OOTP 19

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

How's the trade AI this year? Because that actually seems like a realistic trade. Kelly is a top-100 prospect and Bach is an elite reliever rental.

Wondering if that's you manually doing it or if they're doing a better job.

It seems better for sure this year. When I scouted Brach, the Orioles wanted 4 players, one of which was Kelly.. the rest were also either a plus prospect or someone like DeJong who has a great contract and a high upside. Brach has already told me he's not signing an extension because he doesn't like Matheny.. so a rental it is.

I also traded for (name escapes me at the moment) but a low tier 4th-5th starter because I have so many SP injuries and I had to give up another decent 2B prospect.

So overall I'm impressed so far with the trade AI. The AI teams have made a few trades and they make sense.

I love the rating graphs too, being able to quickly tell how a player is improving or declining is great. Drafting also seems improved as players seem to want a bit more if they are a highly touted HS player.

[korme]

For all the guys that have already played multiple seasons, wondering how injuries look. It always became clear to me that nearly every veteran (say, 8+ exp) would have an injury rating of fragile. In free agency it'd be like a diamond in the rough if a guy's injury rating was normal.

Also, how is the catcher draft thing going?

[MizzouRah]

What is the catcher draft thing?

My first pick, 20th overall was a catcher.

[bulletsponge]

i have seen only a few fraglie players, not as bad as last years

[Young Drachma]

Got a copy today.

[Ksyrup]

Finally had some time to mess around with the new game and ran a 40 year fictional league to build up some history. By the time I've gotten to 2017, I'm seeing some weird stuff with starting pitcher stamina. A ton of pitchers averaging less than or barely 5 innings a start. It's like playing entire seasons using the 2017 playoff pitching usage. 22 pitchers threw between 170 and 190 innings. 1 guy threw 190 innings and was the league leader.

Am I that out of touch with baseball that I don't realize starters are getting pulled after 4 or 5 innings in real life? This seems a bit extreme. I get that you're going to have a group of guys who start 30 games and get 150-170 innings, but they are the "studs" of the league. There are a ton of guys starting 20-30 games and getting 100-140 innings. At the bottom range, I saw guys with 15-25 starts and 70-90 innings.

I had the league follow the yearly league evolution, so we went from guys throwing 220+ innings in the 80s to this. But it seems way too extreme to be realistic. Anyone else seeing this?

[Ksyrup]

Also, many of these pitchers are effective, just not pitching enough. One of the worst teams in the league had 3 top starters with ERAs of 3.22, 3.23 and 3.61. They each started 31 games but only threw 136, 142 and 147 innings. They averaged about a K per inning, too. They had another guy with a 3.34 ERA who started 22 games with 102 innings.

[MizzouRah]

I turn off evolution so I'm not sure if that could cause or issue or not.

[Ksyrup]

Well, this league is ruined. And if this is where MLB is headed...

I left it to where it mimicked the development of MLB from 1980 until 2017. But in 2017, too many guys are essentially super-relievers starting games. and then you've got guys pitching 100+ games in relief. One team had a guy go 0-11 with a 4.15 ERA in 31 starts/138 innings, and then 3 guys appear in 109-111 games each with ERAs of 6.91, 8.10 and 9.30, each throwing 90+ innings.

[cougarfreak]

Last year there was only like 9 pitchers who threw 200 innings. I think the league leader was like 211. Someone reported something similar in beta (not quite that low number)and I posted the top 10 list from last year.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ksyrup]

There were 20 pitchers who threw over 190 innings last year in MLB, 15 of them threw 200+ innings. In my league, the leader was 190.

I'm going to start over and force the league to stick with 1980s league settings. I get that starters are pitching less in the majors today, but the way the game is handling it seems problematic. Not enough high-end stamina pitchers and that's filtering down to the rest of the pitchers in the league, regardless of whether they are effective or not. And then that's causing relievers to have to pitch way more games and innings, resulting in tired pitchers relieving effective starters after 4-5 innings and getting shelled.

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

There were 20 pitchers who threw over 190 innings last year in MLB, 15 of them threw 200+ innings. In my league, the leader was 190.

I'm going to start over and force the league to stick with 1980s league settings. I get that starters are pitching less in the majors today, but the way the game is handling it seems problematic. Not enough high-end stamina pitchers and that's filtering down to the rest of the pitchers in the league, regardless of whether they are effective or not. And then that's causing relievers to have to pitch way more games and innings, resulting in tired pitchers relieving effective starters after 4-5 innings and getting shelled.

Yeah, this definitely feels like it's off. In my current season the league leaders seem to be averaging around 6-6.5 IP per game, in real life it's much closer to 7. I also see way, way too many pitchers having decent games with decent stamina ratings being pulled after 4-5 innings. I don't know if it's a feature of stamina ratings, just think the game might be too quick to pull starters right now.

Also, the league leading relievers (deliberately excluding players who have made 1 start) have 90+ IP already through 120 games, which is insane. Looks like last year true reliever usage topped out around 80 IP.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

I turn off evolution so I'm not sure if that could cause or issue or not.

I never play with evolution on for that reason. It's too variable.

[Johnny93g]

With a standard MLB setup, i took over the Jays in GM only.

After the season, Josh Donaldson wanted 42 mil for 7 seasons. By December, he wanted 39 mil. On December 6th, it looked like he hadn't received an offer. Looking at his demands, i hit advance next day, and he signed immediately with another team for 27 million over 5 years. I had offered 30 on the 1st of December and was told he wouldn't consider it.

His price dropped overnight and i had no opportunity to even see it is all i can think of.

Kershaw, also a free agent, wanted 41 a year on Dec 1 and signed 26.8/7 on the 4th. I wasn't viewing his demands, but it sounds similar to Donaldson.

That's a fail in my books.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

I never play with evolution on for that reason. It's too variable.

It's only an evolution problem if you're playing historical to current day. I'm thinking this is a "modern" setting problem. Is anyone who is just playing with current day settings seeing an issue?

But yeah, I've restarted my 1980 fictional historical league and made my own custom league settings that won't evolve over time. I'd rather see SP with 250 IP than 140-180 and all of the trickle-down issues that causes with relievers.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

With a standard MLB setup, i took over the Jays in GM only.

After the season, Josh Donaldson wanted 42 mil for 7 seasons. By December, he wanted 39 mil. On December 6th, it looked like he hadn't received an offer. Looking at his demands, i hit advance next day, and he signed immediately with another team for 27 million over 5 years. I had offered 30 on the 1st of December and was told he wouldn't consider it.

His price dropped overnight and i had no opportunity to even see it is all i can think of.

Kershaw, also a free agent, wanted 41 a year on Dec 1 and signed 26.8/7 on the 4th. I wasn't viewing his demands, but it sounds similar to Donaldson.

That's a fail in my books.

I basically reported this exact same issue a couple of versions ago and the community on that board jumped all over me for not understanding how baseball works. So to answer your concerns, no people will not consider reasonable offers. That isn’t how baseball works. People demand a number and then drop their price arbitrarily at some point and take whatever is offered. If that means they turn down 5/100 one week to sign 2/12 the next then so be it. That is how baseball works.

Signed,
OOTP developments community

My own commentary is I can kind of handle this stuff in single player, but it is league destroying in MP. These players should always consider the best offer they get, especially in MP.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

With a standard MLB setup, i took over the Jays in GM only.

After the season, Josh Donaldson wanted 42 mil for 7 seasons. By December, he wanted 39 mil. On December 6th, it looked like he hadn't received an offer. Looking at his demands, i hit advance next day, and he signed immediately with another team for 27 million over 5 years. I had offered 30 on the 1st of December and was told he wouldn't consider it.

His price dropped overnight and i had no opportunity to even see it is all i can think of.

Kershaw, also a free agent, wanted 41 a year on Dec 1 and signed 26.8/7 on the 4th. I wasn't viewing his demands, but it sounds similar to Donaldson.

That's a fail in my books.

The problem with older versions of OOTP, is you'd have guys who were not old and still good enough to play who'd end up retiring because they weren't smart enough to ask for a one-year deal at a reasonable rate or for teams to recalibrate and decide they needed them at some other point in the season.

So this is probably some adjustment of that, to create a more dynamic environment, and isn't working.

I haven't even dove much into 19 yet, but will be curious to see what issues I run into w/r/t the financial side which has always been a gripe of mine.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by dubb93

I basically reported this exact same issue a couple of versions ago and the community on that board jumped all over me for not understanding how baseball works.

Well there's a shocker.

Sycophant City being sycophant city. Worst community I've ever seen, following the lead of the developer.

How anybody plays his fucking shit STILL never ceases to amaze me.

[Young Drachma]

Retired a bunch of numbers of guys on teams where I thought they ought to be. (Specifically Blue Jays and Rockies.)

Considering expanding to 32 teams but don't really want to deal with the hassle of minor league realignment and figuring out where to put them. Move the Marlins to Montreal and moved to Tampa Bay Rays to Miami. Put the A's in San Jose and so that solves the ballpark issues.

Trying to decide where to expand, I guess.

[MizzouRah]

Harper is a Cardinal.. 10 years/$435 million - only possible once the owner told me to sign an MVP and gave me a nice bump in payroll. I also had to get rid of Fowler's contract.

[Young Drachma]

Just had the 80-82 Cardinals win the World Series.

[MrBug708]

My backup catcher retired, before the playoffs, in September. So naturally I didn't have a second catcher on the 40 man

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Finally had some time to mess around with the new game and ran a 40 year fictional league to build up some history. By the time I've gotten to 2017, I'm seeing some weird stuff with starting pitcher stamina. A ton of pitchers averaging less than or barely 5 innings a start. It's like playing entire seasons using the 2017 playoff pitching usage. 22 pitchers threw between 170 and 190 innings. 1 guy threw 190 innings and was the league leader.

Am I that out of touch with baseball that I don't realize starters are getting pulled after 4 or 5 innings in real life? This seems a bit extreme. I get that you're going to have a group of guys who start 30 games and get 150-170 innings, but they are the "studs" of the league. There are a ton of guys starting 20-30 games and getting 100-140 innings. At the bottom range, I saw guys with 15-25 starts and 70-90 innings.

I had the league follow the yearly league evolution, so we went from guys throwing 220+ innings in the 80s to this. But it seems way too extreme to be realistic. Anyone else seeing this?

Looks like you were on to something as I've had to go to a league wide 26 man roster with 8 relievers per team.

There were like 40 position players pitching because SPs are being pulled too quickly and bullpens are exhausted.

I'm also seeing top RPs not being offered good money so teams get them on a cheap one year deal.

Lastly.. some players really seem to go from good players to no skills in just one off season. These are not 30+ year old players either. It's like a player has a quality season but his ratings drop anyway.

I would wait on a patch or three for any serious MLB style of play. I'm only continuing on because my Cardinals are horrible in 2019 and it's been a challenge trying to get them out of the cellar.

[Scoobz0202]

Saw that OOTP 19 is part of EA Origin Access for those that have that.

[Young Drachma]

LOL. It occurred to me today that along with the MLB license, I suspect OOTP was told to remove drug suspensions from the game. Guys can still get suspended for brawls, but I don't see any mention of drug suspensions anymore.

I don't mind it, largely because the old way you could never track who got popped for a drug infraction anyway, since they never had a list of suspensions.

[Ramzavail]

i vote for needle icon on the player page.

[Young Drachma]

I was curious what teams had low-round draft picks make the majors and have productive careers. It's pretty impossible to check that though via the draft page unless you just wanna click through ever draft.

So I ticked the "delete minor leaguers who don't make the majors" button to rid the db of those guys. Since there are sooooo many guys who never make it, it'll lower the file size a bit, which is nice, but it also makes the draft picks page for each team a lot easier to navigate since only guys who made the bigs end up on that page.

Especially since it's a 100 year old league, it was probably about time to dispatch from all of those minor leaguers who I was never going to look at anyway. (Though, I did save a backup.)

[MrBug708]

I probably can use another starter, so the AI offered me a starting pitcher who went 4-18 with a 5.62 ERA. They asked for a 26 year old LF who hit .245 with 33 HR's and 116 RBI's last year, the #19 prospect in baseball who is a future star in CF, and a SP/MR pticher who appeared in 80 games last year with two starts and a 3.99 ERA

[Shkspr]

Never be afraid to climb those golden stairs.

[Icy]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

I probably can use another starter, so the AI offered me a starting pitcher who went 4-18 with a 5.62 ERA. They asked for a 26 year old LF who hit .245 with 33 HR's and 116 RBI's last year, the #19 prospect in baseball who is a future star in CF, and a SP/MR pticher who appeared in 80 games last year with two starts and a 3.99 ERA

The game is testing your trading AI.

[MrBug708]

The only thing it does is make me set any sort of prospect to untouchable...haha

[JPhillips]

I bought this during the summer sale. There's a lot it does better, scouting and trades in particular. But the financials are, if anything, even worse. I'm in the 2020 off season and only 4 teams are projected to make a profit.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I bought this during the summer sale. There's a lot it does better, scouting and trades in particular. But the financials are, if anything, even worse. I'm in the 2020 off season and only 4 teams are projected to make a profit.

I'm in 2023 and only 4 teams were in the negative at the end of the 2022 season.


Are you playing the MLB QS?

[JPhillips]

Yes.

[Vegas Vic]

I recently purchased OOTP19 for an unbelievable $4.99 directly from their website. I had never played it before, but became instantly addicted to the game.

For someone like me who has no interest playing the game with real-life players, is there any reason to upgrade to OOTP20? I assume that the big attraction for most is getting the updated rosters, which I have no interest in.

[CraigSca]

I don't think they've announced any new features for OOTP 20 yet. Frankly, I'm not sure where they can go beyond upgrading the in-game graphics.

[weegeebored]

I have been playing OOTP for a couple of years starting with 17 then 18. Even at $5 I didn't bother to upgrade to 19. I would have stayed with 17 but 18 had trade improvements that made it worthwhile for me to move to the newer version. So it all depends if the new features in 20 are something that you feel you want. BTW, I play as GM only so I don't care about manager features or player animation. Then again, buying the new version supports the developer so you might take that into consideration as well.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by weegeebored

Then again, buying the new version supports the developer so you might take that into consideration as well.

I haven't actually "played" OOTP in probably 4 years, but I keep buying it. Most of that is just wanting to support their work, because back when I played it really hard, it was exactly what I wanted out of a career baseball sim.

And, frankly, I want it to still be there for people just now discovering text sims. Maybe when I retire, I'll fire up OOTP 40 and fall in love with text sims all over again.

ETA: Just to clarify, I do install it and fire it up for a couple of hours every year just to look at the new coat of paint and some of the new features. Some of that seems really cool. I just don't have the attention span to throw at long, ongoing careers any longer. I suspect the success of the Red Sox in recent years has blunted some of my need to scratch that World Series itch in a fantasy universe.

[JPhillips]

I'm worried they'll put more of their energy and time into the Perfect Team stuff.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I don't think they've announced any new features for OOTP 20 yet. Frankly, I'm not sure where they can go beyond upgrading the in-game graphics.

It's not new version content, IMO, but there are a lot of in game systems that need a lot of improvement.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm worried they'll put more of their energy and time into the Perfect Team stuff.

Markus said that PT made enough money that they didn't need to do a pre-order this year. So, PT is good for something.

The team is large enough now, I think that'll be able to put a lot towards both.

I'm OOTP fanboy though, so...

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by weegeebored

Then again, buying the new version supports the developer so you might take that into consideration as well.

That's understandable. I haven't purchased the last two iterations of FOF, but I do plan on purchasing FOF 9 when it is released, since it is being upgraded with a 21st century GUI.

[Mota]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm worried they'll put more of their energy and time into the Perfect Team stuff.

I agree. I've played it a bit and it's fun, but it drastically moved into the MLB The Show territory, and veered away from what makes OOTP great.

Obviously it's a focus for the team, so less time will be spent on the core game.

All it takes is listening to the OOTP Now podcast to understand that. It's all they talk about. I was so excited that an OOTP podcast was coming out, and all they talk about is opening up packs and pulling players. Not interested.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Markus said that PT made enough money that they didn't need to do a pre-order this year. So, PT is good for something.

The team is large enough now, I think that'll be able to put a lot towards both.

I'm OOTP fanboy though, so...

I'm sure it's the right financial choice, I just don't have much interest in the pay to get better card games.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Markus said that PT made enough money that they didn't need to do a pre-order this year. So, PT is good for something.

The team is large enough now, I think that'll be able to put a lot towards both.

I'm OOTP fanboy though, so...

I'm a fanboy too and will be part of the beta testing this year.... this one text sim I always purchase without hesitation.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm worried they'll put more of their energy and time into the Perfect Team stuff.

Yeah it seems to be the route all sports games are taking. Guess I can't blame them as people throw money at it. But every sports game that has taken the microtransaction route has abandoned the core sports sim side.

It is too bad because the game was really starting to hit a sweet spot after the huge stepbacks when they made the shift off 6.51.

[Mota]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Yeah it seems to be the route all sports games are taking. Guess I can't blame them as people throw money at it. But every sports game that has taken the microtransaction route has abandoned the core sports sim side.

It is too bad because the game was really starting to hit a sweet spot after the huge stepbacks when they made the shift off 6.51.

With the Perfect Team addition, the game became about spending MY cash to make my team better rather than spending my team's budget.

We've seen it a million times before. They say it won't take away from their focus, but as long as the whales are spending money, that's where their attention will go. It's been proven over and over again. When's the last major dynasty mode addition that FIFA, NHL or MLB The Show have done?

I've bought every version of OOTP on day 1, but this year I will need to see what improvements are being made to the core game before I commit to spending my money. I'm definitely not hearing about it on the OOTP podcast, that's for sure. Right now it's all about how you can spend your real money for a chance to get a diamond 93 Ichiro Suzuki.

[lungs]

I've been playing Perfect Team. I've spent a little money, not a ton. Never won at the lower leagues but kept getting promoted up to Diamond. Now mired in mediocrity for the last ten seasons in Diamond. I'd have to spend a gob of cash to get over the hump I suspect, and I'm not going to do that. I'd almost rather be relegated down a notch but my team is too good to go down. And I'm not really keeping any what I'd consider cool cards, because they aren't good enough to play in a Diamond league.