Rant - player development lab

[yankees2021]

This is by far the worst feature in the game. Not only does it rarely result in a success, but the owner has zero control over the factors that make it a success. I had all six slots filled with high adaptable and work ethic players, picked easy or medium difficulty improvement for stats that were below potential and zero of them. That's right, Zero of them succeeded. This happens almost every spring with the exception that once in a while a player will improve at stealing or something small. Why even have it at all if you aren't going to make it useful. In real life, more than half the players who focus on something in the off season see improvement, even if it is only slight.

In 25, at least I had a chance.

[omg_pwnasaurus]

I've changed the settings to allow only 6 participants and lowered the overall difficulty to "less difficult" and upped the results to improve the gains and I had 2 of 6 fail still but out of the 4 that succeeded only 1 excelled and the power gain was still only +10 (20/80 scale) while the other 3 players had mild gains of +5.

I think these results are more in line with what I would expect from the dev lab so I use these settings. Lowering the number of participants while upping the dice roll of success makes it more of a targeted approach of dev imo, ie) spending a whole offseason with some big prospect IRL or something.

The only real downside is the CPU is still not making smart decisions with how to use the lab. I still see pitchers with 20/80 control working on their defense, etc. So it feels like a slight edge to the user in terms of choice, but the fact that the results, even with the difficulty at minimum and the results at maximum, are not nearly at all game breaking, makes it fine imo.

[Rand]

I find the exact opposite to be the case, it's far too easy to succeed. Even with difficulty at hard, I still succeed about half the time and a failure with any real repercussions worth caring about is a once a decade scenario while big gains happen almost every year.
I wish there were a very hard option.

[crazyjoedavola]

i am finding the pdl to be pretty good thus far...i use 12 setting and see about 30-40 % of those getting a boost, also, of those that do not get a boost i am not seeing a negative impact...which is really good imo!

[Branflakes]

It would be interesting if dev budget affected the number of dev lab slots available. Like paying driveline 500k per player. Maybe I will do this myself as a house rule.

I agree I like to turn down the difficulty on the dev lab so it feels like I have more control over the key prospects, but it does tend to compound on itself and get unbalanced after several years.

[Sweed]

For me it works on default as I would expect. Some improve, some don't.

Too me adding this feature always came with the possibility of unbalancing the game by making it too easy to upgrade players. Go back to threads about this after it was added to the game. Some users (not the OP AFAIK) were mad because they wanted all players in the lab to improve and thankfully that wasn't how it worked. If it's going to be off at least be off by making too few players increase their abilities.

At least they added options to tune to your liking. I'll stick with default and hope they never change that setting and it's likely hood to succeed. Leave that "as is" so we don't have to search for a new setting when importing or starting a new game in a new version. If they want to make changes I'd suggest adding more easy/hard options.

['94 EXPOS]

I too play with it at default settings. I find the success results to be a decent mix that fits with my expectations.

One exception was this past season. I tried to improve bat speed on a low graded prospect who appears to have good tools. The success was deemed 'outstanding' yet my scouts reports never demonstrated any improvements for the player. Odd and a bit frustrating.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by yankees2021

This is by far the worst feature in the game. Not only does it rarely result in a success, but the owner has zero control over the factors that make it a success. I had all six slots filled with high adaptable and work ethic players, picked easy or medium difficulty improvement for stats that were below potential and zero of them. That's right, Zero of them succeeded. This happens almost every spring with the exception that once in a while a player will improve at stealing or something small. Why even have it at all if you aren't going to make it useful. In real life, more than half the players who focus on something in the off season see improvement, even if it is only slight.

In 25, at least I had a chance.

I understand the sentiment, but I think any other way would be ruinous to the game's intent. If all teams had regular success in the dev lab twice a year (figuring you can run 2 different sessions per player in the off-season) the overall talent growth over time across the league and statistical outputs would I think frustrate more OOTP users than placate those who want more Dev Lab success.. I don't think the intent of the Dev lab was for it to be the main way to realise or grow potential, but an adjunct to the existing process, a high risk-high reward channel to try and tease out or unlock development - just another tool in the managers kit.