Quote:
Originally Posted by The Wolf
Why not ask Markus?
|
Well, two reasons
1) My "if there was an indication" language was an opportunity for Markus to ride in on his white horse of awesomeness to give such an indication
2) It's opening Pandora's box in one regard when it comes to another set of House Rules being needed.
To expand on #2, if IF shifting really is as powerful as it appears to be IRL, then OOTP should model that impact. If OOTP models that impact, then for the sake of realism, it would also have to model the fact that current and historical managers have not been using IF shifting as often as is optimal, and have appropriate strategy settings for the AI that reflect that. This means that in current day games, the human player would have a slight advantage over the AI teams by aggressively shifting, Maddon-style. It also means that in historical games, since there is no reason to expect shifting to be less useful in different eras once you get outside of the deadball era maybe, given that historical managers hardly used it at all, the human player would have a very significant strategic advantage over the neanderthal AI managers when it comes to defensive shifts.
There are two potential ways to address this.
1) Markus waters down the impact of IF shifting in historical contexts. I don't like that solution, because I don't believe there would be any realistic validity to it, as a pull hitter is a pull hitter regardless of era (again, once you get outside of the bunt-crazy deadball period), and a groundball is a groundball, so I'd expect the impact of shifting to be consistent from roughly 1920 to present.
2) House rules for players, to not shift more than was realistically done historically, AKA not at all. This is my preferred solution, but it's a case of more knowledge and transparency into the combination of real world effects, the OOTP simulation model, and AI manager tendencies giving the human player yet another edge over the AI. I happen to think that's appropriate for this particular issue, since it's reasonable to me that a modern day manager, if transported into the past to manage, really would use shifting more than his historical counterparts. I also happen to think that there's a not insignificant subset of players/posters who are constantly on high alert for any additional advantages conferred upon the human players against the AI, and who might therefore lobby for solution #1.