OT - Ping Puresim players

[QuikSand]

Just curious... are there people out there who are playing and enjoying long-term careers with PureSim baseball?

I have given this game pretty much every benefit of the doubt, and have just made my third attempt to "get into it" but really to no avail. I want to like this game so much... but I just find that lots of small things (and some really large ones) keep me from finding it anything past frustrating.

Anyone out there having a great time, playing a long-term career with interesting results and some challenge?

[QuikSand]

I need to offer a meaningful caveat - I am just now downloading the laetst release (v1.71, I believe), so my less-then-exhiliarating have come with previous versions. I have updated my game at least three or oru times since I initially bought it, but have yet to get much out of the game, despite playing through some 20 seasons or so.

I'll give it a go with the latest upgrades - maybe that will help.

[FBPro]

I leave OOTP and go to it every few weeks, usually for no more than a day and couldn't really tell you anything going on it my career.......for me nothing to "draw me in". OOTP is not perfect but for some reason gives me more of a "personal" feel.

[Bee]

My experience with OOTP has been similar to Quiksand's with Puresim. I have bought the last 3 versions, everytime hoping that the game will capture me but has failed to do so everytime. I've tried the demo of Puresim and it hasn't even interested me enough to buy the game. Perhaps my dislike for baseball taints my view on these games, but I don't like soccer either and enjoy CM.

I hope you find the enjoyment you seek with the latest patch Quiksand.

[QuikSand]

Just did a "quickstart" league with the latest version... we'll see how this works.

My first impression is weird - I look at my team's batters, and practically every single guy has a rating in "control hitting" or at least 85/100. Either we have a team full of Rod Carews, or there's something weird going on here with either the gameor my scout. We'll see. I'll zip through the first season to find out of all these guys can hit.

[FBPro]

Good luck.... :)

[thirdandlong]

I have played a few dynastys with PureSim. I simmed about 100 years all in all. 50 being the most in any one dynasty. I was sucked in pretty well. I used all fictional players, and essentially ran the draft, signed free agents, and simmed two weeks or so at a time. I would juggle my lineup/rotation as needed between sessions. I was pretty sucked in. I still reminisce(I think that is how it is spelled, but it don't look right) about the best players. My favorite was a starting pitcher that dominated the league from the time he was 21, and retired from my team at the age of 43. He actually only won a single Cy Young before he was 35, but garnered 3 after that. He retired with 330 wins. The reason he didn't win Cy Youngs before that was that while he was a consistent 15-20 game winner for years(usually leading the league) he rarely had the Very best ERA, which is what counts in Pure Sim Cy Young voting. Any way consider myself sucked in.

[QuikSand]

Okay, here’s a little snapshot of my biggest single “issue” with PureSim. My first randomly-assigned team’s season – here’s quick look at the players who got the lion’s share of the at bats for us, and their key ratings (by my scout, of course) and their essential production.


PLAYER CH PH EYE AVG OBP SLG HR
Rojas 100 54 35 272 342 354 5
Williams 90 90 59 274 325 411 9
Boetler 94 95 59 313 384 518 28
Talbert 83 100 61 310 348 525 25
Martin 87 95 58 273 329 460 24
Jenkins 86 99 89 266 330 384 7
Gill 98 91 22 271 328 373 8
Mason 94 60 28 259 323 351 7
Stepp 86 85 9 264 319 367 8


All nine players were basically full-time starters all season long.

For a little perspective, in my 12-team league, Boetler’s 28 HR tied for 27th best in the league – on average, every other team had two guys better than anyone on my team in power hitting. Boetler’s OPS ranked 18th overall. With a team stacked with guys with outstanding ratings in “contact hitting” we ended up with exactly zero guys rated in the top 20 in that category (Boetler and Talbert were 21 and 22).


My biggest gripe is that there seems to be almost no real way to get a feel for a player by looking at his ratings. I’m not asking that the production in a given year be wholly or overwhelmingly dictated by the pure ratings… but in this game, the disconnect is so wide as to make “scouting” a total crapshoot. Look at Williams and Boetler’s ratings – they are practically identical. But Boetler is the closest thing I have to a star, while Williams is basically a pile of crap. Add in Jenkins, whose ratings are pretty mush the same as those two – this guy can’t hit a thing—he’s rated 99/100 in power hitting, and posts a slugging percentage of .384!?!?! Similarly – in the initial draft, Boetler was our 7th round draft pick--going well after guys like Jenkins (who is older and is basically no good) and my 2nd round pick, a 3B who wasn’t even good enough to start ahead of Williams (my 17th round pick who stinks anyway).

I take a quick look at the top HR hitters in the league, and their key ratings. The HR king is a guy whose ratings are 55 Contact and 42 power – he crushed 50 homers this season. Nice. Next guy, with 46 HR, is rated 57 contact and 40 power. The third place guy, who hit 44 HR, has a 38 contact and 84 power rating (which at least suggests he’d hit for power). By the way, Mr. 38/100 Contact also hit .336 on the season, putting him third best in that category as well.


How am I supposed to play this game when I feel like all I ever see is white noise in player ratings? I understand that we don’t want to see every number in perfect detail – that scout error is a good thing in a text sim. But isn’t this just downright absurd? (This lack of ratings/ouput correlation is not isolated – it’s completely consistent with every experience I have had in this game, even with a 6-year deep career, where even the blindest scout would presumably be able to recognize a guy hitting 50Hr a season as a pretty good power hitter)

(Don’t even get me started on the fact that when players are seeking free agent contracts, all you can see are these meaningless ratings, and you have to click their players cards one by one to see their stats)

[Bee]

That's really bad. I've seen games where the correlation between ratings and performance was bad, but those numbers take the cake.

[Ksyrup]

Yep. Although I hadn't done as thorough an analysis as you did, I noticed the same thing a while back and haven't touched the game since.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Quik -- AFAIC, something like you described isn't just absurd, it's freakin' pathetic.

Thanks for making me feel better that I haven't wasted my time on the game. Sounds like what I'm "missing" isn't something I'd miss at all.

[QuikSand]

Since I'm still playing with this, some more stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the game.

- - -

Players in the game have a calculated "request" for a FA contract - which you may exceed by % if you are so inclined. Conceptually, this makes sense (though the routine for the demands leave me puzzled - there seems to be a fairly weak correlation between great perfomance and big demands).

For a veteran player, it also makes sense that a player would be willing to reduce his annual demands in exchange for a longer term contract. So, when you attempt to sign a 30 year olf free agent, he might want 30,000 for a one year deal... but would accept 28,000/yr for a four year deal. The trade-off between enrichment and stability is understandable in a sport where contracts are guaranteed.

However... why use this same routine for a young player? A young player with a supposedly brigh future is looking for a contract for, say, 5000/yr. Why on earth would he want to accept less money per year in order to be locked up at that meager salary for a longer time? It should be inverted for such a player-- remember, that not only is a guaranteed contract a floor, it's also a ceiling! The youngster is essentially saying "I'm worth 5,000 right now, but if you will promise to lock me up below market value for years to come as I get better and better, I'd be willing to accept less money." Good heavens.

. . . taking a deep breath in. . .

This game has evolved through one of the most painstakingly open processes that I've ever heard of - open beta testing, an almost absurd number of releases stacked end to end, and countless people offeing their various opinions on the game at every turn.

Didn't anyone ever think to point out that this makes no sense? There are easily another dozen small things in the game that are equally puzzling, and I can't for the life of me understand why. The market for player demands (aside from the generalizations here) seems horribly askew - where top-quality players ask for and receive only shades more than perfectly average players (I've heard this has improved - but have yet to see much evidence of this). There is a weird supply of players who seem to be willing to work for about 99% less salary than average players... even though the game inexplicably uses "points" rather than dollars, it seem like these guys aren't even working for beer money. (How do you explain two teammates respectively earning 40,000 units and 25 units?) The chaneg in player "scouting" from yar to year is so dramatic it's laughable... your same scout can rate a player as 65 in one skill in one year, adjust that to 40 the next year, then back to 75 the following year - all the while the player generates a fairly steady stream of stats that indicate no real movement in his ability. Throughout the game, there are screens that are ergonomically offensive - when I'm looking at the schedule, I can't get to the "main menu" - since it is printed too far down the menu to appear on the page... instead, I must go to something else like "standings" and find that option from there. All over the place, menu options are written in wildly varying text and fonts, often overlapping other material on the same page. Text isn't centered or formatted in ways that it's obvious it should be, the list goes on and on. Yes, pretty much any of these are "small things" and are far less important to me than, say, the game's AI (which I honestly can't judge on too well - I've been so put off by the cumulative effects of all this other crap that I cannot get into the game) - but in most every phase this game looks like it's still in the alpha stages -- and it's just shocking to reflect on the number of people who have reviewed, playtested, critiqued, and massaged this game along the way only to get it to this point.

[sabotai]

That's odd, QS. I've played maybe a total of 25 seasons in Puresim (have played it on and off) and have never gotten numbers like those. But then again, I've never had a team full of hitters (never used the quickstart either).

Anyway, you can turn scouts off so you see the actual ratings.

I just did a quick start league to see what I got. I got a team full of hitters too. I have not seen this when just creating a league normally so I suspect there's something screwy with the quick start code (either players are created too powerful, or most likely it seems the initial scout evaluation made by ther quick start season is off).

[sabotai]

Damn, QS lays down a bitch-slapping. :)

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by sabotai
I just did a quick start league to see what I got. I got a team full of hitters too. I have not seen this when just creating a league normally so I suspect there's something screwy with the quick start code (either players are created too powerful, or most likely it seems the initial scout evaluation made by ther quick start season is off).

My point isn't so much that the team is out of kilter (I don't care what teh nature of the players is, and whether it's balanced properly)... but that the ratings don't seem to mean anything at all. In any kind of sensible world, what should a basebal player's rating for "Contact" lead to? Hitting the ball, putting it into play, geting hits, right? I have 7 of the top 25 guys in my entire league in terms of "contact' rating, and my team ended up the second-worst hitting team (BAvg) of the 12. What can this possibly mean that makes any sense to someone trying to play a test sim?

[Bee]

Hey QS,

Have you tried Fast Break College Basketball? I'd be curious to see your opinion on that game unless you have an aversion to basketball sims (I've never seen you comment on basketball sims). The game might have the most "dynasty friendly" print function I've ever seen in a game.

[QuikSand]

One more item...conceptually, I don't object to the use of one rating for "potential." I get it, and I like the general notion that potential is a bit more mysterious than the FOF model, where your scout says the guys will develop in this particular skill by this much, and at that particular skill by only that much.

Conceptually, this mightmake it interesting - my best-hitting minor league 2B is 23, and is rated 25/100 in "potential." Meanwhile, my other young 2B isn't doing all that well, but is rated 75/100 in "potential." I like the idea of that - that makes for good sim decision-making.


Tell me - what does it mean to have a 38 year old player with a "potential" rating of 83/100? Does this have any meaning at all? What about a 29 year old with a high rating? A low rating?

Should I ignore this? (That's what I do) Or should that tell me something? If so - should I have been able to figure that out on my own?

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by Bee
Hey QS,

Have you tried Fast Break College Basketball? I'd be curious to see your opinion on that game unless you have an aversion to basketball sims (I've never seen you comment on basketball sims). The game might have the most "dynasty friendly" print function I've ever seen in a game.

Haven't tried it... I have trouble imaginging a basketball sim to be any fun, honestly. Just doesn't sound like there would be enough to do. I have enough trouble staying interested in managing a baseball team, and there are twice as many players there... in basketball, with 12 players and maybe 6-8 that really matter... what the hell do you spend your time doing?

[Bee]

Originally posted by QuikSand
Haven't tried it... I have trouble imaginging a basketball sim to be any fun, honestly. Just doesn't sound like there would be enough to do. I have enough trouble staying interested in managing a baseball team, and there are twice as many players there... in basketball, with 12 players and maybe 6-8 that really matter... what the hell do you spend your time doing?

Well, now I know why you don't comment on basketball sims. :D

From my perspective I think you have the same decisions with any game but with a sport that fields a smaller team there are less decisions to be made in general. While a negative, I don't think that completely kills the enjoyment for me. I end up either simming seasons a little faster or reviewing game results a little closer than I normally would. The college angle helps a little IMO because of the turn over rate for players. I didn't really enjoy the pro basketball games much (FastBreak and Jumpshot), but I am finding the College game more enjoyable. But I can understand your issues with a basketball sim, so I'll withdraw the question. :D

[thirdandlong]

Something I am not sure you are aware of. If you crank the difficulty rating up in pure sim, you are essentially making your scout worthless. That is what makes the game difficult, you can't count on the ratings your scout gives you when you have the difficulty set high. In some ways that is more realistic than the easy level where you can take your A rated scouts ratings as gospel.

I actually enjoyed having to evaluate a player by his stats, rather than his ratings.

[Shaun Sullivan]

Quicksand,

Allow me to clarify a few things. First of all, the notion of ratings in PureSim is very dynamic. I assume you had a good scout, but if you didn't then the poor ratings would be because of the poor scout. Now, the fluctuations are possible because even if your scout mis-rated a guy on season, he is not so "stupid" that he'll mis-rate the guy the next season even after the guy jacks 50 homers or something. Scouts take real-world performance into account, so sometimes you will see these fluctuations. The more years a scout has seen a player, the smoother the year to year changes.

Secondly, PureSim's rating system works a little differently than other games. The ratings are actually in terms of how the player compares to the other guys in the association thus a 55 Power in one league could be very different than one in another. There are positives (works well for any time period in baseball) and negatives (a few *really* good guys could mask the fact that the guy with the 55 Power is actually pretty darn good, even though 55 doesn't "feel" that way). To put it simply, the ratings could almost be considered a percentile (though that is not "technically" how the algorithm is implemented).

Third, I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but the entire scout variable can be removed from the equation, removing that X factor from the ratings calc. All you need to do is check the "Reveal Ratings" box when you create and association. Do that and you'll see better correlations (closer to FPS-type correlations, but of course not perfect).

As for the salaries, I actually disagree with you about the ranges of salaries. The highest paid players get significantly more than the avg salary guys. Now the low (25 point guys) are there to help mitigate problems with having a "hard cap". They are important when a team runs out of cash and needs to fill a few slots in order to have the minimum 50 man roster.

Also, everything you have mentioned (from the salaries, to the financial model, to the ratings) can all be tweaked in the XML file that comes with the game. I know what you are going to say, "I shouldn't have to do that!". Well, you don't, but it is nice to have if you just don't agree with some of the defaults. There are literally hundreds of variables that can be tweaked, from the effect wind has on a fly ball all the way to complete control on the player generation engine.

As for the fact that players will take a little less for long-term deals than short-term... (I'm surprised it makes you so angry :) )Contracts in PureSim are guaranteed, so basically the player is cognizant of the fact that he has a little more financial security with the long term deal and will accept less. It also adds to the fun factor a bit because you want to make the "build for the future" play style possible in the game. Sometimes, in the name of making the game more fun, choices must be made that buck some aspects of accepted principles. Each player also has an internal "GREED" rating that impacts their behavior in this area.

I don't want this post to come off as defensive, because (as you know) I thrive on collecting feedback and continually improving the game. That said, I wish you would have brought this stuff up on the PureSim forums where:

A) I would have seen it sooner
B) You'd get lots of good feedback people both agreeing and disagreeing.
C) You wouldn't scare away folks from the game (This one kills me!)

BTW, I would suggest you download the latest version (1.74) and sim a few seasons, then use the "Export Data" tool to do a more detailed analysis. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. The export tool exports every rating and stat for every player for every season directly into Excel or Access, so the amount of things you can analyze is boundless.

Thanks for posting your comments, and I hope you'll take a look again given the context I have provided in this message.

I am going to do some analysis based on your comments as well, so trust me, if there is something egregious in there, I'll be on it.

Shaun Sullivan
Developer, PureSim Baseball

P.S. PureSim 2004 uses $ instead of points ;)

[lynchjm24]

Originally posted by QuikSand


Tell me - what does it mean to have a 38 year old player with a "potential" rating of 83/100? Does this have any meaning at all? What about a 29 year old with a high rating? A low rating?

Should I ignore this? (That's what I do) Or should that tell me something? If so - should I have been able to figure that out on my own?

I believe an older player with a high potential rating is supposed to have his skill deterioration slower on the back end of his career.

[QuikSand]

Shaun, thanks for responding... and I had intended to post all this into the PureSim forum, but had intended to "clean it up" a bit before doing so (both for readability and tone).

I have downloaded 1.7.4, and have played through one full season so far. I plan to give it a few more seasons - you're right to say that's important to get a fairer picture. An earlier comment about scouting taking on less reliability when I use the "hard" skill level also may help to explain my initial concern (while I might disagree with the design decision there, it does at least inject some rationality into what I'm seeing).

I'm not taking your comments as needlessly "defensive" - indeed, I think you adopted as positive a tone as I could have imagined. I let out my frustrations with the game a more than I had originally intended - that fact that you are staying civil just reinforces my feeling that despite my frustrations, I did the right thing in buying this game.


One specific comment - I understand the notion of a guaranteed contract for an older player being a thing of value. Where I deeply question the PureSim model is with young promising players - a long term contract to such a player isn't a guarantee, it's a prison. A blossoming young player would much rather sign a short term deal for current market value and be able to test the waters later (after he develops more) than accept a longer deal that will force him to play for the under-market value over time. PureSim currently has this inverted (again, in the specific case of good, promising young players).

I'm going to re-read your response, and might offer some more after doing so.

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by Shaun Sullivan
Secondly, PureSim's rating system works a little differently than other games. The ratings are actually in terms of how the player compares to the other guys in the association thus a 55 Power in one league could be very different than one in another. There are positives (works well for any time period in baseball) and negatives (a few *really* good guys could mask the fact that the guy with the 55 Power is actually pretty darn good, even though 55 doesn't "feel" that way). To put it simply, the ratings could almost be considered a percentile (though that is not "technically" how the algorithm is implemented).

Okay - that's interesting, but does it help to explain what I'm claiming to see? Whatever the number 88 and 89 mean in your system, shoudln't it stand to reason that players with such ratings ought to be at least pretty comparable in that skill? (Whether they are <loosely> "cardinal" or "ordinal" ratings shouldn't matter, really)

If the scout error is really that wide, then that's the explanation for what I'm seeing. I'm not necessarily demanding that my 90-rated hitter should be a magnificent batsman (though it would make sense that he would be) - but my main concern is that I have seven 90-rated hitters, and they range from star to stiff, seemingly without any outward reason for the variance (except a huge helping of scout error).

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by Shaun Sullivan
As for the salaries, I actually disagree with you about the ranges of salaries. The highest paid players get significantly more than the avg salary guys. Now the low (25 point guys) are there to help mitigate problems with having a "hard cap". They are important when a team runs out of cash and needs to fill a few slots in order to have the minimum 50 man roster.


I disagree in general here-- yes, there ought to be a wide range of salaries, but let's just look at the real-life counterparts to get a sense of where reality ought to lie (getting away from points/dollars in the process). The spread between the highest and lowest salaries in MLB is something like 100 to 1... in PureSim, it's more like 2,000 to 1 or even greater.

I don't see this as a huge flaw in the game, but essentially what you're doing is allowing people to play with "short" rosters -- rather than carrying 50 or 60 real players (whatever is nominally required) they instead carry 46 or 55 real players, and fill in with other guys whose salaries don't even pay for a bag of balls. Why insist on the rigid roster min/max-- all these super-chep players serve to do is undermine that. Why not just have a minimum salary of around 1,000... and allow people to play with fewer that the hard-wired total number? It amounts to the same thing, I know, but it avoids this absurdity caused by the players who basically play for free (and the weird result, which is that those players can actually become valuable in certain circumstances, since the game forces you to carry a certain number of players).

Anyway - for what it's worth.


Your comments about the modifiable settings are well taken - that will be my next effort to try to get into this game. Yes, my first inclination is to say "I shoudln't have to do this," but I can live with it as a second-best solution, if it works to my liking.

[sabotai]

"One specific comment - I understand the notion of a guaranteed contract for an older player being a thing of value. Where I deeply question the PureSim model is with young promising players - a long term contract to such a player isn't a guarantee, it's a prison. A blossoming young player would much rather sign a short term deal for current market value and be able to test the waters later (after he develops more) than accept a longer deal that will force him to play for the under-market value over time. PureSim currently has this inverted (again, in the specific case of good, promising young players)."

There's a cap for all players at 5 years (which can be changed in the XML). Perhaps if Shaun could add another value in the XML which capped the young players (says 25 or younger) at a smaller number would fix this. Say a cap of 3 years for a younger player.

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by sabotai
There's a cap for all players at 5 years (which can be changed in the XML). Perhaps if Shaun could add another value in the XML which capped the young players (says 25 or younger) at a smaller number would fix this. Say a cap of 3 years for a younger player.

Actually, I do like the idea of being able to lock up a promising young player to build for the future. I just think that such a contract shoudl come at some cost to you. Ideally, in my mind, the contracts ought to be staggered -- a young player ought to be asking for a multi-year deal that escalates in some general connection with his anticipated improvement over time. Sure, he ought to take something less that his maximum expectations (because he is getting a guarateed deal) but he shouldn't be thrilled to accept a multi-year flat contract that fails to recongize his future potential.

[sabotai]

Hmmm. Maybe there should be a kind of contract "incentive". Perhaps a deal where his salary increases if he makes a certain stat level.

Say in the 3rd year of his deal, he averages higher than .300 (out of the min AB required). Then his deal would increase say 8,000 (or some other predetermined number) for each of his remaining years...something like that.

[Buccaneer]

Originally posted by QuikSand
Actually, I do like the idea of being able to lock up a promising young player to build for the future. I just think that such a contract shoudl come at some cost to you. Ideally, in my mind, the contracts ought to be staggered -- a young player ought to be asking for a multi-year deal that escalates in some general connection with his anticipated improvement over time. Sure, he ought to take something less that his maximum expectations (because he is getting a guarateed deal) but he shouldn't be thrilled to accept a multi-year flat contract that fails to recongize his future potential.

That's great logic but can you translate that to an algorithm? Serious question, can you come up with a logic statement (in english, not programese) using variables that would meet this criteria?

[Philliesfan980]

Wow, incentive based contracts. I've never played CM/4 but have we seen that in a simulation yet?

[sabotai]

In CM, yes. In others, not that I know of. The football sim from .400 (TPF) looks like it will though.