I don't know how else you determine "normal." I can understand that it makes sense to have options, but a default of 9 pitchers with a default of 25 man rosters strikes me as "not normal." That leaves 16 players on offense and very few relievers. If "normal" means having closers throw 100+ pitches, then something is wrong, IMO.

I wish I could play and see for myself, but I can't get the demo to work. Oh well.

Dangarion's comment seems like something out of the Maximum Football thread.

Have you played the game? It does NOT default to Normal, it defaults to Very Often.

I don't think he's even played the game yet. He is making those statements based on the comments made by others.

As you see from the last line of my post, I have NOT played the game because the demo doesn't work for me. I'm glad to hear it doesn't default to 9 man staffs. That makes me feel better about the game. It does give an odd sense of things to think the default isn't "normal," but if it works out with "very often," then I guess it isn't too big of a deal.

Phew, I spent over 3 hours yesterday getting my league setup:

- fictional 24 team league
- AAA, AA, A
- All teams are completely regionalized into 6 divisions, including all minor league teams. The result being that all minor league teams feeding a ML team come from the same area. (e.g. Philadelphia Keystones have minor league teams in Pittsburgh, New Jersey, and Harrisburg)
- "Double AA level" 6 team Canadian league


After spending 3 hours on this and only getting past the team creation (and not even starting the logo creation, player photo creation, etc...) I'm almost to the point where I'd be willing to pay someone to set this all up for me. There may be a job for an enterprising soul in the exciting field of Quickstart Setup.

You mean Double Eh? :)

I think after another patch and hopefully adding a thing or itwo ie. shop player and more simple scouting UI this will be a buy. Now, I just have to quiet print the 355 page manual/guide without the client company I am at doing an IT audit catch me using up all their paper.:)

I agree. I wasnt thrilled with playing games before, but now Im really uninterested in it...there should be a button to just to get to the "playable pitch"

Yes, there probably should.

There is. The enter button

So, is there one pitch play?

If you press a numbered option, it's pitch by pitch.

If you just want him to go up there, and if he gets a good pitch to hit the ball, hit enter, and it plays out the whole at bat.

That's probably right there in the 350 page manual. :)

I havent played this version of ootp or any version in quite a while. It will be a good bit of time till I have any steady time to try to get into it. but I do have to comment that I find it funny people are complaining about them having too much manual. I remember one of the big complaints a few years ago was lack of manual. :)

man, looking at the last few posts, I wonder how many people in this thread have actually bought the game? If you played the game or demo, you'd quickly realize that both pitch-by-pitch or hitter-by-hitter modes are available when playing out games.

Anyone know where this 14 day time limit rumor came from (is there any validity to it)?

The demo download site still says 6 months of gametime. :confused:

I just downloaded the demo, and it says the trial ends June 22, 2006.

Well, I have bought the game, but I didn't notice a way to toggle it on/off. I was looking for an option rather than just hitting "enter" (enter I'd think would seem to do away with much of any strategy, unless it's just for your basic ab's where you're not doing anything much). I will examine it more closely next time I play.

Looking in the manual, I see a quick play for the at bat in the quick play bar at the bottom of the window - I had been thinking something like that might be with the other managerial buttons under 'Game Controls'. Seemed like a logical place to look.

Yeah, but you cant do any kind of strategy with it. To steal, you have to pitch by pitch. Thats what i was afraid of when they added pitch by pitch, they'd screw up one-pitch mode.

I am playing the demo.

I know it happening when you start a brand new season for sure.

The AI teams wont sign any free agents until game 1. But human teams can sign free agents before.

The demo dont go pass 6 months , so i can't say for sure if it happens after the first season again.

Turning off the ticker helps speed up slower PCs immensely, as does relying on fewer stats (they're important, but...not that much to me when I'm just simming to get a league history before I choose a team) and so, now that I've got the actual patch installed, it seems to be running okay.

I still lost my old league that I was simming pre-patch, but...oh well I guess.

Jeez, that sucks no strategy.:(

*shakes head* so you make a deal in any Face to face games.. if there are runners on base then you go to pitch by pitch mode.

It's really no freaking big deal.

Yeah I'm going with "Normal" stat detail. There's absolutely no value in seeing those detailed stat splits since player ratings do not go to that level of detail. Those detailed stats are just the result of random chance.

But you can use the pitch-by-pitch mode at any time to steal, hit-and-run etc... There's actually a ton more strategy this way.

I actually like the way this is handled in this version. I hated not being able to control which pitch you steal on, when to try to take a pitch, etc.

This way, for most at-bats you just hit enter to play the entire at bat. When you have a strategic decision to make, you play out all pitches by using the other number keys.

It adds a little bit of time to your game, but not much, IMO, since you can blow through the vast majority of at-bats by just hitting enter.

But the problem with that is that alot of people don't want to play out every pitch but at the same time give up the strategy elements of baseball. The pitch-by-pitch mode must take a while to finish a game?

Sorry, I was not aware you could switch between modes. Foz.

If you go pitch-by-pitch for every batter on both sides, yes.

What I've taken to doing is pitch-by-pitch for my own guys, and progress per at-bat when I'm on defense.

The main problem I'm running into is that, well, you can't force a steal unless you use 'Send Forced,' but 'Send Forced' works the same way as a hit-and-run.

So really, it's the most pointless addition to the game that does nothing to solve the "keep trying to send your 19/20 guy on the dude with the 4 arm and have him not run" issue.

Using 'Send Forced' is the same as what I always used to do - hit and run.

Many of you folks here can appreciate this. I just got one of the college interns working under me to print out the 352 page guide, three hole punch it, put it in a three-ring binder and label the sections with tabbed dividers .God, I feel kind of guilty. This must be how Clinton felt:)

It is only 14 days as duffy said that it's at least better than the time limit were used to with OOTP.

It's actually both. You can go up to 6 months in the demo within the 14 days.

Got it thanks. I'd prefer the FM model of 6months of gametime, unlimited play, but whatever.

So would I. That's what I thought we were getting till I installed it.

As a current law school intern....I truly hate you..

;)

Some thoughts on the demo...

I like the universe setup, I've been able to re-create the UBL's setup with a sister Euroleague that only allows EBF free agents to be bid on by the UBL. We'll have to see how it really works once free agency rolls around (I had to turn it off because guys were jumping ship mid-season). I love the reports, the interface (once you toy with it for a while) and the news sections.

That being said, the AI is completely, astoundingly bad, mostly with money. There are some mediocre veterans getting signed to insane contracts, and some silly waive, cut, sign loops. Everything is on AI control...


Alan Moye a good 34 year OF for the yanks was inked for 18.9M x 4 years.
JP Druan, journeyman good MR who is 37 was inked by Cleveland for roughly 6.5M per year for 3 years.
Ricky Cashion, Cleveland's All-Star 27 year old closer, he signed for 3 years at 1.87M for the first 2 and 300k for the 3rd.
Jason Bergman was traded to OAK, where the 37 year old signed a 4 year deal worth 8M per year.

There are about 500 cases of teams signing a guy (or claiming him off waivers) only to release said player a few days later....only to sign them again. Example, Cleveland released some dude on 4/18, then signed him on 4/18, only to release him again on 5/1. Multiply that by about 50 and that's what you have. Plus the about 50 guys being promoted and demoted in the same day, (so and so optioned down, so and so recalled the same day).

It's cool, but going through the transaction log makes my eyes bleed.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Cleveland put starting OF Robert Gum on waivers to activate All-Star Mickey Hall, who they then promptly traded for a 7/6/6 MR. About a week later, they traded their 3rd OF Bill Simonton for another MR from the same team (this one much worse). Simonton went right to AAA where he still sits.

So in the span of a few days, Cleveland lost their entire starting OF, got 2 decent MRs (that they probably didn't need) and one of the guys who is quite good is not even playing for the other team.

But on the bright side, the AAA team now has enough players to continue the game ... and the Uganda leagues is still going strong.

At least the important stuff is covered. We wouldn't want civil war breaking out.

Is the demo based on release version code, or is it based on patch code?

it's supposedly based off first patch code

Not exactly. You can't pick any strategy and play one pitch mode. Any strategy at all brings you to pitch by pitch.

I can tell you in my standard out of the box league there are rediculously good prospects in the free agent pool after the amature draft. On a 20-80 scale, I've got players with an 80 contact rating who are 22 years old, have no history and are unsigned. If you run a week - they don't get signed. Run a month - they don't get signed.

I wonder if they'll get picked up if you click the "Run computer manager on all teams" or whatever it's called?

Where is it? I'll try it.

In the game setup somehwere on the bottom right it says actions, and you can run computer manager on the teams.

Hilarious.

Fuckshit. I looked for 10 minutes and don't see it. Then I downloaded the manual. Can't find it in there. Then I downloaded the 350 page thing. Zip file was corrupted. Then OOTP decided to freeze and I had to shut my computer off to start all over.

Imagine that.

Joe Schultz?

I can't remember exactly how I set it up, but most of the teams have finacial budget ranging between 8-13 million. I have revenue sharing, and the highest paid player in the league makes around 1.3 mil per year, but the majority make between 100k and 700k.

So I have some named players and players who are maginal in the majors coming here to play full time or players who are up and coming in the minors get the chance to play more full time.

The league typically draws 10-11k per game at $7 per ticket for most.