OOTP 15 Announced

[Mota]

You can't just make a game, release it and hope that it'll sell. Markus and company have been on a million podcasts promoting the product, been working with tons of websites and giving review code. They are definitely building momentum with the product.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

I have not. I simmed 29 years to get started.

Have you downloaded the latest patch?

Yes, but not the beta patch. I played some more last night luckily without a crash. I'm saving every week now. Saving more almost guarantees that it won't crash, right?

[lungs]

I can't seem to run a long term sim without the illegal number of players thing coming up.

[frnk55]

If stranded on a island and could only pick one game it would be OOTP.

[DaddyTorgo]

How's player development?

By which I mean - career progression for established players, and also development of minor leaguers?

OOTP was always fun to sim long-long term careers and see how things evolved, but I always felt player development wasn't the strongest feature, which tended to make that a little less fun.

[bhlloy]

Probably my biggest question as well. As fun as OOTP is, there have always been massively glaring player creation/development quirks that make it almost impossible to get deep into a career. Last two versions were very heavy on five tool superstar outfielders and pretty light on pitching for example

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by lungs

I can't seem to run a long term sim without the illegal number of players thing coming up.

In league settings there is an option to fill in with fictional players. When starting a fresh league you may have to do this a couple of different times before the free agent pool becomes large enough.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Probably my biggest question as well. As fun as OOTP is, there have always been massively glaring player creation/development quirks that make it almost impossible to get deep into a career. Last two versions were very heavy on five tool superstar outfielders and pretty light on pitching for example

You can set this up however you'd like. Ask some questions on the OOTP forums if you need as a lot of them guys are very sharp at knowing every detail of this game.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

You can set this up however you'd like. Ask some questions on the OOTP forums if you need as a lot of them guys are very sharp at knowing every detail of this game.

That's not necessarily what I want to hear...

• How are the out-of-the-box settings?
  
• Is there an available setting that someone has come up with that's better/more true-to-life that's easy to setup and doesn't require constant tweaking/monitoring?

[Mota]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

In league settings there is an option to fill in with fictional players. When starting a fresh league you may have to do this a couple of different times before the free agent pool becomes large enough.

In OOTP14 I'd run into that problem after several years, constantly the Short Season A teams would only have 6 guys on their roster and I'd have to fill with fictional players. Don't know where they would all go but it would keep happening.

[CraigSca]

I play purely fictional, but with 2014 settings. Out-of-the-box runs just fine for me. I don't necessarily see lots of 5 star outfielders and a dearth of pitching. Of course, I'm not going to run into issues of having short season A teams with 6 players on their roster either, since I'm not playing with real rosters.

For me, the game is light years better than it was when FOFC used to collectively mock the game.

[DaddyTorgo]

That's good to hear Craig.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

That's not necessarily what I want to hear...

• How are the out-of-the-box settings?
  
• Is there an available setting that someone has come up with that's better/more true-to-life that's easy to setup and doesn't require constant tweaking/monitoring?

From what I have read the out of box settings are just fine. I think this would be tough to get right IMO. If Markus matches things like injuries with reality people complain the injuries are too high, if he doesnt have them exactly right people will complain its not realistic. There are a few things I like to adjust with each version such as lowering the computer trades and making it more difficult to get prospects. I also tinker with the computer evaluation to weight last season more heavily than the current season. I hate when I can re-sign my own guy who is struggling in April for a bargain rate. That part isnt realistic if I weight the current season too high.

I know some people dont like messing around with these things but depending how how realistic you want it to be sometimes you do have to mess around a bit.

[lungs]

Indy leagues are almost impossible for me to use. Now they are keeping too many players on the reserve roster. I keep raising the limit but they keep signing players and go over the limit.

I don't want to use no limit reserve rosters. No big deal at this point but hopefully it's fixed in a patch and I can add the Indy leagues back later.

Otherwise I'm liking the game a lot when I'm actually playing and not fiddling around with setups and simming a history for my universe.

[MizzouRah]

Hello Matt Garza.. TWO no hitters so far this season.

[DaddyTorgo]

Was that back-to-back starts, or was there one in between?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Was that back-to-back starts, or was there one in between?

One in between where he only went 2.2 innings giving up 6 runs.

[RainMaker]

Anyone know how to get a Steam Key if you were one of the pre-orders?

Edit: Nevermind, I figured it out.

[Scoobz0202]

Just ordered this and meant to apply the $20.84 that I have in Steam Dollars towards it and apparently forgot to do that and paid full price. Damn me.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

You can set this up however you'd like. Ask some questions on the OOTP forums if you need as a lot of them guys are very sharp at knowing every detail of this game.

Those people are animals

[Scoobz0202]

Couple first year player draft questions:

1.) What's the reason that a lot of pitchers in the draft pool show up as MR yet when you look at their stats they have definite potential for SP with 3+ pitches.

2.) Maybe because I am playing on an ultrabook, but does it build the player list for you everytime you go back to the draft pool? Really makes it a pain/annoying when its my pick and I click through players scouting them out and everytime I go back to the pool I have to wait for it to build the player list. It only takes 2-3 seconds, but when trying to look at 5-10 players that can be obnoxious. I don't recall previous versions being like that but then again it's been a couple years since i played a lot and then it was on a desktop

[MrBug708]

OOTP 15 is one of the options for the next Community Choice vote on Steam.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

OOTP 15 is one of the options for the next Community Choice vote on Steam.

It was one of the ones for the last community choice and failed, no?

[MrBug708]

Ah, I wasnt keeping tabs on it after I voted

[Peregrine]

Anyone know why the OOTP website is down for a few days? Hacked, did it move, etc.

[EagleFan]

Looks like the site is up, just the forum down. Though I didn't navigate through all the links but what I saw seemed okay.

[CraigSca]

I saw on twitter that their provider is having problems and that they have backups and an open ticket against it.

[Peregrine]

All-star sale for half off on OOTP 15 announced and even better - new update! I highlighted the one I'm most excited about.

Here are the improvements / fixes:
• Improved 3D ball flight engine, using realistic physics-based calculations
• Improved 3D ballpark importer / editor
• Improved memory management resulting in increased stability and speed, especially with large games
• Free agent compensation / arbitration is now more realistic. OOTP correctly assigns FA comp status to all free agent-eligible players who stayed on the team the entire year, and compensation draft picks are only given when the user/AI offered arbitration to this player.
• Draft picks with signability of "impossible" no longer state their demand. You have just one shot to convince the player with a great offer.
• Added the option to hide player nicknames (in the player personality section of the game setup)
• Improved the league events editor. When in commish mode, users can edit the dates of existing events and also create events using the internal event types. That way experienced users may fix problems with events caused by league scheduling errors.
• Improved in-game AI for several situations
• Improved in-game play-by-play commentary
• Moved the "Force Start / Position" section in the player strategy screen from the depth chart strategy to the pitching strategy for pitchers and renamed it "Force Role."
• Re-ordered the items in the team menu to match the order of tabs on the team screen
• Fixed issues with touchpads on Macs
• Fixed several bugs and rare crashes

There are a couple of know issues on some Mac OSX systems (poor 3D ballflight framerate and oversaturated facegen pictures) which we are still investigating and will fix in a future update.

Alright, I'll leave for an extended vacation next week, and once I return, work on OOTP 16 will already begin. We've got big things planned for it

[DaddyTorgo]

So what's half off? 17.99 or something still?

[Young Drachma]

yeah, it's been stable for me from the start. I think I had one crash during beta, but nothing like the old releases where you'd deal with that. I'd patch up for sure, start a fresh league and see what happens.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

All-star sale for half off on OOTP 15 announced and even better - new update! I highlighted the one I'm most excited about.

Here are the improvements / fixes:
• Improved 3D ball flight engine, using realistic physics-based calculations
• Improved 3D ballpark importer / editor
• Improved memory management resulting in increased stability and speed, especially with large games
• Free agent compensation / arbitration is now more realistic. OOTP correctly assigns FA comp status to all free agent-eligible players who stayed on the team the entire year, and compensation draft picks are only given when the user/AI offered arbitration to this player.
• Draft picks with signability of "impossible" no longer state their demand. You have just one shot to convince the player with a great offer.
• Added the option to hide player nicknames (in the player personality section of the game setup)
• Improved the league events editor. When in commish mode, users can edit the dates of existing events and also create events using the internal event types. That way experienced users may fix problems with events caused by league scheduling errors.
• Improved in-game AI for several situations
• Improved in-game play-by-play commentary
• Moved the "Force Start / Position" section in the player strategy screen from the depth chart strategy to the pitching strategy for pitchers and renamed it "Force Role."
• Re-ordered the items in the team menu to match the order of tabs on the team screen
• Fixed issues with touchpads on Macs
• Fixed several bugs and rare crashes

There are a couple of know issues on some Mac OSX systems (poor 3D ballflight framerate and oversaturated facegen pictures) which we are still investigating and will fix in a future update.

Alright, I'll leave for an extended vacation next week, and once I return, work on OOTP 16 will already begin. We've got big things planned for it

You're welcome for the ability to remove nicknames. I personally initiated that rant in the beta forum a few weeks back and after some small debate, Markus came in and said he'd create a toggle to stop them. Which was awesome.

[rjolley]

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with the nicknames?

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

Sorry, I think the wolf gets credit for having nicknames removed

[Peregrine]

Nothing's wrong with the nicknames, I'm not a zealot against them like the Wolf, I just wanted an option in some leagues to turn them off. Usually I keep them on and just remove a lot of the dumber ones in commissioner mode.

[korme]

I have random crashes all the time. Been trying to play game-to-game, and it's frustrating playing a weeks worth of games to have it crash

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by korme

I have random crashes all the time. Been trying to play game-to-game, and it's frustrating playing a weeks worth of games to have it crash

File a ticket with ootp, they're pretty responsive and without knowing what it is..hard to identify. But seriously, go on their forums and you should file a ticket so they can fix it if it's a bug.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with the nicknames?

I hate them. I like giving guys nicknames organically, but they ruin the game for me. And as aforementioned, I used to get rid of the terrible ones in my online leagues. You can delete them manually, but if you forget or start the league and then want them gone, it's too late.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Nothing's wrong with the nicknames, I'm not a zealot against them like the Wolf, I just wanted an option in some leagues to turn them off. Usually I keep them on and just remove a lot of the dumber ones in commissioner mode.

Can't you just blank out the Nickname database and be done with it?

[DanGarion]

Finally a reason to buy it.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by DanGarion

Can't you just blank out the Nickname database and be done with it?

No reason to now - I guess I like the middle road - I want them in some occasions and not in others - now I have that option.

[vex]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

So what's half off? 17.99 or something still?

Still $7.99 too much. Thanks, Steam Users.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

So what's half off? 17.99 or something still?

19.99

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by DanGarion

Can't you just blank out the Nickname database and be done with it?

Doesn't always work and you have to do it when you first load the game. Also if you're not careful and don't get rid of the trailing space line, then all of your guys have fucked up middle names with a _ space or something.

Plus, asking newbies to get into the game files and change that is asking a lot. Plus it's a real pain in the ass and a simple thing for him to fix. Once he realized there were people who hated it.

Glad Markus gave us the option.

[bhlloy]

I can't believe there is a world where a board of text sim users thinks $20 is too much to pay for the second best sim on the market. But maybe it's just me

[EagleFan]

Nicknames "ruin" the game? Seriously?

[vex]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Nicknames "ruin" the game? Seriously?

About as much as not having the proper color of gloves in Madden.

[vex]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

I can't believe there is a world where a board of text sim users thinks $20 is too much to pay for the second best sim on the market. But maybe it's just me

For me it's because it is released every year with little changes. FM drastically advances their game every year.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

I can't believe there is a world where a board of text sim users thinks $20 is too much to pay for the second best sim on the market. But maybe it's just me

For me it's because of my lack of interest in the sport anymore.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

I can't believe there is a world where a board of text sim users thinks $20 is too much to pay for the second best sim on the market. But maybe it's just me

I think it's the fact that the game comes out every year and never really quite feels done is part of the problem. Not to mention the fact that when you do a multiplayer league you really see a lot of the warts.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

I can't believe there is a world where a board of text sim users thinks $20 is too much to pay for the second best sim on the market. But maybe it's just me

I wouldn't even necessarily consider it the best baseball sim on the market at this stage. For all its own flaws, there's something still appealing about Baseball Mogul's simplicity and easy/quick style of play.

I think the comments about FM continually evolving while OOTP makes minimal changes, with a lot of the legacy issues apparently still hanging around, do ring true. As much as I curse out FM for its own complexity, it's progressed so much throughout the years that it's still something that compels me to play it, even if crazy manic bursts before getting mad and quitting for a while again.

In the text sim universe, I personally would put OOTP about 6th, behind FM and FBCB no matter what metrics I was using, and behind DDSPB, DDSCB, and FBPB for me individually.