[MisterTidster]

I’m 8 seasons in and I’ve noticed some quirks that feel like they might be development lab related…

First is the high number of veterans across the league that seem to completely take in their early 30s. I had a catcher that was consistently 4-5 WAR each year, then at 29 he lost a half star and completely tanked. Teams are constantly trying to trade me their $20m+ players who are around age 30 that lost a half star and suddenly become mid. It feels like you have to keep your top players in the development lab each season to keep them from tanking.

Players in the minors very frequently seem to stall in their development losing stars of potential. By the time they reach AAA, they’re not really looking super viable with very moderate potential… it’s like the algorithm is trying to regress everyone to mean unless you’re active in the development process… again the development lab is the tool that keeps your high potential players moving up through the minors without losing potential stars.

Problem is, with 8 slots available in the lab, the number of players successfully competing their training is pretty low and you have to choose between keeping veterans from tanking or developing your top prospects. Feels like with only 8 default slots available, some of those forces that causes ability drop off in veterans and potential drop off in prospects shouldn’t be as strong. Those forces could scale up depending on the number of lab slots you manually adjust to.

Edit to add: One factor to what I’m experiencing might be that I set my assistant GM to make all the development plans. I kinda wanted to avoid that level of micromanaging. If you’ve had a lot of success with those development plans, I’d appreciate tips.