Out of the Park Baseball 13 Released! (plus Patch info for pre-order customers)

[Markus Heinsohn]

OK guys, this is what I just posted over in our forums... the game has gone live.

Hello baseball fans,

we are proud to announce that we have just released OOTP 13! The game is available for download immediately, here are the links to the setup file:

Download link for PC:
PC Installer

Download link for Mac:
Mac OS X Installer

Download link for Linux:
Linux Installer

IMPORTANT: Patch info for pre-order customers:
The download links above are for the latest build, version 13.1.4. To apply the patch, simply download the setup file and install it over your current installation. There no need to uninstall or unlicense your current copy! However, you should quit the game before installing it, of course. There is no special 'patch file' this time because it would not have been significantly smaller than the full setup.

Changes in Version 13.1.4 compared to the release version from Friday:
- Added the option to display league leaders in the league standings screen
- The simulation screen now shows spring training leaders & standings during spring training
- Improved trade AI
- Improved inaugural draft AI in random debut leagues
- Improved historical simulation accuracy
- Added "Facegen profile picture zoom" to preferences dialog
- Fixed various reported bugs

Here is the release newsletter, it contains all you need to know about OOTP 13:
OOTP 13 Released! - Newsletter

The game is the best we have ever produced, so get your copy now, you will enjoy it!

Markus + the OOTP Developments Team

[Peregrine]

Thanks Markus - enjoying the new patch, especially the leaderboards posted again on the standings page!

[Vince, Pt. II]

And in case anyone has missed it with the other thread, this game is getting fantastic reviews from just about everyone who has played it.

[korme]

Are ratings supposed to be this high? This is just a snippet from a random team in my 16 team league. Granted it's a historical fictional league, so I have modifiers and all that stuff set to be time-appropriate.

However... this is just the outfield for a 2-6 team, and 5 of 7 of the OFs have a 15 contact rating or higher (20,19,18,17,15). I'm just not used to playing with ratings these high... If I have a 15 rated contact guy that's a pretty damn good #2 hitter... this guy won't get 50 ABs this year.



The problem I'm also getting is that there are so many similarly rated players that careers seem to be much shorter- in 33 years of simmed history, the career wins leader is at 241, and the career hits leader is at 2,744. 33 years and not a 300 win pitcher in the deadball era and 0 3,000 hits guys???

[korme]

Any thoughts here? Is this something I need to just get used to, playing with creation modifiers on for historial sims? And any idea on what to do to get some longer or more stable playing careers?

[MrBug708]

If everybody has high ratings, doesnt it cancel it out?

[RomaGoth]

Am I missing something here? It appears to me that Verlander's ratings are a little for a top 3 pitcher.

[MrBug708]

What's the question?

[MrBug708]

???

[korme]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

If everybody has high ratings, doesnt it cancel it out?

Kind of, but it makes it harder to sort through through the mess. And, this is an incredibly uninspired answer/solution. It's very odd going to sort the FA list and seeing 20+ guys with a 17 or higher contact potential. Get my drift?

[MrBug708]

Make it out of 100? Or 2-8?

[Mota]

I had that issue with a fictional league of mine a few versions ago. I ended up turning international signings off, as 3/4 of the superstars were just appearing into the league via this method. Once that dried out, the talent levels dropped considerably as all teams now have to rely on the draft.

[JetsIn06]

Im confused about your Verlander question. The top section are his hitting ratings, his pitching ratings look great.

[JetsIn06]

dola

Then again, I'm only looking at his pitch ratings. His actual Stuff/Movement/Control ratings aren't even visible on that shot.

As for the high contact ratings Korme, that's just what happens in early 1900's era games. There's lots of high-average guys, no power...the ratings are used in conjunction with the total modifiers to get the statistics where they should be. As you progress in your game, it will become more spread out, but based on many, many games where I played from 1900-20xx, it gives you a very realistic history despite the tough-to-gauge player ratings.

[JetsIn06]

This game is seriously amazing. They've pretty much fixed every little thing I can remember bugging me. I haven't used associations yet, but that's really, really cool for fictional players who have more than one league running.

Expansion has gotten much better, as you can set a limit on how many players can be taken from each team.

Trades are seriously so much better as far as human/CPU trades go...but even better? The trades between the AI teams are simply blowing away old versions. Good players are being traded for prospects at the right times. I saw David Wright get traded by the Mets, Halladay traded by the Phillies, all for 3-4 solid prospects. There's so much more that I love here, but I'm too busy playing to go on. This is by far the best version of OOTP yet.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by JetsIn06

Im confused about your Verlander question. The top section are his hitting ratings, his pitching ratings look great.

My copy/paste program is giving me fits right now or I would post a better pic. In comparing Verlander to...say....Max Scherzer:

(Verlander)

Stuff: 17/17
Movement: 16/16
Control: 13/13

(Scherzer)

Stuff: 20/20
Movement: 14/15
Control: 13/15


These ratings seem way out of wack. Scherzer has upside for sure, but how are his ratings already better than Verlander, one of the most dominant pitchers in the game right now?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by JetsIn06

This game is seriously amazing. They've pretty much fixed every little thing I can remember bugging me. I haven't used associations yet, but that's really, really cool for fictional players who have more than one league running.

Expansion has gotten much better, as you can set a limit on how many players can be taken from each team.

Trades are seriously so much better as far as human/CPU trades go...but even better? The trades between the AI teams are simply blowing away old versions. Good players are being traded for prospects at the right times. I saw David Wright get traded by the Mets, Halladay traded by the Phillies, all for 3-4 solid prospects. There's so much more that I love here, but I'm too busy playing to go on. This is by far the best version of OOTP yet.

+1000

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

My copy/paste program is giving me fits right now or I would post a better pic. In comparing Verlander to...say....Max Scherzer:

(Verlander)

Stuff: 17/17
Movement: 16/16
Control: 13/13

(Scherzer)

Stuff: 20/20
Movement: 14/15
Control: 13/15


These ratings seem way out of wack. Scherzer has upside for sure, but how are his ratings already better than Verlander, one of the most dominant pitchers in the game right now?

Looks like you have scouting on, which can give you some really wacky ratings. If you edit both players, and Scherzer is that good, then yeah I'd say that's a problem with the rosters. But that looks around about where I'd expect Verlander to be, that's very good for a SP

[MrBug708]

There will likely be better rosters out within a month

[MrBug708]

Dola

Ratings aren't a sole determination of how a player does. I've had 6/7/7 pitchers have an ERA of 3 and 8/8/8 pitchers have an ERA of 5

[Shkspr]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

These ratings seem way out of wack. Scherzer has upside for sure, but how are his ratings already better than Verlander, one of the most dominant pitchers in the game right now?

Do you have scouting off, talent change randomness set to 0, and player development disabled?

I just set up three replay historical leagues, and three straight times, Verlander came in at 16/13/15, with Scherzer at 13/10/13. I'm fairly certain that the same stats with no randomness added will result in the same starting levels. Now, in the regular world I'm playing (full scouting and talent changes at regular levels), Verlander is sitting in June '13 with ratings of 18/17/14 with Scherzer at 13/12/11. If you haven't been futzing with setup options out of the box, I'd say the answer to your query is that a) the scouts are wrong, and/or b) Scherzer got a talent bump in that particular game.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Looks like you have scouting on, which can give you some really wacky ratings. If you edit both players, and Scherzer is that good, then yeah I'd say that's a problem with the rosters. But that looks around about where I'd expect Verlander to be, that's very good for a SP

Originally Posted by MrBug708

There will likely be better rosters out within a month

Originally Posted by MrBug708

Dola

Ratings aren't a sole determination of how a player does. I've had 6/7/7 pitchers have an ERA of 3 and 8/8/8 pitchers have an ERA of 5

Ok thanks guys. I will keep an eye on it.

[RainMaker]

Just picked this up a couple minutes ago. Definitely digging the interface and its simplicity. One of the things that had held me back of late.

One question, is there a way to make the game bigger? Either full screen or just a little larger? I have some decent sized monitors and it's kind of small on them. Barely fills up half the screen.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

One question, is there a way to make the game bigger? Either full screen or just a little larger? I have some decent sized monitors and it's kind of small on them. Barely fills up half the screen.

There is an option to view the game in full screen mode. It is on the main page after loading up the game under the preferences section.

[RainMaker]

Thank you , found it. Not sure how I missed that.

[MizzouRah]

I really need to get some sleep, I've been playing non-stop since Friday morning.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

Do you have scouting off, talent change randomness set to 0, and player development disabled?

How do you do this? I do not see these options.

[Shkspr]

In the advanced setup tables, scouting is turned on and off in the global setup tab, talent change randomness is in the next tab (player and picture options), and you can checkmark to disable aging patterns and development below those coefficients. You don't have to do any of that; those options appear to be there to improve replay simulations. There is another place the player development can be tweaked; when setting up a historical league with the wizard, you can basically age players exactly as they did historically, retard development completely, or you can convert their careers into OOTP talent bars (current and potential) and let them develop with variation generated by the coefficients you use on the player and picture options screen.

As far as which numbers are the optimum to use in those slots, it's still been just a few days of general (pre-)release. I don't think consensus has been reached. However, I will say that I think these rosters are extraordinarily robust. I even spot-checked a couple rookie league guys I know, and was shocked that even in general terms (the fast guy is fast, the glove guy has a good glove, and the power bat has major league power potential) it looks like the roster makers did their homework. It's not at FM levels of fidelity, but few things in life are.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Glanced at my Twitter feed tonight and what do I see ?

@Steve Corino - Totally addicted to this "Out Of The Park Baseball 13" game. Anyone play it out there?

He goes on to rave about the fun he's having with the game for several mores tweets afterwards.

(For the non-wrestling fans here, Corino is one of the longer running & better known indy circuit guys out there)

[lighthousekeeper]

1. Fired this bad boy up after a year of inactivity.
2. Start new MLB universe starting in 2012.
3. Double-check global settings before diving in (e.g. scouting off, trading difficulty - hard, coaching off, etc).
4. Take control of Phillies.
5. First move: trade away Jim Thome (with his $1.5M extension) for Stephen Strasburg.
6. Remember why I stopped investing time in this.
7. Close game.

[cody8200]

Was that a straight 1 for 1 trade? Insane.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by cody8200

Was that a straight 1 for 1 trade? Insane.

yes: 1 for 1

[Johnny93g]

Trade setting: Hard, problem solved.

OOTP has it's problem, but help yourself a little bit

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

Trade setting: Hard, problem solved.

OOTP has it's problem, but help yourself a little bit

Yeah - but the game shouldn't be setup out of the box so that a trade like that goes through.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

Trade setting: Hard, problem solved.

OOTP has it's problem, but help yourself a little bit

If you read the post, you'll see that he already had the trading set to Hard.

[Johnny93g]

I'll try this in a bit, I have a hard time believing it went through. If it does, I apologize, It just seems so far fetched to me

[Johnny93g]

Originally Posted by Izulde

If you read the post, you'll see that he already had the trading set to Hard.

I missed that part for some reason, my apologies. Try very hard then, like I said, it's hard to believe but I'll try it, in my experience, with trading on hard or very hard, the computer is not to likely to deal these top not players for older players

[spleen1015]

That issue may not be trade AI related. What are the ratings of the players? OOTP doesn't know names just ratings.

To each their own, but you know that trade wouldn't happen in real life, so why attempt it in game?

[cody8200]

Just tried this with the exact settings used (as far as I can tell). Looks like a no. Sure you weren't in commish mode?

[Johnny93g]

I just tried it with those settings in the post.

"You are kidding right, I'd never accept this deal"
I then clicked on the make this work now button. No player would make it work.

I'll change the trade difficulty to average. Same result.

Trade difficulty to VERY EASY and Heavily favor veterans. Paplebon or Hamels needs to be added to the deal to happen.

[cody8200]

Maybe the OP was using an older version of the game? I know trade logic was improved some after the initial release (but it was like 6 months ago that those changes to the logic occurred).

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

You know that trade wouldn't happen in real life, so why attempt it in game?

Because I want to build a winning dynasty. I want to obtain Strasburg and give away as little as possible in return. Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture...having no real life friends, I want a computer to act as a proxy and be my intellectual equal in a friendly competition. In fact I want to pretend that there are 29 other intellectual equals competing with me in a cutthroat game of baseball simulation, not dissimilar to the MLB today in real life. This battle of wits between me and my supposed intellectual equals will then hopefully provide me with a sense of satisfaction if I am able to best these opponents.

If, on the other hand, I want to play a game with intellectual inferiors and intentionally play bad so as to make things equal....well I've got my 5 & 8 yr old daughters for that.

[cody8200]

It looks like you should be ok reloading the game and trying again. Even on the easiest setting, this trade doesn't get done. Just make sure you aren't the commish and use the latest update to 13.

[Toddzilla]

Still, why even attempt a trade that would never happen...ever. The Nats would never ever trade Strasburg, even if the Angels offered up Trout and a few other guys.

Stop trying to break the game and then complain it's broken.

[miked]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

Because I want to build a winning dynasty. I want to obtain Strasburg and give away as little as possible in return. Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture...having no real life friends, I want a computer to act as a proxy and be my intellectual equal in a friendly competition. In fact I want to pretend that there are 29 other intellectual equals competing with me in a cutthroat game of baseball simulation, not dissimilar to the MLB today in real life. This battle of wits between me and my supposed intellectual equals will then hopefully provide me with a sense of satisfaction if I am able to best these opponents.

If, on the other hand, I want to play a game with intellectual inferiors and intentionally play bad so as to make things equal....well I've got my 5 & 8 yr old daughters for that.

Or instead of relying on the AI and Markus to bring you competition, you could come back to the UBL. Just sayin.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Still, why even attempt a trade that would never happen...ever. The Nats would never ever trade Strasburg, even if the Angels offered up Trout and a few other guys.

Stop trying to break the game and then complain it's broken.

well i can't remember exactly the sequence of events, but my thought process certainly wasn't 'let me break my game by doing this ludicrous 1-1 trade.' i was just starting to build what i thought would have been a multiple player trade on both sides. in ootp, you can pester the other gm a million times. so you go 'ok i want strasburg, let me add him.' 'ok now i don't want thome, let me add him.' 'ok now let me ask the gm (totally expecting he'd balk), just to test the waters to see how far i am from completing a deal AND to build a starting point for when i can click the "make this work now" button.

[Philliesfan980]

I think the general problem with a trade like this going through is not so much the rediculous nature of it. To me makes your future trades, which on the surface appear to be well balanced, questionable. You'll always have the "am I getting one over the computer" in situations where it's not as clear cut.

With that said, computer AI is never going to be perfect (At least not in our lifetime) so maybe you just have to agree not to do crazy trades and accept everything else blindly.

[EagleFan]

OP may want to add... patched the game to his list of things to do (or, not play in commish mode). Can't get anything close to that deal to go through unless I am in commish mode.

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by Philliesfan980

I think the general problem with a trade like this going through is not so much the rediculous nature of it. To me makes your future trades, which on the surface appear to be well balanced, questionable. You'll always have the "am I getting one over the computer" in situations where it's not as clear cut.

With that said, computer AI is never going to be perfect (At least not in our lifetime) so maybe you just have to agree not to do crazy trades and accept everything else blindly.

+1

Though, there have been plenty of recent trades in real life that people would be complaining about if OOTP allowed them to go through.

[Mota]

I used to be able to fleece the AI pretty easily for their young players but that's a few versions ago. AI GM seems to be much better these days at protecting their future, or at least you have to give up one of your top players for a chance to get a future top player.

The only way I can see that trade happening is if in that particular game he didn't have enough pitches to qualify as a starter and they treated him as a RP. I've seen that happen when one of my star SP lost a pitch and was viewed by scouts as a RP.