It's not from mulitple leagues I dont believe, it just doesnt erase the history on it's own from that league...I think where you get semi histories is when you have two commishes though and some of the items are left off

Yes indeedy, this sure looks like a major upgrade worth paying for.

I have seen that, too. I imported the 1991 rosters just to mess around with. I only managed one spring training game and let the AI do subs. One of our starting pitchers, John Smiley, ended up in centerfield toward the end of the game for no apparent reason.

A week or two after that when the regular season was about to start I could no longer sim any games as a random minor league team that was not affiliated to my organization didn't have enough active players. So much for that career, I guess.

I realize that others have pointed that problem out in this thread. It just seemed silly what a disaster my first attempt to play this game was.

I think that's a case of player numbers being re-used. So Joe Superstar happens to be players #1234. He retires, Johnny Prospect gets randomly assigned his number, and the history file isn't erased.

Actually you can get an html report using your scouts ratings instead of sisa. For example if you are looking at the batters on your roster viewing their current
and potential ratings (which you can do with custom views) with your scouts rattings you can get a html report. Bottom of screen hit the "report" button. You can open an html window in game or write to disk and the report will open in firefox or whatever your default is so you can print a hard copy if you want.

It's in the manual :) Section 1.01.1

With regard to pitchers in the field. This is something many cried for because
"real pitchers can do this, why can't mine?". IMHO it's so rare it shouldn't be in the game unless tested to the point of working to near perfection. I'd like to see an option in league setup that bars pitchers playing in the field.

Or at the very least, let human managers do it if they insist but for god's sake don't let the AI play with it.

That is absolutely correct.

After the buttons, old players retire and new players get their recycled player IDs. The game erases the history's of the retired players at the button, but if you just unzip the new season file into your existing (previous season) file, the history text just seems to be compiled on top. When you see it in the RWBL, it is because one of the comissioners took over the file w/o completely deleting their existing file before unzipping the new season. I know we have done it a few times throughout our history, before we realized what was going on.

In other words then, no. That's what I had thought - that you have to be on the page of what you want to scout - but man, that's all over the place. Even if you just had a dropdown on the staff for things like 'scout org', 'scout ML', 'scout AAA', etc, it would be better. Players I can understand needing to be on the player page. Teams though, that's pretty standard.

Seems a little more complicated then what I'm looking for.

Seems a little more complicated then what I'm looking for. I just want my head scouts ratings to be the ratings I always see when going through the SION pages. Why would I want their horrible ratings when I've got a scout who is maxed out in every category?

I read this on Octupus Overlords PC game foru,:

"I should have been clearer in my assessment. My intent was to point out that while the code may have been newly written that's rather a moot point, since the user doesn't see the code, he sees the interface. The interface and functions appear to be copied (I was going to say "based", but it's closer than that) from the FM interface. For those folks who are FM or Sports Interactive fans this is well and good, but for those (like myself) who have followed the OOTP series for several iterations it's rather a shock to have to not only look for the new functional features of OOTP, but also learn how to simply navigate around as well.

It's great to say that the engine was rebuilt from the ground up, but since I suspect that the overlap between FM and OOTPB fanbase is rather small, there would appear to be little motivation to make the interfaces the same. In fact I would venture to say that for purposes of marketing it would have been better to base the interface on the last OOTP, then show the loyal fan base how the main features of the interface from OOTP6 that they have learned to know and love were retained, and then show the new functions that have been added.

If OOTPBB2006 was built from scratch, why *does* it look so much like FM? Coincidence? A massive outcry from the OOTP fanbase saying "We want it to look like that soccer sim!"? No, it's not an accident, it had to be directed to be that way. So *why* would you want to make them look so much the same? I would hazard a guess that it is based on re-use of code, code modules, or something of that ilk. New code might have been generated for OOTPBB2006, but I suspect that it's a reuseability issue that made it look like does. Not that there's anything wrong with that, unless of course it hurts your sales, or restricts incorporating improvements.

I still bought the game since it is the best baseball sim out there, although Puresim and Mogul have made some advances. And I know that Marcus and the crew will address many of the issues and give the fans a lot of what they are asking for. However, I'll be more wary next time. "
I couldn't agree with this more.

FM had one of the best looking and most useable text sim interfaces I've ever seen. I definitely do not mind OOTPB taking after it now. Then again, I've never played the older incarnations of the series, so I have no interface to "unlearn". It will probably take several patches and maybe another release of OOTPB for the game to grow into the UI. I have confidence that SI can make it work well.

Let's say I want to create a fictional league of say, roughly 24 teams and fast sim 50 years or so of history. Everything is fictional, fictional logos, stadiums, players, etc.

Then I take over one of the teams and play out every individual game. Play as both a manager and a General Manager.

Which game would better suit me? Or is it too early to decide?

Agreed.

I wondered this too, actually. It seems to me that there is clearly going to be a different sort of appeal for one game over the other depending on what you like, want, etc.

I'd like this answered too, though I'm pretty much on the side where I think works best for me.

Agreed. Like any UI it will take some getting used to. First time player of FM this year and was lost for awhile trying to learn soccer and the UI at the same time. Found learning the soccer part was much more difficult than the UI.

Well, I've had a little bit of an opportunity to play around with the game now. After I initially downloaded the game, I was gone for a couple days so all I could do during that time was look at the mammoth game guide. But I do think it helped, as so far I really haven't had any problem navigating around the games interface and I've never played any of the FM or EHM game previously.

Basically though, all I've done thus far is looking around at the players, teams, stats, etc, without actually trying to manage a team yet. I simmed out 30 years, starting in 2006, while I was at work today with mostly default settings. One US major league with the standard minors, no foreign leagues. I think the only settings I changed was to make trades harder and rarer and to favor prospects. No initial draft (players distributed by the computer).

First observations: offensive numbers are a bit higher than I would prefer, particularly in the AL. AL ERAs (for the entire league) ranged from 4.58 to 5.30. Real life from 1993 to 2005 the range was from 4.32 to 5.00. So overall this might be a bit high, but I'd say acceptable and should be easy to adjust if desired.

NL ranged from 4.10 to 4.63. The NL ERAs actually fall nicely within the real life range from 1994 to 2005, from 4.11 to 4.63. (Interesting note looking at the NL league pitching stats. From 1976 to 1992, the league ERA only exceeded 4.00 once, from 1993 to today it hasn't been below 4.00. Colorado joined in 1993.)

Baltimore had the one true dynasty thus far, appearing in 5 straight World Series, winning 3 in a row. Interestingly, they played Washington 4 years in a row.

Notable players - Hitters:

Nate Leatherwood - Career batting average leader at .362 through 10 seasons. Consistantly hit 25-30 home runs as well. Also won a gold glove at shortstop. His career was tragically stopped short by an accident during spring training that left him with a fractured skull.

Mike Kaye - All time leader in HRs (696), Doubles (721), At Bats (10,790) and Strikeouts (1,796). Hit at least 30 HRs 13 times and was a career .299 hitter. He was the first pick in the 2nd round and was subsequently traded twice before reaching the majors. (Neither trade looks particularly good, but I can't criticize swapping minor leaguers.) He was never an MVP, but his best season was .318, 49 HR, 154 RBI. The end of his career got a bit interesting. He batted .295, 25 HR, 89 RBI with Cleveland in 2031. Signed a 1 yr, 510K contract with Texas in the offseason and was quickly traded to the Angels. SISA scouted him as 13 Contact, 13 Power, 9 Eye. He batted .306, 33 HR, 113 RBI for the Angels in 2032. Signed a cheap one year extension with the Angels, then was put on waivers and claimed by San Diego. A month later, San Diego traded him to Houston, where he struggled with injuries and only batted .243, 10 HR, 34 RBI in 280 at bats before retiring. Strange little sequence at the end. I think the game AI was looking too closely at the SISA ratings without paying attention to Kaye's actual production.

Stone Paulton - Single season batting average record at .403, while playing for Colorado in 2029, in what was his first full major league season. Batted .328 and .312 in his next two seasons. Was traded for a decent reliever to Chicago (N) before the 2032 season. Only batted 223 times for Chicago for a .269 average. Was then traded in the next offseason to Cleveland, where he signed a 4 year extension for 21 million. Bounced back by batting .323 with 12 HR and 94 RBI, but then missed 2034 with a ruptured achilles and only played briefly in 2035 before tearing a back muscle and ending his career. I actually like how his career developed. Did Coors make his career or did could he be consistantly good anywhere without the injuries?

Nicholas Daulton - First overall draft pick in 2016 for Tampa Bay. He hit 33 HRs in his first major league season, 2019. He followed that up with 28 HRs in 2020. But in 2021, he had probably the best single season for a batter so far in this league, batting .373, 61 HR, 170 RBI, 161 Runs, 52 SB. He followed that up with .319, 45 HR, 112 RBI, 129 Runs, 54 SB, winning his second consectutive Outstanding Hitter award. He was having another outstanding year in 2023, but was traded to the Angels in what looks like a cost cutting move. Basically, Tampa received an equal player in return who would be a free agent after the season and a prospect, giving up a player hitting his prime and about to make big money. It worked out well for Tampa as Daulton tore an ankle ligament in September and never played again.

Notable players - Pitchers:

Tercero Barrio - Maybe the best two seasons I've ever seen from a pitcher. He holds the single season record for ERA (1.74) and wins (30!). These records occured in consectutive years. He was a free agent in the initial player pool and signed by Florida in July of 2006. He was very unimpressive during three years in AAA and had a 6.86 ERA in a 2008 September callup. But he was part of Florida's starting rotation in 2009 and was an average pitcher for the next four seasons. In 2013 he was traded to St. Louis in what looks like a reasonable trade. In 2014, Barrio was 7-9 with a 4.15 ERA before his season ended with a Herniated Disc. But he came back in 2015 with a remarkable 18-1 record, 1.74 ERA. He signed a 5 yr/78 million extension on August 2nd, then suffered a Dislocated Shoulder on August 9th that cut his remarkable season short. (Only 29 starts) 2016 though...wow. Barrio went 30-3, with a 2.27 ERA, 344 K in 293 IP, 6 shutouts. The Cardinals won 102 games that year, scoring 806 runs. However, his old Florida team won 112 games and the World Series that year. Barrio never approached this success again however. He went 17-10 two seasons later, but never broke 12 wins after that. He ended up 214-154, 3.90 ERA, 3,396 K (career record), 1,503 BB (also career record).

Mike Shuck - Only 300 game winner (next has 237 wins), he played with Washington during 4 year World Series run. Was the Rookie of the Year in 2009 with a 15-6 record and 2.76 ERA. However, he pitched 103 innings in 2008, so he probably shouldn't have been eligible. But anyway, he pitched for 19 seasons with Washington and had at least 11 wins for 17 straight seasons, including 4 20+ win seasons and 2 Cy Youngs.

Just an overview of some things I've seen so far. I need to figure out how to log into the OOTP boards so I can post bugs I find. For some reason, it lets me log in, but will not let me post.

Yes, there are bugs, and some pretty major ones. I have come to expect these bugs in text sims and don't have a problem with it as I'm confident they will be fixed to make this an excellent game. Should we have to expect these bugs? Maybe not, but as long as I have fun with the final product, it's not a problem for me. When I end up not having fun with the final product (within a reasonable amount of time) that's when a company will lose my business.

Right now, I'm loving this game's potential.

Thanks for the update Ryche.

For the people who have simmed a good number of years, is there that many career ending injuries? From the brief example that TroyF and Ryche have provided it seems the top players have horrible injuries. Are there any Hall of Famers that just retire when they get old and their production declines? Thanks.

Out of 30 players currently in the Hall of Fame, only 4 suffered career ending injuries. A few others had serious injuries that effectively ended their careers, but for the most part, it was a decline of production that ended careers. More of them ended up in the minor leagues at the end of their careers than I would prefer Very few went out at the top of their games.

For some reason, the players that caught my eye tended to flare out quickly.

I think it'd be better if you could make the trade immediately, but it took a day or two for the player to arrive for duty, honestly.

I've not played the older OOTP games that much, so I cannot comment on this particular change of UI's very well, but in general, people hate change. If they are accustomed to something, they'll cry bloody murder if that something gets changed. It's always easier to complain and demand a return to the old familiar system than to try and adapt to a new system. It's just natural. We heard the exact same thing with EHM since a lot of people thought it was a herecy to go for a whole new interface just because they had grown into the old windowsy freeware UI. In our case, it should have been understandable to see a whole new UI since NHL EHM was not a sequal to the old freeware, but a whole new game on its own.

But as they say, you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs :)

That would work. It's a little more realistic, plus it's still fun.

Well, I ran another sim last night with a similar league setup. Only made it 17 seasons though as I forgot to turn off box scores and game logs. Anyway, for whatever reason the AL's ERA dropped significantly, down to the level I would be looking for. The range in my first sim was 4.58 to 5.30. This time the range has been 4.57 to 5.03. Only twice it has been over 5.

Had a Toronto team go on quite a run, appearing in 6 of 7 World Series. Only won one of them though.

One pitcher jumps out at me, Ramirez "Meter Man" Bejinez. He was the first overall pick for Seattle in 2003. In 2007 he was the Rookie of the Year, going 17-9, 4.02 ERA and 285 K in 241 innings. He won 14 games with a 3.09 ERA the next season while fighting through injuries. Then, from 2009-2013, Bejinez won 5 consectutive Cy Youngs, winning 21, 24, 28, 28 and 28 games, striking out well over 300 each year and putting up ERAs of 2.57, 1.75, 2.37, 1.89 and 2.01. At this point he signed a 4 yr/47 million deal with San Diego. His first season with San Diego wasn't quite at his previous level, 14-9, 2.85 ERA, but he ruptured his bicep at the end of the year and hasn't been the same since. He's now quite mortal, posting ERAs over 4 the last three seasons.

Gentlemen,

Check out this blog: http://www.calvertgames.com/cgblog/index.php

Some excellent settings discussed:

Thanks to a forum member over a DS for this link. After a patch or two I just might pick this one up thanks to the user base.

Do you have confident that there going to fix the waiviers, release and trades issus that been going on from past versions of ootp and now still on the new engine of ootp 2006?

I really hope so after a couple of patches these issuses can finally be resolved after all these years.

The FM interface is just amazing as far as I'm concerned. FM is the benchmark for all text-sims in both interface and gameplat for me, so steps closer to that by OOTP are a big plus in my book.

I can't wait til this is 100% playable so I can get going.

Can anyone tell me how much player personalities affect this game (see: FM)?

Not played enought but for what i have seen and reading the manual, FM players personalities are not in OOTP2006, you just have the same greed, loyalty etc than 6.5 had before and that only affect contract negotiations. Sad news for me, i was really looking forward a baseball game like OOTP with the players personalities from FM, where the players get pissed at you, between each other, that become angry if you fire their team mate, etc etc.

Yeh! I'm sure it'll be in the next version. That would've sealed the deal for me!

Has anybody ever had any "zip code error" when trying to purchase?
What if I purchase by check? Will I receive a license to make the game fully functional(have already downloaded the game)?

Did you report this bug at the ootp tech forum ? I didnt see it there.

OK, the good and bad from a bit more in-depth fun with the game:

First -- I got fired for not meeting the owner's goals on June 30 of my first season. I need to RTFM, because I couldn't figure anywhere you can find out what your goals are. I stayed within my budget, but after a so-so April and a great May to climb within a game of first, we had some injuries and crashed in June to last place in the division and 15 games out. However, just before I got fired I made a key trade and we got some players back. The rest of the way the team played lights out and finished in second place three games out of the wild card. The AI made only one significant trade, and that trade was pretty lateral -- he picked up a 3B with better ratings who put up nearly identical numbers to the 3B we already had. But 2 of the 3 key players on the team were players I acquired and one of them was on the default roster.

Interleague management: Again, I apparently need to study the hundreds of pages of documentation. But right now, I would make this statement: If you are a purist and want a real-life baseball simulation, this is not it. It might be the same message I would give to people about TCY, which I liked tremedously but I think Jim made it clear that it was his interpretation of college football, not an identical recreation.

Why do I give this warning? Unless there are some settings I missed, when you have foreign leagues and you have player movement enable, the game plays like soccer, not major league baseball. Also, it seems that if you want foreign players in your game or even if you want to mirror real-life baseball, you have to endure a certain amount of unreal diversity -- I can't tell you how many Chinese players you run into.

I can encapsulate an example of all of this with just one player: Alvino Franco. I discovvered Franco while scouting the Dominican Republic. The SISA souting rated the 23-year-old RF 8/8/8 but my top scout rated him 10/9/10 with a great glove to boot. He was head and shoulders above everybody else in the league, so I tried for six months to acquire his rights from his team in the Domincan. I finally worked out a deal two weeks before I was fired that included a couple of journeymen who flamed out immediately and a couple of prospects that flopped completely along with $6 million in cash, which I had plenty of. Maybe that's why I got fired.

Franco came in and was absolutely on fire. In 74 games he hit 21 homers, drove in 55 runs and hit .299. Gee, maybe that's why we had such a great second half of the season. In his second season he hit 44 homers with 126 RBI and a .301 average and .421 OBP. During spring training the following season he was traded to Colorado for a RF of slighlty less quality and a somewhat promising 3B. He has a solid season -- 35 homers, 104 RBI, .284 average. After the season, he was traded to Matanzas of the Cuban League for a 27 year-old pitcher rated 7/10/7. Lots of league hopping for everybody.

Other things of note: the pitcher the Rockies acquired by Franco has plaeyd games at 2B, C, CF, LF,3B, RF and SS during his career.

I've also have either a great example of the waiver insanity that Troy has noted or an example of how great this game is. Luis Plasencia was the No. 1 pick in my first draft in 2006. I had my scouts all scout the draft pool and all of them rated him in the top five. He was drafted by the Dodgers and developed a familiar pattern -- after dominating rookie ball, he moves up a level, struggles, then dominates and moves up level. Rinse, lather, repeat. Then somethign wacky happened: in 2007, SISA's ratings for potential in his player history were blank, which happens a lot. In 2008 his ratings were -/2/7 with potential of -/6/8 -- a bit lower than he was original rated by my scouts in the draft. He got called up midseason by the Dodgers and went 2-1 with a 2.40 ERA -- and ends up on waivers. In 2009 he was rated -/7/8 with potential of -/10/9, a nice bump up from a year earlier. Arizona nabs him and he has a so-so rookie season in 2009 before becoming one of the best pitchers in the league in 2010 and winning the 2011 Cy Young Award.

So was this just another case of the broken waiver wire? That's my guess. I can't rule out that the Dodgers didn't like his ratings and didn't think he was going to pan out and tried to sneak him through waivers but Arizona pounced.

Oh, and a guy rated 4/4/4 with potential of 4/5/4 just threw a no-hitter.

Much of what I have seen supports everything Troy has said. Next league I start, waivers is getting the heave-ho.

You know, it's funny that for many years, OOTP customers have been complaining or joking about the lack of a manual. Now it comes with a hefty manual (apparently) and everyone still complains or jokes about it.

I don't like that.

i <3 the FM interface but it sounds like ATM there is just too much that doesn't work (waivers, interleague movement, etc). Maybe I'll wait until next year to give this a look, although i suppose the demo will at least warrant a DL.

So if you don't want to run all of those other leagues can you still get players from those countries to come into the FA pool? It seems like more trouble than is needed turning on all of those other leagues.

It's not so funny. People aren't making jokes about the manual, they are making jokes about a UI / set of features that makes reading the manual a necessity to do much of anything.

Not that that may stop me from giving this a try after a patch or two irons out the key sim issues that were brought up and converts the financial / trading model to a baseball one from a soccer one.

Confidence in Markus alone? Not really.. but I'm going to give SI the benefit of the doubt here. Markus now has many people logging bugs and recognizing some UI issues as well as some graphical issues.

I get juiced up about ootp, then I read posts like kcchief's and I scratch my head. I would really love to get this game and import my 6.5 world, heck I'm hoping it would also let me get used to EHM as well. Good thing I'm only at the AS break in my 6.5 career, so I have time to wait for a patch or so before my import date passes up again.

Ugh. I wouldn't touch TCY because of what you mentioned. If that is the case here, without a workaround, I probably would, unfortunately, stay away from this too.

You get an e-mail on Opening Day telling you what the owner expects for the season.

I'm enjoying the game, but as a minor league manager the game moves around my lineup and pitching staff in between games everytime the GM makes a roster transaction.

Anyone know how to keep the game from making these lineup changes? Is there a way to save my lineups/rotation as a minor league manager?

That is a show stopper and this along with other things I am hearing can't be fixed in a patch or two. In fact, I doubt this kind of thing would be changed in latter versions. Why? These kinds of design parameters obviously were built into the game purposely. Kind of feels like the game design had the blessings of Bud Selig aka Mr World Baseball Classic.

If I was in the middle of a career and saw a star player from MLB traded to Cuba, I think it would kill my interest pretty much immediately.

You can set in leagues if they are able to trade.

It's under Rules
Trade with other Major Leagues.

Turn off the "hidden player" option. No players from other countries get created adn you don't have to worry about the foreign invasion.

Still working on getting the twenty season upload done for everyone.

The game is strangely growing on me, but it's taking a damned bit of work for that to happen. I think the waiver wire is irrepairable. I just shut em off and don't bother. Ditto with the foreign leagues and hidden players. It's just broke.

If markus could get a patch out that just made sure pitchers didn't play the freakin field, I think I can work around the rest of the crap. The stats are fairly realistic, the career arcs fairly solid, the statistical tracking is the freakin bomb.

The only down side at that point would be the trade model, which I'm getting used to, no matter how ridiculous it is.

I think that any *serious* (historical types) simmers are going to ignore these other leagues, so this won't happen. Those who have them all on are probably of a much different mindset and won't care, or might like it (perhaps those who don't really follow baseball, but picked up the game bc of the SI connection for instance).

if waivers are included in the game they should be on. ditto with foreign leagues. they should work in the way that they work in the real world, otherwise why bother to include them. it's like i'm paying for features i'm not using then. If you were deaf would you want to pay extra for a 6-disc CD changer in your car? I think not! Same thing here. Why pay for a feature if it's not going to be useable. If waivers and foreign countries are broken then the game should cost less or the features ought to be removed. Otherwise I'm paying for a feature I'm not using, which as a consumer I am opposed to.

Summer is here so I just looked at my OOTP 6.5 and my 22-year-old fictional league and decided to get back at it. I've played a couple of seasons and am quite happy. I only sim games and generally run through a season in one-two days. I have no interest in buying a new baseball game this summer based on what I'm reading.

I strongly disagree. The value of having the core features work very well is worth far more than the cost of the game. These "extra" stuff are distractions and only there for marketing/sales purposed. One could argue that waivers are a fundamental part of real world baseball but it apparently does not translate well to a computer game and therefore, it becomes more of a hindrance (or micromanagement chore) than added value.

cuervo: You are correct in that historical simmers wouldn't bother with stuff like that and therefore, could run a more playable game.

I've been at my OOTP5.11 historical career since the middle of April and just got into my 16th season. It does that very well, imo, and there's no need to add any of the extra stuff that would only make it look like a modern league with an international flavor. Doing something more simple very well is worth more than doing something more complex not so well.

I think my hard drive reaching capacity this week while running PureSim was a sign I shouldn't get this game. :)

I am enjoying PureSim, much more then I thought. I never tried previous versions, and had planned on still getting this OOTP when money allowed. Now I am not so sure. I love the FM interface, but this sounds like it's a messed up version. I am sure it will be fixed, but I have problems with some of the other things mentioned.

But if it is turned off than won't that mean no players from other countries come in from Japan, Korea, Cuba, Columbia,Venezuela, PR, Dom. Rep etc. In other words if we have to turn off trading with leagues than how can we get the players from those other countries? And if we turn off the leagues entirely few if any player s will be generated from those countries. Also agree with waivers not being turned on is a problem since it is part of MLB and the game.

You can selectively turn on trades for Cuba, thus you could then only get Cubans when they are Free Agents. Just like you could do the same with Japan. This would fit into the way baseball now works (more or less).

The comment about few players from other countries being generated is false. You can also choose what the percentage of non country players are in the league. So if you want 30% of the players to not be from the US, then my understanding is you will find those players in the draft as prospects, they will be from various countries, but they will be in a ratio that they should be in real life, so lots of Dominicans, less Japanese, fewer Dutch.

I'll be honest here. . . I don't have an interest at all in the Japanese League. I've never once woken up and said "gee, I really wonder how #$!@%^@ @%#@ in the Japanese league did yesterday"

So it's a feature I wouldn't use anyway. I want an U.S. type league setup to work with the minor leagues. Give me that, and it's well worth my 35 bucks.

Now, I know it'll surprise my friends to hear this, but I am not the center of the universe. If it's critical the South African League and waivers are important to your enjoyment of the game, I'd strongly advise against a purchase at this point.

Those looking for the perfect game need not apply either. It isn't close. I've never been an OOTP fan boy and despite drooling at the stat pages everytime they open, I think the PureSim/OOTP battle is still a toss up with PureSim getting a slight nod from me at this point.

Thing is, I'm that way with everygame. I don't care if the create your own player works in NCAA or Madden because I never use them. there are things in every title I don't use because it's just not enjoyable.

I'm going to start another league and test some of these settings. At first glance, I'm certain that the ratio of foreign players is not right. I left the percentage at 30 percent, but my league is full of way too many Chinese, Korean, South American and other nations. I don't know if that is a result of the fictional rosters that were created a start up not using a real-life ratio or attrition.

I do know that the draft is messed up -- if modeling real life, the draft should be almost exclusively American players. But worldwide players are included in the draft in large numbers.

Ok then answer me this. If you only run the MLB, and none of the other leagues, how do you expect the players from other counties to entre the leauge? They have to come from somewhere which is why they are from the draft. The game doens't have built in instructional leagues in far off countries like real baseball, so this is the way it adds players from other countries. Now why you would be getting a noticable amount of Chinese that may be a problem with the player creation files. I'm not sure, since I haven't gone deep into how it does them, I'm going off of how I understand the game.

Well, to compare this with FM, I don't have to select, say, the French soccer league to have French players. I won't have as many, sure, but I will have a reasonably appropriate number of top-level players that a league like theirs would produce. Should be the same way in OOTP.

The Lahman database? :)

I can just imagine some funny scenarios with a Yankee infield all made Nepalese players from the Himalyas.LOL

Well, since the worldwide scouting seems to be separate from running the other leagues, I would have assumed that the way the game was built that it would allow you the option of scouting for worldwide free agents but not necessarily run those leagues. If you're going to go to the trouble of mimicking worldwide baseball, that is how I would do it. Then the draft could be exclusively North American as it is in real life.

If you are running foreign leagues in your universe, there are essentially now three ways foreign players can enter the game: free agents from worldwide scouting, free agents or trading (if turned on) with foreign leagues, and the draft.

I'm just starting my second shakedown league. This time I'm leaving the foreign leagues out so I can see how foreign players enter the league without the leagues turned on and how and if worldwide scouting works.

One difference I see immediately is that when you have foreign leagues turned on, the game creates enough players in foreign countries to fill those leauges -- i.e., Japan has 1190 players in its foreign league, in an MLB only league there are 201. In my MLB-only universe, there are 6,500 + players to fill the entire MLB and minors. That means about 5,200 will be on MLB teams with 1,300 extra players.

I'll admit that I don't know the demographic makeup of real-life MLB and its minor leagues. Are there 29 South Africans in the system? 38 guys from Aruba? 194 from Cuba? Some of those seem high to me. My understanding is that representation in the player file is tied to baseball quality, politics aside (there's no Castro in OOTP BM). But I think there are two problems:

- the representation ratio is a bit off -- average rated countries like South Africa may get more representation than they deserve while excellent rated countries like the Dominican may get less than they deserve

- there is not an accurate correlation between baseball quality and the quality of players created. OK, I'm fine with the game creating three guys from Bulgaria. But immediately I see that one of these guys is a young pitcher rated 9/10/10 who looks like the next Roger Clemens. To me, instances of countries with few professional players should create few if any superstars, but in both my first two leagues I've seen studs from odd and remote locations.

Before I get labeled as the anti-fanboy, let me say there is something about this game that I absolutely love -- scouting. I think the way scouting is implemented in this game is absolutely terrific. I'm not familiar enough with FM to know if this format originated there, but I love the fact that I have a bunch of scouts and they can come to different conclusions for the same player -- to the point where you'll have one scout fall in love with a guy and everybody else thinks his average, or you'll have a scout who thinks some supposed can't-miss prospect sucks. That's realistic to me.

That said, there is one change I would like to see in scouting -- an option to have an average of your all scouts' ratings for players displayed on screen. That would definitely make things easier when say you're in the draft and you're trying to find a consensus from your scouts on who is the best player on the board. I don't like having to flip from scout to scout and see how the ratings compare.

Without owning the game I would agree with what kcchief has said, though I think a median score might be more useful in this case as it's less suseptable to extremes.

I do love some of the names ... Cuban Jeremias Bastardo is my star right fielder. I want to give him the nickname "El Bastard."

That is very cool. Almost sounds like a first in text-sims. Usually scouts vary very little from my experience in the games I have played. I don't think I have seen that much variation in scouts in FM, but there is some. That is the best I have experienced, scout wise.

The scouting information is great. The work you have to do to get it is a royal pain in the ass.

I'm so lost. I haven't had a chance to play at all, and so far I'm completely puzzled. I can't seem to get much to work (like I downloaded logos, put them in the logo folder, but they still aren't being used). I thought about starting early and letting the game sim through a bunch of seasons, but I can't seem to find if you can more than just one season at a time. Even with only the American leagues with minors on, it is not simming very fast.

Anyway, I'm sort of over-whelmed and under-whelmed so far.

The Scouts average is an excellent suggestion (and was one that the development team is already aware of).

With respect to the foreign invasion, one thing you can do upon league creation is use the Foreign Player Percent Modifier (Options tab on the League Setup). This will impact the number of foreigners created for the draft pools and the leagues initial setup.

I think Markus is working on a "median" of sorts scout wise, could be wrong though as I've taken in a bunch of information lately.

If not for the fun in 6.5, I would write this game off completely, but I would love to see my universe in 2006 if not for the massive amount of stats alone. ie- I would love to play a game and see how X reliever did against X player in his career.

Ugh ... where's the auto save? Just got my first crash. I went to have my manager auto-set lineups and accidentally chose to autoset vs. RHP+DH and it went kablooey. D'oh!

I have noticed that even when I have lineup and pitching decisions set to be handled by my manager, while lineups seem to work fine my pitching depth chart doesn't always get set automatically.

What he said.

A scouting average and/or median would be nice. You can, however, see what each of your scouts says about a given player all at one time (assuming the given scout has scouted that player). Open the player's card, and on the Player Profile sheet there is a tab for Scouting Reports. This lines up the scouting for each of your scouts plus the SISA report in a form that allows you to easily compare.

Another great thing about the scouting is the "Quick-Scout" option. Even when your scout is off on a scouting assignment, he can still perform up to 8 quick-scouts per day. This is very helpful when evaluating trade proposals, etc.

Regarding the foreign players, I started a league that is MLB plus 4 levels of minors. No foreign leagues. I set my foreign players option to 10%. Under the Manager menu there is a sheet called "Explore World" listing every country with detailed information about the quality of baseball there. I've got a pretty decent scout from Mexico, and he is on assignment there to find me some attractive young prospects. It really works quite well. I think Marcus provided the ability to create foreign leagues in order to make the game more attractive to a world market. If you want (like me) to play a more realistic American framed version of major league ball, don't create foreign leagues. Works well.

After about 20 hours of play, I'm really starting to like this game. There is a lot to be fixed and cleaned up, but overall it is shaping up to be an awesome piece of work.

It looks like the player histories may indeed be stored the same way in this version. When I just had my crash, I re-opened the game and it went back to Jan. 2 with my last save, but all the player histories had their news from the season -- I had simmed through April when I hit crash.

True dat. One annoyance -- on some screens, like the roster screen, you can arrow forward and back from one player to the next so you can look at players ratings and scouting report for making roster decisions. Unfortunately, you can't do this when you open the player profile from the Transaction screen when this type of comparison would be most helpful.

This is great news now just if the releasing players and trading can be fixed if not the waivers this would be one to check out.

With regards to running foreign leagues, but not wanting to see MLB stars going overseas to play, here's how I solved the problem:

For each of the MLB level foreign leagues, cut the financials to 1/3 (or less) of the MLB level. Just like in real life, the star players follow the money, both in the US and elsewhere. What gets tricky is when you stagger schedules. I've got a Scottish league that runs mostly in the MLB off-season -- we'll assume they're playing in domes, okay :) . The FA's from the Scottish league hit the FA pool in late January/early February. If I'm not monitoring the SBL's schedule, the other MLB teams have scouted the FA pool and gotten all the decent FA's before I even place a bid.

My favorite concurrent league is a June - September 100 game schedule independent Indiana Rookie League. Since we're unaffiliated, it's like a constant semi-pro league where the players grow up and get old without their ratings ever topping 4's or 5's. I set the average player salary to $30K and adjusted the other financials accordingly. Every once in a while, a 38 or 40 y.o. borderline major leaguer will play with one of the teams for a season, then retire, and when one of our players (by "our", I mean the league's) gets offered a contract from or a trade to an MLB farm system, the whole league throws a BBQ. ( :) )

There's something pure and fun about my Indiana Rookie League running in the background of the greater baseball universe. I dig it.

And yes, if you want to keep your sanity, turn off waivers. Hell, turn off the 40 man roster, too, but I've been doing that since v6.

dola...

The one thing I really miss in this game (well, not miss, since it's never been there in the first place) is the opportunity for a choaching progression. If I kick ass in an unaffiliated rookie, minor or independent league, I'd like to get job offers from the bigger fish, ala FBCB, instead of having to scour the job openings and automatically getting any open job I apply for. Heck, I'd even take the job board approach if the game would turn me down sometimes.

This sounds awesome. This is the kind of depth that's missing from Puresim. This is the kind of depth that will make you come back for more over and over again. If they can fix the game up a bit and straighten out UI and AI quirks, we have ourselves a keeper.

My initial experience in creating leagues doesn't really make what Gabe is saying sound that great. You can definitely tone down the foreign percentage, but that also tones down the size of the world. He makes it sound like that if you set foreign players at 10 percent you can have your scouts go find more foreign players than that -- you can't. No more or less than 10 percent of all created players will be foreign regardless of whether they are foreign free agents or in the draft.

My VERY preliminary investigation of the impact of running foreign leagues is this:

- If you want a "real life" experience, turn off trading with other major leagues. Leaving this on allows a soccer-like flow of players from one league to another that is just staggering and will end with the Yankees trading an in-his-prime Johnny Damon to some team in Veneuela.

- If you don't want trading with foreign leagues, I see no real reason to have them turned on at all. The only thing it would seem to do is add a past and history to foreign free agents who decide to come and play in America.

- Playing without foreign leagues seems to reduce the quality of foreign free agents. It won't be like real-life where you're the Braves and you're signing 16-year-olds in the Domincan. The talented foreign rookies will be in the draft. Finding substantial foreign free agents by souting the world looks to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Most will be duds. This probably overall a good thing.

Like I've said, none of this is necessarily a deal breaker -- but I think people should know what to expect.

Yeah this happens, I've reported it as a bug.

Keep the information coming fellas. It's actually been great waiting on this one as I've learned a TON since release.

Has anyone begun to look at stats yet? I listed a link a page or so back that had some settings which make the stats very MLB like. Just wondered if anyone has used them yet?

Well yeah, if you are doing historic.

I'd love someone to do a quickstart for the major nations, and combine them (that way America/Japan etcetera will have the real names).. but quickstarts can't be combined can they?

First thought: Wow, poor bastard. I love that the Dodgers beat the shit out of the Giants' pitching, but 171 pitches? Talk about taking one for the team.

I clicked the player.



Second thought: Ooooooh. That wasn't such a great idea.



So let me get this straight, are they TRYING to kill the guy? Recoup the $12,980,000 still owed the dude because he's 36?

Holy crap. he essentially pitched two full starts worth of baseball!

Well, I think you have something to fill in that nickname field with, now... "Dead Man Throwing"

EDIT: WOW... he threw almost more balls than strikes. 52% of his pitches were strikes. Abysmal.

blah. that's not good AI right there.

I was thinking "Dravecky," but I'm not that cruel.

Even to the Giants.

And how impressive is it that he threw nearly as many strikes despite a noodle arm than the starter and first reliever threw pitches?

I'm not surprised he walked 9 guys. That's true grit.

Just for the hell of it:

Sack, that looks like what happens in FOBL (v5) every now and then when all the other pitchers are tired. The game just doesn't know what else to do but to leave that guy in.

Case in point:
http://www.thefobl.com/fobl/box2396.html

or:
http://www.thefobl.com/fobl/box1425.html

Happens a few times each season. No Jose Canseco relief appearances in OOTP. So this is far from a new issue.

jeezus, till the poor AI like that is fixed this game won't see my money. i hope it does get fixed and gets to see my money though.

True. But I have to think most managers would rather use several tired guys for an inning each than throw a tired closer out there for 6 innings. Still, it isn't something I'd ever seen in previous versions of OOTP.

We see it fairly often.

What the AI might need to do is to recognize this as a possibility and just keep the *starter* in there longer to take one for the team.

Yeah, they probably should have left him out there for at least another inning or two. He only threw 73 pitches.

And really, my biggest beef here is pulling the 2nd reliever after just 21 pitches. That's just flat out irresponsible AI. Better that he throws 40 or 50 and then the closer comes in if he's all that's left than for him to throw one 21 pitch inning and then the closer throws 171.

yeah, throw a starter in there, and bite the bulet and bring someone up the next day to fill in

Oh, and if ANYBODY should be throwing 170 pitches, it's the middle reliever, not the closer.

Wow, playing the games out, i've noticed very long hooks with the AI in the game, it almost makes me not want to play right now. I'm managing a short seasoned league with a bunch of guys straight from the draft, and the opposing managers are leaving them out there for 120-135 pitches on avg it seems.

That pitch count is high for a major league pitcher, let alone a guy making his first minor league start.

I wish they had instructions from the 'big club' on how to handle certain prospects. You know in real life a GM tells minor league managers to get certain highly touted prospects in the game as much as possible, and tells them what limits they set on certain pitchers, how often they'd like them to go, etc. I know this because i'm pretty sure Theo Epstein does this with the Sox minor league system. Jon Lester was on a very strict pitch count early in the season per order from above. Craig Hansen is now starting minor league games in order to develop his pitches as quick as possible, opposed to just throwing an inning or two every few games. Another order from above.

Teams usually have a development type of system for the minor leagues, not one e-mail at the start of the season expecting them to at least play .500 ball. I'm sure my GM would rather me play his prized young prospect who has a ton of potential over a 28 year old with high ratings rotting away in A ball instead of playing the best guys and winning every day.

If anybody throws 170 pitches in a game with arms available on the bullpen, i'd expect that manager to be fired the next day.

Incidentally, it turns out that that's what happened with Bobby Salter. They signed him to a contract after the game, put him on the active roster, and DFA'd a couple dudes and demoted a couple others.

One of the demotees? A SP who hadn't pitched in the majors yet this season.

No, I'm sorry. I stand corrected. They made that move BEFORE the game. I'll be watching their post-game transactions.

They signed two outfielders to minor league contracts and didn't sign or call up any pitchers.

I had something like that happen to my closer. Pitched 4 or 5 innings in a blowout, well over 100 pitches. Only problem is, I had him on a 40 or 50 pitch count.

OOTP crashed, and I hadn't saved since the day before the 171 pitch game, so I had to reload.

Same thing happened - we beat the starter around (knocked him out in the 2nd instead of the 3rd this time), the same reliever pitched 'til the end of the 3rd, then the closer pitched the final six innings.

Much better control this time, though. He only threw 102 pitches and walked 2 guys instead of 9. :p