Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP9 First Impressions...)

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

I think Ksyrup was referring to the tests that him and SkyDog (oh damn Ben E. Lou) have been running to determine what is the proper weighting to give to current year/previous year/ratings.

i honestly haven't adjusted my evaluation and played far enough into the future to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions - ksyrup likes to sit down and simulate entire universe histories for fun so he is really the expert on how well this is "working" with what %'s

I don't know what's working perfectly for everyone either, it's a matter of personal taste I guess. I personally use the default settings, and I find the game very competitive... to be honest, I suck at playing my own game

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I don't know what's working perfectly for everyone either, it's a matter of personal taste I guess. I personally use the default settings, and I find the game very competitive... to be honest, I suck at playing my own game

that's good (in a way) though. I personally find it to be competitive on the default settings for sure. I can win the WS one year (and one year have a guy hit .400 and win 136 games) but then flameout and miss the playoffs 2 years in a row.

I applaud the efforts of people like ksyrup and RonCo to try to "tweak" the game to best reflect real-life, both in using stats as the only way of evaluating players, and also in fine-tuning player development so it is as realistic as possible.

And i think it's great that you've made a game that is so tweakable that this is possible.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Can't you do this now?

Well, my comment was aimed more at Hell Atlantic's remarks about how baseball is evaluated earlier in this thread. But with the game, there are a couple of things.

One, at Ben's suggestion, I eliminated using a "zero" for the rating evaulation (using somewhere between 1 and 15 in several tests), and it seemed to function much more realistically. I'm not sure why Ben thought about using values other than zero, but whatever the reason, his hunch seemed to play out in my sims. Using zero, I saw some wacky things.

Two, while the evaluations seem to be working as you've set them up to, I still have not found a good evaluation setting across the board that feels realistic enough for me. I saw way too many guys get sent down to the minors after a bad season or two, but not called up again until the next year (if at all). I would prefer to see the AI send a vet down for a while, then at worst, call them back up during September, if not sooner. But that doesn't seem to happen - once they get sent down, they are down for the year (ordinarily). I also saw guys with solid major league stats get 1 or 2 starts (or 10-20 ABs) in the minors for no apparent reason. And then, there are players who seemed to spend parts of too many consecutive years in the minors (say, a starter would split time between AAA and the majors for 5 or 6 years in a row).

I'd call it a work in progress right now. I don't think it's as simple as just putting in some numbers and playing. I think it's working the best it can right now, but I just haven't found a good balance yet - it needs a ton of testing to determine what feels right. You've given us the basic recipe, but it's going to take some time to determine the correct seasoning. I decided to turn my attention to SD's NABA league for now, but no doubt I'll be back on this issue at some point.

One thing I hope you are looking at is the tendency of the AI to sign guys to multiple 1-year contracts within a few months or a couple of years of being signed, to the point where they are essentially signed to a 3-5 year contract, only to see them released within the next year. Also, I've seen a few too many guys who sign big money deals traded within a year of signing the contract. That should rarely, if ever, happen. And the multiple 1-year deals then being released feels like a game where different parts are not working together, as opposed to feeling like a "real front office" that has a plan and is being consistent. Minor issues, obviously, but things I'd like to see tightened up.

[DaddyTorgo]

ksyrup - you bastard. i want you to figure out the evaluation settings now. or at least conversate with me and tell me what sort of things you are looking for when you look for, and i'd be willing to run the sims then and take on the project.

[Ksyrup]

I was running multiple sims with evaluation settings from 1-40-35-24 to 15-45-25-15, and after 75-100 years, I started going through teams/players at random and looking at players' careers - specifically, when they got sent down/called up to/from the minors. I saw some good stuff - at one point, Mark McGwire looked like a HoFer after hist first 3 years, but for the next 1.5 years, he hit under .200 and only had 20 HRs, and the AI sent him down, then traded him. I saw a few guys follow bad seasons with a bad 40-50 AB start to the next season and get sent down. But, they never came back up that year, either.

Basically, I was just looking for major/minor experiences that mirrored real life as closely as possible, and noting good and bad examples of each and whether I saw any patterns that suggested I tweak the numbers one way or the other. Hardly scientific, I admit.

[DaddyTorgo]

fair enough. just wasn't sure if you had particular criteria for who you looked at or whatever

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Josh Hamilton projected to do exactly this after two months of the current season, so it is not impossible at all

The allstar date problem is usually tied to strange user settings or manually edited schedules. I've never seen it in my tests.

..and if this guy is "rare" I'm cool with his numbers..

I have NEVER messed with the schedules whatsoever.. took it right from the MLB quickstart. Working with LGO.. I hope they correct themselves next season.

[MizzouRah]

FWIW.. I don't mind the output in stats either, with the defaults numbers so far in my universe.

[path12]

Haven't been following the detailed conversation too much, but my one concern with the game so far is that I set up a fictional league, ran 50 years history, took over a bad team, made a few moves and was in the World Series year 1.

I don't know that I'm that good a GM........

[Godzilla Blitz]

Just got OOTP 9 yesterday. Haven't played a version of this game since OOTP 6, and I didn't play that one much.

I was concerned about the complexity of the interface and that I'd struggle to be able to figure things out, but so far I have to say that it's been the exact opposite: this game is cake to play. I'm loving things so far, because I can do everything I want to do in a baseball game and let the computer handle the rest. Very slick, and having SkyDog's quickstart file makes things much easier.

Very glad I got this game so far.

[RainMaker]

Well there is a wishlist up for OOTP 10 right now on the OOTP boards. I'm seeing people wanting women's leagues and homerun derby tiebreakers. I'm not kidding, there are people arguing for this over things that would actually help improve sales.

Markus, since you read this board, please pretend those people don't exist.

[MizzouRah]

If they want women's leagues they can purchse Baseball Mogul.

[JeffW]

Is everyone using scouting turned on and if so, which accuracy level? All I have ever known is FOF, where fog of war is omnipresent. A lot of players seem to disfavor OOTP scouting, though and it is cumbersome to analyze prospects because you need to check the OSA ratings, your scout ratings and statistics individually.

What are some "angles" for player evaluation in OOTP? For example, in FOF, route running was of prime importance for top receivers. Are there OOTP sub ratings that are more important than others?

Are there clues to identify booms and busts with higher frequency? What are some general approaches to building your farm system.

[Young Drachma]

While little light has been set on feeder leagues and the best practices for developing players in OOTP, I've been testing for weeks now to find the best model I can find for player development settings.

I call them SippyCup, because if done right, you can watch a player from the time he's in high school to the time he's a retiree. I could even see testing a level lower than "high school" to get kids who are say, 13-15 playing in your system..then you go from Little League to the Pros. That's been my OOTP dream for a long time, so I intend to accomplish it with this version.

I think I've found a model I like and that will produce a sustainable crop of talented players for the duration of your league. For my money, every feeder league you add will add 5 rounds to your draft. I prefer to err on the side of less vs. more, because the bottom line is, if you have TOO many feeders, it's going to slow down your game unless you're on a machine that's fast. So, I tend to let the computer do the feeder leagues + additional players option for draft feeding in my leagues.

Let me know if you try them. I'll come up with a template that I'll release later on with a basic structure, so you don't have to do all of the legwork, but for now, this ought to get you somewhere if you're an experimental type that's looking for a different sort of setup than what's out there.


Sabermetric Creation Modifiers
---------
ROOKIE
Batting average: .575
Extra-Base Hits: .315
Home Runs: .269
Walks: .300
Strikeouts: .400

SHORT-SEASON A
.632
.420
.322
.500
.550

SINGLE A
.690
.578
.484
.600
.600

DOUBLE A
.805
.630
.591
.700
.700

TRIPLE A
.862
.735
.699
.750
.800

HIGH SCHOOL
.402
.315
.215
.250
.300

COLLEGE
.517
.315
.269
.300
.350

MAJORS
Traditional OOTP Player Creation Modifiers
All set to 1.000 except
Control: 1.050
Fielding: 1.200

Sabermetric PC Modifers
1.150
1.050
1.075
1.000
1.000


League totals modeled after SkyDog's modifiers

Player Aging/Dev
Batter Aging: 2.000
Batter Dev: .750
Pitching aging: 2.000
Pitching Dev: .750
Talent Chg Randomess: 200

[Young Drachma]

I prefer playing with feeders only in scenarios where I want to watch kids develop from say 14 or so (I create a 14-17 league in the Dominican, a 16-18 league in the US and then a 18-21 league in the US for college)

If you're not interested in watching them develop, having them is a waste of time, I think, because it just slows the game down depending on your machine speed.

I haven't created a solo league yet, because I've been mired in testing for beta, then for my settings and getting my online league off the ground. But now that it's together, I'm looking forward to actually playing.