OOTP 10

[gstelmack]

Well, in the thread in GD, Markus is claiming the draft list bugs have been fixed.

[Alan T]

We'll find out sooner or later if that is the case!

[Tasan]

Well, I'll probably be preordering the thing, so I'll let everyone know.

[TimGuru]

Please don't tell me this league is going to force me to give OOTP more money? What a scam, buggy and goofy version after version, and we the sheep keep hoping the next version will be different. Can't we just live with "the devil we know" (not meaning Chief in this case....)

[Young Drachma]

Obviously the Board would have to approve any decisions to upgrade. But I would be very hesitant, having served on two beta teams, to upgrade to a new version unless we had 6+ months of rave reviews AND everyone in this league had decided to buy it.

Or unless there was some other compelling reason.

But this won't be like OOTP9, where we were the first league to switch over to the new version.

[gstelmack]

Yeah, I was mostly passing along that tidbit, I'm not gung-ho to upgrade either.

[Alan T]

What other outstanding bugs do we experience in this league that never were fixed in ootp9 but were reported?

I know of two:

- Draft list bug where players randomly would disappear from the draft list while adding new players to the list
- The player ratings rollover bug where a player would have his ratings vs RH go from 100+ to suddenly between 20-30.

Are there any others that I don't remember?

[gstelmack]

Do we know if the "already added players lose their green high lighting in the draft list whenever you move someone down to the list, and you have to resort or go back a page to get it back" bug was previously reported?

I don't consider the "good year, bad year, good year, bad year" player performance pattern a bug, but a massive design annoyance in my book.

One thing I am glad to see is the customizable UI, so that on my widescreen monitor I can finally get more than the base 3 attributes in the Transactions screen when moving guys around.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Do we know if the "already added players lose their green high lighting in the draft list whenever you move someone down to the list, and you have to resort or go back a page to get it back" bug was previously reported?

Edit: Yes, this was a reported bug.

[Chief Rum]

Some of these are bugs, some of these are design decisions, take them for what you will:

--The lack of individual pitcher strategies, like they have with hitters
--Drafted players appearing with professional service time already
--No AI strategy setting without a "bench coach"
--Nonsensical player AI with respect to signing contracts (the "MLC" issue)
--The release of high end prospects if the bottom minor league isn't set to 40 players
--Continually poor in-game manager AI (when left to own devices)
--The schedule editor, which I know has given both DC and Alan massive headaches
--All the damn bugginess that cause numerous issues for this league, mostly inexplicable so I can't remember them, but the sheer number of times we have used the term "Ugh...German engineering" is an indication in and of itself
--The sortable player lists going from sub-paged to one long list when the list is short enough--the option to go with pages with limited numbers of players should always exist and not be dependent on the number of players in that list
--All the upload/download issues we have had
--No home/away or left/right overall team stats (or other splits)
--Some positions mean nothing defensively
--Players can play at a position for years that they aren't trained and yet never gain even one point in Defensive ability at the position, which makes no sense. Sure, just playing a position isn't going to make someone Ozzie Smith at SS, but they should pick up enoough of the rudiments of the position to get 1-5 points in overall Defensive ability there
--Tiebreakers!

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

--The release of high end prospects if the bottom minor league isn't set to 40 players

Related to this was the one that hit me:

- If you hit the "Let AI Manager set up minor leagues" button on the transactions screen, it will release high end prospects for no good reason even with plenty of cap room, etc.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

--Drafted players appearing with professional service time already

On this one, I had assumed this was normal behavior when adding players to the draft that are "experienced" players.

To clarify what I mean, when you have the option to add players to a draft pool to "enhance" it, you have choices of a few different types of players that you can add. One of the choices was an experienced type player instead of a normal draft type player.

Are the players that we have seen show up after the draft already with service time accrued some of the "major league ready" draft picks? Or do we see it with completely raw players too?

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Alan T

On this one, I had assumed this was normal behavior when adding players to the draft that are "experienced" players.

To clarify what I mean, when you have the option to add players to a draft pool to "enhance" it, you have choices of a few different types of players that you can add. One of the choices was an experienced type player instead of a normal draft type player.

Are the players that we have seen show up after the draft already with service time accrued some of the "major league ready" draft picks? Or do we see it with completely raw players too?

I don't know if they were added players, but I have definitely seen players I have draft hit their minor league free agency eligibility much too soon (like, the next season).

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

I don't know if they were added players, but I have definitely seen players I have draft hit their minor league free agency eligibility much too soon (like, the next season).

Were the players that this happened to already with yellow/green/blue ratings and could go directly from the draft to AAA? Or were they typical draft picks with reds and some oranges and needed 4-6 years of time in the minors to develop?

[TimGuru]

How about:

When you are on the free agent pages, sometimes you have to click back and forth among free agents and another screen to get either the FILTER or SHOW ONLY (batter/pitcher/etc) drop down oval to appear.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by TimGuru

How about:

When you are on the free agent pages, sometimes you have to click back and forth among free agents and another screen to get either the FILTER or SHOW ONLY (batter/pitcher/etc) drop down oval to appear.

Can you send me a screenshot of this one happening? I can't reproduce this error and don't think I have seen it before. It would help me try to see what I am looking for.

[TimGuru]

Sure how do I send you a screen shot? PM me... (ie, do you want them PM'd or emailed as attachments somewhere, not HOW to take a screenshot).

[TimGuru]

oooooh, I got some terrific ones. In scr1, POSITION oval is missing, in 2 and 3 SCOUTING is missing.

ps, this has gone on since I first bought this version, patches, and reinstalls etc

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by TimGuru

oooooh, I got some terrific ones. In scr1, POSITION oval is missing, in 2 and 3 SCOUTING is missing.

ps, this has gone on since I first bought this version, patches, and reinstalls etc

Tim, What resolution do you play at? Do you see this when changing resolution?

[TimGuru]

I play at 1280x1024 and I don't change any of the stuff on that page anymore, I had crashes when I tried using Chalkboard look which I much prefer (I think its called classic)

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Were the players that this happened to already with yellow/green/blue ratings and could go directly from the draft to AAA? Or were they typical draft picks with reds and some oranges and needed 4-6 years of time in the minors to develop?

My recollection is they were regular draftees, with time needed in the minors to get to the bigs.

Fact is, even if they are ready for the bigs, they still should have four years to go before hitting minor league free agency.

Major league ready Asian players aren't the type of players I am talking about here (which I think is a bit what you're suggesting). These are draft generated players.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

My recollection is they were regular draftees, with time needed in the minors to get to the bigs.

Fact is, even if they are ready for the bigs, they still should have four years to go before hitting minor league free agency.

Major league ready Asian players aren't the type of players I am talking about here (which I think is a bit what you're suggesting). These are draft generated players.

I honestly wasn't trying to suggest a reason for why it shouldn't be a bug. I was actually just trying to figure out which of the four draft player types this was that we were seeing this from. As best as I know, I didn't come across any previously reported bugs on this, so I'd rather report it correctly then not is all.

Basically I am trying to figure out the following:

1) What is being done to cause this scenario to occur since it appears to not be a common issue for other leagues.
2) Report that scenario and try to find out if it is indeed a bug or not, and if it is not a bug, find out the reasoning or thinking why.

Maybe after tomorrow night's draft we can search through the drafted players and try to find some examples of this which we can then dig into further.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Alan T

- Draft list bug where players randomly would disappear from the draft list while adding new players to the list

This hasn't been very random setting my draft list for tonight. I may be screwed. Not that I expect the guys I really want and tried to put at the top of my list to still be there when I pick...

[Tasan]

That one kept hitting me tonight as well. I still can't figure out one guy I had on there that disappeared.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

--Players can play at a position for years that they aren't trained and yet never gain even one point in Defensive ability at the position, which makes no sense. Sure, just playing a position isn't going to make someone Ozzie Smith at SS, but they should pick up enoough of the rudiments of the position to get 1-5 points in overall Defensive ability there

On this one, it doesn't appear to be a bug, but a design decision. I think if it works as it supposedly does, I don't personally have too much issue with it in ootp9. (I know shocking something that I'm not picking at). Obviously it could be improved, but I'd rather them fix other things that are more glaring issues then tweak this probably. This is how it is supposed to work:

Defensive Skills and Ratings

The game enforces skill minimums for each position, in order to keep players from getting a fielding rating at positions they're not suited for. On the 1-250 rating scale internally used by the game (which is what is displayed in the editor) and with a minimum experience of 100, players will get position ratings if they have these minimum skills:

Infield positions (R = Range, E = Error, A = Arm, TDP = Turn DP):

Code:
Pos | IF R | IF E | IF A | TDP
----|------|------|------|------
P * | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0
1B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
2B | 40 | 50 | 10 | 60
3B | 40 | 40 | 60 | 20
SS | 70 | 50 | 70 | 60
* pitcher position must be set

Outfield positions:

Code:
Pos | OF R | OF E | OF A
----|------|------|------
LF | 40 | 40 | 40
CF | 90 | 40 | 40
RF | 40 | 40 | 40

The minimum values for a catcher's Catcher Ability and Catcher Arm are 10 each.

Players lacking these minimum requirements will not get a position rating no matter how long they play that position. More specifically, it seems that the game assigns an internal rating of 1 to such a player once he has reached the minimum experience of 100 for that position, but he will not get any higher rating than 1 with additional experience beyond that (up to maximum 200) and there will be no rating displayed within the game, e.g. in the player profile.

The game takes into account the "defensive spectrum" defined by Bill James as 1B-LF-RF-3B-CF-2B-SS-C in terms of increasing raw ability needed to play each position. 1B is the only position that has essentially no minimum requirements; anyone can learn to play it well enough to get a visible rating in the profile screen. The thresholds for range, error, etc, go up as you move through the spectrum. Only born middle infielders will ever be good shortstops, at least in a league with fictional players created by the game engine. Position players can learn to play catcher, but it often takes a very long time, and they typically don’t make very good ones. Converting infielders to the outfield is a much more promising proposition than the other way around.

[gstelmack]

Pre-order period is almost up. Do I need to pick it up for FOOL?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Pre-order period is almost up. Do I need to pick it up for FOOL?

The answer I have been giving people when they ask is that I am leaving it up to the league if they want to upgrade or not to OOTP 10.

I'm on the OOTP beta team so am limited to what I can say just yet about the new release. Just speaking of what has already been announced about new features in the game, I think some of them could be interesting or useful in FOOL, but for the most part we obviously won't take advantage of the new in-game widgets or much of the enhanced changed to the day to day part of the game (Since we do the entire season in one sim). A number of bugs which drive me crazy when running the FOOL sims are obviously fixed in ootp10, but likewise I'm guessing we'll eventually encounter new bugs that haven't been found yet.

So upgrading to ootp 10 would make my life a little easier on some things, and might be interesting or a fresh experience, but what makes this league great for me is the format of the league coupled with the great owners in it. I am in no way going to push us to upgrade to ootp 10 if it means losing a number of the owners here. Now might be a good time for people to check in with their thoughts, thanks for your bumping this.. a good time for people to make that call here.

Please post below if you have no intentions of upgrading to OOTP 10 (even if FOOL does, and would drop the league if we did upgrade), or if you aren't planning on upgrading but will if FOOL does.. or if you are getting the new version and would like to see FOOL upgrade as well.

[Montreal_GM]

Bought it. I'd prefer to upgrade if/when migration issues look to be limited. Sure there are questions about how pitchers will convert, player ratings, etc, but hopefully the pros outweigh the cons after people get testing following the release.

[bz]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Bought it. I'd prefer to upgrade if/when migration issues look to be limited. Sure there are questions about how pitchers will convert, player ratings, etc, but hopefully the pros outweigh the cons after people get testing following the release.

I have pre-ordered it too. I also agree with Montreal's concerns. Conversions have also been skittish for some leagues but with only having 12 teams and the seasons are simmed much faster, the conversion would seem to be easier for a league such as this. As long as there are no major cons, I will be ready whenever we decide to switch.

[gstelmack]

I am not planning to upgrade unless the league does, which I am willing to do, or if I get into Bill Abner's OOTP 10 league. Which probably means I should just go pre-order it...

[cgould43]

ordered it already also

[allpro10050]

if the league upgrades i might have to drop out.

[Chief Rum]

On the fence. Won't buy except for the league. I'm done with Markus's awful programming, all things considered.

But not sure I want to leave FOOL. If the league decides to upgrade, I will have a tough decision.

[Tasan]

I upgraded, but with the idea that this league wouldn't be upgrading anytime soon. I'm fine with having 2 installed.

[hyde4us11]

10 is so much better that i might only stay in leagues that are version 10. As a tester as well i can say with the knowledge of the game its the best ever. And if the latest talk is put into the league (Alan you know what im talking about) there is no question whatsoever that all OOTP leagues should move to 10.

[muns]

ill be honest here. Markus has just pissed me off when it comes to ootp and making new versions. He seems like a good guy, but there are more than a few things that you just scratch your head on an wonder what the hell is going on.

im not thrilled with the idea of getting ootp 10, especially with how beta has been handled in the past. I remember the first SI verison and how it was the best ootp version ever and i played a grand total of 30 mins.......

I know this past version was a huge step in the right direction, but maybe just maybe before you even start to think about making a new game, the other bugs that havent been squashed like the draft bug for instance, need to be taken care of. Not saying well it will get fixed in the next version.

So with that said im not pre ordering, and like Chief im on the fence.

[gstelmack]

The ONLY reason I'm even considering it at all is he seems to be listening to folks like Alan on some key very broken things. If upgrading to OOTP 10 makes Alan's life easier and it really has fixed these longstanding issues, I'll pony up the cash.

I'd like to see more of the text sim developers get the wake-up call kick-in-the-pants the Madden team seems to have finally received. I'm not real high on the next versions of any of the current round of text sims at the moment, I'm really frustrated with most of them. Except for FBCB.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

The ONLY reason I'm even considering it at all is he seems to be listening to folks like Alan on some key very broken things. If upgrading to OOTP 10 makes Alan's life easier and it really has fixed these longstanding issues, I'll pony up the cash.

Yes, there are things that have been broken for multiple years that are fixed in ootp 10 and many things that I have to do by hand or bugs that I have to work around currently that would not be an issue in 10.

That said, I don't have any desire to tell people how to spend their money. I love this league and really enjoy the owners in it. So I would rather continue doing the work arounds that I currently am doing and stay on ootp9 if upgrading would cause us to lose several owners.

[allpro10050]

ill buy it, if the league is going to convert. but with pre order period ending tomorrow it would be nice to have a firm yes or no

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by allpro10050

ill buy it, if the league is going to convert. but with pre order period ending tomorrow it would be nice to have a firm yes or no

Right now it sounds like at least 3 owners don't want to upgrade but would if we forced to, and 1 gave the impression that they might drop out if we upgraded. Plus several others haven't commented one way or another so I do not know if that is indifference or just haven't checked this thread. That is fairly close to half of the league right now though, so I am leaning towards a no on this.

I'll send out a few PMs to people to make sure I understand their viewpoint and say for sure after the playoff sim tomorrow morning. Right now it looks like it is likely a no though at least for now.

[Montreal_GM]

I must say I'll be disappointed if databases are found to convert successfully and we don't take advantage of the new game. Personally, I feel that 30 bucks a year to keep up with the free league(s) you play in isn't too much to ask, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell someone to spend money they don't have or simply don't want to spend, so don't take it that way.

I could go into the amount of bugs in games developed by major studios but I won't. I'll simply say OOTP is one hell of a game for the price and relative to other games on the market hasn't come close to ever letting me down.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

I must say I'll be disappointed if databases are found to convert successfully and we don't take advantage of the new game.

I might be misunderstanding your comment here, but I've successfully imported FOOL into ootp10 many times already and done some tests. I can't really comment on much of that currently until the beta is over though. I think any time there are new features some things will work "differently" then from before, but it wasn't a disaster or anything.

[Chief Rum]

I just gave Alan a lengthy response about this in PM, and it somewhat mirrors what muns and gstelmack have said here.

That said, I am encouraged if it is indeed true that Markus has been listening to Alan and others on the beta team about things, instead of going on his merry way as he has since OOTP 2006 (at least).

I already pretty much told Alan, I wouldn't buy the game except for this league, but I decided I would be unlikely to not upgrade if the league chose to do so. I would rather stay in the league than worry about a little cash for the game, or with supporting someone who hasn't in the past shown much inclination in the past to clean up some of his worst routines.

So I don't see this being an issue I would leave the league over, but I am right wth Tasan, that if we do this, I want to be absolutely certain the game is ready to go (bugs fixed, all is well, smooth sailing, not a hint of issues, even if it takes 2-3 patches, and it will) before we convert.

Really, the only reason I know of to convert quickly is the issues Alan has to deal with using '09. That's the only way I can see supporting a quicker move than being certain we have an ironclad product to work with.

Half the league is relatively new, so you don't know: Half--maybe even more than half--of the major issues FOOL has run into in the past year have arisen directly from poor programming by Markus. The league continues to exist IN SPITE of the program it's using, which is a tribute to the dedication of Alan (and Dark Cloud before him), and our long time owners.

[Montreal_GM]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I might be misunderstanding your comment here, but I've successfully imported FOOL into ootp10 many times already and done some tests. I can't really comment on much of that currently until the beta is over though. I think any time there are new features some things will work "differently" then from before, but it wasn't a disaster or anything.

Obviously they'll convert, the successful part being that things are in good working order order once a save game is continued, bugs are at a minimum, etc.

[Tasan]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Half the league is relatively new, so you don't know: Half--maybe even more than half--of the major issues FOOL has run into in the past year have arisen directly from poor programming by Markus. The league continues to exist IN SPITE of the program it's using, which is a tribute to the dedication of Alan (and Dark Cloud before him), and our long time owners.

Just quoting this again to make sure everyone reads it, since its at the end of a long post. Not that anyone would skip over a long Chief post or anything

[cgould43]

I think the plus side to waiting to make sure things are ironed out in this league, is that a new season starts every week. In many other leagues new seasons start every couple months. So if we don't want to upgrade this week we wait until next week or the week after.

[gstelmack]

Well, I went ahead and pre-ordered, so I'm ready if and when the league decides to go. And if we do decide to go, I'm fine with waiting a couple of weeks if needed for the first patch, or going whole hog on day 1, whichever.

[hyde4us11]

Let me say that i have been apart of the team testing online league bugs and i can safely say the game is ready for online leagues out of the box. You guys dont know of me much because i am fairly new still but Alan can attest I know a little bit about the game lol. Ive played OOTPX for 2 months just about daily everyday since we got started.

[Alan T]

I posted in the playoff thread this morning the following message:

I'll start off by answering the question regarding upgrading to OOTP 10 or not. After hearing what several owners have posted along with talking further via PM with a few to understand where they are coming from, at this time we are not planning on upgrading to OOTP 10. There were a handful of owners that said they did not want to upgrade, but would buy the game if the league decided to do it. The deciding factor however is that a couple of owners actually just don't have any financial ability to buy a new version at this time so our upgrading would be a way of telling them "So long, see ya!"

I am open to the idea or thought of running a seperate FOOL version 10 league in the same mold as this one if there is enough interest in it

Bringing it over here for more discussion if people wish. As I said, I'd be willing to run a second FOOL type league in version 10 if there is enough interest. It would run parallel to the version 9 league here, not replace it. Probably a slightly slower schedule (not every day sims) or such if people wanted. Or there is always a possibility at some point down the road the regular FOOL will upgrade to 10, or 11 (and just wait a year to upgrade) since it becomes tough to find replacement owners the further you go.

Anyways, thoughts or discussion below!

[gstelmack]

Not sure here. On the one hand, I went ahead and bought OOTPX on the hopes that it will fix a lot of the frustrations (OOTP9 was a cluster and I probably should have stuck to my guns, avoided FOOL, and skipped it entirely), and I went ahead and joined the RWBL so I'd have to run two versions (which is probably not that big a deal). On the other hand, I like the owners and we have a good group.

If an OOTPX FOOL league was created, I'd have a big decision as to which one to go with. Stay with this team / group, or just move to the new one and abandon OOTP9 altogether. I honestly don't know which way I'd go.

If we don't start that league I'll stick with this one, and only leave if I find myself really preferring OOTPX and really engaged with the new RWBL.

And yes, the next draft list editing screwup I deal with may help solidify my direction...