Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP9 First Impressions...)

[CraigSca]

I gotta tell ya, everytime I see a "fixed!" without any explanation, it really irritates me. If you have an issue with the game, you can never be fully assured it IS fixed.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Would his 35% setting for last season still count toward last season?

In effect, his pitcher would only have this season weighted 40% based on the day he was released. Thus making at June 15, his current season being only 20% of what the computer uses to make the decision (40% of 50%). It would seem that the AI's logic isn't flawed if he had a good season the previous year (which would account for 65% of the evaluation on June 15th). A solution for this would seem to really put the focus heavily on Current Year Stats since it will also use last years up to a point. I wonder if the evaluator was set 0/80/10/10, if he would have been released much earlier and not picked up by the computer.

Yeah, but look at his full stats - he was horrendous the year before, as well (albeit in fewer innings, but still).

1974: 12-5, 2.51 ERA, 143.1 IP, 119 HA, 40 BB, 95 K
1975: 14-12, 4.18 ERA, 217.2 IP, 222 HA, 133 BB, 108 K
1976: 4-7, 7.31 ERA, 88.2 IP, 114 HA, 58 BB, 11 K
1977: 2-17, 9.62 ERA, 102 IP, 109 BB, 2 K

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I gotta tell ya, everytime I see a "fixed!" without any explanation, it really irritates me. If you have an issue with the game, you can never be fully assured it IS fixed.

It may not have an explanation, but it has a smilie.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I gotta tell ya, everytime I see a "fixed!" without any explanation, it really irritates me. If you have an issue with the game, you can never be fully assured it IS fixed.

To be frank its not always possible to give an explanation as to the solution to a bug or issue in a game which would make sense to a user.

If I was to paste a bunch of code and flow diagrams here to indicate how I'd fixed a bug in my codebase today for instance few people would understand it and even those who do would appreciate that without a better knowledge of the entire system they still have to take the fact that its 'fixed' on faith.

Markus tries very hard to make the best game possible and beyond that to give open support to the games community posting on websites and talking about the product - I for one think he does a good job, especially as a very small developer with limited testing resources.

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

To be frank its not always possible to give an explanation as to the solution to a bug or issue in a game which would make sense to a user.

If I was to paste a bunch of code and flow diagrams here to indicate how I'd fixed a bug in my codebase today for instance few people would understand it and even those who do would appreciate that without a better knowledge of the entire system they still have to take the fact that its 'fixed' on faith.

Markus tries very hard to make the best game possible and beyond that to give open support to the games community posting on websites and talking about the product - I for one think he does a good job, especially as a very small developer with limited testing resources.

As a person who knows how to program, I fully understand your explanation.

What I was really referring to, however, were answers to less direct questions like this purely hypothetical example -- "I noticed that pitcher's K's seem to fall off the map while their walks remain at a constant rate. This could have a bearing on why hitters continue to excel well into their 40's. Could you look into this?"

A couple days later you'll get the "Fixed " response and that's great, but the problem is - what was fixed? Was there an error made in coding? Did he change the effects of aging and hope it works? What if my initial understand was wrong and this ISN'T why hitters continue to excel into their 40's?

Mind you, Markus is a great programmer and his skills are light years ahead of mine, I just wish I better understand the resolution to some of the problems in the game beyond, "fixed."

[DaddyTorgo]

so is there any sort of consensus or anything on evaluation and modifiers?

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

so is there any sort of consensus or anything on evaluation and modifiers?

I'm holding off on buying until I get a better sense of where the issue stands.

[DaddyTorgo]

i'm intrigued by the 49/49/1/1 and .8/.8 that was being discussed earlier...

[Ksyrup]

OK, so I ran an 80-season fictional sim with 1/50/48/1 evaluation settings, and I'm a little more heartened by what I'm seeing. First, I'm definitely not seeing as dramatic an issue with BB/K ratio as I was with the historical sims. There are bad BB/K ratios, but they are with older players and generally, not as pronounced as the ones I found in the historical sim. Typically, the walks are reasonable, but the Ks are way down. Maybe a guy will pitch 180 innings, and have 46 BB and 32 Ks. Not terribly realistic, but not 109/2 either!

The other thing I'm liking is that I'm seeing evidence that the evaluation settings might be working better with fictional than historical, too. With 1/50/48/1, the goal is to have the AI look almost entirely at the last 2 seasons' stats to make decisions. I found an example of a guy who had decent numbers in his contract walk year, became a FA, and was given a big contract despite his ratings dropping off, and he bombed big time. That's awesome, because while his W/L and ERA was decent, you could tell from his BB/K and H/IP ratios that he wasn't the same pitcher. And his post-contract stats showed it.

This guy wasn't much of a strikeout pitcher, but he posted solid ratios early in his career and had a 19-8, 3.53 ERA and 63/117 BB/K ratio at age 25 before suffering a major injury the next season that knocked him out for 13 months. When he came back, he wasn't the same - in the last 2 years of his contract (ages 28 and 29), he posted these numbers:

6-8, 4,61 ERA, 158 IP, 182 HA, 57 BB, 49 K
17-9, 3.61 ERA, 217 IP, 208 HA, 61 BB, 56 K

Now, the second year looks pretty good, and might have convinced a team to offer him a 4 year, $22M contract. The first year of that contract? 6-22, 6.40 ERA, 180 IP, 265 HA, 54 BB, 47 K. And it just got worse from there. The only problem I see is that he spent 6 years with that team and threw way too many innings in the majors given his poor performance. But I like, in theory, what appears to be the AI thought process in signing him. I might mess with the percentages some to give a bit more credence to scouting, but the goal is have teams evaluate the player on stats. That looks like it is happening much better in the fictional sims than the historical.

Next, I'm going to take a look through the history to see what evidence I canfind of guys being demoted/released immediately after a 200 IP and/or above-average season.

[Anthony]

yeesh, do you have a real job? at what point do you just play the fucking game? or is this what you're gonna do for the next few weeks until you lose interest from doing all this "work" and move on to another game?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I'm not actually "playing" anything.

oops, nevermind, you already answered this.


have fun.

[fantom1979]

Just some random stats:

Since 1960:
The worst K/BB for a pitcher with over 200 IP was Claude Osteen with a .68 in 1975.

There have been 32 pitchers with a K/BB under 1.0 with over 200IP since 1960.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

oops, nevermind, you already answered this.


have fun.

I'm vetting the game. I enjoy the simming/review of league history much more than actually playing the game, TBH. Baseball is unique in that the stats/history make up quite a bit of the experience - for me, much more than actually taking over a team and running it. I like creating league experiences and "living" them, and in that sense, I'm reviewing the simulations to see how well they simulate a real-world baseball experience.

I'll probably do some actual playing of the game at some point, but when I do, I nearly always simulate 50-100 years of league history before I start, and if I can't buy into the simulation prior to taking over a team, I definitely won't enjoy playing in that league.

[Ksyrup]

Well, from my review of this fictional league I simmed, I feel pretty confident in saying that OOTP9 does a much better job handling fictional league AI decisions than historical sims, for whatever reason. I'm not finding many instances of questionable AI decisions to demote/release good pitchers, and in fact, I've seen just the opposite - some surprisingly good decisions to demote pitchers with decent track records who had a bad season until they could prove they could pitch in AAA, then they were brought back up. I like what I'm seeing. I wonder how much of this is the evaluation settings I'm using...? They appear to be working as intended (I think).

I even found one instance of a reliever who got converted to starter that looks, from the stats, like a phenomenal job of AI decision-making. Guy came up at 23 and pitched in 25 games, all relief, saving 16. At 24, he pitched in 32 games, saving 15 and also starting 12. At 25, he got traded mid-year, but made 83 appearances, all in relief. At 26, he did another split job, pitching in 53 games, starting 11. The next year, the team apparently wanted to make him a full-time starter, so he made 2 dominating AAA starts in April before being called up and making 31 starts (going 19-5, 2.80), with no relief appearances, and he never went back to the minors after that.

I think I'll be turning my attention to fictional leagues at this point...and maybe I'll actually play the game!

[DaddyTorgo]

HA - don't be a dick. If Ksyrup wants to run a bunch of data in order to help improve his enjoyment and others enjoyment then the least you can do is not be an ass about it.

he spent the money, he can do whatever he wants now that he has the game.

[Ksyrup]

HA is from NY...he can't help it.

[DaddyTorgo]

hahaha

who was it talking about using .8 as a development modifier?

[Ksyrup]

In the RonCo thread over at the OOTP forum, SD says he'll be putting together a new fictional quickstart combing RonCo's modifiers and his settings. I'm looking forward to messing with that when he releases it. From the analysis he and RonCo have done, it looks like the initial set of players created by the game are far superior to the ones created later in the game, so his next quickstart is going to sim for a 25-year period and delete the league history so that the numbers are more consistent.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

HA - don't be a dick. If Ksyrup wants to run a bunch of data in order to help improve his enjoyment and others enjoyment then the least you can do is not be an ass about it.

he spent the money, he can do whatever he wants now that he has the game.

that's fine, but when the game doesn't 100% accurately allow him a way to enjoy the game the way he wants to, thereby making him post (many many times) that the game is broken or faulty - which its not, whatever its faults may be its still the best baseball sim game i've ever come across - that's when the problem begins.

he wants to complain (again, a lot) about the game because in his world scouts don't factor in ratings (ie, abilities) of players - only stats, and stats from previous years, as many as 2 years ago to be exact. right. i guess JD Drew should be thankful he doesn't live in KSyrup's league, cuz for about the last 5 - 8 years the only thing JD Drew could hang his hat on was that scouts would drool over his potential and skills. he certainly never put up the numbers to support that leap of faith bestowed on him. in KSyrup's world there would be no JD Drews, just guys who either perfomed or didn't perform, never that guy who had those sexy ratings/skills who always seemed to land a job somewhere cuz the next GM thought this would be the year it all came together.

this is a case where the vocal few are trying to paint a negative picture about a game that is, at worst, decent in terms of pure stat simming and player developement. we get the point. the game isn't allowing you to play your league the way you want. you aren't getting the results you want in *your* league. perhaps your expectations for what a text sim sports game can do is off base. if you want historical replay go play Diamond Mind Baseball. text sim games aren't designed to hold up to such intense scrutiny. you're asking someone to code human intellect into a game, to make the AI do things as a human would do. if that's what you're looking for, simply operate in Commish mode and control every team.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I think I'll be turning my attention to fictional leagues at this point...and maybe I'll actually play the game!

GASP!!!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I wonder how much of this is the evaluation settings I'm using...?

If you do get a hankerin', try using those 1s instead of 0s in a historical sim. My "theory" about that is more conjecture/assumption than anything else, but I am a little curious about it.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

this is a case where the vocal few are trying to paint a negative picture about a game that is, at worst, decent in terms of pure stat simming and player developement. we get the point. the game isn't allowing you to play your league the way you want. you aren't getting the results you want in *your* league. perhaps your expectations for what a text sim sports game can do is off base. if you want historical replay go play Diamond Mind Baseball. text sim games aren't designed to hold up to such intense scrutiny. you're asking someone to code human intellect into a game, to make the AI do things as a human would do. if that's what you're looking for, simply operate in Commish mode and control every team.

I'd call it more than a vocal few. The OOTP boards are dead compared to where they were 5 years ago. There are little to no leagues. No one buys the game.

You don't have to tell people to go play other games to get what they want, they already are.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

In the RonCo thread over at the OOTP forum, SD says he'll be putting together a new fictional quickstart combing RonCo's modifiers and his settings. I'm looking forward to messing with that when he releases it. From the analysis he and RonCo have done, it looks like the initial set of players created by the game are far superior to the ones created later in the game, so his next quickstart is going to sim for a 25-year period and delete the league history so that the numbers are more consistent.

After further analysis, I'm not certain I'm going to do this. In my overnight 100-year sim, starting in 2001, there was a four-year offensive mini-boom that began the career, but then things remained within one standard deviation of the 100-year norm from 2005-2022. Seven of the nine seasons from 2023-2031 were one between 1 and 1.56 standard deviations below normal, followed by 2032-2038 being normal. 2039 and 2040 saw a two-year mini-boom, then 2039-2067 were normal. Offense was down again from 2068-2074, normal from 2075-2078, then there was an extended offensive boom from 2079-2092, and normalcy the rest of the way. Overall, it looks like the league is having a healthy offensive fluctuation throughout its history.

However, all this being said, it is worth noting that the highest league-wide offensive stats in history in just about every category were achieved in 2001. Based on this, I'd still recommended simming a decade and deleting that history to avoid "unbreakable" single-season records happening during that initial boom.

[Balldog]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

perhaps your expectations for what a text sim sports game can do is off base. if you want historical replay go play Diamond Mind Baseball. text sim games aren't designed to hold up to such intense scrutiny.

OOTP 6/6.5 seemed to do everything I wanted in a text sim but OOTP 7-9 has left me hanging.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

this is a case where the vocal few are trying to paint a negative picture about a game

I'm not trying to paint any picture about this game. I haven't told one person NOT to buy it. On the contrary, on a music board, I posted glowing things about this game in general that has lead to a couple of sales. I'm simply posting about what I perceive to be problems with the way the game operates, because I enjoy it and want it to be even better than it already is. Perhaps you conveniently skipped over my glowing comments about the way the AI appeared to be functioning in the fictional sim I did.

Here's the thing - you may not agree with how I want to play the game, but the game has evaluation settings that allow us to have the AI essentially disregard ratings as an evalulation tool. If that's in the game, and someone wants to use it that way, then it should work properly, shouldn't it? That has nothing to do with whether you and I disagree on whether that's the proper way to run a league. And then the stuff I'm finding about BB/K ratios and guys falling off a cliff early in their careers for no reason... you don't think that's a problem? When I go to play a game, and I've got a 25 year old consistently putting up a 1:3 BB/K ratio, given my understanding and expectations of how baseball works, shouldn't I expect that he will NOT, over the next 3 years, go from a 1:3 BB/K ratio to a 6:1 BB/K ratio? What fun is playing a game when you can't use reasoned analysis to inform your decision-making? There are no guarantees about any player's future, but we know enough about how players develop to know that those kinds of declines rarely, if ever, occur (absent injury or the rare case of Steve Blass Disease). And even when they occur, they aren't given a couple of years to work out the kinks in the majors while getting absolutely destroyed.

This game is an improvement over previous versions, and I agree with you that it's the best baseball sim out there. That doesn't mean there aren't some big issues that need to be worked on. I'm seeing some historical sim issues that are leading me to leave that alone for now and move on to a fictional league, because I think the game is working more solidly for that kind of league right now.

[Ksyrup]

Question: Does the trading difficulty setting affect anything other than human trades? Will it make it harder for AI GMs to trade with each other? I always set the trading frequency to low because I think the average setting yields way too many trades, but I'm wondering if the difficulty setting would also put a damper on AI trades, or at least tighten them up a bit. The number of decent pitchers I see traded for mediocre middle infielders (and it is very often that exact combination - pitchers for middle infielders) is a bit bothersome. I wonder if the difficulty setting was up, whether it would affect the AI's willingness to offer or accept certain trades it might take on a lower setting.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Question: Does the trading difficulty setting affect anything other than human trades? Will it make it harder for AI GMs to trade with each other? I always set the trading frequency to low because I think the average setting yields way too many trades, but I'm wondering if the difficulty setting would also put a damper on AI trades, or at least tighten them up a bit. The number of decent pitchers I see traded for mediocre middle infielders (and it is very often that exact combination - pitchers for middle infielders) is a bit bothersome. I wonder if the difficulty setting was up, whether it would affect the AI's willingness to offer or accept certain trades it might take on a lower setting.

I don't believe it affects AI trading at all. But I can't confirm that, it's just conjecture.

[Ksyrup]

That's my guess too, which is why I lowered the frequency setting to try to curb so many trades. But it would be nice if the difficulty setting made the AI more selective in accepting/offering AI trades, not just human trades.

[Anthony]

i have my trade setting at the lowest frequency, and difficulty at "Hard". i see a very realistic amount of trades. i don't get too deep into the affairs of other teams, so i don't review the trades to see if they're equal or not. but i'm seeing 5, maybe 8 trades tops in the offseason. before i set the frequency to low, there was a huge amount of trades. low works best.

"Very Difficult" is indeed very difficult. so much so that it doesn't even make it worthwhile for me to aquire a star, cuz i'd have to literally give up my whole farm system. even with Hard it's made me have to resort to using my minor leagues to fill holes cuz i can't keep on throwing in like 3 prospects just to get the other team to back off its "don't bother me with those kinds of offers" stance.

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

he wants to complain (again, a lot) about the game because in his world scouts don't factor in ratings (ie, abilities) of players - only stats, and stats from previous years, as many as 2 years ago to be exact. right. i guess JD Drew should be thankful he doesn't live in KSyrup's league, cuz for about the last 5 - 8 years the only thing JD Drew could hang his hat on was that scouts would drool over his potential and skills. he certainly never put up the numbers to support that leap of faith bestowed on him. in KSyrup's world there would be no JD Drews, just guys who either perfomed or didn't perform, never that guy who had those sexy ratings/skills who always seemed to land a job somewhere cuz the next GM thought this would be the year it all came together.

But there's a difference here. Ratings, as they are used in the game, are the player's TRUE ability. In the real baseball world a "rating" would be a scouts perception of his ability.

As a player progresses through his career, scouting ratings should be used less and less as the player's real contribution to the league can be viewed from his empirical data. To have the AI base their decision on some scouting report that SOMEHOW judges that a guy's arm has fallen off without any catastrophic injury is just ridiculous. If a guy went 17-9 the previous year and had a nice K/W ratio, there is no reason to have a scout come back and say he stinks and should be in AAA. Like Ksyrup, I want an accurate simulation of the way baseball works. That's not the way baseball works and would leave a sour taste in my mouth.

To me, it's like the FOF issue where some teams would retain only 10 players from year to year. It's a great sim, but there are some things you may need to overlook in order to have fun. Some people are just not as good at overlooking things as different things are more/less important to different people.

[Mota]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

To me, it's like the FOF issue where some teams would retain only 10 players from year to year. It's a great sim, but there are some things you may need to overlook in order to have fun. Some people are just not as good at overlooking things as different things are more/less important to different people.

I think this is why I really enjoy my 16 team Canadian League and don't really go into the whole MLB sim. Maybe in Canada for some reason players peak early and experience sudden drops in talent. I just don't sweat it, and it doesn't sweat me.

I really enjoy making long term decisions in this game on who to keep, when to trade players, etc, and seeing it play out over multiple seasons. I traded my injury prone star CF because I couldn't afford all my players. He goes on to continue to be a superstar for multiple seasons and makes his new team elite (doh!). I enjoy dealing with the long term injuries, scrambling to find a new SS when my current one has just experienced a career ending injury (first one I have in 7 seasons). My replacement is hitting .350 (wow) but has a 1 rating at SS and has already made 15 errors in less than 30 games. Do I need to find someone else or is his offense worth it? And can he sustain it?

That's what I love about this game, and I'll tell you that OOTP does a damn good job at this part.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

"Very Difficult" is indeed very difficult. so much so that it doesn't even make it worthwhile for me to aquire a star, cuz i'd have to literally give up my whole farm system. even with Hard it's made me have to resort to using my minor leagues to fill holes cuz i can't keep on throwing in like 3 prospects just to get the other team to back off its "don't bother me with those kinds of offers" stance.

Have they fixed the trade bug where an AI team would not take a 1st round pick for a 2nd round pick, or $100,000 for $1. That used to bother me with "very difficult" trading. It wasn't difficult, its was silly.

[Alan T]

I thought OOTP used to give a news report when someone broke a milestone type of record for a season. I guess that no longer happens anymore? Just had a reliever get his 58th save of the season (which I -think- is a record) but no news report on it at all.

[Ben E Lou]

The QS league with the new settings is up now:

http://operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=66223

[MizzouRah]

Been playing the heck out of ootp this weekend and I'm still seeing things that make me scratch my head.

MLB fictional, year #4 - triple crown winner who hits 0.340/73hr/202rbi

Last year the pick the All Star players, but no all star game. This year, the All Star game is on the same day as other regular scheduled games.

I still think this game tries to do way too much. I love the depth, I really do.. but there are alot of little glitches that pull me right back out of my universe.

[korme]

HA, as much as I usually admire your brutal honesty, I think you're completely missing the boat with KS.

[Ksyrup]

I spent the weekend running test sims with different evaluation settings and still haven't found a great way to limit use of ratings. A lot of guys spending partial years between AAA and the majors based on a couple of short (but bad) stints in the majors. Just seemed like there was too much jumping back and forth between AAA and ML. And then there were the odd situations were good players would get 10-15 IP or 20 AB in the minors each year for no apparent reason. The good thing is that it definitely looks like the AI is using stats for evaluation, though. And as Ben suggested, I think not using "0" as one of the numbers helps.

Ben, on your fictional league, you use RonCo's development modifiers? Are you finding issues with the BB/K ratio like I pointed out in some of my sims? Because one thing I've found, across the board, is that the RonCo settings were the cause of the outrageous BB/K ratios I saw. When I used the default settings, the development might have been off a couple of years, but there were only a few older guys with out of whack BB/K ratios. With RonCo, and I was getting problems like my 1975 Reds. But I haven't tried RonCo with your league setup, so I don't know how they act.

[Ben E Lou]

Yes, I'm using the RonCo modifiers. Maybe it'll get addressed in a patch at some point, but it's plain as day that in fictional leagues players develop way too quickly and stick around too long at default settings. I'm not seeing the big problems with BB/K ratio, but there are two key differences:

1. I'm using a beta of the next patch, which lowers the speed of decline of the Stuff rating.
2. Because I'm far more interested in playing a challenging computer game than I am about every detail of "realism," I heavily use ratings as the evaluation in my settings (65/33/1/1).
3. The AI seems to be rather fond of the Stuff rating.

As a result of the above, some superstar players might have a final season with a 1:1 ish BB/K ratio, but that's the worst I've seen.

[Anthony]

i'm seeing the development of prospects being way too volatile. i've rebuilt my team around what looked like sure-thing, can't miss prospects, only to have them falter and some previously scrub guys in my minor become 4 or 5 star players. i remember one of the scrub players was requested by the AI in a trade to complete a deal, and i was like "huh, why would the AI ask for *this* guy...let me give them a better prospect just for karma" and sure enough 1 or 2 years later he boomed big time. anyway, just a little too much boom or bust. no big injuries to these guys either. power is power, unless you're old you shouldn't just automatically lose a couple ratings points off your power for no reason or all of a sudden forget how to take a walk.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

i'm seeing the development of prospects being way too volatile. i've rebuilt my team around what looked like sure-thing, can't miss prospects, only to have them falter and some previously scrub guys in my minor become 4 or 5 star players. i remember one of the scrub players was requested by the AI in a trade to complete a deal, and i was like "huh, why would the AI ask for *this* guy...let me give them a better prospect just for karma" and sure enough 1 or 2 years later he boomed big time. anyway, just a little too much boom or bust. no big injuries to these guys either. power is power, unless you're old you shouldn't just automatically lose a couple ratings points off your power for no reason or all of a sudden forget how to take a walk.

I agree, it's close but not there yet. I do like it better than the old way where prospects were almost guaranteed to be what they were projected. Prospects should always be tough to decipher, but this just seems far too random.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. Two days since the last post and off the front page. Moving this over to the baseball sims subforum now.

[Ben E Lou]

This pretty much tells the story of what I really like about the AI improvements to this game:

Manager Report for Ben E Lou

Saturday, November 11th, 2006

Personal Detail First Name Ben E Last Name Lou Nickname Age 31 Date of Birth 03-15-1975 Nationality American Team Columbus Mudcats Columbus Mudcats NABA

Managing History Year League Team G W L WPct Finish Post-Season Wins 2001 NABA Columbus 162 91 71 .562 2nd - 2002 NABA Columbus 162 84 78 .519 2nd - 2003 NABA Columbus 162 80 82 .494 5th - 2004 NABA Columbus 162 71 91 .438 5th - 2005 NABA Columbus 162 96 66 .593 2nd - 2006 NABA Columbus 162 82 80 .506 3rd -

Six seasons, no division titles, a mediocre farm system, and a mediocre all-around performance. So far, it has been very fun and challenging. There aren't many top-tier talents hitting free agency, and the OOTP AI has always been good at getting into bidding wars for the few who are out there. With trading on "hard" and heavy ratings-oriented AI evaluation, I've been able to play without any house rules. In the current offseason, I have $18M-ish to spend on free agents, so there's no way I'll be able to afford a proven star to get us out of mediocrity. I suspect what I'm going to have to do is stop spending up to my limit, pour max cash into scouting, and focus on the farm system. It's pretty clear with my team ("Average" market size), I won't be able to win a championship by focusing on free agents.

[Ksyrup]

That pic doesn't look anything like Darius Rucker.

[MizzouRah]

So Ben, this is all with your quickstart, correct?

Are there any settings that need changed once you start? Also, I assume If I want to start a "fresh" NABA league, I could just erase all stats and histroy?

Thanks!

[Young Drachma]

Gotta say, that the Add-Ons Center is the best addition to this game, ever. Not having to scour and add things like logos and the such to the game, saves me so much time and trouble. It's a feature I'd never think of, but really glad someone did and implemented it.

[Ksyrup]

This is from Jim's most recent roundtable discussion:

You play a baseball game by the stats the player accumulates. You play a football game based on the scouting report and hope the stats follow.

This is where I've been trying to go with the way OOTP evaluates players. I don't think it's unrealistic for both the AI and human to put a great amount of emphasis on evaluating stats to make game and roster decisions. I would like to see OOTP's evaluation process further refined so that I've got a very rough (say, 2-8 scale) scouting report, but what really matters most is the stats.

I guess this will be another area that HA disagrees with Jim...

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

This is from Jim's most recent roundtable discussion:



This is where I've been trying to go with the way OOTP evaluates players. I don't think it's unrealistic for both the AI and human to put a great amount of emphasis on evaluating stats to make game and roster decisions. I would like to see OOTP's evaluation process further refined so that I've got a very rough (say, 2-8 scale) scouting report, but what really matters most is the stats.

I guess this will be another area that HA disagrees with Jim...

Can't you do this now?

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Been playing the heck out of ootp this weekend and I'm still seeing things that make me scratch my head.

MLB fictional, year #4 - triple crown winner who hits 0.340/73hr/202rbi

Last year the pick the All Star players, but no all star game. This year, the All Star game is on the same day as other regular scheduled games.

I still think this game tries to do way too much. I love the depth, I really do.. but there are alot of little glitches that pull me right back out of my universe.

Josh Hamilton projected to do exactly this after two months of the current season, so it is not impossible at all

The allstar date problem is usually tied to strange user settings or manually edited schedules. I've never seen it in my tests.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Can't you do this now?

I think Ksyrup was referring to the tests that him and SkyDog (oh damn Ben E. Lou) have been running to determine what is the proper weighting to give to current year/previous year/ratings.

i honestly haven't adjusted my evaluation and played far enough into the future to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions - ksyrup likes to sit down and simulate entire universe histories for fun so he is really the expert on how well this is "working" with what %'s

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I just wish I better understand the resolution to some of the problems in the game beyond, "fixed."

Craig, I just do not have the time to explain some of the fixes... in areas like players development I need to change the code in several areas to balance an intended fix, and explaining it would take longer than the coding