Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP 2007 Preview Thoughts...)

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

More evidence that this may be a creation issue, combined with an AI issue: every .390+ batting average season (and there were 11 of them) was accompanied by at least 29 homers.

My #3 carrer AVG leader has just 29 career home runs, and 2500+ hits...

Anyway, I'll look into it

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

The AI player evaluation is using pretty modern formulas (developed by baseball prospectus), which indeed may lead to 'undervaluing' contact-only guys. But only from the traditional point of view, as in reality these guys are not really valuable. A .260/.350/.450 guy is more valuable than a .300/.330/.370 guy.

Maybe next year I'll add a toggle to enable a more traditional evaluation method.

Evaluation is only part of the issue here. It's a creation issue as well, it would appear. I'm not seeing any 80 contact, 20 power, 60 eye players. Plus, I'm not talking about .300/.330/.370. The guy I mentioned above was .336/.376/.431. Also, his overall numbers point to another issue, I think: hitters with very high contact but very bad eyes. This guy had a season where he hit .345, with 109 strikeouts, and only 24 walks. That's more than a little strange to me. And again, from looking around, this isn't isolated.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

My #3 carrer AVG leader has just 29 career home runs, and 2500+ hits...

Anyway, I'll look into it

That's good, but check for rarity. Like I said, in 86 years, I'm not seeing evidence that a Suzuki/Pierre/Freddy Sanchez type player is sticking around the league long enough to put up 2,500 hits. In fact, looking at the average leader board, it's very easy to spot the high contact/low power guys: they're the ones who are among the league leaders in career batting average, but only were in the league for 8-12 years or so. Here's another one: .320/.437/.451 at age 33, ratings only changed -8/0/+2 from age 33 to age 34, but he only got 103 ABs at age 34, then was released and never signed again, despite being 49/40/71. I'm thinking that the "Eye" rating isn't being valued enough. (All of this is with scouts turned off, of course.)

[Markus Heinsohn]

I made some tweaks, the next beta build should produce a few more Suzuki-type players

[CraigSca]

Shoot, I got shut-out in getting one of the 100 pre-order preview copies as well. That'll learn me!

[CraigSca]

SD,

I wonder if hitter profiles have changed from the way we grew up, and therefore there aren't as many Tony Gwynn-type hitters floating around. While you named a few that are present today, I'd be willing to bet there aren't anywhere near the number we remember in the 80's.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

SD,

I wonder if hitter profiles have changed from the way we grew up, and therefore there aren't as many Tony Gwynn-type hitters floating around. While you named a few that are present today, I'd be willing to bet there aren't anywhere near the number we remember in the 80's.

I agree, but there are at least three relatively young hitters (Suzuki/Pierre/Freddy Sanchez) who fit the high-average/low-power profile, and you just don't see many guys hitting .345 with 24 walks and 109 strikeouts very often.

I'd be curious to see what kinds of players are created in fictional leagues that run through the 60s, 70s, and 80s with era-correct modifiers in place. My suspicion is that unless the "eye" numbers are increased quite a bit for player creation in those years, you'll still see some guys created with some numbers that don't look right for that era.

[Ben E Lou]

I'd be curious to see what kinds of players are created in fictional leagues that run through the 60s, 70s, and 80s with era-correct modifiers in place. My suspicion is that unless the "eye" numbers are increased quite a bit for player creation in those years, you'll still see some guys created with some numbers that don't look right for that era.

Dola: I'll be checking for this tonight, or if someone with the preview has time to do it during the day today, that would be great.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Guys are getting signed and released a bit around the end of their careers, but stars and solid players are being handled much more reasonably than what I saw in the demo last year and read about.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, this was a huge issue/problem with OOTP a couple versions back. I didn't see it with my team, of course, but the AI was terrible about signing guys to big contracts, dumping them less than a year later (sometimes within weeks), and then another team would sign the same guy and the cycle would repeat.

Ironically, I realized what a huge issue it was by playing ITP, where I was the one being released/signed repeatedly at the end of my career.

[BigPapi]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Although I didn't realize it at the time, this was a huge issue/problem with OOTP a couple versions back. I didn't see it with my team, of course, but the AI was terrible about signing guys to big contracts, dumping them less than a year later (sometimes within weeks), and then another team would sign the same guy and the cycle would repeat.

Ironically, I realized what a huge issue it was by playing ITP, where I was the one being released/signed repeatedly at the end of my career.

Speaking of bloated contracts- it riled me last year that the game could make incredibly irresponsible financial decisons- e.g, signing a 37 year old SP to an 8 year 100 million dollar contract- and then release him the following month....but seemingly take no cap hit for this. Is this type scenario still prevalent (for anyone with a preview build who cares to look around)????

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by BigPapi

but seemingly take no cap hit for this. Is this type scenario still prevalent (for anyone with a preview build who cares to look around)????

No, this is fixed

[Honolulu Blue]

I'm glad that everyone who has their hands on the newest version of OOTP seems to enjoy it. If everything is implemented correctly, it should jump to the top of the baseball career text sim class - no easy feat, considering the competition.

In the interest of disclosure, I should say that I'm deeply engrossed in some other game, and probably won't buy this version for awhile, if ever.

But I do have a few questions & comments about the draft. First, I'd like to thank cougarfreak for posting his numbers on HOFers in his league.

I don't like the skew toward most of the very best players coming in the first two rounds. I think it's too extreme. For competitive balance purposes it's good (and probably good for the game overall), but for other purposes it's bad. Cutting the numbers in half and spreading them among the other rounds past two would feel more realistic to me.

And I also have some concerns about the 25-round amateur draft. OOTP used to have a 5-round draft, which I liked. I think such a long draft is bad for two reasons:

1) Realistically, there isn't much talent out there beyond the first few rounds, so you're either picking high-risk, low-reward projects or roster fillers. My time as a gamer is too valuable to fool around with people like that.
2) It invites "roster bloat" - either the minor league rosters get too big and players don't develop like they should, or the free agent pool is too big and hard to manage. In order to have a 25-round draft, there should be 25 players PER TEAM either retiring or being released. I assume the game handles that well, but I wonder how well I could handle a game that gives marginal prospects maybe two years for a look-see.

I'm assuming that (a) the number of players drafted is customizable and (b) I can hit the "computer pick the rest of these bums" button, so this isn't a huge deal.

And I agree with SkyDog's point that there should be some low-power, high average hitters in the game. They probably would need good eye skills these days, but they should be able to survive.

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue

2) It invites "roster bloat" - either the minor league rosters get too big and players don't develop like they should, or the free agent pool is too big and hard to manage. In order to have a 25-round draft, there should be 25 players PER TEAM either retiring or being released. I assume the game handles that well, but I wonder how well I could handle a game that gives marginal prospects maybe two years for a look-see.

Since I don't have a preview copy, here's how I would do it:

The great majority of the 25 draftees play in rookie ball. I don't have the Association rules in front of me, but I could swear you can only play one year of rookie ball. If you excel or perform to standards, the next year you get moved up to Single A. If you don't, you're cut. Therefore, the turnover of the 25 draftees occurs in rookie ball, and you're not left with 45 guys on AA roster and 42 playing A ball.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

Since I don't have a preview copy, here's how I would do it:

I think someone's feelings are hurt that they didn't get to preview.

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I think someone's feelings are hurt that they didn't get to preview.

Ding!

[samifan24]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

The great majority of the 25 draftees play in rookie ball. I don't have the Association rules in front of me, but I could swear you can only play one year of rookie ball. If you excel or perform to standards, the next year you get moved up to Single A. If you don't, you're cut. Therefore, the turnover of the 25 draftees occurs in rookie ball, and you're not left with 45 guys on AA roster and 42 playing A ball.

This reminds me of one of the biggest problems I encountered when playing previous versions of OOTP: low level minor league teams would have almost 2x a normal sized roster. This would limit the time to develop prospects because you'd want to play your guys equally since you only had one "A/Rookie" level team. I gather that you can now customize how many minor league teams/levels exist in each universe so I hope this has been fixed.

[miked]

Bah! I was ready to dig in to conversion and other goodies, but I can't get it installed. I keep getting an "error reading data folder, please re-install" message. I can't un-install by normal means, have to use ccleaner, and every time I re-install, it's fubared. It licensed ok though, so that's a plus.

Anyone else experience this?

[Marc Duffy]

Try downloading the file again? How can it be not installed - but licensed?

[miked]

I've re-downloaded twice. It installs, licensed, but gives me that error when I try and launch the game. Since the license is on my computer now, I don't see that screen, just tells me it can't open the user data folder, please re-install.

Edit: Just got an email for a new build, I'll try that one.

[Marc Duffy]

Ah, ok - Im with you.

Andreas just posted in the preview forum about enabling trace mode.

[Anguscl]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Another thing which I just PM'd Markus about and I'm hopeful he can address, but I'm getting crashes as I get further into my career. It's about 100 years in, but fast simming isn't an option any longer because I'm getting a Microsoft C++ runtime error at the end of most years. However, when I'm really playing the game I'm sure it will take me a long time to get 100 years into a career (it has 200 years of history since I imported all of the "real history." and that won't stop me from buying.

I ran a sim over the weekend on a computer at work and I am also getting the runtime error crashes, is their an issue with the larger sims; this one was ~150 years.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Anguscl

I ran a sim over the weekend on a computer at work and I am also getting the runtime error crashes, is their an issue with the larger sims; this one was ~150 years.

I reported this to Markus and he said it was an error that was occuring when storing game logs for a long time (which I was doing - I had it to set to save all game logs, box scores, etc forever.) He said it was fixed the other day.

[Drake]

150 years of game logs and box scores would take up a lot of storage space.

[ScottVib]

Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue

And I also have some concerns about the 25-round amateur draft. OOTP used to have a 5-round draft, which I liked. I think such a long draft is bad for two reasons:

I'm assuming that (a) the number of players drafted is customizable and (b) I can hit the "computer pick the rest of these bums" button, so this isn't a huge deal.

If you choose to use "ghost" players (like the older versions of OOTP) then you can go back to the old 5 round amateur draft. But you are correct the number of rounds in the draft are indeed customizable. Also keep in mind if you have other leagues, particularly those who don't have drafts, then some of those free agents, will be signing with the other lower level leagues.

To answer your questions both a and b are correct.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Drake

150 years of game logs and box scores would take up a lot of storage space.

I have 250 GB of storage available and 100 years didn't take up too much space. I'll check on exactly how much when I get home.

[Marc Duffy]

I ran a sim over the weekend on a computer at work and I am also getting the runtime error crashes, is their an issue with the larger sims; this one was ~150 years.

We're chasing down a crash at the moment, please post in the preview forum with as much info as you can ... and also please try to get a league file to a reproduceable state.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

I have 250 GB of storage available and 100 years didn't take up too much space. I'll check on exactly how much when I get home.

Given what I've seen historically out of OOTP, unless something dramatic has changed, you're probably well under 2 gigs (in all current league files, not just logs & stuff). In relative terms, that's not much. I just hate seeing that much space being devoted to storage.

That's not a criticism of the game, just a personal obsession.

[Eaglesfan27]

Yeah, but I love being able to click on the 2050 Dodgers and quickly hyperlink to any one of their games, any one of their player's cards, etc. I'll forgive that kind of storage space if it gives me that type of history. There are also options to save boxscores, news items, etc for only 2 years, 10 years, or not at all (as well as the forever option which is what I've chosen.)

[cougarfreak]

Just some research I did at school today. Not many HOF'ers have actually been drafted (most were before the ammy draft), but here is the result I found at baseballreference.com today.

Hall of Famer Round Drafted
Tony Gwynn 3rd
Cal Ripken 2nd
Wade Boggs 7th
Ryan Sandberg 20th
Dennis Eckersley 3rd
Paul Molitor 1st
Gary Carter 3rd
Eddie Murray 3rd
Ozzie Smith 4th
Kirby Puckett 1st
Dave Winfield 1st
Carlton Fisk 1st
George Brett 2nd
Nolan Ryan 12th
Robin Yount 1st
Mike Schmidt 2nd
Reggie Jackson 1st
Johnny Bench 2nd

Also important to remember, the players I posted represent the best 165 players in my leagues history, which if you figure 25 new guys a year times 8 teams is 200 newbies a year. So you are looking at the best 165 of 20,000+ players. Also remember, I was able to do this 108 year sim in about 12 hours, so the game moves very quickly on my laptop (1.66 ghz dual core with 2 gigs of ram).

[cougarfreak]

And to answer a few other question regarding league size, my 108 year old league is 400 mb. That is saving box scores from all leagues (5 levels of minors, 2 8 team major leagues). Not deleting players who don't reach the majors, and last night I clicked for facegen to generate faces for my major leaguers only just to see if it worked ok.

[cougarfreak]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Really appreciate it, thanks!

I know there are "ghost" players back into the game, ala v6.51, but I still might start out in the minors and work my way up - by the time I get there, I should have mostly all fictional players. Although, if it's like last year's, I guess if I purchase this game, I could start a historical career or something along those lines.

Ok Mizzou, here is my impression of managing a minor league team per a couple of sims I did today. First of all, let me say I could never play this way, it would drive me nuts to lose players whenever, etc. But from what I saw today, generally the AI GM will make player moves on the first of each month. You get a PM telling you who you've gained and lost. I'd say about 95% of the time, what you lost in terms of positions, you gained them back by the additions. I only saw one instance (in short season A), where I was left with 3 SP's, but I had 9 relievers, a couple with high endurance. I seemed to always have plenty of field position players, though I won't say with injuries things couldn't get dicey. A couple of times I noticed only 4 OF'ers on my roster. But all in all, I was never left "short" on players. Any other quesitons, let me know. I did one season at short A, and one at AA.

[MrBug708]

Meh. I put my head scout on scouting the opposing teams when he is idle but found that I dislike the reports all of the time. When I took off the send reports I still received them and I still did even after I cleared his jobs

[chrisj]

So I can't load the preview..

"ootp2007.exe - Fatal Application Exit

Unable to open graphics. Make sure your screen resolution is 1024*768 and that your windows taskbar is not set to always remain on top."

Checked both - screen resolution is exactly 1024*768, and my windows taskbar is not set to always remain on top.

(I'd post on the preview forum, but I cannot access it...)

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by chrisj

So I can't load the preview..

"ootp2007.exe - Fatal Application Exit

Unable to open graphics. Make sure your screen resolution is 1024*768 and that your windows taskbar is not set to always remain on top."

Checked both - screen resolution is exactly 1024*768, and my windows taskbar is not set to always remain on top.

(I'd post on the preview forum, but I cannot access it...)

There will be a new preview build today which fixes this!

[miked]

Sigh, I'm having installation issues as well. The game is installing all the appsdata files to my network drive (which has a "my documents" folder on it as well), but searching the local drive when starting up the game. I have no idea why the game would install one place and look someplace else. Since I licensed it and can't unlicense, I'm down to 4/5. Hopefully I'll be able to get some online league conversion stuff up soon.

[Marc Duffy]

Should be sorted now, you have email Mike

[miked]

Actually, I used my google skills to fix the problem; it works now that I've changed my default "My Documents" location. But thanks a ton!!

[JPhillips]

So I'm still not registered in the preview forum and I'm having the same problem with the taskbar/resolution causing the game not to start up. Do I follow the download link in the email for the newest build or do I need to get it from the preview forum? Thanks.

[Marc Duffy]

You need to email / PM me to get access to the preview forum.

As for the issue, a new build is about to go out to fix it

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by cougarfreak

Ok Mizzou, here is my impression of managing a minor league team per a couple of sims I did today. First of all, let me say I could never play this way, it would drive me nuts to lose players whenever, etc. But from what I saw today, generally the AI GM will make player moves on the first of each month. You get a PM telling you who you've gained and lost. I'd say about 95% of the time, what you lost in terms of positions, you gained them back by the additions. I only saw one instance (in short season A), where I was left with 3 SP's, but I had 9 relievers, a couple with high endurance. I seemed to always have plenty of field position players, though I won't say with injuries things couldn't get dicey. A couple of times I noticed only 4 OF'ers on my roster. But all in all, I was never left "short" on players. Any other quesitons, let me know. I did one season at short A, and one at AA.

Thanks again!

Don't think I would play this way either.

[miked]

So far I must say I like the game. The commish portal is pretty much something I've been begging to have for years. I'm tired of getting my sims interrupted by players stuck in DFA. Now I can set it to release anyone whose DFA time is up. I also get a report of every team's DFA players and how much time they have left...in one report. Not sure how the uploading of the file through the game will go, I'll have to test that tomorrow, along with the reports.

I'm wondering if Facegen changes will be exported. Like if a GM changes his uniform design, will that be exportable? Not sure about logos, since I don't think the game grabs them from the server, but that can be manually imported I suppose.

I'll save my comments on roster moves for tomorrow since I want to dig down deep and get some answers, but my early impression compared with last year's release is that my fun factor is way up.

[IMetTrentGreen]

everyone who posted impressions on this thread should get a discount, because they just sold me. i wasn't going to touch this game, but it sounds awesome.

[chrisj]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

There will be a new preview build today which fixes this!

Thanks Markus. The new preview build loaded perfectly.

I'm seeing strange things in lower levels. I've got a setup with the major leagues (and their related minors), and a fictional league similar to the Northern League. In the lower level fictional league I've set the "super star salary" to $50,000 (with all other salary settings to less and less) - but after a couple of seasons I'm seeing players signing contracts for $500,000 to $5,000,000, etc.

Teams are losing money on a regular basis.

[Marc Duffy]

Can we start a thread in the preview forum about this chrisj please

[chrisj]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Can we start a thread in the preview forum about this chrisj please

Yes, of course. Sorry, I completly forgot I had access now.

[Marc Duffy]

[MrBug708]

I dont seem to have access yet Marc

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by chrisj

Thanks Markus. The new preview build loaded perfectly.

I'm seeing strange things in lower levels. I've got a setup with the major leagues (and their related minors), and a fictional league similar to the Northern League. In the lower level fictional league I've set the "super star salary" to $50,000 (with all other salary settings to less and less) - but after a couple of seasons I'm seeing players signing contracts for $500,000 to $5,000,000, etc.

Teams are losing money on a regular basis.

Fixed

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

I dont seem to have access yet Marc

Have you mailed me?

[miked]

Am I correct in assuming for an online league, when generating HTML I only need to generate history once a season (at the end)? Or do I need to do it every time in case it gets overwritten?