Whatifsports: Baseball / Basketball / Football Simulation Game

I've played these games for a long time now and have meant to post about them forever. If you end up joining, it'd be cool if you could let me know (sitemail or post here) cause there is a referral credit...but you certainly don't have to and that's not why I'm posting this here.

The premise is basically the same for all 3 sports. I will say that I enjoy basketball (Hoops Dynasty) and baseball (Hardball Dynasty) the most.

Hoops Dynasty

Basically, you're the head coach of a college basketball team. You start at a division 3 school that you choose based on availability of jobs. (You always get accepted to a D3 job if you're a new coach and you apply for it.)

FYI--these are all real schools. All real conferences. Every college in the nation is represented, as far as I know. Just fake coaches and fake players with fake attributes.

You're given a budget for recruiting, and you choose who you go after based on attributes, distance from your school, the offense/defense they ran in college, etc. It takes a few tries to get used to it and get better at it, but it's fun and most coaches are willing to help (and their forums are helpful).

Recruiting is a huge part of this and it's one of the more enjoyable aspects. And it takes the most time. For about 2 days at the end of recruiting, you'll want to check in every 6 hours if you can.

Once that's done, you have your season. You allocate practice minutes to the team (for an offense and a defense that you want to run) and to each player for individual workouts on their attributes. And study hall, cause they can't fail out. You set that up once for the season and adjust it maybe once or twice...not much to it.

Games--you have one game per night that's simulated at 2 am EST. So you pretty much gameplan at some point during the previous day.

Essentially, your time commitment isn't too bad once the season starts.. maybe 10 mins per day, depending on how intense you feel like getting with it.

End of season, there's a conference tourney, playoff tourney, etc. If you choose to, you can apply to D2 schools and move on up if you want. Or you can stay with your school and try to build a dynasty. Or just try to take over all the school records with your players. It takes success over time to move from D2 to D1, but it's definitely attainable.

http://www.whatifsports.com/HD

Cost-wise, I think you can still try it out for free for 1 season with the code "FREEHD", so try that out. Generally, it costs about $10 per season (since you get credits for seasons when you don't make the postseason), and a season lasts about 5 weeks or so.


Gridiron Dynasty

For football, it's almost the exact same thing as basketball. No reason to rehash..

I played this one for 7 seasons, but then I chose to quit. It was more work than fun...recruiting was a pain cause you have to recruit SO many guys for football. And gameplanning took forever if you wanted to be diligent and win because you'd have to change your settings for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th down, short/medium/long to go, and each of 6 formations (or however many you chose to run). Then you had to do the same on defense. To go through the play-by-play of your opponents just to gameplan against their plays..just not fun for me. Tedious.

However, for football strategists and junkies who don't mind some tedium, this one can be fun too, certainly.

 

Hardball Dynasty

This is the one I started most recently, but I think it's the best (with Hoops real close behind it). The biggest difference is that I think it has the highest level of detail and accuracy compared to the real sport.

In this case, it's emulating MLB (as opposed to college).

Time commitment wise..it really isn't that bad. It's not as tedious or consuming as Gridiron. For the bigger things, you'll have a few days to prepare...so you can sit down whenever you have 30 mins and take care of it. Day to day normally...games simulate at 10 am, 6 pm, and 2 am central time.. you really don't even have to do anything between those games if you have all your settinsg done properly. I like to check it between games if possible. But they have all these options built in so that you really don't have to.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Main/

So it's fake players in a fake world... it's really cool in that you operate a franchise. If you have time, you can control all levels... I let the Sim AI control roster moves at every minor league level (except I manage promotions and stuff). There's a lot to learn, but the game is really well-programmed and the help files are actually well-done. (and the owners are really helpful)

It implements things like the real waiver process, the rule 5 draft, budgeting, salary cap, minor league options, etc...so you'll learn even better how all that stuff works.

Another cool thing..trades happen all the time. I'll trade to get rid of salary if I have depth...or to give someone an extra piece for a playoff run. But in return I'll get back a prospect (and you can see prospect projections and all...more accurate projections if you budget more for "future scouting")

One last cool thing I'll mention.. the regular amateur draft (some guys will skip out on you and go to college...so you have to see what your scouts say about their 'signability' and decide how risky you want to be).. and international prospects. These international guys will come about all season long, and you have to use your same budget you had for signing bonuses for amateur draft guy for these international guys if you want any. Most you'll ignore...some are crazy good on potential. One guy went for like 18 mil! Daisuke type $$


Cost-wise, it's $15 for the 1st season to try it out, and $23 per season thereafter. A season lasts 3 months long, so it's pretty good value.

If you're interested in this one, I'd suggest you join my world since we have 7 openings at the moment...and everyone's pretty nice and helpful in there.

 

join hardball dynasty! (if you're into baseball, that is)

we need owners to fill slots in our world