Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

[tessl]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I’ve had a chance to run through a few test franchises since I got the game, and have had enough time to figure out the scouting. I see a lot of people using formulas on here and I have found an easier way to scout.

Simply look at where you are drafting, and just individually scout players projected in or around that general area with good potential and decent overall projections. I have used this method 4 times in a row now and have not come away with a player with less than 84 potential yet (all star level). I have also found some gems using this method, and even found a college pitcher who was MLB ready with a 75 overall and 89 potential around the 23rd pick.

Honestly the scouting is just as easy as last year once you figure it out.

Side note: when are they going to fix Asian prospects? Absolutely none of them actually look Asian

Potential only matters if attributes are high enough for the player to be able to progress and advance to MLB. As previously discussed a starting pitcher with stamina in the 60's isn't going to be more than a middle reliever. I guarantee you the drafting and scouting AI has no idea the pitcher stamina doesn't increase.

[ripwalk]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I've now gone through three drafts, letting the AI/CPU handle the scouting, but I jump in on draft day to make the picks..

Maybe this isn't as big an issue if I micomanage the scouting, but does anyone wish there was less fog of war on MOST players ?

It's weird to be able to make your 1st and maybe 2nd round pick with a decent or maybe even 100% knowledge on the player, but by 3rd, 4th and definitely 5th round you are pretty much flying blind and having to pick players who are 5 to 10% scouted at most.

This to me seems pretty unrealistic. There's obviously a lot of luck of the draw in the MLB draft, with it being the one league with the highest prospect bust out rate... But, I still don't believe MLB teams draft players they barely know anything about... basically a complete shot in the dark and hope.

I also find it funny that players ranked in the top 50 can be completely unscouted.. I feel in most cases, pretty much every team who has a first round pick is going to have SOME kind of knowledge on all the top players.

I kind of wish it was a way that anyone who remains in your say top 50, or top 100 draft board, gets SOME kind of scouting % increase each week ... So that they would be maybe 30 to 50% scouted by the end (still some fog of war), if you didn't specifically focus on them. Then those players that you specifically focus on are the ones who end up 75 to 100% scouted.

It just seems odd to me to be basically shooting in the dark on these.

But, again, perhaps this does have to do with the fact I let the AI handle scouting. I'm going to take it over myself at least for a season or two and compare...

But I'm curious everyone else's takes on the 'fog of war' involved with the draft and if it's too extreme ...

[reyes the roof]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I've now gone through three drafts, letting the AI/CPU handle the scouting, but I jump in on draft day to make the picks..

Maybe this isn't as big an issue if I micomanage the scouting, but does anyone wish there was less fog of war on MOST players ?

It's weird to be able to make your 1st and maybe 2nd round pick with a decent or maybe even 100% knowledge on the player, but by 3rd, 4th and definitely 5th round you are pretty much flying blind and having to pick players who are 5 to 10% scouted at most.

This to me seems pretty unrealistic. There's obviously a lot of luck of the draw in the MLB draft, with it being the one league with the highest prospect bust out rate... But, I still don't believe MLB teams draft players they barely know anything about... basically a complete shot in the dark and hope.

I also find it funny that players ranked in the top 50 can be completely unscouted.. I feel in most cases, pretty much every team who has a first round pick is going to have SOME kind of knowledge on all the top players.

I kind of wish it was a way that anyone who remains in your say top 50, or top 100 draft board, gets SOME kind of scouting % increase each week ... So that they would be maybe 30 to 50% scouted by the end (still some fog of war), if you didn't specifically focus on them. Then those players that you specifically focus on are the ones who end up 75 to 100% scouted.

It just seems odd to me to be basically shooting in the dark on these.

But, again, perhaps this does have to do with the fact I let the AI handle scouting. I'm going to take it over myself at least for a season or two and compare...

But I'm curious everyone else's takes on the 'fog of war' involved with the draft and if it's too extreme ...

That’s because the cpu does nothing but scout individual prospects if you set scouting to auto, which can be a fine strategy but you need to make sure you’re only scouting guys that will be available when you pick. I think they cpu wastes a lot of scouting time on guys that won’t be around when you pick.

[DL1287]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

There needs to be more good position players in the earlier rounds. I always draft pitchers early because there’s usually a ton of good ones and they’re the easiest position to scout. The only high potential players in the mid to late rounds are usually 50 overalls with 90+ speed and awful everything else.

Can they also decrease the amount of 1st round relievers? I had a draft where there were 3 or 4 closers in the top 10.

The new system is interesting and pretty good for the most part but the quality of prospects is still pretty bad.

[ripwalk]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

That’s because the cpu does nothing but scout individual prospects if you set scouting to auto, which can be a fine strategy but you need to make sure you’re only scouting guys that will be available when you pick. I think they cpu wastes a lot of scouting time on guys that won’t be around when you pick.

Which is interesting, because without having looked too much into detail what the CPU was doing (I was just simming the season quickly and jumping in to play the draft) ... I would have assumed they were focusing more on individual positons.. as all the guys that were 100% scouted were usually certain position groups. For example my team was 25th in CP's, so most of the fully scouted guys were closers.

Which perhaps they are just scouting by positional need (which is silly) and fully scouting as many guys as they can in that area... I don't know.

I guess I'll have better opinions on this once I try it myself, but I still stand by the fact that some fog of war is good, but making most of your picks almost completely blind is kind of pointless, and not at all realistic.

[reyes the roof]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

Which is interesting, because without having looked too much into detail what the CPU was doing (I was just simming the season quickly and jumping in to play the draft) ... I would have assumed they were focusing more on individual positons.. as all the guys that were 100% scouted were usually certain position groups. For example my team was 25th in CP's, so most of the fully scouted guys were closers.

Which perhaps they are just scouting by positional need (which is silly) and fully scouting as many guys as they can in that area... I don't know.

I guess I'll have better opinions on this once I try it myself, but I still stand by the fact that some fog of war is good, but making most of your picks almost completely blind is kind of pointless, and not at all realistic.

I like what they’re trying to do, I just don’t think it’s executed that well. I agree there should be more info available on everyone. I usually only scout by position and get decent results, but even that is an unrealistic process the way you can only scout one position at a time. I have a hard time believing there is a real life scenario where a scout can’t scout a closer because his assignment is only to scout middle relievers

[ripwalk]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I like what they’re trying to do, I just don’t think it’s executed that well. I agree there should be more info available on everyone. I usually only scout by position and get decent results, but even that is an unrealistic process the way you can only scout one position at a time. I have a hard time believing there is a real life scenario where a scout can’t scout a closer because his assignment is only to scout middle relievers

He beats the traffic and heads out before the 9th inning, it all makes sense

Agreed, it seems to be a decent foundation but isn't particularly well done. It has however made the draft a bit more immersive for me and made me want to play the game more like OOTP, where I get through seasons rather quickly simming or playing only parts of most games, and focusing on team building over a number of years instead...

[ripwalk]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

It's also super annoying how it doesn't list who you've already drafted as you go through. When I'm in the 6th round it should show me somewhere who I took in the 1st five rounds!

[tessl]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I like what they’re trying to do, I just don’t think it’s executed that well. I agree there should be more info available on everyone. I usually only scout by position and get decent results, but even that is an unrealistic process the way you can only scout one position at a time. I have a hard time believing there is a real life scenario where a scout can’t scout a closer because his assignment is only to scout middle relievers

The best thing about it is the upgrade in quality of players in the draft pool. I like what they are doing but it seems like an unfinished product. The screen from previous years where you could sort by position and attribute was easier to navigate.

Bottom line is better players in the draft pool make the franchise overall sustainable in the future. One major shortfall is stamina doesn't increase for starting pitchers as much as the scouts indicate. CPU will therefore be drafting starting pitchers who will never be MLB starting pitchers because their stamina will never be high enough. That's been a problem for years and wasn't fixed. It's an advantage for me because I understand to only draft pitchers with high stamina but CPU teams will waste draft picks.

[DL1287]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

They should change the scout by position system to
Starters
Relievers(RP and CP)
Catchers
Corner infielders(1st and 3rd)
Middle infielders(SS and 2nd)
Outfielders

I would like to draft more position players but it doesn’t make sense to me to scout a couple of outfielders when I could scout 20+ pitchers with one scout. In my Pirates save I’ve drafted 8 90+ potential pitchers in 3 years because they’re so easy to scout and there’s a ton of them.

[countryboy]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

Having now gone through the 14 weeks of scouting (manual) and about to participate in the draft, I have mixed feelings on the changes to the process.

There's a lot of good that was done such as fixing player ages, the work of being "less sure" about a HS prospect versus that of a 4 year college player, the bonus allotment and demand, etc...

But my biggest gripes are:

1) that scouting is only available on Sunday. You simply cannot scout as thoroughly as I would guess a MLB team would scout talent because you are given less time and less opportunity to access various players over the course of 14 weeks.

2) Not only do you have less time to gather information but now you have less scouts as they dropped from 4 to 3. Being able to get decent information on a handful of players to carry out 6 rounds of picks, is almost impossible.

3) I feel far more disconnected from my potential targets this year versus last year. Also, with no way of sorting the prospects by a desired attribute (say I'm wanting a SS with a big arm and higher reaction) I have no way of doing this, so that I can then narrow down the list from those characteristics like before. Also, I have no idea what a pitcher's repetoire is , so his velocity and break attributes are sort of meaningless because I can't tell what pitches he has and how they could play off of each other to effectively get hitters out.

Again, theres a lot to like about the changes and I do, but after my first run through, I don't know that I actually like the revamp as a whole better than what we had previously. There just seems to be certain elements from the simplistic point and click we had before that would help flush out this revamp that are sadly missing.

[JoshC1977]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

Having now gone through the 14 weeks of scouting (manual) and about to participate in the draft, I have mixed feelings on the changes to the process.

There's a lot of good that was done such as fixing player ages, the work of being "less sure" about a HS prospect versus that of a 4 year college player, the bonus allotment and demand, etc...

But my biggest gripes are:

1) that scouting is only available on Sunday. You simply cannot scout as thoroughly as I would guess a MLB team would scout talent because you are given less time and less opportunity to access various players over the course of 14 weeks.

2) Not only do you have less time to gather information but now you have less scouts as they dropped from 4 to 3. Being able to get decent information on a handful of players to carry out 6 rounds of picks, is almost impossible.

3) I feel far more disconnected from my potential targets this year versus last year. Also, with no way of sorting the prospects by a desired attribute (say I'm wanting a SS with a big arm and higher reaction) I have no way of doing this, so that I can then narrow down the list from those characteristics like before. Also, I have no idea what a pitcher's repetoire is , so his velocity and break attributes are sort of meaningless because I can't tell what pitches he has and how they could play off of each other to effectively get hitters out.

Again, theres a lot to like about the changes and I do, but after my first run through, I don't know that I actually like the revamp as a whole better than what we had previously. There just seems to be certain elements from the simplistic point and click we had before that would help flush out this revamp that are sadly missing.

Agree with all your points. Numbers 1 and 3 on your list are the biggest ones for me. I loved the old scouting interface; it was elegantly designed and daily interactions made it more immersive. I've gotten to the point now where I just want to put it on auto = and that's not a good sign.

[countryboy]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

Agree with all your points. Numbers 1 and 3 on your list are the biggest ones for me. I loved the old scouting interface; it was elegantly designed and daily interactions made it more immersive. I've gotten to the point now where I just want to put it on auto = and that's not a good sign.

Honestly that may be what I do, but I think you and I would share the same opinion that setting it to auto only disconnects me even more from the prospects, the draft itself, and the longevity of my franchise because I have a distorted connection to the prospects that I draft.

I like the feeling of manually scouting, ranking, and drafting the type of player I want in my organization, and feel damn proud of myself when I find success.

When they locked scouting I was under the impression that we could at least access the prospects and get an idea of who I want to target going forward, but you are completely locked out until Sunday, which just seems an odd choice. Really takes away, imo, all the hard work that went into the improvements and revamping of the mode.

[tessl]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

Having now gone through the 14 weeks of scouting (manual) and about to participate in the draft, I have mixed feelings on the changes to the process.

There's a lot of good that was done such as fixing player ages, the work of being "less sure" about a HS prospect versus that of a 4 year college player, the bonus allotment and demand, etc...

But my biggest gripes are:

1) that scouting is only available on Sunday. You simply cannot scout as thoroughly as I would guess a MLB team would scout talent because you are given less time and less opportunity to access various players over the course of 14 weeks.

2) Not only do you have less time to gather information but now you have less scouts as they dropped from 4 to 3. Being able to get decent information on a handful of players to carry out 6 rounds of picks, is almost impossible.

3) I feel far more disconnected from my potential targets this year versus last year. Also, with no way of sorting the prospects by a desired attribute (say I'm wanting a SS with a big arm and higher reaction) I have no way of doing this, so that I can then narrow down the list from those characteristics like before. Also, I have no idea what a pitcher's repetoire is , so his velocity and break attributes are sort of meaningless because I can't tell what pitches he has and how they could play off of each other to effectively get hitters out.

Again, theres a lot to like about the changes and I do, but after my first run through, I don't know that I actually like the revamp as a whole better than what we had previously. There just seems to be certain elements from the simplistic point and click we had before that would help flush out this revamp that are sadly missing.

There has been a push by some for less of a sure thing in things like progression and the amateur draft. I believe this system was designed to be more difficult and less reliable.

If they would add another scout it would give more time to discover which is what I'd like to do in order to possibly find a prospect the cpu teams don't know about and steal him in the late rounds. Unfortunately discovery is so uncertain that I've abandoned that to focus on fully scouting a few players with attributes I'm looking for.

I've gone to pencil and paper with the lack of the screen where you could sort by attribute and position. I don't mind it but they should add a 4th scout. The only good news - and it is very good news - the quality of players available has improved significantly.

[countryboy]

Re: Watching early release videos of scouting and the draft

I have to say, that despite my issues with how the scouting works overall in the revamp of the draft/scouting system, the draft experience itself is very well done.

Watching teams select while updating my draft board and then having to re-order/re-populate due to my targets being drafted is a very engaging experience. Also seeing teams reach for prospects as well as watching some of the higher touted prospects fall beyond their ranking was nice to see.

Also, I didn't see a single closer or relief pitcher get taken in the first round. The first reliver/closer to get drafted was around pick 35/36 I believe, which was the competitive balance round.