Out Of Park 15-- too easy? or am I doing things that I shouldn't be doing
 

I started a franchise with my Blue Jays from their opening year of 1977 and I am only in 1983 and have already built a dynasty. I was able to seemingly fleece the AI on a few trades with the trade difficulty of Medium (have no switched it to hard) and have been able to pick up some of the best players in the game in the Rule 5 Draft (maybe I should avoid using the rule 5 draft all together as it seems the AI leaves some really great players there and furthermore, teams are not drafting them in the Rule 5 draft). These are 2 of the main reasons why in my first 6 years of the Blue Jays, I have made the World Series 4 times, won it 3 times and made the playoffs 5 consecutive years.

I was talkign to someone in the forums before and he had mentioned making some house rules when playing so the AI isn't completely beatable, well if the Rule 5 draft is not something that is going to get fixed through a patch or can be fixed through some setting changes in the game, I am going to have to assume that is a house rule for alot of people (not selecting anyone over 2 stars in the rule 5 draft or something like that for example). I picked up the AL Batting title winner of the last 2 years in the Rule 5 draft and the Cy Young winner of last year (pretty unfair).

I hope a patch comes to fix the rule 5 draft so this is not so easily abused, but otherwise I think I should just stop using it. Thoughts?

Remember that when you play historical, you have knowledge of what 22-year-old "Player X" is likely to become, while the AI does not. So the human knowledge of MLB history is always going to give us a distinct advantage in historical games. Combine that with some occasionally questionable AI roster moves and you're set up to succeed.

You need to manipulate the settings in order to get the challenge you need for your playing experience.

For instance I play with Very hard & Heavily favor prospects and I can't offer nothing but fair trades that help both parties. (at the time of the trade, with my TCR setting the trade could be very lopsided 10 years later)

Rule 5 draft seems to not work in the game (AI drafting players consistently each draft) unless you opt for the game to rate players NOT by positions. Basing OVR by positions somehow handicaps the Rule 5 draft for the AI. (maybe this should be log as a bug?)

I play with 200 TCR (Talent Change Randomness) which force me to think twice about giving up ton of "poor rated prospect" to the AI for a steal or giving up contributing players on my team for a hot prospect. Adds more decision making and strategy not to mention a more realistic drafting outcome.

I play with AI eval on and set my percentages to 25% to all. I feel in my eyes that this setting made the AI roster managing smarter for the type of game I am looking for.

I also play with High injuries so that adds another layer of difficulty.

So its all about how you play and set up the game. I wouldn't rely much on default settings.

P.S.

I don't play historical so I do not know what settings are available to you there.

Minor league roster limits are a known issue with respect to Rule 5 and with intermittent release of good prospects/high draft choices. As a first step remove roster limits on your lower minor leagues. Consider 30 man roster limits in higher leagues AA and AAA. Keep in mind that Markus can't have the game crash so it seems that he must allow for player movement when rosters are restricted. This IMO is why increased roster sizes mitigate the issues you see.

You should find little to excite you on the Rule 5 draft but I recommend keeping it because without it some late developing prospects will never flower. In fact the Rule 5 should be a vehicle by which the human player loses prospects hoarded via advantageous deals with the AI to AI teams. Another human player issue is not keeping a full 40 man roster. If you check MLBTR you will see that in real life almost every team has a full 40-man roster. Almost every transaction made IRL results in a player move of some type and often leads to an acquisition by need by other teams. Put another way if you have 35 players on the 40 and the AI teams are at 40 you will always be at an advantage that doesn't occur in real life.

Trading set on medium is easy mode. Always have your trade settings on very hard and heavily favor prospects.

Seconded. "Favor Prospects" would be the lowest I would go, and generally play Heavily Favor Prospects as well.

I'm surprised he didn't say it, but playing stats only would also present a significantly higher challenge.

Also, in my historicals, I generally never use recalc and use the OOTP Development Engine instead, that way players develop differently than they did in real life. Historical, as stated above, is always going to be easier, especially if you don't do this -- because of name recognition.

It is the main reason why my main leagues are always fictional. You've got to go off what you see, and not your real life knowledge. (Not to say you can't still get a challenge out of historical, try these things mentioned above!)

I was just coming to post this. One of the easiest ways to fix the issue of too many good prospects getting waived/released/Rule 5'd is to take away minor league roster limits. I personally play with no roster limits at all in the minor leagues, and the AI will still stick to 25-man rosters if it can. But it won't wind up dropping a great IF prospect just because AA and AAA both have shortstops already.

One problem I have seen with the Rule 5 draft is the AI teams having less than 40 players on their 40 man roster and leaving top prospects off and subject to the Rule 5 draft. I have gone in manually and added top prospects to those teams at times and restrict myself from picking up any such players that can't be added. But it still ends up with some teams losing top prospects they probably shouldn't lose. I also have upped the 40 man roster to 42 and would consider bumping it to 45 if it lessened this problem. I use 27 man rosters in all minors except rookie (unlimited) mainly to avoid having AI teams without adequate subs at various positions. I may bump those limits to 30 at AAA and AA to see if that helps.

While it is certainly true that stats only is the hardest way to play OOTP, the transition from easy mode to stats only would IMO be too big of a shock.

And I fully agree with the idea of no roster limits for minor league teams.

But you can start off in the right direction by reducing scouting accuracy and scrapping the 20-80 scale in favour of, say, 1-5.

I'm of the opinion that the rating scale doesn't matter as long as you are having the AI evaluate solely on production.

When I add even 5% of the evaluation towards ratings, I see the issue with the AI seeing a decline before it actually manifests statistically (the crystal ball.)

I use the 20-80 but I have 0/67/22/11 as my evaluation settings, and evaluate across the entire league instead of by positions. Everyone seems to have even information, and you don't have the mystical genie scouts.

Just my two cents...

(Also is a way to bridge that initial stats-only "shock" to the system that The Wolf spoke of...)

I completely agree with The Dose here.

And I do not remember if I got 0/67/22/11 from him or if he got it from me or if we both got it from somebody else, but using that setting and evaluating by league rather than position is IMO absolutely the best way to handle player evaluations.

I got it from the original stats-only man. :)

Who was the original guy?

Put trade setting on very hard and never ever...ever...use "Favor prospects."

That makes it way too easy to dump a bunch of maybes for a proven veteran. Always...always keep it on neutral.

On Very Hard?

Yea I dont find that to be true at all at least in my experience with very hard & heavily favor propects.

Also what is the context of multiple propects for a proven vet? Is this vet just some guy who can get some starts on a playoff contending team or is he a all star, mvp??? Either way both happen often irl.

I am not able to dump a bunch of 20 pot minor leaguers for a 80 OVR major league player with the above settings.

Here is my thoughts on the matter:


Markus' biggest challenge is to program the AI to make trade decisions that make sense. There are billions of permutations. He cannot account for all of them. No AI is equal to a human. Really, he doesn't work for NASA. But he does make a concerted effort each version to improve the dynamics in play. He focuses on obvious decisions from his perspective and does all that is humanly possible without a team of AI-engineers at his disposal.

My thought is that he knows the difference between a "rebuild" and a "win now" focus. In that vein, he programs the logic based upon these two basic macro-ideas. Once we start manipulating these settings we are getting into areas that he has not fully-accounted for. I'm not saying that he has fully-accounted for any situation but he has, without question, focused on the basics.

OOTP, IMO, is not maximized to understand the difference between "favor prospects" or "favor veterans."

It is my contention that neutral settings are what Markus intends to be the best behavior for the AI. It is my opinion that these settings are designed to be the most-challenging and the most-realistic. I think that that it is folly to play with secondary settings without convincing evidence that the alternative settings compared to the default settings is better as far as "best-behavior" is concerned.

A lot of beer in that sentence so please forgive me if I don't make sense.