The Annual Settings Thread
 

So, after playing around with OOTP 17 for a little while now, what do people feel are the optimal settings for a realistic and smart AI opponent?


Trading frequency?
AI evaluation settings?
Trading difficulty?
Scouting accuracy?
Talent change randomness?

I would like to say default to all, but there are a couple places where I'm curious what others think.

For AI evaluation I've always used:

40
30
20
10

Talent change randomness set to default 100, but I read that someone recommended switching to 200 with the new player development of OOTP 17. I'm a little unsure about changing though, so I'll probably stick to the default personally.

For now I am leaving everything at default with the exception of Talent Change Randomness where I am experimenting with a setting of 125.

I play stats only, so you may not be interested, but here's what I use:

Trading frequency? Average, although I'm moving toward low
AI evaluation settings?
0
67
22
11
Trading difficulty? Hard, neutral
Scouting accuracy? Low
Talent change randomness? Default
No stars, no ratings. Just go on stats, and sometimes, what your scout tells you.

I use 20-80 ratings, and I've found 25-40-25-10 to be a good mix. This means the AI is more willing to work with and aquire players whose ratings aren't telling the full picture for whatever reason. Trading hard with a shift to favor prospects, but that shift might not be necessary this year anymore. And don't be a jabroni and drop injury levels. Normal or Modern, or bust. Also many debate this, but I like to drop player aging to .925 or .950, it's not a huge shift but it helps players achieve juuust the right career length IMHO. I wouldn't recommend messing with the TCR until people figure out how the new development changes this year affect things.

As to my reason for the AI evals, it's because I've seen more than a few players who have been on paper worse than their competitors but consistently overachieved, and I'd like the AI to recognize that as easily as I do.

Since we are in the discussion, what would you recommend to see less top 10 prospects traded? My settings are ''heavily favor prospects'' but but I often see a top 10 prospect on the top 100 list traded for a not that good player... I sometime see rebuilding team trading their top prospect top win now team for a starting ''not so great'' player

I just want to know what I could change to reduce this ;)

I do exactly what he does.

Trading frequency? Trading difficulty? Average (though I'm also considering low), hard, neutral.

AI evaluation settings? 30/35/30/5. This represents what I want to achieve and also works well with the AI managers' weightings. Really old-school managers will still prefer their scouting reports slightly, but most of the new school will weight it based on how they're doing this year and how they did last year.

So currently with these settings, Clint Hurdle still values his scout's opinion more than anything else, and this year and last year's stats are tied (not sure that's entirely accurate Clint Hurdle behaviour, but I appreciate the fact that the feature exists :p). Whereas Joe Maddon is more appreciative of the players' current stats. Bob Melvin and David Forst are like "scouts? What're scouts?" :p

With the defaults, it seemed that all managers and GMs acted with basically the same priorities, albeit slightly different weightings. Having the evaluation settings closer together makes their personalities more distinct. At least on their profile screen, not sure how much of an impact that actually has on the game just yet, I'm still playing around with new stuff and haven't started a long term game.

Scouting accuracy? I've left it on average, but am considering low.

Talent change randomness? Left it default because I'm too scared to change it until other people have experimented. :D

I have stars off, because eff stars. But I leave ratings on, because to me it's an easy visual representation of what my scout currently thinks of him. Turning them off just seems to be making the game more annoying, as opposed to more difficult.

I do this with the exception of Trade frequency on low (really wish there were a setting to approve all trades) and I do have the 1-20 system on with stars for potentials.

I haven't considered stats before, though. That's a really interesting idea. Do you find yourself really digging into stats a lot more?

Yes, you definitely need to pay more attention to the stats. And with scouting on low, even more of a challenge. And I nearly always take on an expansion team, whether it's historical, fictional, or real players. I like that challenge, and nearly every year, my team has the lowest payroll in the league. Stars are just annoying to me, and it's really fun and challenging to see if your "gut feeling" is right on, or way off.

Same with the amateur draft. Do you take a HS kid who hit .459 with average competition, or do you take the college kid who hit .310 with great competition. And I follow my players through their career, well at least through 10 to 11 years, whether they are draft choices, int'l signings, rule V draft picks, and on occasion, trades. Very simple spreadsheet that I hand write on that has Name, Position, Age, Salary(bonus for draft picks). Just my two cents, and the great thing is, there are so many ways to play this game.

Your last sentence says it all. I may have to test that out. It's obviously more life-like which there are pros and cons of course in a video game.

"No stars, No ratings" --- scouting set to LOW --- What do you rely on when drafting and evaluating players then?

Stats :)

The idea behind stats-only is to put you not in the position of a video gamer with God-like abilities to see talent levels and potentials, but instead into the position of a GM, who can only make player choices based on stats and scouting reports. It's the Hard Mode of OOTP.

So, you still have your scout make recommendations for the draft and player movement? I may have to try that - I took an expansion team after the 2016 MLB season, would be difficult - but may be need to play out.

This year I am trying to play with as many default settings as possible. Markus knows best.

Tcr 200.

Are you a salesman? Serious question because you just sold me to do that.

Engineer. And once you play stats only, it will sell itself. You'll probably never go back.

So obviously those AI evaluation settings are probably a necessity. Anything else I should be aware of or any other setting I should change?