Give Manager-Only Mode Some Love

[Timofmars]

I enjoyed playing the Manager Only Mode (MOM), but also find it very frustrating. I love trying to get the most out of the players I'm given, and there's no option to abuse trades to become overpowered. However, I get completely turned off when the AI makes stupid trades or contract/FA decisions.

MOM has the potential to be a very different game mode from the default career mode rather than just being the same but with restrictions on what you control. So here's my ideas for MOM.


I would like to have some influence or input on the management decisions for my players, especially regarding trades and contracts. Regular OOTP modes require me to initiate trades and contracts (or let the AI handle it completely). But I'd love a mode that comes to me with the options. It limits the scope of the choices I can make (less overwhelming than the regular mode and not really exploitable) but still gives me some control. Some ways of doing this could even make it feel like a role-playing game, which would be fun departure from the regular career mode. Here's some ways it could work:

1.A. Player Contracts A: For player contracts, instead of letting me negotiate contracts or giving me no control whatsoever, perhaps let me have a page showing a potential contract extension deal for each eligible player. It can basically just be what you'd see when you begin contract negotiations and the player gives their initial offer (but maybe make it a slightly better deal for the team since I won't be able to actually negotiate it down). So now throughout the season I can check this page and just click to extend the player if I like the value his offer provides. A possible option here could be to set the length of the extension I'd like to get for a player, and it shows the required salary to make that happen. This would give me fine control over the timing of when my players eventually get released, so I can have them heading out the door just as my prospect is running out of option years.

1.B. Player Contracts B: Alternatively, for a more RPG feel with less control, I could be periodically presented with extension options for players randomly, and I have to decide whether to go along with it or not. There can even be some variability on how good of a deal it is for the team so that there is some risk-reward in the decision, as maybe I could get a better deal later. An additional feature here could be to let me set the number of extension years I'd like to get for each individual player, so when an extension offer pops up, it tries to have that number of years in it. If I don't specify years, it'll just do the default of what the AI thinks is best.

1.C. Player Contracts C: A third way to do contracts could be to let me sort of rank players in the order of importance to me and how much I like the value they offer in a potential extension (so I should still see an estimate of what the contract would be), and then the AI would prioritize giving extensions to the top players in my list, at least until they are out of extension money. This could be combined with the previous idea(1.B.), where I'm more likely to get "random" contract extension offers for the top player in my priorities list. And of course, I should be able to indicate the players I don't want to extend. Or it can just be 3 groupings I can set for players into, where they all start in the default section where the AI may or may not decide to extend, as it does currently. And then the other 2 groups are "try to extend" and "don't extend".



2. Trades: For trades, I'd love to only have offers presented to me instead of having to initiate trades or having no influence at all. For MOM, I want the GM to consult with me on trades, at least ones involving players on the 40-man roster, if not all trades (I hate to see a good prospect go for a bad trade deal). To influence the trades I am offered, I think it'd be great to

The regular OOTP mode gives you access to potentially trading for any player in the world. But I imagine a MOM mode where you are presented with more limited choices and you have to decide whether to take a decent deal or wait for a better trade that may never come.

OOTP already has the section that lets you indicate what you are looking for in trades, like positions, age, ability and potential, etc. You can also mark players as being on the trading block or unavailable for trades. Well, I'd like to use something like this in MOM to influence the trades the AI offers.


3. Manager Immersion Features: I think I'd love it even more if MOM did not feel like it was just the regular OOTP with restrictions, but rather felt it was something completely different and immersive. These ideas would involve much more significant development effort than the previous 2 ideas, but it could be a future direction to consider to make MOM a kind of fun "arcade" mode.

3. A. Give me dilemmas that will affect the morale of different players and I have to decide who to disappoint and who to make happy. Give me things that boost or weaken a player for the following game or for a set number of days, like with new statuses like unfocused/focused, depressed, on fire, etc. Or "focused on his plate discipline" vs "swinging at everything" as some example temporary modifiers that show the mental fluctuations of when a player's game just clicks in a certain aspect, versus when they just seem to forget how they were being successful before. The specific nature of those fluctuations are nice because they can affect your decisions more specifically as well, like giving the leadoff spot to your guy who's plate discipline is in good form.

3. B. Events. There can be all kinds of events, like the team bus breaks down and causes a delay, giving a small negative effect for the next game for some player or 2 as it interferes with their pre-game warmup routine, a player invites you to their BBQ for a boost in morale, etc. I also would like to see events with long-term implications, like with a series of event branches over time. I'm sure the OOTP community would have plenty of ideas too, to create a diverse set of events so that repetition is rare.

3. C. Historical or Fictional Challenges. You could have challenge scenarios specific to MOM that could involve custom storylines. I think some OOTP players that love historical stuff would have ideas about the kinds of situations they'd like to experience. One interesting idea to explore would be dealing with racism issues in the era when black players were entering the league.

3. D. Utilize AI. AI chatbots are at the point where we could potentially have unlimited unique events or at least dialog in an event if you were able to ask an AI with the right prompt and context provided. Even if not integrated into the game directly, I think AI could help you write a lot more events and dialogue in a short time so that it'd be rare for players to see a repeated event.