Did Anyone Pick up OOTP 8?

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I just recently picked up 2007 again and have been essentially using it as a simulator, which is still fun. But that's it. I don't enjoy playing the game as a GM/manager. And even just watching the historical replays, I can see some serious problems that are easier to overlook because I'm not "in" the game as deeply, just watching. But I hate the mapping of the UI, the duplication of screens that, depending how you get there, have different info on them, the inability to view the simulation screen other than while the games are being simmed, even though it has the best overview of what's going on in the league, etc.

As far as under the hood stuff, the one thing that appears to be completely broken is being able to set the percentages of what the teams rely on in making their decisions - we have the ability to have GMs give zero emphasis on ratings, yet decisions are still made only on ratings. In fact, I'm not sure those percentages mean anything. I still see way too many players who have great years, they lose 1 or 2 points off of a couple of talent categories during the off-season, and they immediately get dumped into the minors or FA before the next season. I've got guys winning the Cy Young and not even pitching in the majors the next year because their stuff dropped from 11 to 10 and their movement from 15 to 14 and stuff like that. And that's with emphasis on ratings no better than 10%. Sign and release still happens at an unbelievable rate - in one of my replays, Lou Gehrig was signed and released about 25-30 times within 2 weeks. There are just too many things like that for me to be interested in investing time into actually playing the game. But I do love my stats, and the game is a very good simulator - if you can get over seeing Cy Young winners sitting in AAA the next year...

Since you are seeing Gehrig being signed and released I don't think this suggestion will help you (unless he's maybe at the end of his career and suffered a big downswing in his ratings?) but I'll throw it out for those that may not know.

I don't know if you are using minor leagues or just how your league is set up but one thing that does help the sign\release issue is roster sizes in the minor leagues. It is suggested and is even mentioned on the league creation screen to set your lowest minor league team to allow at least 35 players (50 is probably better and these guys are basically fodder anyway). This gives your organization some "reserves" since there are no minor league disabled lists available. In my league I set AAA, AA, and A to 27 to help account for no DL being available. Something I'd sure like to see fixed in oootp9.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Since you are seeing Gehrig being signed and released I don't think this suggestion will help you (unless he's maybe at the end of his career and suffered a big downswing in his ratings?) but I'll throw it out for those that may not know.

I don't know if you are using minor leagues or just how your league is set up but one thing that does help the sign\release issue is roster sizes in the minor leagues. It is suggested and is even mentioned on the league creation screen to set your lowest minor league team to allow at least 35 players (50 is probably better and these guys are basically fodder anyway). This gives your organization some "reserves" since there are no minor league disabled lists available. In my league I set AAA, AA, and A to 27 to help account for no DL being available. Something I'd sure like to see fixed in oootp9.

...and this points to a long-time OOTP issue: for a long time, the user has had to test and tweak setting after setting, and turn off feature after feature just to make the game work decently. Just figuring out how many rounds to have in the draft was a near-nightmare for me. Set it too low, and there are ghost players all around. Set it too high, and the minors get too big, leading to sign and release. The process of figuring out that I need x slots in AAA/AA/A, y in A-short, and z in rookie ball, combined with an r-round draft, and then I need to set creation modifiers to this, increase development speed by this, decrease decline speed by that much, set AI evaluation percentages to this, that, and the other, set trading to this with the AI slightly favoring prospects (as opposed to heavily)....

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. That process isn't fun, but it has been a necessary process to be able to sit down and play a decent SP career.

And don't even get me started on stats. I should be able to enter that I want a league-wide AVG of .260, OBP of .325, SLG of .400, a 1.5 strikeout to walk ratio, and a home run every 40 plate appearances, and the game do a calculation to give me immediate feedback saying that with those settings in average parks, the average 600 PA hitter will hit .260 with 28 gap hits (2B+3B), 79Ks, and 53 BBs, and then I can change those five basic numbers to my liking, and be done with it.

[Icy]

Update from Markus about OOTP9:

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Hey guys!

I just want to keep you in the loop a bit OOTP 9 is in development, but has not entered beta testing yet, so the release will not be before Opening Day. We will start a preordering period in March though, so keep your eyes open for a nice offer.

Here are few of the things that will be new in the game:
- In-game sound
- Totally recoded scouting
- Revised financials, including two optional revenue sharing systems
- Some nifty stuff for online leagues
- Even more improved historical league support, resulting in pretty much perfect results
- Player suspensions
- Improved interface
- Improved HTML & reports
- Tons of tweaks & AI improvements
- A great new skin
- 2008 MLB rosters

This year we will not add hundreds of bells & whistles, but rather improve what we already have. Feature-wise the game is already lightyears ahead of the competition, so we're focusing on making the game more enjoyable

The price will probably be $39.90 for the full version, and $24.90 in the preorder period.

Cheers!
Markus

The good thing is that he is workign mainly on fixing all the bugs and features not fully working, instead of adding more features. Good decission imho.

[miked]

What a joke. $40 for what is essentially a patch. Nothing major new, and doesn't really even mention fixing half the stuff that's broken with v8 (AI finances, online waiver claims, free cuts in the offseason, broken compensation, etc).

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by miked

What a joke. $40 for what is essentially a patch. Nothing major new, and doesn't really even mention fixing half the stuff that's broken with v8 (AI finances, online waiver claims, free cuts in the offseason, broken compensation, etc).

I think
- Tons of tweaks & AI improvements

covers most of what you're indicating isn't mentioned ... I've personally worked with Markus for a few years now and think he's a very dedicated and talented developer.

You could equally argue that some of the previous releases of my games have been 'essentially patches' - indeed one of the most successful of ye-olde CM games I did (01-02) contained very few new features and concentrated on tweaking and refining what was already present ...

As such personally I've always found that people appreciate having a solid game much more than lots of bells and whistles which aren't in tune

[miked]

You are absolutely correct. I have v2007 and am still waiting for finances, waivers, compensation, and lots of other things to work. It will be a long time before I spend $40 to get a fixed up version of something I have already spent $35 or whatever on. Every day we uncover new bugs in 2007 that will go un-addressed because a new version HAS to be made.

[Icy]

Agree with Marc that "Tons of tweaks and AI improvements" means fixing (or trying to) the stuff that didn't work in 2007.

When Markus asked the beta team what was thought to be needed for 09 to be a fun game, most of us agreed on making all the features to work properly instead of adding new ones. A lot of users say that OOTP2007 was too complicated and that is exactly what Markus wants to do for 9, to make it less complicated and more fun again. I fully agree with that philosophy as there is not much more to add to the game, but better to make it work properly and in a more intuitive way.

Calling it just a patch is like saying that 99% of the sport games are just patches (see any EA game for example).

[Icy]

I guess we all would want the games to be patched forever and for free until we are happy with the $40 we expended, but we must remember that independent developers like Markus need to eat (yeah there is a huge difference between working to eat and working to to make a huge corporation even bigger) from their games sales. Releasing a free patch every new year would mean he would need to to stop to work full time in the gaming industry and look for another job like a lot of text sim developers had to do, what would mean the end of OOTP.

This is not only about Markus but about every other independent game developer, i get more pleasure expending $40 per year on an improved game that on a meal in a restaurant. It doesn't mean we must excuse poor programming or bugs, but we can't try to punish them forever either, or we will end letting our niche hobby to die. We need to find the middle point between pushing the developers to fix their issues and wanting to punish them for trying to earn some $$ every year, it's not that every patch released by Markus has been a paid one, in fact we have not payed for bug fixes for a full year, so i think we got enough from our $40, specially compared with what we can get with $40 nowadays.

I know some here prefer another developer philosophy, but i prefer to pay for an upgraded game every year than to let the developers to stop their game franchises, to have to look for a mainstream job or to have them to develop games i'm not interested on to try to survive.

I think sometimes we tend to confuse small developers with monsters like EA, while we keep paying for the EA updated rosters garbage year after year.

[lighthousekeeper]

I think of it more as a $40 annual subscription to continue to get the latest game updates. I have absolutely no problem with paying that for a game of ootp's immense complexity.

[Icy]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

I think of it more as a $40 annual subscription to continue to get the latest game updates. I have absolutely no problem with paying that for a game of ootp's immense complexity.

Bingo!

[johnnyshaka]

My clients wouldn't like me continually billing them for issues that have been ongoing for years...I would've been fired a long time ago.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I might have had a bad roster set, but I fell into the same boat Ksyrup did. The sign/release/sign/release stuff drove me up a wall. I also didn't like a lot of the decisions the AI made in regards to veterans. It seemed that the minute a veteran showed any sign of aging he was off to the minors. I know this was an issue in pre-SI versions, but it seemed more prominent in the latest installments. I had a tough time getting veterans into their mid-30's. I had been asking for years to add development that skewed in the direction most players go. For instance, a guy in his 30's may lose a little power and speed, but his ability to draw walks and contact should probably go up. His leadership may also make the players on the team a little better (kind of like how Coach on the Floor works in College Hoops series).

I've actually seen just the opposite happen - whereas pitchers seem to get canned way too quickly, hitters seem to hang on forever. I've seen teams give a guy hitting .180 600 ABs. I've seen faded superstars hang around for years hitting .220 and contributing nothing. Now, this may have something to do with the fact that I'm playing nothing but historical replays, and there are only so many players to go around, but I don't think that's the primary reason for it.

On the flipside, like I mentioned, I've seen pitchers who have no reason to be out of the rotation suddenly dropped to the minors or FA before the next season starts. The whole reason I want to set the percentages very low for relying on scouting is so the AI is making reactive decisions based on the stats, instead of seeing an incremental drop on ratings on January 1st of each year and making changes to the team before poor performance dictates. That's what's happening - instead of seeing the Cy Young winner's performance drop off a cliff the next year and then demoting him, he's not even in the rotation at the start of the next year! If Marcus could fix this to where the game reflects the percentages we give it - I currently go with 10% ratings, 50% this year's stats, 30% last year's, and 10% 2 years ago - it would really help with my enjoyment of the game. I want to essentially remove the proactive, omnipotent AI from the game and have the AI making reactive decisions. It makes a huge difference in the continuity of the historical development of a league.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

My clients wouldn't like me continually billing them for issues that have been ongoing for years...I would've been fired a long time ago.

Not if your company was the only company in the world who provided what your client was looking for.

[KWhit]

I for one am glad that many additional features aren't being added. One of the problems now is that there are too many features which tend to confuse people (see this thread).

I've always enjoyed the OOTP series and have put thousands of hours of play into the different versions. I believe 2007 / OOTP8 is a great game that gets more criticism than it deserves.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by KWhit

I for one am glad that many additional features aren't being added. One of the problems now is that there are too many features which tend to confuse people (see this thread).

I've always enjoyed the OOTP series and have put thousands of hours of play into the different versions. I believe 2007 / OOTP8 is a great game that gets more criticism than it deserves.

The one new feature I really would like to see would be a 2D graphical representation of the game - like the old Microleague games or like the CM series.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

...and this points to a long-time OOTP issue: for a long time, the user has had to test and tweak setting after setting, and turn off feature after feature just to make the game work decently. Just figuring out how many rounds to have in the draft was a near-nightmare for me. Set it too low, and there are ghost players all around. Set it too high, and the minors get too big, leading to sign and release. The process of figuring out that I need x slots in AAA/AA/A, y in A-short, and z in rookie ball, combined with an r-round draft, and then I need to set creation modifiers to this, increase development speed by this, decrease decline speed by that much, set AI evaluation percentages to this, that, and the other, set trading to this with the AI slightly favoring prospects (as opposed to heavily)....

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. That process isn't fun, but it has been a necessary process to be able to sit down and play a decent SP career.

And don't even get me started on stats. I should be able to enter that I want a league-wide AVG of .260, OBP of .325, SLG of .400, a 1.5 strikeout to walk ratio, and a home run every 40 plate appearances, and the game do a calculation to give me immediate feedback saying that with those settings in average parks, the average 600 PA hitter will hit .260 with 28 gap hits (2B+3B), 79Ks, and 53 BBs, and then I can change those five basic numbers to my liking, and be done with it.

Well we area all different, aren't we Maybe it's my slow style of play that doesn't let me see the problems that the fast simmers do?

I play the game with all default creation modifiers and am as happy as can be with the game.

My routine with a new OOTP..
Import my on-going game

Run one test season to check league totals

Make any changes needed to league totals using the modifier (ie 1.100 =10% increase) Been pretty easy for me to get the results I want.

Run one test league to verify my new league totals

Start playing the game

Takes about half hour to 45 minutes.

Starting my third season in v2007 and I've never had to touch league totals since the first time I set it.

Since you mentioned the draft I just went with what was suggested, IIRC 6 rounds per minor league level and then added 5 rounds to have some guys that don't get drafted. 5 levels of minors 30 rounds+ 5 extra= 35 rounds. No testing, no muss, no fuss, no ghost playes. It's a game I don't have the time nor the inclination to test, I play it for fun.

Since I believe the first patch the roster size suggestion of not less than 35 for your lowest league is posted on the league setup screen right where you input the number. It's not a secret and no guessing is required. The two extra slots I use in the higher levels was my idea just because injured players have nowhere to go so the team ends up playing short handed. Minor league DL is certainly an area that needs to be addressed in v9.

I know you are more picky than I am about your league. I've read some of your threads on how to set up modifiers etc and cringe at the amount of testing that goes into it. Frankly to me, it's not worth the time and effort because the league on average is short two 40yr olds, or the average player age is off by approx a year. Too me it's a game and meant to be fun and as is it is x1000 better than anything that any of the graphical game companies put out (that includes oopt, fof, ehm, fm, fbcb, tcb) with regard to doing career simulations. This isn't a criticism or knock on you it's just that we have different styles and expectations of the games we play. But damn when I read what you have to go through to make the game playable for you I actually feel kind of bad knowing I can pretty much enjoy it with only minor tweaks out of the box.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

Not if your company was the only company in the world who provided what your client was looking for.

OOTP is the ony baseball text sim in the world? Really?

[path12]

Originally Posted by molson

Am I the only one that doesn't find the new OOTP really all that complicated? You're not required to run every new feature or have a league in Zimbabwe.

I've only used OOTP to play a small, fictional, old-timey kind of league with a few quirky setup options and no scouting or financials, and the game runs fast, efficiently and accurately (and it's fun).

It's no more complicated than Baseball Mogul in that environment, and the engine's WAY better.

Help me out then, because I got frustrated last year and haven't played it since, but since baseball is around the corner.......

Give me an idiot rundown of how to get a basic league structure with a couple levels of minors going.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by path12

Help me out then, because I got frustrated last year and haven't played it since, but since baseball is around the corner.......

Give me an idiot rundown of how to get a basic league structure with a couple levels of minors going.

Open the game then click on the (?) mark at the right of the menu. Open the manual and click on bookmarks. Scroll down to "The League Creation Wizard" then follow the instructions. There are sections for fictional, standard, and historical setups.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

I think
- Tons of tweaks & AI improvements

covers most of what you're indicating isn't mentioned ... I've personally worked with Markus for a few years now and think he's a very dedicated and talented developer.

You could equally argue that some of the previous releases of my games have been 'essentially patches' - indeed one of the most successful of ye-olde CM games I did (01-02) contained very few new features and concentrated on tweaking and refining what was already present ...

As such personally I've always found that people appreciate having a solid game much more than lots of bells and whistles which aren't in tune

I will take it a step further and say that IMO any sports game, from Madden to text sims, is basically a very nice patch when it is coming out every year. This is why I have almost always held to my personal rule of buying a sports game every other year if it is always a regular release every year.

To me I see enough changes for OOTP9 to justify a purchase if I chose to. A new UI is always interesting to me and can change the feel of a game for me by itself. Trying to fine tune everything is always a big bonus in my eyes and he says he is trying to do that. My only problem with what he has on that list is this...

- Even more improved historical league support, resulting in pretty much perfect results

Saying 'near perfect' is just setting yourself up for guys to take shots at you even more then some are. I would have gone with simply 'improved' results.

[JPhillips]

That's always been Markus' chief problem IMO. He promises the moon and doesn't deliver. When he's called on it he gets thin skinned and defensive. I've told him a few times that he'd be better dialing down expectations, but he never changes.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by path12

Help me out then, because I got frustrated last year and haven't played it since, but since baseball is around the corner.......

Give me an idiot rundown of how to get a basic league structure with a couple levels of minors going.

I played ootp for years and years, but kind of stopped after OOTP6 for a while. I recently just picked back up OOTP 8, and inside of it, there was a button for Quick Start Major League.. I just hit that button and it set up the basic structure similar to what you mentioned.

Since I did that, I have tweaked some with the settings (such as turned off the coaches/scouts which have eternally seemed broken), and modified things like injury settings... I think once I did that it seems fairly playable for me. It doesn't seem that the things that were broken 3-4 years ago have been fixed though unfortunatly.. but it wasn't a bad game 3-4 years ago either, I think I had just gotten tired of it.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Lighthousekeeper

Not if your company was the only company in the world who provided what your client was looking for.

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

OOTP is the ony baseball text sim in the world? Really?

When I said "what your client was looking for" I didn't mean "baseball text sim". I meant: "baseball text sim that has complete tracking of all historical stats, fully simmed minor leagues, 40 man rosters, rule five drafts, configurable stats-based-AI, online league support..." (and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of) for which I believe ootp is the only provider.

[Cringer]

Shit. I kind of want to play OOTP now. I don't think I can find my last order info to work on getting it installed though. I kind of deleted all my old emails on accident a few weeks ago.

[Icy]

Originally Posted by Cringer

Shit. I kind of want to play OOTP now. I don't think I can find my last order info to work on getting it installed though. I kind of deleted all my old emails on accident a few weeks ago.

Email or phone call elicense, they will ask you for some data, maybe the credit card number or stuff like that, they should be able to resend the email.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by Icy

Email or phone call elicense, they will ask you for some data, maybe the credit card number or stuff like that, they should be able to resend the email.

Couldn't remember who the license company was. Cool, I will try that. The website I need right now to do work is taking 10 minutes to load a page.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

When I said "what your client was looking for" I didn't mean "baseball text sim". I meant: "baseball text sim that has complete tracking of all historical stats, fully simmed minor leagues, 40 man rosters, rule five drafts, configurable stats-based-AI, online league support..." (and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of) for which I believe ootp is the only provider.

So you mean a game that offers everything that was offered 2 or 3 years ago but still doesn't work as advertised, 2 or 3 years ago?? So my client is paying for me to maintain a "broken" product in it's current state but dress it up a little with some fancy buttons and is tickled pink to do so??

Let's agree to disagree...you like the game as is...I don't and haven't for a couple of years.

[Rizon]

I'm just looking forward to the H2H feature.

[Sweed]

And jb(cut and paste)magic makes his appearance in the ootp 9 thread on the ootp boards..


My post from about 2:30 am yesterday

Originally Posted by Sweed

Yes, there are many issues with the rosters, I've already said it needs to be fixed. The rosters are user made, I believe by Erich(Rolen17) and until they can be done by inputing stats instead of ratings I don't think it will get any better. You have to "guess" for a lack of a better term to find the proper ratings mix to make players as you want them to be.

The reason I bring up the number of players is instead of making the 800-1200 players needed for the major leagues and testing, these guys are making them for all levels and testing. Don't you think they should prioritize getting the majors right first (if it can even be done with the current system) and then move down?

Hell, if your first post in the thread said you wouldn't be buying the game until this was fixed instead of about leagues in Zimbabwe I'd have been agreeing with you all the way.

jb's from last night around 11:30 pm

jbmagic
Hall Of Famer

Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 3,337

Tons of tweaks & AI improvement.


Please give us more detail on that.

Every patch or update or new version you always say that.

But the AI is very weak and the same bugs carry over from one version to the next.

Like AI finances, online waiver claims, player releases, free cuts in the off season, broken compensation, coaches/scouts, trades, etc.

I hope this version finally fixes all the AI problems that been in the game from many version now.


MLB Rosters

Its never going to be any good until you let us enter the stats of players to produce the player rating.

Until that can be done by inputing stats instead of ratings I don't think it will get any better. You have to "guess" for a lack of a better term to find the proper ratings mix to make players as you want them to be.

That is going to make it difficult for roster makers.

I like how he pulled the quote mid-sentence and capitalized "Until" then changed
"they" to "that". His craft is evolving

[lighthousekeeper]