Development Lab Slots Might Need Scaling

[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.

[Bobfather]

There is a max of 30 players. Go to settings, players & teams, down on the left side.

[MisterTidster]

Saw that. Bumped it up to 16 already. Just pointing out how the math acts a little quirky.

[twins_34]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the development lab and has everything to do with players from the age of 27 to 30 taking hits on their defensive ratings which is going to be addressed in an upcoming patch it just hasn't been released yet. But the issue is not the development lab the issue is just players losing defensive rating at a sharp rate between the age of 27 to 30. You'll notice that they're bat still seems to be just fine but their defensive ratings just fall off the table. But the devs know about the issue and they are working on it so yeah your issue is just defense ratings taking a jump off a cliff. One way I'd probably fight against this is set aging to much older for right now and then set players aging speed to like 0.900 to 0.850 . That might help with the defensive rating drop off but it is at least something you can try.

[MisterTidster]

Thanks Twins. Found that helpful and will check out your videos. I did figure out today that my severe development issues was indeed due to not manually handling the development focus for each player… my fixation on the development lab was because the lab could partially compensate for my issues.

It turns out that assigning your assistant GM to handle development focus can be really bad. I thought that the assistant GM’s preferences would mostly affect trade evaluations. Turns out my “speed and defense” minded assistant GM was jamming up defense and running on ALL my players. Prospects weren’t developing the traits that would help them move up causing them to stall in low A, and their potential in the traits sacrificed for the running and defense would steadily drop causing their overall potential to drop. It’s like my “speed and defense” assistant GM thought I wanted to develop every player into a leadoff hitter. Pitching wasn’t much better… turns out the reason I had such a hard time developing a reliever with decent control was due to my assistant GM constantly sacrificing control for reliever stamina.

Funny that I never noticed the age 27 defense decline, because the jacked up defense focus was propping up D as all the rest of their traits dropped.

[TessaVine]

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.

After 8 seasons, development lab limits seem too restrictive. Veterans rapidly decline by 30, and prospects often stall in the minors. With only 8 slots, balancing vet maintenance and prospect growth feels impossible. Regression feels too aggressive unless micromanaged. Scaling lab effects based on available slots might help. I trust Academized for their excellent coursework writing service found at https://academized.com/coursework-writing-service which consistently delivers well-researched and original papers tailored to my academic needs.


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.

Balancing prospect growth and veteran maintenance with only eight slots feels restrictive. Adjusting this could enhance player development realism.

[Fighting22]

I'm 4 seasons in (play pitch by pitch) and have a hard time with players not developing. Traded some vets for younger studs with potential, and after 2 seasons in the bigs they're not even close to getting better, although it still shows the top ratings. I'm 60% over in the development budget and send these guys to the lab but nothing seems to happen. All the others have guys that are twice as good as mine, but mine never develop.

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by Fighting22

I'm 4 seasons in (play pitch by pitch) and have a hard time with players not developing. Traded some vets for younger studs with potential, and after 2 seasons in the bigs they're not even close to getting better, although it still shows the top ratings. I'm 60% over in the development budget and send these guys to the lab but nothing seems to happen. All the others have guys that are twice as good as mine, but mine never develop.

Yeah...when the new patch comes out I'm going to see if anything changes on that front but if nothing does I'll experiment to see how high I need to crank up dev speed without it turning unrealistic the other way.


I also think part of the problem is that the 25/26 draft pools feel extremely underpowered. Yeah, some draft pools IRL are weaker than others, but I checked a long-term save recently and after 10 years or so the majority of the first-rounders in '25 retired without even making the big leagues.



The best players of the entire class were some later round pitchers who were blessed by the TCR gods.


If you look at IRL draft classes in the past 20 or so years, even in the weakest ones, most of the first-rounders will at least make the majors, even if they don't end up being any good.

[tejdog1]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

Yeah...when the new patch comes out I'm going to see if anything changes on that front but if nothing does I'll experiment to see how high I need to crank up dev speed without it turning unrealistic the other way.


I also think part of the problem is that the 25/26 draft pools feel extremely underpowered. Yeah, some draft pools IRL are weaker than others, but I checked a long-term save recently and after 10 years or so the majority of the first-rounders in '25 retired without even making the big leagues.



The best players of the entire class were some later round pitchers who were blessed by the TCR gods.


If you look at IRL draft classes in the past 20 or so years, even in the weakest ones, most of the first-rounders will at least make the majors, even if they don't end up being any good.

Check out the 2017 first round.
El stinko

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Not necessarily related to the same dev lab question/concern but I noticed this today. The AI controlled Giants took recently drafted Randy Johnson and his ****ty control and sent him to the dev lab to work on.....his infield defense?

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

Check out the 2017 first round.
El stinko

True but even in 2017 (and the arguably equally bad 2016 first-round) ~80% of the first-rounders made the majors, even if they ended up stinking.