[old timer]

Hi all,

I work in tech support and am only on the beta team because of that job. I absolutely HATE testing and never participated before this year because of that. But... For me at least, this version has so many cool things to offer, I couldn't resist playing it a lot and consequently, I found myself doing a lot of testing.

Before I continue, I'd like to point out I'm still discovering new things and I've been testing since the beta began. So here goes (in no particular order):

I know this has already been discussed, but a major improvement is the interface. It feels much easier to find stuff (well, it may still need some tweaks) and it's going to be less confusing to new people especially, without sacrificing options for us veterans. Just to give an example of one of the many little extras that are "hidden" in the new version, the league menu is now sorted by league level so that a major league will be at the top with its minor leagues (also sorted by level) immediately below it and then followed by another major league and so on. So no more hunting all over that menu for the right league. International leagues would sort at the bottom, by the way. This is a small thing, but there are many of these little things and I really think they add up more than you might think.

There have been several bug fixes from previous versions and I'll just give two examples here: Minor league free agents tended to sign only with one or two teams in a particular league. I had one team in an independent minor league level go 76-0 (including post-season) in OOTP 12 because of this problem. Another (apparent) fix is related to menu glitches. I used to encounter disappearing menus on certain screens (like the free agent screen) and some other odd anomalies like this, but haven't yet seen this in OOTP 13. These may not matter to many of you, but there are numerous other examples of fixes that I've stumbled upon that I didn't see officially listed yet. Of course, I may have just missed some of them.

I've really enjoyed the real-time simulation (RTS) feature so far as well. When I first heard about it, it inspired nothing more than a yawn. So imagine my surprise when I found myself playing with RTS mode on quite a bit. I work from home and it's especially nice to check in on the scores throughout the day. Imagine being a bit busy while at home and you don't have time to play much, but you can just walk away and later spend a few minutes seeing what happened since the last time you checked. It's especially nice when nearing the playoffs. It makes the league feel more alive when you can go to the different leagues and see all of the games as they're progressing during the day. It's really something you just have to try out I think, to really appreciate it.

My main point here was to show that there are improvements in the game that may not be officially listed yet and some features may not seem like a big deal until you try them out. So for me at least, OOTP 13 is even better than the descriptions make it sound. Hope you all enjoy it too!

p.s. - If you have questions, I'll try to answer when I get time, but I'm busy testing still, plus helping in tech support, plus working on my "real" job, plus ...