MLB 10: The Show 30-Player Franchise Mode

Hey everyone, the MLB FE team here to bring you the first installment of the MLB 10: The Show blogs. For this entry, we’ll be talking about some of the details that have gone into the new 30-Player Franchise Mode.

One of our goals going into this year was to finally enable the ability to mimic your real-life counterpart rosters when in Franchise mode. In order to do so, we had to allow all 30 teams to be set for user control. Before we could even dive into that, we had to change up how profiles and options work.

In the past, we’ve allowed you to create a total of four profiles. With this new 30-Player control, we had to open the profile system up to accommodate the potential for a full 30 players. One of the biggest reasons was to have the ability to support up to 30 different option sets. So now you have the ability to create 30 different profiles, and assign any or all of them to your selected teams. If you want only one team to use a custom option set, assign a profile to only that team, and all other selected teams will use the Global options set.

After crossing the options hurdle, another area we needed to expand on was our player injury system. In order for you to have that true-to-life roster, we saw the need to allow you to manage your player injuries. We now support a system that allows you to select which players should be injured, choosing their injury type and injury duration. You can also choose to remove players from the disabled list at any point, ensuring your roster can be kept in sync with the actual club roster. In order to use this feature, you need to first set the Injuries option to manual.

During our design phase, we realized one important roster control aspect we desperately needed to add — Class-A rosters. This year you will now have a Class-A team roster to work with, giving you even more wiggle room when making roster decisions. The Class-A team cannot be taken in game, but you can use it as another 15 roster spots for your organization.

Once we finished addressing the tools vital for you to support your rosters, we looked at polish features. We came up with a new email system in Franchise mode to provide you with one convenient place to keep tabs on your organization needs. This email system will provide with you updates in a variety of areas, including day-to-day operations, roster related information, Minor League player updates, and league transactions. You will have the ability to cater your inbox by selecting which areas you want to be notified of, and which you don’t.

One last area expanded upon was the waiver system we implemented last year. We’ve added real-time waiver periods. Now when a player is placed on waivers, teams will have 48 hours to place a claim on the player. After the 48-hour period, the claiming team with the highest waiver priority is awarded the player. Teams are now able pass players through revocable trade waivers and, if he clears, can trade that player after the July 31st trade deadline. Also, when a player is designated for assignment, teams will now have 10 days to decide whether to release him, trade him, or if he clears waivers, assign him to the minor leagues. As was the case last year, we have a transaction handbook that you can visit at any point to familiarize yourself with all of the rules.

As you can see a lot of focus has been placed on providing you with all the tools necessary to keep your Franchise roster up-to-date with its real-life counterpart. These enhancements aren’t limited to only Franchise mode, and the same 30-player control can be found in Season mode.

– Aaron Luke and Kolbe Launchbaugh