Consider this: they become "personal" because there are people involved. Not post-bots, not scripts, but real live people.

If you think about it, that actually explains it pretty well.

Or he could keep irritating you and providing me with tons of entertainment. :D

:)

I wish I could find it so entertaining. :(

soooo anywho *trying to change the subject* ...

Wondering if people can point me in the right direction as to why there are only 30 or so players (out of 3000+ in the universe) that are 35 or older? My aging modifiers have been set to .98.

I haven't seen too much of an outcry on the ootp boards, so i figure there must be something i'm doing wrong. Are there other settings I should be looking at? I would assume that the default aging modifier value (1) would produce results at least somewhat similar to modern MLB.

For more information: I'm using a fictional 24 team universe with 3 levels of minor leagues. Everything else is basically using the default values. A guy did some resarch on the ootp boards to change aging modifiers to .001 (the lowest possible value), but I can't imagine that that drastic solution would be the way to go, especially when it seems that others are playing the game right out of the box without seeing aging problems.

is there some other config setting i should look at?

Edit: I wonder if having 15 rounds in the amateur draft is the culprit?

You could also tweak the development modifiers a bit. I think one of the problems identified in the Dream Team forum was the fact that the game seems to heavily favor ratings (so even if your older players are doing well, they'll be tossed in favor of the newbs). Also, the game development seems sped up, so that tons of players are ML-ready too young. IRL, if a young player is struggling, the team will send him down...in OOTP, as long as he has better ratings, it will keep him up.

Yeah someone on ootp board did a short analysis and came up with suggested modifier settings. but what confuses me is that others on the ootp board seem to be having no problems with the game, even without modifying the modifiers.


on a (related) tangent: i have no problem with the game favoring ratings. but it seems that the root of the problem is that older players are not keeping their ratings long enough. i think to compensate for the arby/fa system, veterans should retain ratings even longer than we would perceive that they do (based on mlb age statistics) because owners IRL probably favor younger guys despite their true playing ability because they have cheaper contracts. so even though the mlb average age is 28.5, that doesn't mean that actual ratings begin to drop off at 28.5, but instead may begin dropping off around 30. The game should also include this, to compensate for the financial incentives currently afforded to opt youngsters contracts over FA contracts.
Developers need to begin realizing that MLB average age does not equal talent peak age.

I think it works both ways. Plenty of veterans get playing time because they have big contracts even though they could be replaced by a younger cheaper equivient player.

There could be post-bots amoung us!

The biggest issue I see in the game WRT aging - and this goes back to when Markus originally separated starters from relievers in (I think) version 5 - is that with starting pitchers, there are guys who are just super-duper aces who will give you 7 innings of lights-out ball but only have a 12 (out of 20) endurance. Thing is, OOTP appears to have a rock-solid endurance threshold where, the second a pitcher dips under it, he's instantly converted into a reliever. I mean, instantly. That's why you see so many guys go from a good SP career to one as a MR when they get into their 30s. Partly this is because, as above, the game looks more at ratings instead of accumulated performance, but it's also necessary to eliminate this, at least as something set in stone.

But yeah... playing in God mode as I like to do, I really don't see all that many 30+ year olds just suddenly die off per se. What I'm seeing is the computer habitually replacing 10/10/10 32 year olds with 10/10/10 22 year olds. This is a good AI move but also not terribly realistic. IRL the 10/10/10 veteran has demonstrated that he's at least a league average player while the youngster has not shown that at the major league level in all probability. I realize that there is no such thing as a AAAA player but baseball minds think there is and that is one huge reason why the guy with the "proven" record very often gets the nod over the guy without it.

The other thing to take into account is that the primary thing that nearly all managers and GMs try to do is avoid getting fired. No, winning the World Series is not the #1 immediate goal, except when the boss says that doing anything less will get you a pink slip. Because of this, GMs and mangers tend to be rather conservative with their moves. If they stay with a vet for too long, that's going to look like less of a minus to the boss (and to the fanbase that follows the team) than if they pull a productive vet for a rookie and the rookie doesn't produce. Generally speaking, a major league player has to lose his job or get hurt before a GM will put someone in in his place. This even happens every now and then with HOF-caliber players. Think of Edgar Martinez in Seattle, getting stuck behind Jimmy Presley until the Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love finally hit his way out of the Kingdome.

But yeah, I think transaction AI is more to blame than the aging curve. Problem is, I think if you "fix" the AI in this case you'll have a big group of people complaining that it's too easy to "moneyball" the computer. Makes it something of a lose-lose situation.

After a couple months now, I'm officially going the "unplayable" route and staying with 6.51. I'll wait and see what others say next year but will probably look at alternatives.

As someone mentioned earlier, it's just overdone. It isn't fun to play as I feel more and more like I spend my time doing menial tasks than actually playing the game. It takes hours to make a trade, hours to make sure your minor league system can get through a couple weeks, and hours for other menial tasks that took a few minutes in 6.51.

Now I was excited as anyone about a lot of these new features. I think in the end though, sometimes doing too much is bad. The beauty of OOTP was being able to run an organization for decades and watch players develop and go through your system. With so much being added, it can take months just to get through one season without a disaster happening to your organization. The functionality is overly complicated and too much stuff has become a drag.

I think the moral of the story is that we really didn't have a bad thing with the previous versions of OOTP. Yeah, it would have been cool to have some things like an almanac and some more customization to leagues. Yeah it needed some roster management tweaking as well as other issues with the AI. But in the end, it was enjoyable for many and a good game. I think the effort may have been better spent building on that instead of trying to fix something that wasn't entirely broke.

I think we'll see a lot of changes next year. It doesn't take long to look through the forums to see that this years version is dead. They may have sold a lot of copies up front, but I doubt as many people are playing. The online leagues have dwindled down dramatically, there isn't even a roster set, mods are scarce compared to other versions, and we have people who are waiting 2 months for fixes before they even start their league.

It just seems to me that they took a good game that needed some improvements and turned it into a very complex game that is ridden with bugs and flaws. I'd like to think next year could fix it, but I seriously just see so many flaws in the game that the re-write needs a re-write.

Since this topic has been an issue with this game for a couple of versions, I found this article today.


http://baseballanalysts.com/archives...axes_and_1.php

Death, Taxes, and Major League Waivers
By Keith Law

MLB's rules are complex and convoluted, but they're not hard. I've heard various people in front offices referred to as "rules experts" or - my favorite "waivers experts." The rule on waivers (Rule 9) runs nine pages, a large part of which revolve around resolving the order of claims. We're not talking Finnegan's Wake here; anyone with the rules and perhaps a pen and paper can figure these out pretty quickly. The problem is that the rules aren't very public, and as a result, members of the media and the average fan are all at a disadvantage when it comes to some of the more esoteric rules or to baseball's inconsistent nomenclature.

Here are a few rules that seem to cause a lot of confusion with my best efforts at explaining them.

Waivers

I'll never forget something I saw this spring on a message board I won't name, when Chris Snow of the Boston Globe (and now director of hockey operations for the Minnesota Wild) reported that Hee Seop Choi couldn't be sent to the minors without clearing waivers. Because most fans weren't familiar with the rule in question, the immediate assumption was that Snow was wrong. And one poster in particular ripped Snow, saying it was just "sloppy reporting" and then saying how every beat writer should learn the transaction rules.

Except, of course, Snow was right. How odd that the professional should know what he was talking about.

There is a rule rarely invoked in baseball that creates a situation where a player who has options remaining still has to clear waivers to be sent on an optional assignment. If the assignment is to begin at least three full calendar years from the date of the player's first appearance on a 25-man roster, then the player can not be sent on an optional assignment without first clearing major league waivers. These waivers are revocable, and players usually clear those waivers without incident.

There are three kinds of waivers in MLB:

* Unconditional release waivers. These are self-explanatory. A player on release waivers can be claimed for $1, and the claiming team assumes the player's contract. The player does have the right to refuse this claim and become a free agent.
* Outright or special waivers. The name changes depending on the time of year, but the effect is the same. These are the waivers you use to kick a player off of your 40-man roster. They're also the waivers to use when you wish to send a player who is out of options to the minors (thereby also removing him from your 40-man). These waivers are irrevocable, meaning that if you place a player on outright waivers and he is claimed, you can not pull the player back off waivers.
* Major league waivers. These are the waivers in question during August. Between 4 pm on July 31st and the end of the season, players must clear major league waivers to be assigned to another major league club. These waivers are revocable, and they are also the waivers required for players in Choi's situation, who have options remaining but are more than three calendar years removed from their debuts on major league rosters. Although these waivers are revocable, if a player on major league waivers is claimed and the waiver request is revoked, a subsequent major league waiver request in the same waiver period will be irrevocable.

So, as of the day that this article first appeared, any player who first appeared on a 25-man roster prior to August 3rd, 2003, must now clear major league waivers to be optioned to the minors.

Service time

Some bullet points on service time...

* One year of major league service is defined as 172 days of service, but a major league season actually runs around 183 days. A player can only accrue 172 days of service during a season, but he doesn't have to be on a roster from wire to wire to get that many days. This means that a team that wishes to hold a player in the minors long enough to push his free agency date back by one season must wait at least eleven days (and probably about two weeks, just to be safe) before recalling him.
* Days spent on optional assignments shorter than ten days don't count against your service time. If you're sent down on Friday and are recalled on Monday, you get Saturday and Sunday's days of service as well.
* The cutoff for "super-two" status (referring to players with between two and three years of service who are eligible for salary arbitration) is not fixed; all players with at least 2 years and 0 days of service but no more than 2 years and 171 days (2.171) of service are ranked in descending order by total service time, and the top 16% are granted super-two status. The cutoff is usually somewhere between 2.130 and 2.135; to the best of my knowledge, it's never been below 2.120, so a player recalled after June 5th or so is in the clear.

When an option isn't an option

If a player is sent out on one or more optional assignments during the course of a season, but the total number of days spent on those assignments is fewer than twenty, then he's not charged with an option. So there.

The fourth option

Everyone knows that a player who is added to a 40-man roster for the first time may be sent out on optional assignment in up to three years, which are commonly referred to as "option years" or just "options." But once in a while, a player ends up receiving a fourth option year. Here's the text from the MLB rulebook:

"Contracts of Major League players who, prior to commencement of the current season, have been credited with less than five seasons in professional baseball ... shall be eligible for a fourth optional assignment, without waivers, during that season. For purposes of this Rule 11(c), 90 days or more on the Active List during a championship season shall constitute a 'season of service.' ... [if] a player is placed on the disabled list after the player has been credited with 60 or more days of service in any particular season, the Disabled List time shall be counted to the player's credit."

So what are we saying here?

* A player who is currently entering his fourth or fifth pro season and already has been optioned in three separate years gets a fourth option. Delmon Young has been optioned in three years (2004, 2005, 2006) and he'll get a fourth option in 2007, which he's doing his best to earn.
* A player who has missed one or more seasons to injury - meaning an entire season, or enough time to accrue fewer than 90 days on an active roster - may get a fourth option if, exclusive of those injury-shortened years, he has fewer than five full seasons in pro ball. A season in which he's on an active roster for 60 days or more and then gets hurt still counts as a full season, but a season in which he's hurt and then comes back and gets 60-89 days of service after the injury does not.
* Seasons spent entirely in short-season leagues (the New-York Penn, Northwest, Pioneer, Appalachian, Gulf Coast, and Arizona Rookie Leagues, as well as the Dominican and Venezuelan Summer Leagues) don't count as seasons for the purposes of a fourth option.

As you might imagine, more players are eligible for fourth options than you might have realized, but they often don't come to light because the players are low-profile or because they're kicked off of 40-man rosters before the fourth option comes into play.

Prior outrights

The first time a player is placed on outright/special waivers, he must accept the outright assignment if he clears. All subsequent times, however, he has the right to reject the outright assignment and become a free agent, or he may accept the outright assignment but become a free agent at the end of the season (unless he's back on a 40-man roster at that time).

In addition, a player with at least three years of major league service may also reject an outright assignment at that moment or at the end of the season, regardless of whether he has a prior outright. Players receive these rights under Article XX of the Basic Agreement, and are sometimes referred to as Article XX free agents within the industry, although they're more often lumped in with minor league free agents in the press because the time of their free agency is similar.

As you can see, MLB's roster rules aren't difficult, just complex. I think MLB could do a better job of explaining the rules to fans, since there's a huge appetite for information on rosters, waivers, and service time, but I hope this has at least cleared up a few of the more common quirks in the system.

Great post and I'm soooo glad I didn't pre-order or "give in" to this version. I'm also in the camp that believes that v7 - meaning a nice built in almanac and some AI fixes/cosmetics/options fixes would have been butter on my toast or jam.. whatever.

Having said that, I'm a firm believer that next year's version will be worth at least looking into, but I do have a part of me that believes 6.51 might be the end of the line for me and well, that sucks.

I love the simplicity of 6.51 and from the sound of things, 2006 is too complex for what I want out of any game.

News from Markus posted yesterday.

Yes, a great post here. I agree 100% and have washed my hands of OOTP for good now. I bought right after release, the game was unplayable, then I had insult added to injury when they discounted the game for buyers after the first patch. I tried Puresim and it is fun, but the door is WIDE open for new entry in the baseball world (hint: Solecismic)

More news by Markus

So is anyone playing this?

I was just never able to get into this game, unlike every previous version of ootp that I owned. Version 1.0.3 certainly doesn't look like a difference maker either.

Nope.

PureSim 2007 is the best sim baseball game this year.

The AI is way better than in Ootp.

OOTP 6.51 baby!

I'll have to respectfully disagree about Puresim 2007.

Have you play the latest patch release? Its very solid.

I still haven't tried the updated demo of the new OOTP. What I played just didn't hook me like previous versions. I've purchased since V.4 I think, but I didn't buy the latest one. Hopefully, it'll get better in coming years because in a few ways, it took a step back I think.

I did buy Puresim and got my money's worth out of it. It's not as rich as OOTP 6.51, but it's still good. And for the most part, what's there works.

I'm playing it an enjoying it a lot, but I only play fictional into the future, as opposed to historical mode which seems to be a lot more screwed up. I realize I am in the minority, but as somebody that only plays fictional -- and who LOVES minor league baseball and loves micromanaging the hell out of my minor league clubs -- the game fits my needs pretty well.

no, I just can't get into it. Every time I try to play it, I still can't get past the UI, navigation, etc.

Heck, I still can't figure out how to just start a career as a GM instead of working my way through as a coach. Maybe it's right in front of me, but last I heard (after doing research) is that you have to do something like find the little checkbox somewhere putting you in commish mode then doing something from there.

I'm sure I could find out how to do it, but the fact that I can't do it without searching for help is the point. I don't want to have to build my way up to be the GM. If I did, i'd like to be able to choose that option.

Again, maybe i'm missing something simple, maybe they put it in with one of the later patches but last I checked I still couldn't easily just select 'human controlled' for a team.

That's just one of the many little things that kind of made the game boring to me this release, and i'm most definitely not buying 07 until I hear reviews on it first.

Current 1.0.3 patch fixlist

- Improved player development & aging algorythms
- Added player overall and potential rating to player profile screen
- Added all league reports into a submenu within the league main menu
- Improved both the broadcast and webcast game screens
- Coaches & scouts may now refuse 'demotion' to minor league jobs
- Commissioners may now retire or unretire players manually
- Added AI lineup selection options to the game setup, traditional (weighting overall ratings/stats more than splits) and sabermetric (depending solely on split ratings/stats)
- When promoting a player to the active roster, he is automatically added to the 40-man roster if there is room
- Players with a major league contract who are on DFA and no longer on the 40-man roster and cleared waivers may now be assigned to the minor leagues
- Added the option to only display qualifiers in the sortable player list within the league statistics screen
- Improved importing of historical stealing ratings
- Tweaked development of market size, fan loyalty and fan interest
- Fixed allstar game date editing
- Fixed rescheduling of allstar game problem
- Fixed coaches causing staff expenses when leaving the team
- The "force trade" option now handles waiver trades properly
- Fixed several play-by-play issues
- Tweaked contract values earned through salary arbitration
- Improved AI in terms of a salary cap
- Fixed HTML bug on team leaderboards report
- The "Download league files" menu button will now be shown for commishes, too
- Tweaked injury system, increasing the amount of day-to-day injuries
- Removed protection of traded draft picks
- Added a "clear schedule" function to the schedule editor
- Added an info message that informs managers if staff members are leaving the team after the season

#2414 - Fixed amateur draft scheduling problems when importing real schedules
#2427 - Fixed display of fielding stats in player lists
#2430 - Erasing the service time now resets option years properly
#2023 - Fixed minor league contract extensions
#2288 - Fixed holds recording in played out games
#2451 - Stats leader team now identified in top 5 players boxes
#2487 - Schedule in reports doesn't display ASG from wrong league
#2512 - Team fielding report shows passed balls now
#2451 - Stats leader team now identified in top 5 players boxes
#2487 - Schedule in reports doesn't display ASG from wrong league
#2446 - Fixed improper use of quotes bug in teams.csv dump
#2525 - Corrected number of reports in CSV export screen
#2465 - CSV output uses comma now, change delimiter in /data/config/app (sqldump_csv_delimiter) if needed
#2469 - Added error message HTML page for "missing" files
#2505 - Fixed potential ratings link on team page
#2530 & 2531 - CSV data dump headers are comma separated now, too
#2528 - Removed needless fields from human managers data dump

:)
Thanks jb, glad you finally purchased the games and stopped asking questions :D

Making fun of jb doesn't change the fact that OOTP stinks, Marc.

If having a joke in these parts is seen as making fun we're in trouble. I even used smileys but oh well.

Anyway, in-game screens updated in 1.0.3 ... http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=130524

Your opinion, not everyones.

Marc Duffy

When is the AI going to finally be fixed? Thats the main problem with ootp 2006.

This patch 1.03 doesnt address the AI problems with the game. The players getting sign and release, sign, release again,sign by the same team.

The problems with same player getting sign , then waive , then sign, then waive, etc.

These problems been going on from versions to versions.

The Ai is very weak in ootp 2006.

So you didn't end up buying it I take it? Not that I don't understand why you wouldn'y, but you keep talking as if you have really compared the two, when you most likely played the demo of OOTP for a few weeks...

I played the latest patch demo.

If you don't want to admit the AI is terrible in ootp 2006 thats fine.

I continue to be happy enough with OOTP2K6, but I understand the concerns of people who are into real players and/or historical simming. Neither of those models happen to appeal to me, so those complaints are moot as far as I'm concerned. OOTP2K6 appeals to my playing style more than Puresim 2007 does (though I like Puresim okay, and I'm absolutely wild about the in-game ball flight -- I can't explain it, but I could watch that little ball for hours. In fact, I have. :) ).

Still have a LONG way to go to catch how long I watched the little MicroLeague ball bounce around.

OOTP2K6 really needs a set of balls.

Those complaints are far from moot even for those of us who strictly play fictional universes. The killer for me was after I spent several days setting up my universe, then simming out 10 seasons, the average age of my 25 man roster was around 24. In the whole league there were only about 100 players over 31. So I'm hoping that #1 on the list:
"- Improved player development & aging algorythms"
isn't only a tweak but a MAJOR adjustment.

Do you really think he was making fun of jb? C'mon spleen.

Marc, I welcome you continued updates on ootp. Even though I probably won't purchase it this year, hearing the progress makes me more interested. Keep up the good work.

I've continued to play through the patching process and have enjoyed the game. I started a real game with the last official patch and play out all of my games.

I can only speak from my experiences in my 6.5x imported league (played since v4 and is now probably about 40% real players, 60% fictional) but here are some things I am seeing.

With regard to the sign\release(a lot), sign\waive\release(not very many) it does still happen. But to be fair most sign and release are low ML players that are rated 20/80 current and 20/80 potential and would be ghost players in past versions and have no chance of ever sniffing MLB. While there are way to many and it looks silly in the reports I can ignore it since these guys will never have an effect on my Major Leagues. I can see if someone wanted to manage in the minors that this would be very annoying.

As I said I play out all of my games and in doing so I check the waiver wire a couple of times per game week. I don't do this to try to rob other teams but to see what type of players are being waived. Most of the time there are between 4-6 players on the list at any one time while the highest I've seen has been in the 8-10 area. These players are generally rated in the high 20's to low 30's with an occasional 40. I have only seen one player on waivers that had no business being there and I am currently in August. This was a guy who historically is a very average player but was having a good year, so ratings wise you could see him being there but not with the year he was having. This is a big improvement over the release version and even the first big patch. In those versions I would see guys like JD Drew being waived (in my world he's a .280 35 HR type player). In the current version I don't find anyone like this being waived.

So the game continues to evolve and go through it's growing pains. I'm getting my money's worth and I guess that's all that matters to me. I mostly took the time to post becasue I thought MizzouRah might be interested after I read his post.

Really? Were you maybe playing with a smaller league than the major league setup? Playing with fictional players, major league setup with full minors and 25-round draft, I'm seeing no problems whatsoever with the aging algorhythm. Currently my pitching staff is being carried by 36- and 33-year olds, and my best hitter is 33. I haven't noticed that it's much different on the computer teams. A representative number of 30+ guys with the occasional 40+ sprinkled in, but also many superstars breaking in young (no more 26-year-old phenom rookies). The aging actually feels more realistic to me than it ever has in the OOTP series, and I'm worrying about whether I should even install 1.03 when it comes out for fear that fixing it for other modes of play might break it for mine.

From what I can gather it doesn't seem as though the game can effectively handle playing much differently than the way I described above. Which is nice for me but I understand why everyone else is steamed.

Sorry, I haven't seen that happening, though I've heard that it's happening for others. Not sure what I'm doing differently than you are, but it hasn't been an issue for me, and I've simmed a couple 100+ year careers.

Hmmm - strange. My universe was smaller (24 team league - 3 levels of minors; with 6-team Canadian crap league). And then when I saw this post:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=128090


I assumed that most people were experiencing the same problem. He had to basically set the aging modifiers to 0 to get realistic results.

In all honest jb, I think you've clearly made up your mind which game you prefer (your patch postings in the other thread perhaps underline it). I've no problem with that. All I'd like to say is that Markus and his team and constantly working on issues with the game (especially the AI) and great strides have been made in this area since the original release

Look JB, you cannot really compare the two games in terms of AI unless you use an OOTP league that doesn't have to cope with a) 40-Man rosters, b) waivers, c) option years and d) a FULL minor league system. Create a league in OOTP without any of this and you have AI that has to deal with the same things like the Puresim AI. And don't tell me that Puresim does have minor leagues. I know that the AI to handle a reserver roster is nothing different to one handling a minor league system that does not have to be complete (full rosters), because I have coded it ;) Nothing against Puresim, but you really cannot compare it to OOTP in terms of AI complexity.

Guess what, it does fix the problems you mentioned. ;)

Sorry guys, I wasn't posting here for a while because I lost my password and the email I used to register. Anyway, Ben was kind enough to provide me with my data, so here I am.

The release of OOTP 2006 was pretty rocky. Two days before release I was really confident that we have a stable and fun product, but I underestimated the complexity of the new version, so the testers and I didn't catch all bugs & problems. We did our best, but we did not have enough time obviously.

Now with each patch , the game has gotten better & better, and the upcoming version 1.0.3 is really a brand new game compared to the initial version. We have fixed many bugs, tweaked & improved so many aspects of the game and added tons of new useful features. Is it perfect yet? Of course not, but in my opinion version 1.0.3 (to be released probably Friday) is by far the best baseball sim on the market.

The online league features now work perfectly as well, and are definitely far better than those in previous versions.

Also, after a slow start there are great roster sets available, and very good photo sets. Also, some really awesome utilities have popped up, especially FaceTool is awesome. It generates fictional player photos for your fictional league, and even updates the uniforms on the photos everytime you run the tool again, reflecting player transactions.

Here are a couple of screenshots, one of a current MLB roster set plus a facepack, and the second one is my fictional league that has been 'pimped' by FaceTool:



PS: Real players & logos are not included in OOTP 2006, this is for demonstrating purposes only! Trademarks belong to their respective owners :)

FaceTool + new default ballpark image:


So, I suggest checking the demo of OOTP 2006 1.0.3 if you do not own it, or download the patch once it is available later this week. It is really not comparable anymore to the rocky initial release!

Cheers,
Markus

Good news Markus.
I preordered 2k6 but stopped to play it after a few days and haven't since then. Maybe it's the time to pick it up again.

If you can find where I said the AI is good, please point it out. My only point is that you keep coming on here talking about how poor OOTP is when you've only played it for a few hours most likely. You don't own the game (I don't either) and you haven't really tested things out. The most you've done for the genre is cut and paste cross posts from other forums and whine about bad "ai" while you just copy posts from other people. It's like your a cross-post forum bot who is only capable of re-posting what other people say.

If you didn't buy the game and have no interest in doing so, why don't you start another thread on OOTP asking why people at FOFC don't like you, then cross-post it here again.

I am interested and it's good to see Markus addressing the issues I had from previous versions.

Is it still a pain in the butt to start a normal MLB style league? I just want to replicate the real MLB layout and whatever other leagues that I would need for that setup.

Thanks!!

Actually it's just a few clicks. Create new game -> click Major American League -> click start game -> Enter manager name -> select team -> Start.

That's it :)

Thanks!

Thanks to Sweed too... if it's not happening that much (waivers), I might take the plunge.

If I wanted to import my 6.51 career, how does it all setup in the new version? Meaning, minors and what not? I guess it would probably be better to start fresh I would imagine?

Ok Markus

I going to give 1.03 Demo a try and test it out this weekend.

I loved OOTP 6.5, so I am hoping it will bring me back.

You can import your OOTP 6.5 league, but you'll lose some history, and if you want minor leagues the game has to fill up the minors with fictional players. But if you can live with that, it's all good :)

:eek: Whoa Markus - can we get this in writing? Oh sweet - this is in writing now. :)

I hope I don't have to dredge up this post in 1 month after finding the problem persists.

Snap.

Actually, I'll keep 6.51 on my pc and work with that career and if I hear the waivers isses have been fixed, I'll get 2006 and start a new career from there.

Thanks Markus!!

Like Markus said it's a pretty easy process. There's a button to import your 6.X league, when you hit that the game will direct you to the select the file it needs from your v6 folder. It brings in your teams (including your minor league players), stadiums with their settings, career MLB stats, and probably more I can't think of right now. What is missing is career minor league stats and some history. Individual awards did come through for the players, as I can see what years Prior won the Cy Young award on his player card under accomplishments.

After you v6 league imports you'll need to have the game create your minor leagues. You can hit a button to add 5 levels at once (AAA-down to rookie A) but it is suggested with an import, from v6, for best player assignment to minors to add them one at a time. Simple enough just hit the add AAA button, then AA, the A, etc. The game will assign your players to a level it thinks is appropriate. The game will then start on Jan 1, at that time be sure to check where the AI put your imported players and adjust befor moving to Jan 2.

One cool thing is to save your setup in a template. Before you hits start game be sure to do this. This will save all of your settings, rules, modifiers etc so if you want to start over you can without having to re-enter the information. It's also very useful in the fact that before starting I renamed all
the minor league teams to their real names. Took about 2 hours but with the template I won't have to do it again if I start over with my 6.5x imported league.

You may also want to use the template feature as you build your league. There's no limit on saving them and you can give each a different name. So you could start to build you league and if you have to quit just load the template and pick up where you left off. Or if your not sure you want 5 ML levels you could save a template after adding AAA-A as one name. Go back and add Short A and Rookie A and save to another name.

With regard to player movement, like I said, it's mostly scrubs that I find moving around in the minors or that get released while sign\release is not even a real issue in my game for non-scrubs. Waivers at the MLB level or highly rated players is almost nonexistent in my league. My game templat was created way back in 12260 so I might even be seeing more movement (sign\release scrubs at low ML levels) than guys that created games with later builds. I know a few of the "hard" critics posted in the beta forum that they aren't seeing a lot of sign\release or waiver movement in their leagues.

Like I said I'm enjoying the game and feel like I'm getting my money's worth.


If you haven't used your demo time then give it a go. If you have maybe PM Marc Duffy, perhaps he can set you up with something again (worth a try).

If you don't try it this year make sure to give it a good look next year.

Sweed

puresim probably the better game this year.

shut up asswhite

Excellent post, thanks!!

After 1.3 is released, if that issue is indeed gone (not that I don't believe you), and the game is in fact in good shape, I'm sure I'll purchase it. It's a good time too, since I'm a seasonal player and with the playoffs around the corner, I could dig pretty deep into the game.

Any mod names you can think of like the logos in Markus's screenshot, pictures, roster file (real) and anything else you can think of?

I think I will start a new career if I get 2006 just to start fresh and I'll keep my 6.51 career to play as well.

Please stop causing problems...


wait.. we've already done this routine in this thread, haven't we? :eek:

Full circle, baby. Full circle.

Now if only they would let you import current version leagues into the game... I would love it. IE the ability to import OOTP2006 leagues into other leagues. I would think it wouldn't be too difficult since you can import 6.x games.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...76#post1849076

The only mod I've used is Comedian2004's "Auto-face", you can find it here..

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=126580

The photo folder is over 200 mb but once it was d'loaded it took this little gem of a program a minute or two to give over 6,500 players in my league a photo. It's good for fictional, real, and historical gaming and easy to use.

I believe on his site he also has a logo mod that lets you add logos to your game very easily. Haven't used it myself as I already had my logos done before he released the mod.

Here's a link to the face-tool that Markus used in his screenshot. Haven't tried it but it does look interesting.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=118171


I've only played with my 6.5x league so haven't tried the roster mods but the best one I know of is CubbyFans, made by him and Erich (Rolen17 to those that have been around awhile). Should be able to find a link in here http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=129243 somewhere to d'load the file. Looking at the last page of the thread it appears he has everyone rated down through AAA but some are having trouble getting his link to work at rapidshare. Sorry but that's as much as I know about it.

Ballpark photos worked from v6 so I just brought mine over though I had to replot player locations on the fields. Some of that had to do with importing to a new game and some was due to going from a 1024x768 monitor to a lcd with 1280x1024 resolution.


That's cool, totally understand what you are saying. The other side is I certainly don't want to convince you to buy something you won't be happy with. I think one thing we all learn on these boards is that something that is acceptable to one guy is a gamebreaker to another. The last thing I want you to do is buy it only becasue of my posts. Wait for the buzz after the final 1.03, get a demo if you can or maybe someone can post some html reports for you and others to look over. Sorry I don't know how (on the computer challenged learn as I go plan) and if I did I don't have anywhere to do it.

Later,
Sweed

You know I try to take jb for what he is and just ignore a lot of what he posts.
However in his famous "why nobody like me post" I wrote a post but never hit the submit reply button. It's erie how similar it was to the bolded part of your post. :)

I'm using FaceTool mod and it really is amazing.

Two things I'd like to see;

1) Manager/Coach stat tracking - I wish OOTP 2006 tracked manager stats like FM and EHM, and it was difficult for manager to move up the minors to manage in the majors. Hopefully, the next version will do that.

2) Roster limits/minor league DL - I enjoy managing my way up in the minor leagues, but the unlimited rosters of the bottom level of the minors (or reserve rosters, if no minor leagues) bugs me.

Here's a question for somebody in the know;

I am managing a short-season A club. I had SP Guo-fang Li, who was dominating the league 5-1, 2.28 in 47IP. He was promoted, pitched well, and then released. His potential ratings weren't very good, but his current ratings were fine for the lower level minors.

The question is; if I had player potential ratings off, would this guy still be pitching somewhere? Would the computer AI still see potentials and cut this guy loose?

These are very good suggestions and will certainly make it into OOTP 2007 :)

Yes, it would. When you switch the ratings "off", you only keep them from displaying. They still exist and the AI uses them.

Thank you for the answers.

Please Markus, give us again the Player evaluation AI setup %. I loved that feature as you could setup how do you wanted the AI to value the players. When i play without ratings, only with stats, i want the AI doing the same. Also i always like to give a good % to stats for more realism, in real life there are over and under archievers that are valued by their stats not only by their potentials. Right now the AI will ignore those players with average ratings having one monster season stats wise.

That'll return in OOTP 2007 as well. I thought a fixed distribution would aviod confusion, but it looks like it backfired ;)

Great news :)

Fantastic. Like Icy, I really enjoyed being able to set the evaluation criteria in OOTP6.x.

Again, thanks!! I appreciate all your help.

I assume you can use this face-tool with real player photos as well? Meaning, when you run it, will it overwrite current real player photos?

Thanks again!!

Final OOTP 2006 1.0.3 feature/fixes list by Markus. Coming out tommorrow.

Why are you so interested in a game that you don't like or care about?

Because up to this point I wasn't.

I said I am going to try the demo 1.03 out this weekend and see how it is.

And some are interest here, so I provided the infomation.

Well I'm glad to hear you are going to give the new demo a shot. It just seems weird to continually post updates regarding the game, if you don't have interest in it, regardless if there are others in the community that do have interest. Seems like it's time you could spend doing something else you actually have interest in. But that's just my opinion.

1.0.3 Build 12270 now available


Download patch (PC & Mac)
http://www.ootpbaseball2006.com/down...=download&id=8

Download try and buy demos (PC & Mac)
http://www.ootpbaseball2006.com/down...=download&id=1

New features and functionality

- Added a "Offer all minor league free agents minor league contract extensions" function to the teams' possible free agent screen
- Added player overall and potential rating to player profile screen
- Added all league reports into a submenu within the league main menu
- Added "Schedule" to the tabs of the team screens
- Added an info message that informs managers if staff members are leaving the team after the season
- Added an info message that informs managers when players retire
- Added AI lineup selection options to the game setup, traditional (weighting overall ratings/stats more than splits) and sabermetric (depending solely on split ratings/stats)
- Added a "clear schedule" function to the schedule editor

- Improved player development & aging algorithms
- Improved roster management AI
- Improved both the broadcast and webcast game screens
- Coaches & scouts may now refuse 'demotion' to minor league jobs
- Commissioners may now retire or unretire players manually
- When promoting a player to the active roster, he is automatically added to the 40-man roster if there is room
- Players with a major league contract who are on DFA and no longer on the 40-man roster and cleared waivers may now be assigned to the minor leagues
- Added the option to only display qualifiers in the sortable player list within the league statistics screen
- Improved importing of historical stealing ratings
- Tweaked development of market size, fan loyalty and fan interest
- Fixed allstar game date editing
- Fixed rescheduling of allstar game problem
- Fixed coaches causing staff expenses when leaving the team
- The "force trade" option now handles waiver trades properly
- Fixed several play-by-play issues
- Tweaked contract values earned through salary arbitration
- Improved AI in terms of a salary cap
- Fixed HTML bug on team leaderboards report
- The "Download league files" menu button will now be shown for commishes, too
- Tweaked injury system, increasing the amount of day-to-day injuries
- Removed protection of traded draft picks
- Fixed Mac problems with online leagues
- Tweaked closer usage in order to give them a few more innings pitched
- Tiebreakers now occur in leagues without playoffs as well

#2023 - Fixed minor league contract extensions
#2288 - Fixed holds recording in played out games
#2414 - Fixed amateur draft scheduling problems when importing real schedules
#2427 - Fixed display of fielding stats in player lists
#2430 - Erasing the service time now resets option years properly
#2446 - Fixed improper use of quotes bug in teams.csv dump
#2451 - Stats leader team now identified in top 5 players boxes
#2451 - Stats leader team now identified in top 5 players boxes
#2465 - CSV output uses comma now, change delimiter in /data/config/app (sqldump_csv_delimiter) if needed
#2469 - Added error message HTML page for "missing" files
#2487 - Schedule in reports doesn't display ASG from wrong league
#2487 - Schedule in reports doesn't display ASG from wrong league
#2505 - Fixed potential ratings link on team page
#2512 - Team fielding report shows passed balls now
#2525 - Corrected number of reports in CSV export screen
#2528 - Removed needless fields from human managers data dump
#2530 & 2531 - CSV data dump headers are comma separated now, too
#2535 - Removed needless tables from data dump; fixed league_events bug

Allright ootp'ers, let's here how this patch is. :)

Just wait for somebody quoting here every thread for every board and writting his opinions based on the stuff he has quoted again and again, why bother on playing a game when you can just get that info and judgue that way how's the AI??

I'm just guessing here..........but I'll bet there are still lots of signings, released, signings, released, etc.

I was simming a year, but I have to leave the office for a bit. So far, it doesn't look bad. In fact, now that I've spent some good time with it, I'm liking the game quite a bit. It's much easier to navigate than EHM is for me and so much more information than 6.51 had. I do miss the shop a player feature though.

I'll get some more playing time in with the demo, but I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on this one.

So it says this is the "final" patch on the download site?

Markus also said that in his post on here announcing the patch. They are going to work on 2007 now. Personally, I'll probably wait until 2007 to see how things progress.

I have the same feeling.

I try out the demo this weekend.

So JB, what did you think?

How's the AI?
Can i edit players in the game if i don't have my edit button back in FOFC?

Why you being a jerk here?

In the NAFL FOF league your pretty cool over there.

Big improvements since the first release demo.

Still playing it out and testing out the AI.

I also like more the NAFL's jbmagic than the one here.

I'm having a blast. With the MLB fictional quickstart, bogart's stadiums, truthserums logos, and the WONDERFUL facegen tool.. I'm having a lot of fun right now.

So far, definitly seems much improved since release.

Thanks!

Is anyone else having major navigation issues? My mouse pointer is moving reallllly slllllowwwwllly, and I'm having to click on things several times...

I guess I'll have to take the blame for abandoning the game in it's horrific state that this essential feature was left out. Looks like you had to carry the rainwater all by yourself.

I'm absolutely baffled this feature wasn't included. Last night I decided to dive back into this one more time now that the game is "finished" and I had what I thought was a pretty simple goal -- major league teams and real minor league teams with full international background leagues (real or fictional names not important). This ended up being an absolute chore. First, there are so few quickstart and templates in the community, in part I'm sure because the game turned off many hardcore modders and that setting this stuff up is a PITA, hence why I was looking someone to do the work for me. :) Second, the construction of the game makes it difficult to achieve what you want from a custom league standpoint since once you start a league you're locked into that setup and can't alter it.

I could have done EXACTLY what I wanted to do if I used league creation to add international leagues and the import a full league file such as the Cubby/Rolen rosters. Instead, the only way I could eventually find to do I what is to use a world template file setup I found at the OOTP boards that is riddled with errors such as illegal odd numbers of teams in a league and leagues with an odd number of games that crash the scheduler. I'm sure I'll probably have some leagues with no action because of that error.

It seems like importing 2k6 leagues into a league setup file is a no-brainer. How was this left out? Clearly it was brought up.

Where did you find all of these things? It seems like a lot of the links on OOTP's boards are to fileplanet and end up being down/broken links.

That happens to me often in Football Manager. In the 20 odd minutes of fooling around with the latest version of OOTP it didn't happen. I just don't have the time to figure out a whole new interface for a game. It just didn't feel intuitive to me.

A lot of good stuff can be found here: http://www.ootpmodsquad.com/

The MLB quickstart I'm using contains the wonderful truthserum logos, the stadiums are over at modsquad and the face gen download is over on the mods forums. It will show version .9 or something when installing, but it's really the 1.0 version. I had a tad of trouble with it at first, but I finally have it working.

It goes into your fictional universe and creates player photos for every team and will also add that team's logos to the jersey's as well as use the team's colors. You run it at the beginning then after spring training and after the trade deadline, rinse and repeat. If a player is say, traded to another team - after this is ran again, it keeps the players face, but it updates their uniform to the correct team they are now on. I'm telling you it's one awesome tool.

I'm about to do a Skydog and sim about 10 years of history before digging into my new baseball universe!


** For those of you who are importing a 6.5 league, there is also a mod now available that will import all player history as well. **

Hmmm... I don't have that issue.. not sure what would cause that?