I can't see any way that a person who did NOT like the FM user interface would like the new OOTP one. It's like a hybrid of past OOTP versions' and FM. They tried, but from all the feedback they are getting on it, they probably came up a bit short.

relax, sally, was just making fun of your "i'd be willing to be" comment.

personally, i like FM's interface.

I don't know about FM, but in EHM I always wondered why they seemed so obsessed with making sure every possible country was represented. I was constantly reminded that it was an international sim, not just a North American one, but it still seemed excessive. That would seem even more true with a baseball game.

Well shouldn't Japan show up first in the list of countries. since they just won the world baseball whatever the hell you call it. :) Each version the country who wins that year can be listed first. :) Wouldn't that inspire the americans to field a better and more motivated team. :) I am so glad I have not ordered this game yet. Thanks for all the feedback from everyone though.

Short answer: I had some time, I was curious about how hockey was organized in places like South Africa and New Zealand, so I did the research and put them in. It's not like other areas were neglected to get that stuff added. That sort of thing keeps me sane after typing in a few thousand rows of historical player stats.

Well for FM, they sell it in a lot of different countries. And even the smaller countries/teams can participate in soccer tournaments like Concacaf, the European Championship / UEFA championship etc... so it adds a lot of depth/realism even if you're not managing the more obscure countries/teams.

As for OOTP, I supsect it's because a) they are levereaging FM/EHM's code, b) they are trying to sell to many countries along the sames sales lines as FM, and c) Marcus is not American so he's more likely/predisposed to allow for other countries/nations to be modeled.

Am I completely missing it, or is there not a way to look at the prior years stats on the roster page?

Also, I played a few games out, then resigned as a coach to sim a few seasons and build a history, but now it's hard to find a job. When do GM/manager contracts expire so I know when to look for one? Is it the day after the postseason ends for whatever league they're in?

I'd really like to have access to the screen you see while the game is simming through a season. I want to be able to view that screen whenever I want, even when I'm not simming.

All in all, its most certainly a LOT. Normally, I can sit up for hours and play this game -- even past versions -- get into a dynasty and such.

That said, I'm really enjoying the international feel. It gives the game a completely distinctive taste than say, other baseball games which clearly aren't meant for that. It sets it apart.

Is it confusing? Sure is. But EHM kicked my ass for a few days before I really could understand what the hell was going on. And that game obviously has some polish to it.

But I can see how this game is a culture shock for folks who have only played a lot of OOTP or something, because it is a really different game. That said, if they work the kinks out, it'll be even better.

I went to bed last night and my head hurt from starting at the screen with that thing, because it does lack the same engrossing nature to a degree that you had with previous versions of OOTP, but that's because you don't know WHERE to start, I think.

So, I'd say..it's a good game. It's fun and I think its replayability will surpass any previous edition of OOTP, for me anyway.

It's confusing, it made my head hurt, but I think it's a great game. :p

I'm with you on two out of three.

Has anybody found a way yet to set parameters for receiving trade offers?

I've been receiving several trades along the lines of the below:



I haven't found a way to set a team profile like "win now," "develop youth" or anything like that for use with regards to receiving AI offers, and I'm wondering if anybody knows if I'm just looking in the wrong place.

I don't know if I'd have had as much of a problem with this offer if not for the cash request and the fact that the 35 y/o looks like this:



Even as a one-off, not so much a problem. The problem is that every trade offer I've received is pretty similar to this one in terms of offering decrepit old farts with little use on any major league roster and asking for decent to good young kids and cash (at one point, $3 million in cash).

One thing I don't understand about the interface complaints. What is the basis of your argument that the FM interface is not solid or well thought out?


FM is the largest text based simmulation in the world. EHM is the second largest simmulation in the world. OOTP is the third largest simmulation in the world.

All of these share a common interface scheme. This scheme is very well implemented and works quite well. Those of you that are complaining about the interface, need to give it a few weeks before you make a decision.

I can't name one interface that is any better then these above.

The FM interface is fantastic. I know my early thoughts re: OOTP 2006 is that it isn't making efficient use (yet) of the codebase SI has provided. It will grow into the interface, I have no concerns on that front, but I don't feel yet like it fits the skin it wears.

And Windows is the most popular OS in the world. Does that mean it's the best?

All I know is I've run this game for five freaking hours and I still feel like it's the opposite of fun. After 20 minutes I'm actually pissed off, and that's a shame. I was really looking forward to this game, but now I'm tempted to go back to OOTP5.

Many of us have given many weeks to the FM interface (and earlier variations) and have never found it works well for them. The slowness of the game compounds the interface problem for many people. There is also a lot of clicking to do certain things. For me (and a few others here I know of), a game like Baseball Mogul or Fast Break College Basketball has a much better interface. Those games use simple, streamlined screens to convey a lot of information. FM uses big fonts and graphics that often clutter things up. So, it really isn't for lack of trying that many here don't like the FM interface.

What Sack said.

I have ZERO problems with the FM interface. It's intuitive and it feels right. But some of the things in OOTP are simply not intuitive. Again, the absolute best example I can give is the scouting.

I have to go to one spot to scout a player, another to scout a team, another to scout a league, another to scout a country.

All of these screens require multiple clicks to get to. In FM, this isn't a problem. You pick a scout, tell him where to go and he's off. A few clicks, all in the same section of menus and you are done. In OOTP it becomes a chore to set your scouts.

The interface itself is just fine, and I've never understood the people who didn't like it either (different strokes for different folks, no biggie) I don't think we need a wide sweeping series of changes to this interface. What I would like to see are a series of subtle alterations to make things easier to find and easier to get to.

Keep in mind, when you are talking about the people posting in this thread, that it encompasses a group of people who have a ton of text sim experience. It's what led us to this board. Most of us have played every text baseball sim ever released. When you have people with this experience not knowing where the trade screen is without an extensive search, not knowing how to sim multiple years, people not knowing how to find spring training stats without help or a manual?

That isn't good. I spent at least 65% of my time last night LOOKING for things, not playing the game. I never remember doing that in FM or EHM.

i found this humorous, considering we play these games to have fun.

"i'm actually quite angered right now..." HAHAHAHA

Are you saying you haven't sent one of your scouts to Cambodia yet to scout? I'm thinking this would make a great house rule. And maybe it could incorporate an element from Inside the Park kicked up a notch -- send a scout to Thailand or the Phillippines, he goes out drinking with Steve Kuffrey and ends up with a "bug."

I still haven't started reading the monster manual at all and I want to. I absolutely loathe PDF files that are larger than a few pages. And printing that sucker out just isn't an option.

All kidding aside, I'm looking forward to going home and and giving things another whirl this evening. I think it will take a while to become comfortable with the vastness of the program. I had the same issues with the FM and EHM demos -- my lack of familiarity with soccer and even hockey made those games just too much for me to enjoy with everything going on.

I think it speaks volumes that the I think there were more bug reports initiated by the HTML reports that were posted prior to release than since the release of the game. I think this is deserving of a poll ...

Well, I'm glad someone's getting some enjoyment out of the 35 bucks I've spent. :p

Found a pretty good-looking 1B in the free agent pool.

Well. That's an understatement (and probably an AI issue in itself that he hasn't been approached with a contract yet).

What I'm noticing is weird is, well...let me take a few screenshots. I'll post them in a moment.

A six year deal, significantly below what he's asking, but because it's evenly spread, he'll listen.



A three-year contract with salaries weirdly jumping all over the place. He seems willing to listen to that one, too, even though it's below what he's asking.



An escalating contract, which he apparently won't accept because it's not "even" enough. If I offered four years at the $3.35m rate, he'd probably listen. He won't listen to the deal that includes an extra $6m, though - which is worrisome because baseball has guaranteed contracts. He'd see that money whether he got traded, cut, or whatever.

Little bit perplexed by that.

Has anyone played multiple MLB seasons yet?

I'm curious about whether or not the draft has improved and if it is any fun?

And, also, whether or not anyone has found any foreign-FA gems?

Just my opinion, but I hope that guys will report any important tweaks/bugs over at the OOTP boards as well. It's nice to point stuff out over here, but it may be falling on deaf ears. I doubt Mr. Duffy will want to log things over here, though he can correct me if I'm wrong.

I tinkered some more with Goodloe's contracts. He doesn't like $1m escalating salaries with a contract value as low as that, but $500k doesn't seem to bother him.

If you boost the base values up (from $3.35m to $6.35m to start with, say) and then escalate by $1m, he's okay with that.

I'm curious if what's happening here is that the game is looking at escalations as a percentage of the previous year's contract. from $3.35m to $4.35m is a jump of nearly 25%, but from $6.35m to $7.35 him is closer to, what, 16.5%?

Only thing that makes me wonder if I'm even right about that is that I'm not boosting each year's salary by 25%. As the salary is going up, the escalator as a percentage of the previous year's salary decreases, actually.

If it were a 25% annual thing ($10m, $12.5m, $15.625m, $19.3m, etc), it'd make much more sense. Right now, I'm a little flummoxed as to what the logic here is.

My 2 cents:

I share the interface concerns with most people here. It is really very poorly designed, of course I hate the FM UI as well, gave it a month and quit because of it and because soccer is stupid. :)

Simple is better when it comes to text sims, or at least having the option to make things simple. It is great that there is so much detail for the people who like to dig into what your backup OF's numbers are with runners on 1st and 3rd. For me, I would like to be able to look at my AAA roster, quickly be able to tell who deserves a shot at the ML level to replace my MR who is sporting a 7.80 ERA in Mid-June. That's not happening right now.

Further problems noticed immediatly after a couple hours on it....I set up a 16 team fictional league, with 3 levels of minors. Ran the Japan league with no minors and for some strange reason set up a independant AAA league in my home state (not connected to my fictional league).

First off, towards the end of January I looked at the FA list and found 2 superstars from Japan who signed 1 year deals for a few hundred thousand dollars each. They are 2 of my top 4 positional players. Not good.

I also decided to look at that regional AAA league in June. Found a tremendous starter with a 16 million dollar salary. I traded my mediocre 3rd starter and my nice closer who just took a huge potentials hit to this team for their ace (the ace of the league in fact) and 10 million dollars. So basically, they traded him to me and ate most of his contract for this year to get a mediocre starter and a good but not great closer? I think the problem is that major league type players and salaries were created for this supposedly minor league league and the computer looks at these players that way, but they are not (if that makes any sense).

I see potential, I doubt it will ever be fully tapped. I would have been much happier with OOTP7 and a shored up engine and AI. Oh well, live and learn.

sov, when I see something I'm certain is in need of logging, I've been posting it over there.

The stuff I'm posting here is largely either for thinking out loud, or hoping somebody else has some insight as to what I might be missing.

I don't want to overload the bug squashers with potentially irrelevant trivia, as it were.

It's a good thing you smiled when you said that ;)

Us FOFCers have been known to form lynch mobs for lesser offenses then the two in this statement :)

Possible Dola: with my english league Owen D'Eath of the Highbury Gunners won the Player of the Week.

The email:

Red Hot D'Eath of the Gunners Sizzles with Bat-Cops NL (Nelson League) Player of the Week

Josh,

I ran a few offers by the CPU yesterday, tried to fleece some GM's. Almost everytime, they told me they'd listen and then told me to go to hell after I offered the trade.

I wonder if this guy will actually accept any of those demands. If he's that good, it's not cool he's not a hot commodity in FA though.

Getting ready to leave work in about 1 hour. I'll see where my 100 year sim is and report back. I'll ask the group. . .

If I'm 25 years off, do you want me to wait until tomorrow evening and upload the full thing or do you want me to halt it and upload 75 years? It's no big deal either way to me.

I think by 75 years you can see the most glaring issues and WTF's. Then again, if you wait and post the whole 100 years we get the steroid era included as well. :)

Troy,

I didn't mean to imply that he'd accept any of the weird offers. I just thought it strange that he'd listen to an offer, for example, of $350k per for four years (he promptly told me to go die in a fire when I offered it), but he wouldn't even listen to $3.35m, $4.35m, $5.35m, $6.35m as a 4 year deal.

As I speculated, he did listen to a deal with $1m escalators that started at $6.35m for year one. I also threw in some incentives ($1m for every year he has 800 plate appearances, $1.5m for each MVP award), and he ended up taking the deal.

I am concerned that a player as good as my scout thinks he is wasn't receiving any offers in January - which is traditionally the free agent period anyway. I've also signed a couple quality (YOUNG) pitchers. One or two are good enough for the pros, a third is going to be a high profile prospect in my farm system.

I don't know if the computer GMs are being that active on the free agent market in January.

I'm sure Markus is getting enjoyment out of the 35 bucks! :p

I'm actually shocked you bought the game. :) You've been a detractor of ootp for quite some time.

That being said, I'll pass this time around. Nothing against SI, but I wish Markus would have just improved 6.5 and stayed solo.

I'll disagree with you greatly here.

The problems in the OOTP series were never, ever going away with Markus soley at the helm. I don't think we see the same issues with SI long term. If I'm wrong on that, I've misjudged SI as a company. Seeing the care they've put into FM, I don't think I have.

I believe some of the glaring AI problems that have affected this game for years have a real shot at being addressed.

Now. . . don't get me wrong. I'm not an OOTP fanboy by any stretch. This weekend I'll probably be immersing myself in as much PureSim as OOTP because I think there are issues with the AI in OOTP.

Cam,

In all seriousness, play with the bookmark feature. I started using it last night and it helped out tremendously. With one click I can now get to stats, ratings, trades, lineups, shedules, etc.

It makes the game much easier to manage and I think it'll help someone like you (a person who wants to like the game but is having issues) overcome it.

Bingo.

When I play a text sim, I like to move quickly. It's not that I have any particular aversion to detail. Rather, I just like pile up some seasons. I like to see the kid I drafted mature, find success, leave as a free agent, become a star, come back at the end of his career, then retire and go into the Hall of Fame. I can't do that if it takes me an hour to go through each week.

Again, this is how I like to play. Other people like the detail. That's cool. But for me, it doesn't work. That's why I couldn't get into EHM. Even when I was having fun, I'd play all night and still be in October. I'd realize it would be months before I felt like I had any kind of real history with the game, and I just don't have the time or attention span to play a sim that way.

The ironic thing is that SI's detailed approach killed EHM for me and doesn't sound promising for OOTP, but would actually sound pretty good for an NFL sim. The short season makes US football an easier sport to get into detail with at the sim level.

I don't have the same kind of "confidence" in SI like you do from my experience with FM.

I agree 100% with this sentiment.

Question for those with the game...

One of the things that really annoyed me about the SI version of EHM was that you couldn't quick sim a few weeks or months without giving up control of your team. You had to go "on vacation", and turn over control of the team. You had to either allow the team to make moves without you, or prohibit them from doing anything until you got back. Neither worked especially well.

OOTP, on the other hand, had a cool feature where you could quick sim but be interupted if there was an injury or trade offer. You could decide whether to keep simming, or stop and have a look at what was up. Very neat feature, and well implemented.

Does OOTP 2006 still use this approach, or have they adopted the EHM method?

I'm fooling around with it right now. Thanks for the advice.

Is that what you're looking for?

Auto play, FWIW, also encompasses vacations, I *think.*

I'd have to re-read the massive manual to be certain.

I think so. Looks like a slight rework of the OOTP system. Very good to see.

Why when I'm playing a game do players come up with dashes for ratings. Then if I click into the player they have ratings from SISA and my head scout?

Then I back out and the ratings are there. Is that just a bug? Or is that on purpose? It's pretty freaking annoying. Happens at least once an inning to me.

Well, my sim is just bogging down. It's up to 1969 at the moment. 67 years in about 20 hours or so of straight simming. My system is high end, so I'm not exactly sure what they were simming on, but this isn't it. I'm going to go grab a bit to eat, but I think I'm calling it a career whenever I get back.

I'll upload what I have and we'll see how things stack up.

Check whose ratings you're seeing. I've seen it happen where SISA either didn't scout a guy at all, or delivered only an incomplete report, but my head scout had something more substantial. It seems like it pins whichever report you last looked at, and does it for everybody.

If you switch from SISA to your head scout, all ratings you look at for other players display as your head scout's view. Stuff like that.

Looking forward to it!

And some people ripped and tore apart OOTP5's UI. It's not great but compared to what I've seen here (and in FM)....

I still find it amazing how much FBCB has radically changed my view of text sim UI and gameplay. Some think that a simple interface = simple game but I think not only FBCB proved that wrong but Civ4 as well. I think SI, GDS and Solecismic need to play those games some more. ;)

Hmm. When you manage a spring training game, your lineup shows the spring stats. If you go to the lineup tab to make changes, the roster portion of the screen shows the spring stats, but the editable lineup part zeroes out.

Very odd.

Yeah, I changed it to my head scout and I still had some dashes on my own guys. Odd. I'll see if it keeps happening.

I was a little worried about the interface, but the bookmarks are a huge help.

The interface has all the right pieces in place they just dont seem connected. Like when looking at a player through a scout view, and he's a FA< you can't just sign him there. You need to go to league, transactions, FA, and then sign him. In FM, you have all of those options under the player card, regardless of where you are looking at it.

Augh.

"blistered on a line"
"Gijon circles under it."

*facepalm*

Gijon is one quick fielder. You should fine him for the hot-dogging, though. :lipsrsealed:

I think that probably falls under a tampering statute if I start fining other team's players.

According to ootp forums, to sim faster you should disable game logs and box scores.

After spring training it would be nice if the spring training games would fall from the last 10 listing and from the game log unless you select if from the drop downs. Who wants to see the spring training games in that log for pitchers into the end of the year.

So true. I haven't bought a sports sim in over a year, and I think I might be done with the genre. All of these developers are obsessed with "features", because you can list those in bullet-point format in your press releases and web sites. But the features have far, far outpaced the actual functionality of those features, and the fun level overall. FBCB is pretty much a perfect game for the features it has - everything "works".

I think what the developers are doing is a big mistake. This is a niche market anyway, and now they're further narrowing their potential market to people who want to play a certain way - extreme micro-managing.

How do I change what email messages I'm getting? I'm signed up for way too much.

Hmm, I would challenge you to name a better OS then Windows. It is shiek to bash windows, but if you look at the hard facts there really isn't anything better then it.

I did that. Did all of the things they suggested last night. Seemed like a no brainer to me. Disable logs, make sure quick view is selected, etc. I wanted to see how good it would go on very high detail for the majors.

Looks like '73 will be the last year of my sim. I don't have a stop auto sim buttong anywhere, but I did set it to save after each year. I hope it really did it or none of us are getting stats. I think the only way for me to stop this is to ctrl-alt-del it and pray for the best.

Try ESC

While I'm waiting for '73 to end and crossing my fingers this will work out ok, lets talk about the bookmarks. Here are some of my more important ones:

Home page of every team in my organization
Front Office
Trade Screen
Stats - YTD screen
Lineup (don't need rotation as both are in the same set of windows anyway)
Schedule screen


I have more, but I think those are the most critical. Anyone have tips for others they are finding useful?

This is the case in OOTP 2006 as well. At the bottom of the player card there is a button labeled "Action" one of the choices for FAs is to "Offer Contract".

Hope this helps.

In addition to what Josh posted, there's a baseball icon you can click that has the auto-play with options like:

auto-play today
auto-play until next week
auto-play until next month
auto-play until next year

and then a few options to auto-play until specific events depending on what time of year it is (things like auto-play until winter meetings, preseason, spring training, etc).

The game is moving much faster for me than EHM or FM. It's pretty flexible once you learn the interface in letting you control how much involvement you actually want in the day to day stuff. I zip through the seasons in less than an hour, it's the off-season stuff that I get bogged down in, but that's by choice.

Most impartial people think OS X Tiger is better than Windows Vista will be even when it comes out, and it is out right now. I haven't used it, but I really want to based on these sorts of opinions I continue to read. Not saying mac stuff doesn't have other drawbacks, or that I even like macs, just saying that opinion seems to be a big one.

No more threadjack from me sorry. Enjoying reading the impressions of OOTP.

OK, starting the report process, this will take awhile.

Numbers game questions while we wait:

Through 1973:

The career HR leader has _____
The career hits leader has _______
The career Wins leader has ________
The career K leader has _________

umm...2/3?

7.

If you had run it from 1987-2004, the number would have been 1,957,063.

Edit: 1987 not 1978.

So Greg Goodloe just hit his third homer of the spring for me.

The PBP guy was pretty excited, yelling "Go to war, Miss Agnes!"

I don't know why I found that so hilarious, but I'm still laughing. Is that a cultural reference I'm missing?

2/3 of what?

Buc,

Higher than 7.

Single season HR was 65.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/b...ball-storyutil

That was one of Chuck Thompson's - HoF broadcaster for the Orioles (and Baltimore Colts) -catchphrases.

The career HR leader has 700
The career hits leader has 3500
The career Wins leader has 350
The career K leader has 4300

Hall of Fame Broadcaster Chuck Thompson of the Orioles used to say this.

Edit: Whoops, beaten to the punch.

dola

Are you using different eras? Also, sorry if this has been answered.

HR - Lower
H - Lower
W - Lower
K - Lower

HR 650
h- 3200
W- 325
K- 3500

Hope they aren't too low... Last guess

Play along.

Yes, I clicked on the options to make it resemble each era. So this is 1901 to 1973, fictional players, 30 team major league, DH in one league, no financial options toggles, injuries at normal.

It saddens me I didn't get to go the full 100, I'd have loved the steroid era. Such is life.

I only looked at the career leader board. It looked like there was an incredible pitcher. Only stat that really jumped out at me was the stolen base leader who was well over 800. The rest of the stats looked reasonable.

I think this is an import from FM, but the frequency of trade offers and opportunities between foreign leagues is just off the chart. Trades between MLB teams and foreign teams are pretty rare, but I got 11 different trade offers from foreign teams in my first two months of simming.

Actually 2/3 is not that far off. If you played through the eras (why???), then about 2/3 of the time you probably had guys that lead the season with 20 HRs.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to start at 2006 and play forward since not many care about the historical eras and think baseball sims should only be about how it is played now?

So far so good with this one. Sure, there are some annoying bugs that people have explained here:

Like when you click on the substitution screen in-game, it doesn't save your last view and will automatically show you're entire roster rather than just the pitchers, or just the hitters.

There's a bug in the app itself that causes it to use 100% of your CPU. It seems to get slower and slower as it goes along.

The interface is a little less than intuitive, but should get better as you learn it.

The bug where, since injuries are now accurately reflected, the lower minors tend to run out of players (because the parent club needs to replace the injuries). This causes an autosim to stop.

The fact that I can't use one pitch per batter to steal, hit and run, etc. I can either quick sim a batter or utilize one of the strategies.

Overall, however...I'm liking this more than previous iterations. I love the fact that when I'm playing a game I can see what this batter has done against this pitcher when they faced each other in the past - very cool. I love the accurate injuries. This will definitely take some time to delve into, but I can see myself getting much further along in this game than previous versions.

I did not know that. Very cool.

At any rate, he hit another in the 9th inning - which was a good thing, because my reliever gave up 3 in the bottom of the 9th. Would've tied the game, too, not for that homer.

I don't think that's a FM thing since there really aren't trades in FM.

How's the report generation/uploading going, Troy?

I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to peruse some hard data.

636
3173
322
3722

Still creating the reports. I'm worried about the size. We'll see how big it ends up being.

Really? I thought transfers and what not were a huge part of that game.

Damned impressive guesswork. Almost wondering if you did this yourself. :)

HR - 592
Hits - 3109
W - 312 (I believe I had five man rotations selected by default, I didn't change those)
K - 3726

I really can't complain with any of the numbers. It looks like hits and HR are a tad low, wins and K's would be pretty reasonable for a five man rotation.

I think that's pretty close to what I'm getting. I'm in 1966 right now, autosimming until 1972, I'll post what I come up with.

Looks like the 255 bug is still there. You cant have more than 255 runs or RBI's. Markus said it was going to be fixed for this release, but he changed his mind :(

Huh? You mean in a single season? Is it really that bad that you can't get more than 255 RBI in a year?

This is taking forever. I'm not confident I'm going to have the space for this thing when it gets done. I tried limiting a big chunk of data, but it's not looking good at all.

This is odd since I thought the engine was rewritten and wasn't using the code base my mistake I guess. Anyways, this is one reason, the vast difference between baseball in the MLB (US) and soccer in Europe as it relates to interaction among teams and leagues. In Europe as with most things there is a "free" flow of talent across national borders from different teams and leagues. In the Major Leagues, many players come from the Domincan Republic/PR, some from Cuba , a few out of Venezuala and Columbia plus about 20 players from Japan/Korea. That's it. There shouldn't be 150 players from Italy showing up in the Majors or MLB minors for that matter.

I'm just getting my info off of the in game "catobase" tracker.