Alright boyz, here we go!!! OOTP2006 First Impressions Thread!

[SackAttack]

sov, how did you figure out where to insert logos? All I can find is 'generate logo' using the color codes. I don't see any way to link to them off the hard drive the way you could in previous OOTP games.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

Yeah, this quickstart is only going to be cool for like 3-4 days tops anyways. It's like this:

1. Go to Game, Add Manager and create your very own profile
2. Go to Game, Select Manager and select yourself
3. Go to Game, Add Manager and delete me from your mothatruckin game

Option 3 is not an option. You can do the rest though.

[Schmidty]

I know I'm dumb, but I can't figure out how to assign a scout to scout a league (such as AAA). I've read the manual, and fiddled around to the point of insanity, but no luck. I'm sure it's something simpl and I'm just missing it, but does anyone know?

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Option 3 is not an option. You can do the rest though.

It should be if you are the new "active" manager.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

I know I'm dumb, but I can't figure out how to assign a scout to scout a league (such as AAA). I've read the manual, and fiddled around to the point of insanity, but no luck. I'm sure it's something simpl and I'm just missing it, but does anyone know?

What I'm quickly discovering is that this entire game is needlessly complicated to do just about any fucking thing.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

sov, how did you figure out where to insert logos? All I can find is 'generate logo' using the color codes. I don't see any way to link to them off the hard drive the way you could in previous OOTP games.

I just opened up that particular directory in a window and drag-n-dropped.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

It should be if you are the new "active" manager.

I dunno. Maybe I needed to switch managers but I thought the act of adding one did that automatically.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

I just opened up that particular directory in a window and drag-n-dropped.

Ugh. I'm just trying to figure out a way to have the game default to those logos the way you could do in OOTP 6. Having to drag-and-drop each time I create a new league is ridiculously draconian.

[GabeRivers]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Option 3 is not an option. You can do the rest though.

Go to Add Manager. Click on any of the choices for existing managers on the right list. That activates that manager. Then there is a button option at the bottom to delete that manager.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by GabeRivers

Go to Add Manager. Click on any of the choices for existing managers on the right list. That activates that manager. Then there is a button option at the bottom to delete that manager.

Did that. It highlighted the button for the added manager but not for the one sov had in there. Maybe I wasn't switching to the other guy, and so sov's manager was still active and thus undeletable. I'll try again on that later.

[Shkspr]

Originally Posted by Ragone

looking at that trade in the screenshot above.. maybe balitmore figured they couldn't keep him at his price level.. as he was a free agent after the season and basically got what they could for him

And nobody's going to offer more than a 30 year old reliever with an ERA in the fives for three months of Albert Pujols in his walk year?

[Schmidty]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

What I'm quickly discovering is that this entire game is needlessly complicated to do just about any fucking thing.

Yeah, me too.

The Fantasy draft was 4 hours of my life I wish I could have back. I have a giant headache, and I'm not having a lot of fun right now.

[Schmidty]

Honestly though, if anyone can tell me how to scout a league (other than the MLB), PLEASE let me know.

[Shkspr]

Hell, I've played this thing for ten hours and I'm not sure I've yet to go past April 10.

[Shkspr]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

Honestly though, if anyone can tell me how to scout a league (other than the MLB), PLEASE let me know.

All I've been able to do is get my guys to scout each team or organization individually. I've been assigning each of my coachs to scout my team - this gives me an idea of who I can trust and ho I can't, and what the error ranges are. I then send each scout out to a different team and have them scout the entire organization - first quick, then full. I can get most of the league done by opening day, and then I can cross-check players who are offered to me in trades.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

Honestly though, if anyone can tell me how to scout a league (other than the MLB), PLEASE let me know.

I haven't checked it out yet myself, but have you peaked at the big manual yet? I think one of the blogs contained a large excerpt from the manual on scouting and it seemed pretty in-depth.

[Schmidty]

Ok, I just figured it out, and it WAS in the manual. I must have missed before.

You have to have chosen the league, and then you go to "Transactions" from the League Menu. After that you go to the bottom right and choose "Scout League"

It's just a REALLY unintuitive way to do something that should be on a dedicated scouting screen. Frustrating.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

Frustrating.

I used that word in my PureSim review.

It gives me an Inigo Montoya moment now.

"You keep on using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means."

[Young Drachma]

at least there IS a manual this time.

[aran]

SackAttack:

From your experiences so far, do you prefer puresim or OOTPB?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

at least there IS a manual this time.

Oh, yes. A 300 page behemoth, and don't think I'm not happy about that level of documentation.

The problem is, the stuff giving me the biggest headaches - figuring out how to use the logos I want without having to jump through hoops every time I create a new league - well, you know, that stuff didn't get documented in time for the release.

Sad.

[Marc Duffy]

Josh, I'll have the answer in the next hour for you I hope. We were aiming to have a customization manual out on release day but in the end time ran out. It'll be uip soon!

[sovereignstar]

Here's a post (re: logos) that might help you out a little --http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/showpost.php?p=1686691&postcount=1

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by aran

SackAttack:

From your experiences so far, do you prefer puresim or OOTPB?

Smartass answer: a gun barrel in my mouth.

Honest answer: God, I don't know. For the most part, I prefer the FM-style interface that OOTP sports, and God knows it buries PureSim statistically at the moment.

On the other hand, glancing at the tech support forum over at OOTP's forums, it looks like OOTP really wasn't ready for release even ignoring some of the complaints about its intuitiveness. It's a complex game, I understand that.

But when I see that somehow relief pitchers are earning wins and saves at the same time, I wonder how that made it past beta. It realistically should have taken one extra-inning game of sufficient length to find that. Hell, the first game I managed, I found that. Do the beta testers just bang on the simulation engine without testing the manage mode?

There are improvements to OOTP, and a great many of them, but what I'm finding right now is that getting STARTED is an overwhelming chore. Then there's all the hunting around through various menus to find out how to do things like make trades, activate players received via trade, there's stuff like lineup replacement that automatically voids the position (so if you swap centerfielders, you have to re-set your player as a centerfielder, doubling the number of necessary clicks)...

Let me summarize my level of frustration with the two games this way:

If I were an average consumer who had purchased PureSim, OOTP and Baseball Mogul 2007 right now, and I were choosing one to play, I would probably go with Mogul. It's simplistic, yes, but at least it won't drive me to baldness before my 30's.

PureSim needs some polish before I can call it the best of the bunch, and OOTP is clearly, CLEARLY suffering from growing pains related to the switch to SI's codebase.

With PureSim, I know that most of my frustrations are fixable with future patches and updates. That's going to be a game I can play and enjoy with a little patience.

OOTP, I can see a game in there that I want to play. What's driving me fucking batshit insane is figuring out how to GET to that game.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Josh, I'll have the answer in the next hour for you I hope. We were aiming to have a customization manual out on release day but in the end time ran out. It'll be uip soon!

Thanks, Marc.

I know I'm full of piss and vinegar right now, but I also realize that this is a pretty radical change from what I'm used to. I'm giving it a shot to grow on me, and hopefully a week from now I can look back at my early frustrations and laugh.

In the meantime, I'm likely to be one bitter SOB until I figure out what the hell I'm doing. Be patient with me.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

Here's a post (re: logos) that might help you out a little --http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/showpost.php?p=1686691&postcount=1

sov,

That helps me with the naming conventions. It's still a PITA if I have to do that process every time I create a new league (which, if a useable roster set ever pops up, might happen; I have a weird attachment to my favorite real-life Dodgers), and that's what I'm looking for. With OOTP 6, I could dump them all into the folder that the game used when creating new associations, so the same logos would get used each time.

That's what I'm after, is something along those lines.

But at least that link should get me started in the short-term.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

sov,

That helps me with the naming conventions. It's still a PITA if I have to do that process every time I create a new league (which, if a useable roster set ever pops up, might happen; I have a weird attachment to my favorite real-life Dodgers), and that's what I'm looking for. With OOTP 6, I could dump them all into the folder that the game used when creating new associations, so the same logos would get used each time.

That's what I'm after, is something along those lines.

But at least that link should get me started in the short-term.

Well, I think it's just a matter of time before everyone gets on the same page. A Los Angeles Dodgers logo should always be named Los Angeles (A)_Dodgers.png. Am I missing something, but isn't that the same as an old OOTP 6 logo always being logo13.bmp (or whatever it was)?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

Well, I think it's just a matter of time before everyone gets on the same page. A Los Angeles Dodgers logo should always be named Los Angeles (A)_Dodgers.png. Am I missing something, but isn't that the same as an old OOTP 6 logo always being logo13.bmp (or whatever it was)?

Well, other than that the Dodgers are (N) and not (A), yup.

No, that's not the issue. That's actually fine. The problem is that yeah, I can name the images appropriately and drag and drop them each time I need to use them, and that's fine and all, but what I want to do is find a way to just either import them once and for all or drag and drop them once, as OOTP used to do.

It would still assign the same logo to the same team, and that's fine, but it'd already be there waiting for me instead of having to manually insert them into the images folder with each new league.

[CamEdwards]

I'm glad/sad to see that others are sharing my concerns and frustration with this game. I downloaded this last night and sat down eager to play. After 45 minutes had gone by and I STILL hadn't been able to actually play a game, I turned off the computer for the night. I'll try to pick it back up later today, but so far I can't help but be disappointed.

I'm not saying anything new here, but it's just so damned complicated to do anything in the game. The interface is not just unintuitive, it's counter-intuitive. And the play by play does not excite me. At least in older versions there were specific mentions of it being Opening Day and things like that. My first game of the season started out like any other game. In fact, I didn't even see any pre-game notes about starting pitcher and whatnot (perhaps that's in one of the OTHER ways to watch the game).

Like Sack said, you can see where this game has the potential to be very good, if you could strip all the extraneous crap from it.

[Bee]

I'm not feeling overwhelmed at all, but it might be the way I started in the minor leagues. That takes out a bunch of the decisions and possibly some of the frustration others are having (although it adds it's own issues IMO). I've now moved on to the Japanese Pro League and am having much more fun with the game. It was pretty easy to move up the manager's ladder even when I finished dead last in my Triple A league. I think I'd recommend to anyone wanting to try the game and having concerns about being overwhelmed to try the minor leagues, get used to the basics and then move on to the pro leagues. I think that might be a better way to learn the game a little at a time.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

I think that injuries in V2006 are probably modeled as close to reality as anything in the game. BP's Will Carroll, who is an injury expert, shared the data that he's collected with Markus, thus the 'Under the Knife' section. It may look like a lot, but I don't think the average baseball fan understands how many injuries occur in real life.

After 3 full seasons, I haven't had much problems with the injuries other than the stretch I posted. I'm willling to accept it being just really bad luck at this point but when you lose your #1, #2 and #3 starting pitchers for the year in the space of 10 days it's something you tend to notice. Not to mention that at the minor league level you can't control the DL, so these guys were just sitting on the roster eating up space despite being useless for the whole year. I think at one point I was using the bat boy as a starter.

[lynchjm24]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

So it sounds like Bee got discouraged playing a career as a minor league manager. Is anyone else trying that or will impressions of that have to wait? Anyone have draft impressions? For those managing in the majors, such as lynchjim because I know we have similar play styles, what kind of decisions are you making on a daily basis? Certain micromanaging I don't mind as long as the decisions are easy to do, meaning I'm not forced to go to 5 screens play each week, for instance.

I haven't quite gotten through spring training yet. I actually haven't been able to figure out how to look at my spring training stats. Nor have I figured out how I could actually watch/manage the game. I'm sure all this is in the manual, but I'm not really a manual kind of guy - that's on me, not the game.

You get a lot of trade offers, which are horrible to get through. If you go from the trade offer to the closest thing the game has to a trade block - then the game tells you the offer has expired when you go back to your email. This of course makes no sense because it tells you that you have 14 days to decide.

I set up a fictional league based on real life. I already miss the old OOTP 'transactions' screen. I think that might be my favorite text sim screen and the new one is much more complicated. You have to hit a drop down to pick which of the 5 minor league teams you are looking at and you can't see nearly as many players as you used to be able to. Certainly part of this is because of the added levels of minors, but I miss that screen.

The set lineup and rotation screens aren't all that easy to work with. Another area where the simpler screens in OOTP were better. Sure now you have more lineup flexibility, but I play as a GM mostly and used to only tweak things a little bit. Being able to quickly tweak lineups is something that isn't as easy as it was before.

It's really exactly what I expected. It's now more designed for the FM type player who slowly plays out seasons. There is just too much going on to really play this game like I played solo OOTP in the past. It's an amazing game, but if you added maybe a half dozen of the new features to OOTP 6.5 I would have been happier then I'm going to be with the complexity I'm faced with here. I don't have huge amounts of time to play and I'm interested in the long term aspects of a league, watching players develop - building a history around my team. I can't spend 20 minutes trying to figure out which player I should designate for assignment, but with all the information at your fingertips it makes decisions like that harder - not easier.

Maybe it will grow on me, but I have never been able to get into FM or EHM because there was just 'too much'.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Well, other than that the Dodgers are (N) and not (A), yup.

No, that's not the issue. That's actually fine. The problem is that yeah, I can name the images appropriately and drag and drop them each time I need to use them, and that's fine and all, but what I want to do is find a way to just either import them once and for all or drag and drop them once, as OOTP used to do.

It would still assign the same logo to the same team, and that's fine, but it'd already be there waiting for me instead of having to manually insert them into the images folder with each new league.

maybe I'm missing something, but all you have to do is copy your logos into that news\html\images folder and make sure they are named right (Los Angeles (N)_Dodgers.jgp for example). that's it. if you make a new league with LA, copy the logo into the new folder. one caution - if you add logos to the folder while the game is open, they won't work in all places until you restart the game. in 6, you could do this while it was running (and almost had to, because you had to look up who was team 1, team 2, etc.)

I don't really understand why logos are giving people trouble. they should be much more upset about having all the logos and player photos in the same damn directory.

[Ramzavail]

has anybody found the option to add stats in the players eval of AI instead of the pure ratings approach? I really liked that and tweaked it often in 6.5

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by lynchjm24

I haven't quite gotten through spring training yet. I actually haven't been able to figure out how to look at my spring training stats. Nor have I figured out how I could actually watch/manage the game. I'm sure all this is in the manual, but I'm not really a manual kind of guy - that's on me, not the game.

spring training stats are a split.

for league stats...League dropdown menu>Statistics. View Batting Stats. You should now have several dropdowns, including Stats Splits - choose Spring Training. you can further refine with additinal splits (home / road) with the stats double split. unfortunately, lefty / righty splits do not work for spring training, but I think must of the other (albeit less important) splits are available.

to play a game, got to League>Scores & Schedules. assuming you're at that part of the season, pick a game and choose "manage" to play it out. quick-play used to be called sim - that will just sim it out. if you aren't yet where there are any games, you can choose the auto-play until buttons below to advance.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ramzavail

has anybody found the option to add stats in the players eval of AI instead of the pure ratings approach? I really liked that and tweaked it often in 6.5

I may be wrong, but I do not think this is in the game.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

I'm glad/sad to see that others are sharing my concerns and frustration with this game. I downloaded this last night and sat down eager to play. After 45 minutes had gone by and I STILL hadn't been able to actually play a game, I turned off the computer for the night. I'll try to pick it back up later today, but so far I can't help but be disappointed.

I'm not saying anything new here, but it's just so damned complicated to do anything in the game. The interface is not just unintuitive, it's counter-intuitive. And the play by play does not excite me. At least in older versions there were specific mentions of it being Opening Day and things like that. My first game of the season started out like any other game. In fact, I didn't even see any pre-game notes about starting pitcher and whatnot (perhaps that's in one of the OTHER ways to watch the game).

Like Sack said, you can see where this game has the potential to be very good, if you could strip all the extraneous crap from it.

Please help me understand the interface problems. It's difficult for me to recognise the problems having grown up on such an interface. The more experiences shared, the better chance I have of getting them fixed

[cuervo72]

Well, (for me, can't speak for Cam) for one, I find it frustrating to do the following:

Click on a screen from the dropdown. Say, just your basic roster screen.
Click on a player.
Use the arrows to toggle through your players

Now, in the old version, all you had to do is to close the player page, and you were back on the page you started - be it the roster page, a lineup page, a transactions page, etc. I don't see that there is any way to "close" a player page and get back to where you were besides going back up to the dropdown navigation and going down the tree again or pressing the back key a number of times? Basically, instead of a linear page memory, I wouldn't mind one that is tree-based in a way. Hope I'm explaining it well enough...

[Ramzavail]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

I may be wrong, but I do not think this is in the game.

Then I really don't understand why it isn't in this game. Why regress?

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Please help me understand the interface problems. It's difficult for me to recognise the problems having grown up on such an interface. The more experiences shared, the better chance I have of getting them fixed

Marc,

Just a few examples from me:

1) It took me 15 minutes to find the trade screen. Why in the hell isn't it in the front office of your specific team? Why do I have to go to the league screen to do it?

2) Why on Earth do I have to go to ten different places to send my scouts? I have to go to one place to scout a league, one place to scout a player, another place to scout a team. . . for the love of God, have a scouting screen like FM and let me assign my scouts on one page with a few clicks.

3) Speaking of the trade screen, where are my options for looking at anything other than stats? There are certain things that are important in trading in a career sim. Things like contract information, age, potential. . . it's a nightmare to click through all of it.

4) I click on the team schedule page and sim forward a day. It takes me back to the SION front page. To look at my box score, I have to click back into the schedule screen. Or I can use the league schedule screen and click the back button to look at an individual box score.

5) I couldn't figure out where to find the spring training stats either. Now that DD posted, I'll start looking at the screen, but I spent 10 minutes looking for them and gave up.
-----------------------------------------------------

I like the FM UI and I'm sure with some time I'll figure out where everything is and be OK. The amount of information is staggering and I understand that it has to be hard to organize all of the information. But my God, there are some things here that just blow me away. The scouting thing is about the best example I can come up with.

You have something that SHOULD be fairly simple to figure out and incredibly simple to execute. Counter-intuitive explains it 100%.

------------------------------------------------------

I haven't dug into the AI as of yet, but please oh please report the GoSeahawks trade from above as a MAJOR bug. I'll put up with clunky AI long before I'll put up with a triple crown slugger being traded for a middle reliever at the trading deadline. If things like that stay in, I won't be around long enough to figure out the UI.

[CamEdwards]

What TroyF said, Marc.

[TroyF]

One tip for those who have the game:

Use the bookmark feature. Use it extensively. I think I have about 25 bookmarks already, taking me to my minor league teams home pages, stats pages, trade screen, lineup settings, etc.

It's on the bottom right hand side of the screen. Probably the single most useful thing in the game.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ramzavail

Then I really don't understand why it isn't in this game. Why regress?

there are a few things that are not in the game. there's no trading block. the star ratings are gone. I don't believe players get ejected from games anymore (may be wrong there).

I can't speak for Markus or SI, but in some cases it was a design decision (star ratings falls into this category). I believe other features not making it (back) in are simply a function of the game being rewritten from scratch. I have no idea where that stat rating thing falls, but I would suspect it's the latter.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by TroyF

One tip for those who have the game:

Use the bookmark feature. Use it extensively. I think I have about 25 bookmarks already, taking me to my minor league teams home pages, stats pages, trade screen, lineup settings, etc.

It's on the bottom right hand side of the screen. Probably the single most useful thing in the game.

Any idea how these bookmarks work in a multiplayer setting? Are they stored somewhere outside of the league directory local to your machine, or somewhere in the league file?

(I'd look right now, but don't have it set up at work)

[DanGarion]

I haven't been able to figure out how to only look at free agents from the Player Search screen.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Any idea how these bookmarks work in a multiplayer setting? Are they stored somewhere outside of the league directory local to your machine, or somewhere in the league file?

(I'd look right now, but don't have it set up at work)

I don't know to be honest.

I know that for my game, they are simply invaluable. Anything that took me more than fifteen seconds to find went into a bookmark. I haven't played wiht organizing them or any of those options yet. Marc, I'd SRONGLY reccomend making this feature as robust as possible in the first patch, I'm talking about being able to create folders for specific tasks (ie: you can put offseason tasks in one folder, stats in another, news in another, etc)

Now, with all of the negaitivity aside. I think the game has some potential, even in this version. I see no problem with quick simming. It can get interupted for things like trades, but I can set the options up to let the computer managers control anything I don't want to. As a GM, I'll probably let the manager control everything outside of promotions, demotions, trades and draft.

If I see a lineup tweak that should be made for a younger player, I can always control the lineups as well. (which while not easy to catch at first, isn't all that bad, it's easy to set up a depth chart and give your catcher a rest every fifth day for example)

[Bee]

Originally Posted by dangarion

I haven't been able to figure out how to only look at free agents from the Player Search screen.

Me either, but you can sort by team and it puts them at the top. The only problem is when you change views to see their stats and stuff it reorders them.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Bee

Me either, but you can sort by team and it puts them at the top. The only problem is when you change views to see their stats and stuff it reorders them.

Exactly, I hate that every time you change your view it resorts the info. It should only sort when you click on a column, not just because you change your view.

[Ramzavail]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

there are a few things that are not in the game. there's no trading block. the star ratings are gone. I don't believe players get ejected from games anymore (may be wrong there).

I can't speak for Markus or SI, but in some cases it was a design decision (star ratings falls into this category). I believe other features not making it (back) in are simply a function of the game being rewritten from scratch. I have no idea where that stat rating thing falls, but I would suspect it's the latter.

Trading blocks and stars are just b.s. time savers in my opinion. I could care less about those things.

But the fact that you have the opportunity to tweak the ratings via actual performance brings a realistic feel to the universe you are playing in. I hate the full ratings approach.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by dangarion

Exactly, I hate that every time you change your view it resorts the info. It should only sort when you click on a column, not just because you change your view.

yep, hopefully Marc will note this and have it fixed in the next patch.