Help with PureSim Baseball 3 Planning

[Shaun Sullivan]

Hey guys, I have a thread that I posted on our forums that I will be using as an aid in planning the road map for PureSim Baseball 3:

If you get a chance, please chime on on this thread. (http://www.wolverinestudios.com/forum/showthread.php?p=59091#post59091) I am using a "You get to spend $100 (virtual dollars!) on features" method of allocation.

I am especially interested in feedback from folks that play Diamond Mind, Strat, OOTP and Mogul, as I have yet cracked the code on how to engage those audiences. In particular, I want to make a run at engaging the Diamond Mind crowd. I have no chance to get OOTP loyalists to defect :)

[jbergey22]

The thing with Diamondmind is its so incredibly realistic. From what I remember reading of their forums they put in a ridiculous amount of hours just researching past plays.

The Strat O Matic crowd would be easy to get IMO. They have very poor Customer service and their games dont really improve much from year to year. Also, for the type of game they are they are 2nd fiddle to Diamondmind.

The most important things for me would be game engine and AI strategies. Markus goes into detail about the engine he uses in OOTP(which I like) but the AI problems year after year are something that would probably get people to change over to Puresim.

I've always felt when playing your game Shaun that it was more stats driven and didnt use the DIPs model. Would this be a correct statement?

I like stat driven engines for replay games but I like the DIPS engine(great at simulating the unpredictability in baseball) for your type of game.

[FBPro]

With both DMB and Strat the big issue is recreating 19XX or 20XX season's statistics/standings.

[SirFozzie]

I would love to see more engaging from the APBA (Baseball for Windows)/OOTP style, personally. There's something good about watching the ball travel in puresim, but I would love to read text to go with it.. for example.. let's take your standard situation: No one out, runner on first.

Puresim shows the ball bloop just beyond the second baseman, and it reports dryly that the runner moves to second. Nothing big there.

I'd prefer something like the following..

"Carter looks in, the windup.. and the 3-1 pitch to Davids.."

"Blooped toward short right center.. Thompson going back, reaches up.. just out of reach, and it'll fall in for a base hit. Bryan moves to second, so the first two batters here in the 4th have reached, and the heavy-hitting Green is coming up."

to me, this is part of a vital thing.. it engages the player, give him a picture of what is happening that doesn't come through in the picture of a ball moving across the screen and nothing else.

[Shaun Sullivan]

I would love to see more engaging from the APBA (Baseball for Windows)/OOTP style, personally. There's something good about watching the ball travel in puresim, but I would love to read text to go with it.. for example.. let's take your standard situation: No one out, runner on first.

Puresim shows the ball bloop just beyond the second baseman, and it reports dryly that the runner moves to second. Nothing big there.

I'd prefer something like the following..

"Carter looks in, the windup.. and the 3-1 pitch to Davids.."

"Blooped toward short right center.. Thompson going back, reaches up.. just out of reach, and it'll fall in for a base hit. Bryan moves to second, so the first two batters here in the 4th have reached, and the heavy-hitting Green is coming up."

to me, this is part of a vital thing.. it engages the player, give him a picture of what is happening that doesn't come through in the picture of a ball moving across the screen and nothing else.

Thanks. That feature is currently doing well, here is a live graph (http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AjwGFRSTHZLcdENLUEttYWVhM0xwR2xQSEtZNXpyN1E&hl=en) of the feature survey so far:

[Young Drachma]

My idea won't win, I just posted said a better financial engine. I love the customization of OOTP, but if I had a game that simmed seasons quickly and had the ability to model financials better, that'd be a worthwhile thing.

I'm super surprised so few PS folks don't want multi-player league support.

[SackAttack]

Is "doesn't cause me to go into a blind rage" a possible feature?

Because it's been a long time since a text baseball game pulled that one off.

[Shaun Sullivan]

My idea won't win, I just posted said a better financial engine. I love the customization of OOTP, but if I had a game that simmed seasons quickly and had the ability to model financials better, that'd be a worthwhile thing.

I'm super surprised so few PS folks don't want multi-player league support.

I know, that still surprises me to this day. My guess is that the PureSim demographic skews to a much older audience, one that is not as into to online league stuff, just more interested in solitaire play. There are a lot of online games, so maybe the folks that want that don't consider PureSim in the first place.

I hear that OOTP multiplayer is popular, but I bet if we counted up the percentage of OOTP folks in an online league it would be small. Maybe it looks larger for vocal minority / message board bias?

PS 2007 had way more comprehensive and integrated multi-player support than any any of the big text sims, but it never took off. It has since been removed because of the complexity tax on the game, maintenance was not commensurate with the number of player using it etc...

[henry296]

Shaun,

While I haven't played with the last couple of patches, the one thing I noticed in historical play, was too many players with more than 500 ABs. So, better alignment with historical stats in terms of distribution since I think the totals are pretty good.

[fantom1979]

Step 1. Go to the OOTP Suggestion Forum

Step 2. Put ideas from the OOTP forum into your game (not all, some of them are crackpots :) )

Step 3. Advertise the hell out of those new features

Step 4. Profit

(ok, this is probably not the greatest idea, but I would think you could get some people to convert if you spent some time appeasing the OOTP users that feel the game has shifted away from them).

[Philliesfan980]

I would love to see more engaging from the APBA (Baseball for Windows)/OOTP style, personally. There's something good about watching the ball travel in puresim, but I would love to read text to go with it.. for example.. let's take your standard situation: No one out, runner on first.

Puresim shows the ball bloop just beyond the second baseman, and it reports dryly that the runner moves to second. Nothing big there.

I'd prefer something like the following..

"Carter looks in, the windup.. and the 3-1 pitch to Davids.."

"Blooped toward short right center.. Thompson going back, reaches up.. just out of reach, and it'll fall in for a base hit. Bryan moves to second, so the first two batters here in the 4th have reached, and the heavy-hitting Green is coming up."

to me, this is part of a vital thing.. it engages the player, give him a picture of what is happening that doesn't come through in the picture of a ball moving across the screen and nothing else.

I agree 110% with this. I understand some people (heck, maybe a lot of people), like to sim through a lot of the games, but I would rather play the games out.

One of the biggest reasons why DMB still receives a lot of attention in the baseball sim world (even though the owners of the game are effectively trying to kill the game), is the immersion in the play by play. No other game does it better, and in my opinion, the play by play is critical in preventing the game from being a clickfest.

[sabotai]

I know, that still surprises me to this day. My guess is that the PureSim demographic skews to a much older audience, one that is not as into to online league stuff, just more interested in solitaire play. There are a lot of online games, so maybe the folks that want that don't consider PureSim in the first place.

There may have been times that I would have put MP in my top 5 of features that I would want in a sim, but after playing in several MP leagues in a few different sims, MP has dropped way down my wishlist. I've found that it isn't something that really conforms to how I like to play games.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of, even maybe a majority, of people who have asked for MP over the years in several other games have also found that MP just isn't something they enjoyed after giving it a try in OOTP, FOF, and other text sims, and dropped it from their wishlist of features for text sims.