OT: OOTP starting setup

[QuikSand]

Okay, I'm contemplating giving OOTP a whirl, finally.

I'm in the setup of a new league, after finally licensing and opening the game. I have the 6.3 patch applied.


I'm hoping some of the veterans here can help me with some of the subtletis in setting up a fictional league to best effect. I think I'm going to use the 50-10-30-10 balance for player evaluation, that SkyDog and perhaps others have recommended, and a $25m cash limit. And I think I'm going to use the 2-8 scale for talent grades, with no ratings visible - which is more personal preference than anything else.


-Should I "fill the minor leagues?" (I did this in an earlier version, and got disastrous results -- a ton of superstar 19 year old players who went on do have 20 year dominating careers)

-How do I set up my league so that certain teams are "big money" teams and others are "small market" teams? I can't find the place to adjust this stuff.

-Should I use any of these "player creation" modifiers? I have no idea what the default looks like, and whether I ought to tinker with this at all. Same with "player development" - any changes desirable there?


Anything else in the league setup that makes sense to start off with? This may very weel be my one and only OOTP career -- I don't want to start off on a bad foot and waste the whole investment of time.

[Ksyrup]

I do not fill the minor leagues. It is not necessary to have a full 25 man roster in the minors, so you're just adding a bunch of filler to needlessly wade through. I typically have the standard 60 man initial draft, and 5 round amateur drafts therafter (sometimes the initial amateur draft I'll set at 7 rounds).

The big money and small market teams are an issue in the game. It actually works backwards in the game. Once the teams are drafted, the game suggests setting the team markets based onthe team's payroll. This needs to be totally redone, IMO. You can manually create big and small market teams by going into each teams front office setup and changing the fan base and market size, maybe give some of the teams better local TV contracts, etc., but over time the market sizes will change based on the team's performance. So, you could set up the Yankees, but if they under-perform for a number of years, they'll turn into a smaller market team.

I don't touch the player creation modifiers.

[Hammer755]

Pretty much what Ksyrup said.

No to fill minors, and it's not necessary to mess with the creation modifiers.

As for the big/small market, the game may actually work to your advantage if you want to simulate it that way, but it's not perfect. Like Ksyrup said, after the initial draft, it will ask you if you want to set the financials based on team payroll. The way it does this is with the Merchandising Revenue variable. Everything else is pretty straightforward (National TV Deal, Local TV Deal) and I don't think you'll get much variation from team to team.

However, the MerchRev is basically a number that is created to ensure that a team doesn't lose money in the first year of the league. So teams with large payrolls following the draft will have large MerchRev, while teams with smaller payrolls will have small MerchRev. The only problem with this (or it could work to your advantage) is that the MerchRev for each team is based on the prior year's MerchRev, which means that the numbers change very little throughout the history of your league. Therefore a big-income team is likely to be a big-income team through perpetuity, which may be how you want it.

[Ksyrup]

Pretty much what Ksyrup said.

No to fill minors, and it's not necessary to mess with the creation modifiers.

As for the big/small market, the game may actually work to your advantage if you want to simulate it that way, but it's not perfect. Like Ksyrup said, after the initial draft, it will ask you if you want to set the financials based on team payroll. The way it does this is with the Merchandising Revenue variable. Everything else is pretty straightforward (National TV Deal, Local TV Deal) and I don't think you'll get much variation from team to team.

However, the MerchRev is basically a number that is created to ensure that a team doesn't lose money in the first year of the league. So teams with large payrolls following the draft will have large MerchRev, while teams with smaller payrolls will have small MerchRev. The only problem with this (or it could work to your advantage) is that the MerchRev for each team is based on the prior year's MerchRev, which means that the numbers change very little throughout the history of your league. Therefore a big-income team is likely to be a big-income team through perpetuity, which may be how you want it.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the merchandising revenue variable. That would allow you to have teams that perpertually make enough money to stay way above any perceived salary limitations. Again, though, this whole thing needs to be re-worked. This should be based on the city/fanbase demographics. I'd love to see that kind of setup in the game, rather than the way it is now.

[QuikSand]

Can I manually alter the "marchandising revenue" item? Or am I just stuck with whatever it starts out with?

I sort of want my league to have some big market teams in perpetuity... so can I rig it that way?

[Ksyrup]

Yes, just go into each individual team "front office", click the "on/off" button that allows changes (sorry, I don't have the game in front of me), and you can pretty much alter any of the numbers you see on that screen.

[Hammer755]

There are pretty much 3 things you'll want to mess with on the Front Office page. One is the MerchRev (like I said, it varies little from year-to-year). The other 2 are Market Size & Fan Loyalty, which can be adjusted to your liking. These variables do change - I believe that Market Size changes randomly, and fan loyalty is directly tied to on-field performance.

[Ksyrup]

There are pretty much 3 things you'll want to mess with on the Front Office page. One is the MerchRev (like I said, it varies little from year-to-year). The other 2 are Market Size & Fan Loyalty, which can be adjusted to your liking. These variables do change - I believe that Market Size changes randomly, and fan loyalty is directly tied to on-field performance.
I've also altered the local TV contract and just gave it a far-out year that I would never get to, in order to create a never-changing revenue cushion. The only thing about that that I recall as being odd, is that you just can't put in a year. You have to take the current year and add a number to get to the end year. So, if you're in 2004 and you want your contract to end in 2014, you don't type 2014, but 10. Or something like that. At least, that's what I recall from OOTP5.

[QuikSand]

There are pretty much 3 things you'll want to mess with on the Front Office page. One is the MerchRev (like I said, it varies little from year-to-year). The other 2 are Market Size & Fan Loyalty, which can be adjusted to your liking. These variables do change - I believe that Market Size changes randomly, and fan loyalty is directly tied to on-field performance.

Great, that's the stuff I'm looking for here.