OOTP5 Screen Shot Updates
 

Very nice. Of particular note, the following:

On the Rotation screen, you can choose to have the #1 starter pitch when rested, regardless of whether it's his turn. This should take care of SkyDog's issue from Day 1 of OOTP4.

It appears that the game now includes realistic minor league rules (a player with 5 years experience can refuse assignment to the minors), as well as having the amateur draft in June, like in real life. Also, on some other screen shots, it appears that arbitration in some form is in the game as well.

On the Transactions screen, I love the fact that not only can you see the players stars (a 1 star to 5 star rating system added to help us quickly differentiate between the scrubs and future stars in our minor league system), but you also get to see basic stats for each player on that screen, without having to look at each individual player's stats, as well as the minor league team's record.

Excellent stuff. Looking forward to this release.


http://www.400softwarestudios.com/oo...s/screens.html

looks great, i just hope that everything under the hood has gotten better

I could be wrong, but when I played it always started my #1 starter if he was rested. (It has been awhile since I played ootp)

Game looks good, I can't wait to see the finished product.



Todd

If I recall correctly, and SkyDog will remember better than I will, there was an issue with the game starting your #5 starter instead of your #1, and not correctly accounting for rest on off-days, or something like that. I don't know, maybe the game always appeared to start your #1 guy if rested, but didn't. If so, then maybe that issue didn't get fixed (or at least, what we see on the screen shots doesn't necessarily mean it was fixed).

Very nice indeed!!

I really like what Markus has done on enhancing features and the look of the game.

I also like the colors on the OOTP5 logo, very hip!!

Way to go Markus, you doing good son, keep it up.

I am already in line to get this one. 5 is my lucky number so I have some very good feelings about this one.

:D
:D
:D

Yeah, as always the game looks great.

Just a couple things -

I hope he fixed the player development model to get rid of the propensity for high strikeout, high hits-allowed pitchers and Cy Young pitchers with < 1.0 K/W ratios.

Also, it's good to see our 4.5 star player rated "brilliant" for hitting triples. Sigh.

This game has so much potential but I'll paraphrase a comment I saw on one of these boards: OOTP feels like it was written by someone who doesn't know baseball.

not sure about SkyDogs specific issue, but there was an issue with rest.

in OOTP4, the game would start the #1 starter if he was rested, then continue on down the line, regardless of whether the next guy was rested or not. a major glitch, and something that couldn't be "turned off". Looks like the ability to turn this "feature" off is being added.

I know there was an issue with playoffs and #1 starters NOT starting as well.

I wonder if we will ever see managers who play their style of game and not a 'generic' style of game. I would like to see manager profiles and when teams select a new manager, his profile is used to run the team. IE, he drafts speed players vs a slow player, etc..


Todd

The specific problem I have with OOTP is the use/misuse/overuse of the #5 starter. There are two frustrating aspects of this:

1. I pointed out within a few hours of the release and it still hasn't been fixed.
2. I'm no programmer by any means, but I am fairly certain that I could write code in freakin' BASIC to make it handle this aspect of baseball properly.

I'll explain, using the 2002 Braves' original rotation as my point of reference: Maddux, Glavine, Millwood, Moss, Lopez. Now, when a Major League team has a suspect pitcher at #5 and big gun(s) early in the rotation, it will pretty much always use the top 4 guys on 4 days' rest, and use the #5 guy to fill in the gaps. Lets' say the Braves' season starts on Monday, April 1st with a 3-game series, they have Thursday off (4/4), play another three-game weekend series, have the following Monday off (4/8), then play Tues-Thursday and Friday-Sunday series', have the next Monday (4/15) off, have another 6 consecutive days with games, then have Monday (4/22) and Thursday (4/26) off the following week, then play consecutive games through the end of the month. The rotation for the first month would look like this:

1--Maddux (1)
2--Glavine (2)
3--Millwood (3)
4--OFF
5--Moss (4)
6--Maddux (1)
7--Glavine (2)
8--OFF
9--Millwood (3)
10--Moss (4)
11--Maddux (1)
12--Glavine (2)
13--Lopez (5)
14--Millwood (3)
15--OFF
16--Moss (4)
17--Maddux (1)
18--Glavine (2)
19--Millwood (3)
20--Lopez (5)
21--Moss (4)
22--OFF
23--Maddux (1)
24--Glavine (2)
25--Millwood (3)
26--OFF
27--Moss (4)
28--Maddux (1)
29--Glavine (2)
30--Millwood (3)

The #5 starter is ONLY used when he must be used to allow no one to go one 3 days' rest. In this scenario, it is only twice in the first month of the season. In later months when there are fewer off days, he'll be used more, but in a typical major league season, the #5 slot only HAS to come up 18-20 times.

As I said, the coding to simulate this just isn't that hard. Every day, you use the first pitcher in the list who has 4 or more days of rest. It would have been five simple IF...THEN statements in BASIC. I'm sure in today's programming languages this can be done very easily.

From what I can tell, the new feature STILL doesn't address this, and it makes a big difference. If the #1 guy is starting when rested, that will HELP, but the #5 slot would still end up coming up 28-30 times a year. In a sim that includes finances, it is significant to be able to use a cheaper player at the #5 slot, knowing that even if he stinks it up, he'll be stinking it up in about 12% of your teams starts, rather than almost every fifth game.

The only way I've found to get it to handle pitcher's properly is to sim from one off day to the next, then switch out the rotation. A VERY tedious process given the somewhat-clunky OOTP4 interface. I'd prefer to sim a month at a time, stopping only for injuries, but when I see my #1 starter getting 33 starts and my #5 guy getting 32, I have to do something about it.

yep, that's the issue.

I've bitched about it quite a bit, and you're right - it shouldn't be difficult at all to fix, but, amazingly, it hasn't been.

UPDATE: I went over to the OOTP boards and posted this issue. Markus finally understood it. He said he fixed it with about 3 minutes of work. :D

my God - I must have tried to explain that 15 times. Amazing.

Ben, now you know the value of persistantly jumping up and down and hollering until the developer understands and accepts what the customer wants. :D :D :D :D

Actually no. It only took me two posts--one back in April, and one today. I guess it was that clear articulation of mine. ;)

Very nice look... and leagues with 4 divisions!! WOOHOO!! That'll make the fictional leagues a little more fun :D.

Split Leaders Board are very nice as well :D.

In the FOBL we've found that if you use 5 man rotations, the ai pretty much randomly skips the 5th starter half the time. We actually have the opposite problem as SkyDog I guess... since we found pitcher fatigue to have no effect, we wanted o enforce 5 man rotations for balance. Unfortunately like many very basic things in OOTP it doesn't work how you would expect it to or even consistantly.

Bingo - my feelings exactly. I can easily see a developer look at baseball with all its' statistics and conclude "Hey, this can't be too hard to simulate - all the info I need is easily and accurately reflected in the stats!" What this approach leaves out is knowing why certain results occur. The example given of the pitchers illustrates this perfectly.

The developer of Franchise Baseball seemed to have this kind of understanding, and he was an avid proponant of sabermetric principles (a huge plus in my book). Wasn't his name Craig Scarborough? You wouldn't be him by chance...?

I think it'll be well done. Seems to be heading in a solid direction. Of course I'm easy to please:)

I've been living with this misconception that triples are a function of speed and stadium - I didn't know it was an inate ability before OOTP.

I personally am a big fan of the pitcher Balk rating. That's really necessary.

I'd be more impressed with the minor league option years - if what was in the game was even remotely realistic. A player has 3 'options', seasons that they can be sent up and down without having to be put on waivers. There are rules about a player with enough service time refusing assignment - but they aren't 'options'. The one vehicle the game needs more then any other is a Rule 5 draft - as you can stash players in the minors for a decade and never start their free agency clock until you want to.

Dawgfan,

Yep, it's me.

FB, unfortunately, just got completely out of hand and I let it get that way. It was my puppy, but I let the cat out of the bag too soon and fell into the trap of trying to please everyone except myself (I think Jim's comment in his chat wrap bears noting: "Make a game YOU want to play). Finally, some family issues began to rear their ugly head, and I began to hate the project completely. I was about 70% complete at the time.

I still keep hoping that SOMEONE will develop a baseball game that I want to play because it's definitely not there yet. Since I'm not really into multiplayer, I want to play a game at MY pace. OOTP has every glitzy feature you can even HOPE to put into a ballgame. Unfortunately, it's easy to see his stats come out correctly "league-wide", but not on the individual player level. I like Puresim, but that's just way too slow for me. What I found is just what Jim did - you CAN'T use a database for statistical compilation - you need to do it all in memory. That's why TCY and the FoF series are fast - much faster than the other sims on the market. It was actually gratifying to know I had the same idea - I could play 75 ballgames (ML, AAA, AA, A and Rookie leagues) in 5 seconds with boxscores, full statistics, etc.

So, where am I now? I ditched the original FB (and countless hours of work) and have started over again - re-writing a lot of the code, making it more flexible and I've fully embraced Voros McCracken's DIPs. I've also ditched the nice interface and decided to go with less graphics and more numbers (part of the reason for that is I STINK at UIs, that was all Joe Stalling's work). So, FB2 (can I call it that without competing FB1 :confused: ?) is currently in the works, but with no promises of a release date (another thing I should "learned" a long time ago) and no web site with tons of hype.

I liken this to everyone thinking they have that great novel deep-down somewhere inside them. I don't want to be 70 thinking, "Man, if I had just completed that damn game." So, I trudge on...

Sorry for the long post,

Craig

What?? I don't mean to be a "fanboy" but IMO OOTP is far and away superior to any career baseball sim that I have ever played. It is lacking in a few areas but it is getting better and better with each edition.

The game doesn't come close to making me think it was written by someone that doesn't know baseball.

The inherent problems with the game are hidden within the numbers:

The superstar pitcher who gives up more hits than IP and has a BB/K ratio of 1 at best, or at times as bad as 8-10:1 (yes, I've seen an effective pitcher who walked 160 guys in one season and struck out only around 30!).

The guy who hits for a high average year after year, but has a BB/K ratio of 1:10 or worse (just in my current career, the leading hitter in the current season had 16 walks and 143 strikeouts). Shea Hillenbrand is the exception, not the rule.

The guy who has a terrific BB/K ratio, hits tons of 2B, 3B, and HR...and has an average in the low .200's. That might happen in an off-year, but more likely than not, the secondary numbers should add up to a good, if not great, average.

The scouting reports that read like they are written by someone who has never watched the game before.

The problem is, it does not appear that any of the ratings are linked together. There's no cause/effect relationship, and based on a hundred plus years of statistical evidence, there should be.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this game and will be purchasing OOTP5, but at some point, the entire game engine needs a major overhaul before it will be accepted by baseball fans as "true to life." From a macro point of view, everything looks fine and realistic. When you get into the specifics, though, that's where you see the problems.

Dola.

Just want to add that the few areas that the game is getting better in are NOT related to the inherent issues. They are either interface/ease of use improvements, or stuff like spring training, better outputs for multiplayer, even the supposed financial system imporvements for OOTP5 don't get to the heart of the issue. So, while OOTP4 was infinitely better than OOTP2, the underlying issues remain and do not appear to be getting any attention. This is where I think someone could come in, produce a solid game, add the OOTP "special effects" over a couple of years, and stteal the show.

Very well said, and the reason why I solely play and have so much fun at the macro level.

Mark,

Let me preface this by saying I do not want to start a flame war. You're entitled to your opinion, and I think your's is obviously in the majority. A lot of people love OOTP, and I can understand that. I've tried to - and really, I would LOVE to - but I just find there are some things there that prevent me from enjoying it as much as I could. Let me just list my observations that make me "feel" this way:

Individual players sometimes have attributes that you just don't see in real life. I've given the example before about pitchers and their K/W ratios.

The insistence on rating a player for his "ability" to hit doubles, triples, and "getting hits". "Getting hits" may be a translation problem, so I can't really fault him there (though this WILL be the 5th iteration of his app). However, I find it difficult to believe that a scout would rate a player based on his ability to hit doubles or triples. i.e. "Yeah, the guy can't really make contact, but he sure can hit triples!" FWIW, MLB usually scouts the players on the 5 to 7 "tools". IMHO, doubles, and especially triples are a function of a player's ability to make contact and hit for power. Some batters have line drive/gap power, some have homerun power - but I've never seen an "ability" or "innate skill" to hit doubles or triples. Note: triples obviously have much more to do with ballpark and batter speed, along with gap power.

To me, the player creation in OOTP seems to be a disjointed collection of independent variables. A pitcher is rated on his ability to strikeout and walk opponents. Fine. He is also rated on his ability to prevent hits (there is evidence out there that pitchers have relatively little influence on this) and homeruns. The issue is, there ARE definite correlations between all of these statistics. A pitcher who strikes out a lot of opponents tends to give up less hits than your average pitcher. A pitcher who doesn't strikeout many batters tends to do the opposite. To me, it seems that OOTP just randomly picks skill levels for EACH attribute without seeing if it makes sense.

Clutch ability - there have been (what seems like) thousands of research papers on this. No one (to my knowledge) has ever proven that such a thing even exists! Ok...then how can you have this in the game? Because people "believe" it exists? Where do you draw the line? This may have changed, but from what I remember OOTP used to have "hot" players perform better than "cold" players. How then, does a player become un-hot and un-cold if the game engine is built to give them advantages/disadvantages when this occurs? Are the results artificially massaged then when a player is neither hot nor cold?

Also, and I admit this is "MY" issue :), but I have a problem with the statistical formatting on his roster screen :). I don't have it in front of me, but I never understood how "AB" could be the 5th or 6th statistic listed. I know, that's splitting hairs, but it's still a beef.

These are the ones I can think off the top of my head. Again, OOTP is a great game, and a lot of people like it. Markus has done an OUTSTANDING job and deserves all the kudos in the world - he's an outstanding programmer, that's obvious. There are just some things about the game that don't suit my taste. Just my personal opinion.

Craig, I sense another "micromanager" vs "macromanager" debate coming on. ;)

It seems to me that most games have to be biased along this spectrum. OOTP, as you and others clearly stated, works very well at the macro level, but not so much at the micro level. To me, FOF is just the opposite. (Perhaps CM4 is the only game that probably works well at both levels.) So if there is a bias, which is better? I don't think there is a right answer because it does come down how we, as the gamer, perceive and expect to play. If one (not you) says that a game like OOTP fails because it can't get the B/KK ratio right, misses the point. Just like someone saying that FOF fails because it does not have multiplayer.

My point is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to play solely at the macro level, just like there is nothing wrong to play at the micro level. My personal preference, obviously, have always been at the macro level and that is why, for the most part, OOTP4 works very well for me and FOF4 does not. Because I don't have to pay attention to the player details, it lets me focus on the team results and the results of a season or career. But this also hold true for the strategy games I play. I can't tell you the stat ratings of a Feudal Knight in Medieval but I know that it kicks butt. I don't know what a 8/8/7 MR means in OOTP but I know that is probably worth paying a lot for. On the other hand, I fully respect those that can micromanage and pay attention to the details. Both play styles are valid and I think we all have to be careful of not dismissing one as being wrong because in the end, it comes down to fun and there are many ways any one of us can have fun playing these games.

Good thoughts, Craig. Thanks for posting them.


A few quick problems I have with OOTP:

-randomness of talent development/drops. I think randomness is fine to a degree, but I also think OOTP uses it in excess. I can't tell you how many times I've seen guys improve a few talents in a season, drop a few the next, improve one more, drop another.. on and on... How can you really justify this?


-Minor leaguers stats. They seem to be pretty unlinked to the player. You can have two guys at A ball - one with very good ratings/talents hitting .188-10-40 and another who if lucky will make it to AAA, but he hits .288-20-85. Yes it can happen in individual seasons, but in the long run the future stars career minor league stats should be cut and above the career minor leaguer. This doesn't seem to be the case.

-Now flip the script and link those two together. How can a guy with no future potential and poor minor league career stats (over several years) get a random talent improvement and all of a sudden become a future star? While on the other hand, a minor leaguer with great potential and good minor league stats drops in talents before he ever reaches the majors?

All of this makes scouting tough. Minor league stats have very little, if anything to do with future success. So why even include minor league stats?

I think the minor league stats give you a rough estimate of when a player is ready to move up to the next level. Guys with high ratings will need to be moved up, it just depends on when you do it. Moving them too quickly or slowly will hurt their development, which is why you wouldn't put an 18 year old future star in AAA right away, regardless of his stats.

And why have an obviously SEPARATE engine for major leagues vs. minor leagues? Why not use the same one? If your player development model works, your stats should come out fine, and actually tell you somthing about the player. Not to thump the research bible, but minor league stats DO tell you about how the player will perform at the ML level.

-Craig

But I WANT to play baseball at the macro level. In order to do so, the micro stuff has to be handled well--and, for example, when a #5 starter gets 30 starts in a year, that is unacceptable. (That's been fixed, but there are numerous other examples such as disjointed ratings, etc.)

I know what you are saying but until you brought it up, I never noticed that. Maybe it was because I was going with a 3-man rotation for my 1919 Boston Braves or a 4-man rotation for my 1946 BoSox. ;)

Nah :). I don't begrudge anyone the enjoyment they receive from OOTP. As you said, we all have different playing styles. However, for me, if the game doesn't work at the micro level, I feel even if it does work at the macro level, the results are "fudged". For me, FoF and TCY work for me at both levels. The results on a game-by-game basis are believeable, as well as season and career statistics. How do you see it fail at the macro level?

I have Medieval as well, but I'm not a scholar of war in the early 1000's. If I knew that Feudal Knights weren't as powerful as they are in game, I might have a problem with it. The difference is, ESPN doesn't have Wednesday Night Medieval War in the summertime, so I really don't know if it's accurate or not :). I can't say the same for OOTP.

Again, I'm not saying that anyone is wrong here - it's all a matter of personal taste. In my eyes, I THINK the goal of OOTP is to be an accurate simulation of the sport of baseball. For the reasons pointed out by me and others, I think it's a simulation of baseball, but not a satisfyingly accurate one.

Craig, I think a better point I could have made is this. There is only so much time and resources that can go into developing a game. In the design, it does become a series of trade off. In other words, you skip over features to work on what you feel is more important. This is where much of the debates of OOTP and FOF have been focused on, I perceive.

For example, Jim has clearly stated that features like multiplayer, customization, career AI, front office interaction, team financials were not priorities, but the micro level is where most if not all of the work was done. This is why I said FOF4 does not work at the macro level because those are the features that I expected (or wanted) to be there, not what the defensive tendencies are on 3rd and long when far behind. I perceive OOTP4 on the other hand, to be the opposite. If the design choice was to have custom league structures at the expense of having the B/KK ratio to be perfect, then to me, that was an excellent design choice.

In the end, I also want it to work on both levels but despite what they hype and marketing says, I don't expect them to be. I think for now, it is better for a game to be much stronger in macro or micro than to be mediocre in both.

Another example would be the players with terrible hitting, power, avoid strikout etc. ratings but good "get walks" numbers. They can end up hitting .140 with no power and 200 Ks, but they'll still walk 100 times. Are pitchers pitching around them? Are their strike zones magically smaller?

I still think you are missing part of the point. I am very much a macro-type player. I don't have the time to get into the small details. Nonetheless, I agree with everything CraigSca says. The problems with OOTP stem from a fundamentally flawed engine that isn't simulating baseball. Pitchers with more BB than K's do not succeed, minor league stats are good predictors of success, there is no inherent triple rating, etc. Using these ratings is a flawed design decision not an efficient one.

I love Macro-play and I love baseball. That is exactly why I can't enjoy OOTP.

If anything, it's gratifying to know that there are others out there like me, generally dissatisfied with the current state of baseball sims. I was beginning to think I was the only one...

I own OOTP4, and am on the fence about Puresim. I love baseball - much more so than any sport out there. If the ideal baseball sim came along, I'd buy it in a second, price tag be damned.

Here's the issue: there isn't a sim out there (Puresim may be the exception) that does a good job of simulating professional baseball.

I agree with all of the comments so far about OOTP on a micro level - it's the single most frustrating thing about the game.

-Minor league success isn't a predictor of major league success.
-Player attributes make no sense in context (E speed, A triples).
-The statistical models that are known to be fairly accurate aren't represented in the game (ever taken a look at the Pythagorean expectation for teams vs their real records?)

On top of that, there's very little GM-like behavior in the game. Options is the big thing missing - I don't want to be able to keep a superstar player in AAA until my previous superstar declines. The Rule V draft is another major option that's missing, but would prevent the stockpiling of minor leaguers.

Ideally, I don't want to have any control over the "on the field" action - I want to find a manager who reflects my beliefs (maybe a Ken Macha/Earl Weaver type), or maybe find a player's manager (Grady Little), or find an old school type manager (Bob Brenly). The manager would then set the lineup. I could make suggestions (and, of course, fire him), but I really want a GM sim, not a manager sim.

I may be in the minority (and I may have rambled a bit - got interruped by some real work), but if a baseball sim came along and gave me a true GM simulation, I'd buy it in a second.

I feel exactly the same way. That's what FB was supposed to be, and that's what FB2 will hopefully someday be.

Regarding your field management issue: that's another beef I have with OOTP (and FB for the matter). FB2 design doc stipulates that managers will have attributes that define their style of play - not whether they are "good" or "bad". You want a guy who plays BillyBall? Waits for the 3-run homer? Likes veterans? etc, etc...that's in the game.

Though I love TCY, one thing I've always hated is the upkeep of my staff, clicking on 100 choices for an offensive coordinator to see who has the best colors. Argh! Same thing with scouts/managers in OOTP - who would EVER pay for a BAD scout/manager? To me, that's as fun as doing the laundry. The solution? IMHO, tie scouting to the $$$ you devote to it. You can have a huge payroll and have your scouting suffer or vice versa. Either way the decision is still yours, but you take the daily drudgery out of the task.

-Craig

It seems to me that double and triple ratings are a hangover from the replay games like Diamond Mind and StratOMatic where you're trying to recreate the same numbers as generated by a certain player in a particular season.

This has probably been kept around to deal with those who want to use the Lahman database to run historical careers and does work to some extent in that context.

Where the model falls apart is in the generation of fictional players. I agree with the previous posters that ratings appear to be generated completely independantly of each other. We should not expect to see a low average hitter draw a lot of walks unless most of his hits go out of the park causing pitchers to pitch around him. We should not expect E speed players to have A steal ratings. One would think the generation could invove determining a few primary ratings first, and then having secondary associated ratings generated based on a standard distribution around the primary ratings. That way one would not expect to see more than one E speed A steal guy in the league at any one time (just to allow for the rarest of exceptions). You would see lots of E and D steal guys with E speed, and a number of C's and perhaps 4 or 5 Bs.

Instead of double and triple ratings, my ideal game would look at contact, power, speed, aggression and intelligence cobined with defensive players positioning and abilities in determining whether a hit was extended and by how much.

Despite all that, I still do have fun playing OOTP from time to time on the macro level.

My New Years Resolution was to avoid OOTP debates, so I am sticking to it. I am glad to see someone else feels like carrying the bullseye or carry the cross this year. :)

Craig, I'm very happy to hear you're still working on a version of FB. My hope is that you stick to your guns and develop it on your time frame, with your priorities. Don't announce anything until you're a month or less away from releasing it, i.e. in final bug-fix mode.

It's too bad the first attempt didn't work out - as I've said before, it looked by far the most promising of all the baseball sims. In hindsight though, it seems for the best; it would appear that Joe wanted to build a career of this market, while it seems it was more a hobby for you. Joe has his career now with .400 studios, and you get to step back and re-evaluate your game and create it on your timetable. I'd offer to help with the graphics, but that would be a conflict of interest with my current job :) When I finish drawing up my ultimate baseball sim design docs I'll bounce them off of you to see what you think - I'm already pretty sure your game will satisfy most of what I'm looking for.

I agree with everything you, John Galt, Kevin and CentralMassHokie have said about OOTP. OOTP seems to be built on a recreation paradigm, i.e. we know said player hit x-number of triples, so give him a particular rating in this area to recreate this result. As pointed out, this works well for recreating historical results, but suffers greatly when generating new players - the combination of ratings that don't really represent an actual skill (double/triple ability) or the combination of ratings exist independent of each other and look silly in context (no speed/high steal, etc.)

I appreciate A's points about different areas of focus for a sports sim, and I'm glad OOTP works for his needs, but to me a baseball sim that doesn't seem to be built on an accurate statistical representation of how the game really works will always be a fundamentally fatal flaw for my enjoyment of the sim. I don't need to have micromanagability of day-to-day aspects of my baseball sim, but I sure as hell want the mechanics of the game to work correctly at that level.

That isn't altogether true. The A.I. has been completely rebuilt (and I mean *completely*), and the player development algorithims have been significantly altered. There has also been much more significant work done on the financial A.I. than has been publicaly discussed.

The reason you don't hear as much "promotion" of those kinds of features is because when you are a small company trying to get people to recognize your product, A.I. re-workings, algorithims and bell curves don't exactly make the GameSpy's and PC Gamer's of the world, to say nothing of your average untapped retail client, well, froth at the mouth in glee.

People are visual, they want to see interfaces, and reports and outputs. They also want to see new features being added, not just engine tweaks. They want to see improvements in multiplayer, because a great many folks like to use these sims as a vessel for building an online community (via leagues, which become larger than the game).

I think we've done a pretty good (not great, but pretty good) job at trying to balance the two, continuing to work first and foremost on the things that appeal to our core market (i.e. engine realism) but not being so stodgy that we won't take a few chances to broaden the game's appeal.

What we have tried to do with OOTP (and all of our other games) is to never lose sight of the fact that this a GAME, which is to be fun and engaging. Anyone with Excel, a copy of Total Baseball and decent calculus grades can create a near-perfect simulation of any sport. The real challenge is in making that simulation both accurate *and* fun to play. And striking that balance in the design is almost as difficult as coding the game. ;)

JMS

Joe:

Certainly, the game has been improved in other areas, in terms of making players develop better and such. My comment was directed to the idea that the inherent issues we have been discussing have also been improved upon. My belief is that they have not. I haven't seen any movement toward putting into place a system where a pitcher's or hitter's BB/K ratio correlates better with performance, or a pitcher's K/IP ratio becoming an indication of that player's future ability. Nor have I heard talk of scrapping the idea that players get rated for double and triples.

Now, don't get me wrong, while I see these as serious problems, I am also one of those who still immensely enjoys the game. But, I don't think that overhauling the engine to take these kinds of things into account would lessen the game's fun, either. In fact, many people might not even notice - which is, I suppose, a point that you are trying to get at. Why put all of that time and effort into a complete overhaul, when a majority of people playing the game don't care and/or understand that the game doesn't accurately reflect how baseball works?

If a player walks a lot but hits .200, so be it. For some people, they just deal with the player's numbers as is. For some of us, though, we study real-life baseball, see the correlations, and then don't see them played out in a game that is supposed to simulate baseball. But my belief is that while an overhaul might be a difficult thing to deal with, if a system was put into place that properly reflected real-life baseball principles, the game itself wouldn't be any less fun than it is now. but it would be immeasureably more fun for some of us.

That's great news, Joe! Does that mean the issues that we've been discussing have been resolved?

-Craig

it's good to hear that the AI has been totally rebuit, let's hope it's in great conidition this time around. Any news to the financial side of the game? that hasn't ever worked properly and there was talk of it being fixed in 3 and 4.

so indeed there are improved player development 'algorhythms'. 'algoreisms'?

Yeah, and if I can find 30 minutes, I will try to post some more detailed notes here to that end. In the meantime, you might want to check out our Jan. newsletter which lists some of the new features in OOTP 5 which you may or may not know about. Here is the link, and, don't mind Natasha...

http://www.400softwarestudios.com/newsletters/0103/index.html

I think that the amount of people looking to for the game to be a vessel for building an online community is highly overestimated. Just because they are more vocal does not mean that they are more numerous.

If it's so easy to create a 'simulation' of baseball - then why does OOTP have silly things like a Triple rating?

I personally don't see why a few silly reports are more important then getting rid of players who hit .200 with 80 extra base hits, have A speed and only strike out 20 times a year. It's just not possible.

I think it was KSyrup that said he had a batting title holder with 20 walks and 150 k's or something to that effect, I mean the game is fun - but that one player tells me all I need to know about the baseball engine.

As I gave this some thought last night, and thought about how FOF only appeals to a certain segment of the gaming community, and then thought about the difficulty of OOTP pleasing any number of groups - multiplayer, historical, "accuracy nuts" (for lack of a better term!), etc., I am starting to see why Jim is hesitant to make his games anything more than what they already are. With OOTP, for example, as someone pointed out above, the ability to rate for double and triples gels nicely with the use of the Lahman database to recreate the past - but it gets in the way of an accurate simulation of baseball in terms of generating fictional players for career play. And, of course, the great design of the game for multiplayers has left solo play lacking in a number of areas.

I think customization is an area that transcends each of these specialty areas, but perhaps OOTP by its very design, as a conduit for multiplayer and historical replay/career play, will never, and can never, be what another segment of the gaming community wants it to be. Just thinking about the doubles/triples issue, one might have to scrap the use of the Lahman database altogether and go with more "sabermetric" numbers to recreate a player. Then, based on factors like ballpark, speed, OPS, etc., if the system was designed accurately, the numbers generated by the "fictional" versions of the real-life past players would end up being roughly similar to the real-life numbers.

I guess I'm just rambling at this point. Anyway, I will be anxiously waiting to see some of the improvements to the game, and I'll be buying it no matter what. Unlike some for whom the game is virtually unplayable, I do enjoy the game, but know that it could be so much better if some of the statistical correlations that hold true in real-life were incorporated into the game.

Joe, I just checked out the feature list. I noticed a reference to player "development". However, I'm not altogether sure that includes player "creation". You can "develop" all you want, but if the original created player has these independent variables without real-world correlation, it's not going to do much.

I'm really hoping Markus fixes this. It seems that there ARE people like myself looking for a simulation accurate in this regard. Do we outnumber the amount of folks that would prefer to run as "a manager, date women, marry and build a family"? Gee, I really hope so, but I can't help but shudder at the thought.

-Craig