Sandbox League

[ajmh]

Love your Pro Basketball game!

I play sandbox with custom players and manage all 30 teams.

Based on my playing style, I have a few suggestions or requests:

1. Custom players are way too tall (and heavy) and post-oriented for the modern game. It just seems to produce too many traditional C types. I end up moving a large number of PF's to C, a large number of SF's to PF and a large number of SG's to SF to make it closer to the modern game. As a result you have a shortage of wing players and a glut of post types. It also doesn't seem to produce naturally any undersized players like 6'7 C or 6'5 PF's. Converting players up a position creates this, but it reduces the pool of players in smaller positions.
2. There are too many poor free throw shooters. I tend to adjust players so that their FT ability is never less than their Outside Shooting ability but that gets tedious year after year.
3. Too many poor 3 point shooters shoot a high volume of 3. It is pretty common to see C's and PF's with shooting percentages below .400 because they have shot an inordinate number of 3's at percentages below .300. How do I stop this without editing these players? (And it wasn't immediately clear what to edit in Commissioner mode to stop this and allow some of these players to actually be playable.)
4. The draft in commissioner mode is not ideal. Because I am in Commissioner mode if I go to a player in the war room it always indicates that I haven't interviewed or scouted a player, even if the team I am acting as has interviewed and scouted the player. As a result, I either need to remember what I saw on teams screens before the draft, make a list before the draft, or don't save and redo the draft after completing a draft. All options are a pain. It would be better if we could change to being the team GM in the draft and have the information from interviews and scouting. I would prefer that then the additional graphics and commentary that occurs in the draft.
5. In that same vein, you can't actually start an initially league with a draft in sandbox mode. There is no way to select players in commissioner mode in sandbox mode. You end up just having to autorun the initial draft which defeats the purpose of a start-up draft.
6. You need more god-ability in commissioner mode. You need to be able to adjust contracts and retire players. I screwed up a contract offer for a team once and had no way of correcting. There also ends up being a lot of players that I will not use on any team and they just clutter the free agent list, and are of an age where it is unrealistic that they would sign with a G League team
7. League leaders stat package needs to improve. I want to be able to compare TS and Per across players. I would rather see tables similar to the teams stat pages and sort from there.
8. Retained players need to show up on the contract list. Email notification doesn't work well in sandbox commissioner mode
9. Can we have a Meet Demand option in contract negotiations? I am often not offering the max, min, or exemption and don't enjoy typing in my contract offer repeatedly.

Sorry for all the requests.
I love your game, but would love these changes to improve the experience further.

[CJacksonCowart]

This is an AWESOME list and I appreciate you taking the time to write all this out! I've shared it with Gary, and I'm sure he'll appreciate you putting in the work to help improve the product for PB23!

[ajmh]

hanks!

A couple follows ups:

On Free Throw %:
The game already seems to set Free Throw % at a higher percentage than 3-pointers and mid-range shots.
It is occasionally lower than Paint/Restricted Area %.
I am adjusting these Free Throw % up to match the Paint/Restricted Area % whenever I come across them, but usually this is just a player or two per team, and the overall impact is pretty minimal.
Sorry, my mistake below.
I just wanted to clarify.

Also two items that I forgot to include:
Player Nationality
Custom league with fictional players produces too many American players and not enough internationals.
It only seems to create European international players, and maybe a player from Argentina or Brazil or China. (I believe my current league has 1 player from Argentina and 2 players from China.)
it creates no Canadian players, even though I believe they are the most prevalent international, as well as nothing from the Caribbean or Africa.
I don't think I have seen any players from Australia either.
And the international players it creates are players who didn't go to US colleges.
It doesn't seem to create any internationals who have attended US colleges.

Starting salaries:
I started with a draft in sandbox mode, and got players with salaries $55m and above (I believe the highest was $59M).
How is that possible when max salary is currently $45M?

These are just some things that would help improve the realism of what is generally a fantastic game.

Thanks again for your time and the fantastic job you do with this game.