This year's edition added a mode focused on the history and moments of Negro League players, which was awesome, informative, and immersive. Also, scouting updates to Franchise and March to October modes, as well as the ability to do more than one season with the latter made both modes playable again for the first time in years.
However, the Diamond Dynasty mode was primarily ruined by 99's and moving away from immersion. This year, the mode started the season out with 99-rated players, essentially eliminating the power curve structure that had defined the mode since '19. This also devalued the current player collection as well as Team Affinity, which had been the mode's staples for developing a team. In other words, the long, fun grind of six months was removed and shortened to just a week or so. From the first month of the season on, the only massive improvements to a squad were expensive cards found in super-rare "Chase" packs, limiting the game to one for those willing to splash cash on stubs.
Also, this year seemed to over rely on new card types without any basis in historic accomplishment or statistic. The reliance on 99's also undermined a new change in the addition of "captains" who were specific player cards that would boost other player attributes depending on your DD team composition meeting certain conditions such as using players from the same team or same era. However, these cards didn't have much of an impact with the already over-powered 99's and some of the conditions for "captaincy" didn't make sense as some of the best captain cards were focused on arbitrary attribute points, where the boost was given to those with 99 instead of 98 durability. And with the shift to completely made-up player card types, whether a player had 99 instead of 98 in an attribute was completely at the whim of the development team and broke the immersion of the mode. You might as well have played a non-licensed fictional baseball game instead.
However, the Diamond Dynasty mode was primarily ruined by 99's and moving away from immersion. This year, the mode started the season out with 99-rated players, essentially eliminating the power curve structure that had defined the mode since '19. This also devalued the current player collection as well as Team Affinity, which had been the mode's staples for developing a team. In other words, the long, fun grind of six months was removed and shortened to just a week or so. From the first month of the season on, the only massive improvements to a squad were expensive cards found in super-rare "Chase" packs, limiting the game to one for those willing to splash cash on stubs.
Also, this year seemed to over rely on new card types without any basis in historic accomplishment or statistic. The reliance on 99's also undermined a new change in the addition of "captains" who were specific player cards that would boost other player attributes depending on your DD team composition meeting certain conditions such as using players from the same team or same era. However, these cards didn't have much of an impact with the already over-powered 99's and some of the conditions for "captaincy" didn't make sense as some of the best captain cards were focused on arbitrary attribute points, where the boost was given to those with 99 instead of 98 durability. And with the shift to completely made-up player card types, whether a player had 99 instead of 98 in an attribute was completely at the whim of the development team and broke the immersion of the mode. You might as well have played a non-licensed fictional baseball game instead.