I went over this thread to try and see what the common thread of complaints was, as well as the consensus view of what needs to be done going forward. This is my executive summary, for my own purposes -- though hopefully it will be useful to others as well. If I'm leaving out something important, feel free to tap me on the shoulder:
- If there are people who regard the game as a total and abject failure, they've long since stopped posting here. At the same time, few people, if anybody, believe that 2006 was a resounding success. OOTP 2007 will have to essentially be a patch-on-steroids, especially if it's to address all the 2006 issues and still be released in a timely manner. A significant discount on '07 for registered users of '06 would be a nice goodwill gesture.
- Simplicity should be an option; the game should come pre-loaded with full-fledged quickstart leagues, complete with logos and such. There should be simpler ways for people to adjust the statistical output or the financial environment than mucking around with numbers that could potentially throw off the entire simulation. There should be (optional) in-game help, walking new players through the first few steps.
- AI, AI, AI. This needs to be an obsession. Right now, computer GMs are dumb as a post, can't budget at all (and only get out of self-created financial messes by, essentially, cheating) and have seemingly little conception that a heavily loaded team going into Spring Training has different priorities w/r/t trading and free agents than a team 20 games out at the trading deadline creaking under a bloated payroll. The AI is only as formidable as it is because of a) the aforementioned cheats b) because ginormous budgets make it easy to hide disastrously bad contracts and c) because it can refuse to make trades that don't blatantly rip off human players.
- More baseball "feel." More news stores. FM-style "events" and press interactions would go a long way towards breaking up the monotony. A more attractive interface here, too; I'm drawing a blank as to who suggested a pseudo-newspaper format, but that's a great idea. Take advice from a small select group of highly articulate people who have grown up steeped in the culture of baseball. A season in MLB format should "feel" like an MLB season.
- Improved world scouting. Make it more realistic and less of a grind. Dominican/Venezuelan Summer and Winter leagues that behave like they do in reality would do a lot here.
- Ghost players as an option in the minors would be nice. So would a degree of control over which players get assigned to which minor league level without having to manage all day-to-day operations of affiliates. The interface for assigning players to minor league levels needs work, too.
- Revamp the PBP and in-game views; make them more attractive.
- Revisit and improve the financial engine. I'm pretty sure there are still problems with market size calculations. Budgets tend to be kind of wonky, too.
- Make the lives of online comissioners as simple as possible. More automation of the process of running an online league. If you make the process of running an online league as idiot-proof as possible, OOTP will become the de facto standard for online baseball simulations. I would suggest reading any one of Bill Simmons' ESPN Sports Guy columns where he talks about the guys in his fantasy leagues. Program a game that allows those guys to painlessly set up a web site for their league, and all of a sudden you've opened up a massive new potential market.
Do these things, O SI People, and irrespective of any new bells and whistles, you'll have, bar none, the best baseball simulation game in the universe.