fire" a staff and clear house pretty quickly if needed. Maybe there are consequences to this that I don't understand thought, that was just my thought.

I have seen past posts that communicated the opinion that owners should be able to move between budgets more freely (i.e. increase the incremental seasonal movement from a max of 4 to a max of 6 or 8). However, I have not seen a post regarding making the downside limitless. I actually think this makes sense -- I think at any time you should be able to move from any number DOWN to 0 immediately. However, maintaining a limit of 4 on the "up the ladder" still makes sense.

So many great ideas here. A couple from me:

- I've seen a couple of people mention draft scouting. Regardless of what I've invested in scouting, I should at least be aware of the top prospects. My view of their ratings may be significantly inaccurate if my scouting investment is low, but to not have awareness of the top prospects at all is silly
- IMO, the overall prospect pool is too shallow. Most draft pools only have a handful of players who will contribute at the ML level after the first round, vs. reality where useful players can be found throughout the draft (DITR aside). Higher investment in scouting should be rewarded by uncovering some of these later round gems that can make a huge difference in a team's prospect pool
- overall UI improvements to make multiple functions or stat views available on one screen (e.g. player settings, defensive replacements, PH, etc),
- a bit more consistency in player performance - I find that many players have a one good year/one bad year pattern, relievers implode too often, etc.

Appreciate your commitment to making the game better!

The more I think about this idea the more I like it, so I'm going to put it here.

The draft board for the upcoming season should be generated the cycle after the budgets are locked in.

Posted by jimt14120 on 12/27/2020 9:09:00 AM (view original):
It would be nice if commissioners had some control settings for their worlds. In ULB we use a $25M prospect cap, it would be nice to be able to set a limit and not have to check it constantly.

I like this idea a lot. You could also have the option to transfer amounts other than 2M increments. You could allow commissioners to decide the penalty for transfers. Instead of getting 1 for 2 on your transfer money the world/commish could vote choose an easier 1 for 1 or a harsher 3 for 1. Budgeting is one of the most important parts of the game.

Posted by hockey1984 on 1/7/2021 12:35:00 PM (view original):
The more I think about this idea the more I like it, so I'm going to put it here.

The draft board for the upcoming season should be generated the cycle after the budgets are locked in.

I read your post on the other thread explaining this. I'm going to answer it here because I think more will see it here. And I'm probably going to sound like MikeT23, because this is a point he often made.

This game is all about budget allocation. Money management. Cost efficiency.

Just about every exploit we discuss on these boards is about squeezing dollars out of your budget. The extra year of control on a player. The rock in RF. The "why are we locked into 4 million increase/decrease?"

Budget day is the first day of the season. You have to decide. Then you have to play the hand you dealt yourself.

You are postulating that seeing the draft pool before you see the IFAs, before you see the free agents, will allow more flexibility in deciding what direction your team should take. So I'll make two points.

First, anything like this, which is effectively extending your budget after you set, it is dumbing down the game. It removes consequence for your money management decisions.

Second, very few consider the draft as a function of the league in replenishing the player pool. Most of us only think of it as "make my team better." It also serves the world by setting a baseline level for player quality. Everyone gets hot and horny when we see a draft come up loaded with studs. But if everyone got players who were all studs, then they'd be useless. The world would be a version of a high cap sim league.

Now say everyone looks up the day after budgets and sees a very weak draft. 24 out of 32 owners decide to punt, don't sign anyone. Something like that would decimate the world player pool. Even better, the eight guys who take that draft seriously could possibly have super teams in five seasons because the player pool would be full of tryout camp level players.

But my counter argument is I'm not a MLB/NHL/NFL/NBA owner, scout or anything to do with any of them and even I know which years are supposedly 'strong draft classes' vs 'weak draft classes' now, that doesn't mean that they are. Every team and every season has misses but that's what the fuzzy ratings are for.

Like I said, I'm open to suggestions as to how to improve this going forward but it seems odd to me that every season we have 0 knowledge about the draft until about 2 weeks before the all star break and then all of the sudden 'here it is!'.

Maybe it does need a bigger change rather then just a small bug / quality of life fix. I hear in hoops dynasty prospects get ranked A-B-C-D rather then with actual numbers. Maybe that is a start and you can only see those vaules? I don't know.

Fair to say - I haven't played those games so I don't know how that system plays out. So we're talking about a more comprehensive overhaul, which I could get behind.

My argument was based on the current system being set up this way, let's not dumb it down. I'd entirely be interested in a better way to do player allocation top to bottom.

Would like prestige to be a thing. In real like fa's would like to play for my teams more so then tankers.

FAs already tell you their goal is to play for a playoff contender or just to prove they can still play, etc. make those actually mean something. I assume they are currently meaningless.

In real life stud players most the time want to win and not play for tankers. If I was not quitting due to the changes with injuries id be on board with a "prestige" thing like hd.