Anyone done any testing on prospect development in v25.2.52?

[JaBurns]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I think the main issue here now is that people are expecting development to work in an unrealistic way that it's not designed to do.

Most prospects don't develop to their peak potential. Very few prospects will ever develop to be over 50 ratings no matter what their peak potentials are. Many real-life draft classes don't have more than 15 or so above average MLB players once all is said and done, whatever their potential was viewed at the draft. Just because a player has an 80 potential for example, it does not mean he's expected to turn into an 80 overall rated player at his peak. Some may. Most will not. It's going to be a rare player to develop to a 55 or 60 or above rating. If you have an 80 rated prospect and he turns into a 55 or 60 player at his peak, this is a pretty good result.


This is even more the case this year than in previous years, because we've adjusted the overalls to incorporate standard deviations a bit more and thus they are a little tighter and they end up tracking a little closer to the real-life scale now (they are still not identical, so you will have more 70 and 80 players in OOTP than there would be in real-life f.e.). So more players will end up fairly tightly clustered in the 40-60 range once fully developed and it will be somewhat rarer to see a player to hit 60-80 than in previous version of the game. Thus a player whose ratings would have given him a 65 overall rating a couple versions back might have more of a 55 or a 60 now, even if the underlying ratings are essentially the same.

The original concern with development was more just that players were taking too long to develop and there were very few young players well developed. The patch does greatly improve that. What the patch does not do is to make all young players develop to max potential. That's not how it works in reality, and it's not how the game is supposed to work. The league talent levels will stay roughly equal over time (though they drop a bit from the initial roster set ratings, which is to be expected as these are slightly higher than the long term targets), which pretty clearly show that enough players are developing overall.

Thank you for this, it seems to me that a tighter distribution around average, ie 50, is more realistic. I am wondering if I should raise the TCR to have more "career years" by players.
Do players that get a big boost tend regress over time?

[SidHickenbottom]

One question, assuming now we have to accept this is by design and won't change back to the way things have been in the past. In fictional leagues, seed players appear to have a range of ratings similar to how things have been in the past. Drafted/developed players conform to the new normal you describe where +50 is rare. This results in all my leagues thus far represents a really unhealthy dynamic for long-term saves, where older players are dominant in a way that doesn't check with real-life, where younger talent is increasingly valued. Yes, I know people recommend simming forward decades, etc. and I do that to an extent, but if the answer is that development works this way now, maybe tweak seed players to adhere to this principle, too.

[Carplos]

They adjusted initial players with the patch. I haven't started a new league since then to test, so dunno if they need to adjust it more.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by SidHickenbottom

One question, assuming now we have to accept this is by design and won't change back to the way things have been in the past. In fictional leagues, seed players appear to have a range of ratings similar to how things have been in the past. Drafted/developed players conform to the new normal you describe where +50 is rare. This results in all my leagues thus far represents a really unhealthy dynamic for long-term saves, where older players are dominant in a way that doesn't check with real-life, where younger talent is increasingly valued. Yes, I know people recommend simming forward decades, etc. and I do that to an extent, but if the answer is that development works this way now, maybe tweak seed players to adhere to this principle, too.

This is very much what the initial players in a 2024 league adhere to as well. You'll see the same things I've mentioned here, where average players are generally 50's. This shouldn't really differ much if you're in year 2 or year 22.

Just make sure to differentiate between potentials and current ratings. The potentials will mostly always be higher than the current ratings, but most players will settle down to the sort of distribution we've talked about here once they've developed into the phase where they're fully developed (i.e. their current and potential ratings are roughly the same).

If older players are dominant for a short period, this will only be the case for a few years until aging takes them off. The balance between older and younger players is always somewhat cyclical and may fall in a slightly different place in any given year in a specific league given the current player balance.

[mrpoopistan]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I think the main issue here now is that people are expecting development to work in an unrealistic way that it's not designed to do.

1) There shouldn't be a league-wide failure to develop any young 80-grade players. Michael Harris and Ronald Acuna exist.


2) It's a game. For the love of baseball, stop making it more of a grind. If that's the direction the devs want, then it's a mistake. People bought a game, not a simulator.


3) OOTP25 currently sucks as a simulator. It's not producing anything close to real-world results. Again, the real world doesn't generate zero 80-grade players.


4) OOTP25 currently sucks as a game.


It's your house and your rules, but your house is well on its way to being a place no one wants to hang out. Stop attacking the gamers for wanting the game that they used to have over whatever this thing is that the devs prefer.

To be clear, I quit playing entirely. My hope is that the devs will see reason and at least revert the game largely back to OOTP24. (I'd prefer OOTP22, but . . . not getting my hopes up.) Otherwise, the game can sit and rot until I hear there's a worthwhile patch that makes it at least remotely playable. Because spending ten game-years only to watch all development league wide die isn't fun or even interesting. Least of all in a game that's already way too much like having a job.

Seriously, go check your Steam statistics and tell me that I'm wrong. Because I don't believe there's a swell of people who crave a more grindy version of OOTP.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mrpoopistan

1) There shouldn't be a league-wide failure to develop any young 80-grade players. Michael Harris and Ronald Acuna exist.


2) It's a game. For the love of baseball, stop making it more of a grind. If that's the direction the devs want, then it's a mistake. People bought a game, not a simulator.


3) OOTP25 currently sucks as a simulator. It's not producing anything close to real-world results. Again, the real world doesn't generate zero 80-grade players.

Yeah, this is kind of nonsense. Michael Harris is not an 80 grade player in OOTP or in real life and OOTP doesn't fail to generate 80 grade players. It just generates a few less than in previous versions.

[mrpoopistan]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Yeah, this is kind of nonsense. Michael Harris is not an 80 grade player in OOTP or in real life and OOTP doesn't fail to generate 80 grade players. It just generates a few less than in previous versions.

Quit your bull****.


It literally hasn't produced a single generated 80-grade player in my current playthrough. I don't mean for my team. I mean at all across all of MLB. Hell, it hasn't produced a 70-grade player. The top generated player is a 40/65 who came out of college a 35/65.

Also, solid work not attacking the gamers right now. This is how you lose customers, dood.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mrpoopistan

Quit your bull****.


It literally hasn't produced a single generated 80-grade player in my current playthrough. I don't mean for my team. I mean at all across all of MLB. Hell, it hasn't produced a 70-grade player. The top generated player is a 40/65 who came out of college a 35/65.

Also, solid work not attacking the gamers right now. This is how you lose customers, dood.

...

Originally Posted by mrpoopistan

My read is that this is an intended change to bring the 20/80 system more inline with what you'd see on a site like Fangraphs.


I do think the system comes in a little heavy against players, but not gamebreakingly so. For example, my standard candle for a truly replacement-level SP historically is Jeff Locke. I loaded the OOTP16 world into OOTP25, and it grades Locke as a 35/35.


Is that low for a truly replacement-level player? Meh. Not too-too low. Maybe he should be 40/40 if you have a slightly higher opinion of what a multi-year SP with a career 1 RA9-WAR & 3 fWAR should be. But even that's a very debatable maybe when you reflect that Locke had dipped into negative RA9-WAR by then.



I think once they iron out a few things, the representation of the 20/80 scale will be one of the more on-target changes from OOTP25.

[mrpoopistan]

So now you're just overtly digging up old posts to attack me?

Are you okay?

Per the barely a reply: I have some hope that you'll iron this out. I'm losing that hope as I see the responses because I think you guys as the devs want this grindier version of the game.

And none of that was a real response to the core problem: the engine doesn't generate a single 80-grade young player ever. Not even a 70. That's not realistic.

[LacSlyer]

Originally Posted by mrpoopistan

Quit your bull****.


It literally hasn't produced a single generated 80-grade player in my current playthrough. I don't mean for my team. I mean at all across all of MLB. Hell, it hasn't produced a 70-grade player. The top generated player is a 40/65 who came out of college a 35/65.

Also, solid work not attacking the gamers right now. This is how you lose customers, dood.

Firstly, he didn't attack you in any way, he rebutted your comments. Secondly, I'm shocked he didn't attack our outright ban you for the way you actually attacked him.


In my opinion, "customers" like yourself are worth losing because you're not being productive and for some reason choose to be overly antagonistic about a video game not being exactly how you think it should be.

[Carplos]

And here for the last 20+ years I thought I was buying a simulator!

[mrpoopistan]

Originally Posted by LacSlyer

he rebutted your comments.

I must have missed the rebuttal. Because nowhere did I see anything that addresses the total disappearance of generated 80-grade players.

[locuspc]

Originally Posted by Guthrien

If this is a bug, it's just not one I'm noticing like some in previous years. The classes definitely seem a bit odd.. my last 2025 draft was all Relief Pitchers for the final 3 rounds. That was noticeable. They seem less populated by established talents than 24.


PS - Does anyone know the answer to this? If I increase the amount of players for the draft (right now default is 30rds of players for 20rds of draft) to, let's say 40 rds of players, will that also increase the top level talent? I'd like it to be the same "ratio" as the seed, adding a few more high potential talents, along with not getting 3rds of college Relief Pitchers.

It seemed that way in 24, but seems doesn't go that far with a statistical game.

The real life draft classes are always a problem. The second and third year drafts are awful because all the good players from the real life draft file get picked in the first year draft but all the random terrible ones are still there so the game doesn't generate fictional players, it just hands you a draft full of terrible players. People are going to keep complaining about prospects until this is redesigned.

[mrpoopistan]

Originally Posted by locuspc

The real life draft classes are always a problem. The second and third year drafts are awful because all the good players from the real life draft file get picked in the first year draft but all the random terrible ones are still there so the game doesn't generate fictional players, it just hands you a draft full of terrible players. People are going to keep complaining about prospects until this is redesigned.

There's also the practical real-world issue that the 2020 COVID-era draft created some odd drafts afterward. With a shorter draft in 2020, more guys had to make decisions to go to college. A longer 2020 draft likely would've yielded fewer developed IRL college players in 2021-23 because more of those guys would've landed in MLB's minor leagues. We're only seeing the pipeline loosen up now.

[thenewchuckd]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

Game isn't broke. The development issue is mostly people not being happy the displayed ratings are the right colors.

I am sorry, this is not my main issue. My main issue is your game isn't realistic. My next main issue is there is no clear way I can manage this game without it feeling like a complete crap shoot.

There is a problem with development when I take a guy (on 100% accurate scouting) who rates as a high school superstar and he gets stuck hitting .200 at rookie ball for 2-3 seasons. I looked at real life rookie ball stats and high schoolers who are 18 get there and can hit .400. I am sure if I dig deeper I will find some who can even play at A ball or higher.

There is a problem when I can't draft a top rated international player and have him make the big leagues (because the younger a player is, the chances of him making it to the bigs are always proportionally less)

There is a problem when the positional guy I scout as a top guy in the draft and pick at #1, with maxed $$$ in scouting and legendary scouting, just always drops to be an average scrub.

There is a problem when having the best scouts, best coaches and making (seemingly) the best decisions seems to do absolutely nothing.

There is a problem when the defaults mean you'll never get even half-decent trade offers and you can barely trade for a major league player when offering a top 10 prospect.

There is a problem when no matter what I do, it doesn't matter. I might as well go and flip coins while banging my head against the wall.

It is also a problem when the developers & even people playing the game don't stop gaslighting whenever issues like these are raised.

[locuspc]

If you're frustrated that highly-ranked prospects often bust, I'm going to politely suggest you haven't been following baseball for very long.

[thenewchuckd]

Originally Posted by mrpoopistan

A longer 2020 draft likely would've yielded fewer developed IRL college players in 2021-23 because more of those guys would've landed in MLB's minor leagues. We're only seeing the pipeline loosen up now.

I never use the in-game created future draft classes; I would actually like a setting where you can just delete them.

Although seeing this game now, maybe the draft class doesn't really matter. If you made all the players 45 rated to start everything might just turn out the same (because initial rating isn't that important; TCR is what matters)

Maybe I'm just biased by the coin flips and banging my head against the wall.

[thenewchuckd]

Originally Posted by locuspc

If you're frustrated that highly-ranked prospects often bust, I'm going to politely suggest you haven't been following baseball for very long.

The gaslighting is back! Surprise.

I'm not frustrated by this. I'm frustrated that it always happens. You literally cannot trust your legendary scout ever for players 18 and under.

If a team is always picking #1 and always ending up with busts, that GM is going to get fired pretty fast. Ditto to a team always spending all their possible space on international players.

I am willing to suggest that maybe I just don't know what I am doing. However, I lay that on the floor of the developers. If in-game & since OOTP 21 I spend top dollar on all these coaches and scouts, I should be getting messages & feedback in-game of what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.

I see player development in this game as pure random non-sense and I'm waiting for someone to prove me otherwise.

[locuspc]

Originally Posted by thenewchuckd

The gaslighting is back! Surprise.

I'm not frustrated by this. I'm frustrated that it always happens. You literally cannot trust your legendary scout ever.

If a team is always picking #1 and always ending up with busts, that GM is going to get fired pretty fast. Ditto to a team always spending all their possible space on international players.

I am willing to suggest that maybe I just don't know what I am doing. However, I lay that on the floor of the developers. If in-game & since OOTP 21 I spend top dollar on all these coaches and scouts, I should be getting messages & feedback in-game of what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.

It's not gaslighting when someone tells you you're wrong. That's a gross abuse of language.

[thenewchuckd]

Originally Posted by locuspc

It's not gaslighting when someone tells you you're wrong. That's a gross abuse of language.

You are cherry picking parts of what I said and distorting them to say I am wrong. Also denying my personal experience. This is gaslighting 101.

So you're saying I can just hire a monkey for all MLB teams in real life to do the drafting and everyone will be fine with it? Or maybe a random number generator?

I can somewhat enjoy the game if I turn off international amateurs and have the rookie draft be guys 20+; but then I start start to get annoyed again.

I can't play the random crap shoot development game anymore.