[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I've seen squeeze plays. They are very rare. On the same point not a single squeeze I've ever seen has worked.

A lot of managers in game won't take minor league deals right away when signing comes around. What happens is that the AI takes the best available at the time because it has to fill the position. So as a human player if you wait you'll be able to pick up better left over managers because later in the off season they will take lesser jobs. Just like players will take less later in the off season or after the season starts. As much as I'd like to see it change trades, FA, and hiring and firing are some of the hardest things to program in a sports game. Heck look at EA and madden it still sucks there and they've had 25 years and umpteen hundreds of programmers working on Madden. I hardly place blame on a small group of 6-7 who are making a stats only baseball game.

Basically you're stuck programming one of three ways for the AI to sign both players and coaches.

1. have AI go after and sign players immediately with the best available they can get at the end of the season. (this is the setting most sports games use, not just OOTP)
Pros- AI has a good chance of getting some good players before the human player can sign them all (under normal circumstances), Quality players spread around the league.
Cons- AI will routinely outspend itself because player demands are highest at the end of seasons. Easy for human player to exploit because human player can go after players the AI won't even look at since the AI is stuck on best available player and doesn't look at the FA pool as a whole nor looks at what type of secondary needs the team has.

2. Have all AI teams wait till the end of the off season to sign players and personnel
Pros- AI is less likely to overspend to get players which makes the overall financial structure of the game more stable.
Cons- Much much easier for the human player to take advantage of. One or two high budget AI teams will sign a significantly higher amount of quality players leading to a insurmountable deficit in quality from the top of a league to the bottom. Basically bottom tier team will never be able to make it back to the top.

3. Sign fully on a as need basis based on current rooster.
Pros - AI will never go after players it doesn't need. Harder for human player to exploit because AI will typically have more money. AI team will usually always have a good spread of players among all positions.
Cons- AI still goes after best available. AI will still overpay. AI rarely signs upgrades or futures for older players. High amount of quality players left in FA pool after signings are over (could potentially be a good thing if you have more than one lead fed from the same pool of players as more quality players will trickle down to lower leagues)

Those are the three main ways sports games cover signings. As you can see each has pros and cons. The same is true for all AI decisions each way of programing the AI has pros and cons. And we as players WILL ALWAYS latch onto the cons and run with them. Sometimes the cons can be minimized or even eliminated but sometimes they can't. Again look at all the problems games like Madden still have. Many of the same things that plagued Madden 10 years ago still have issues today and again they have 10xs the programmers and 1000000x the budget.

If the devs wanted to they could program the AI to make it so elite a human player would barely stand a chance.

Back on the signing players and coaches thing. IMO the best way for OOTP or any sports game to sign FAs would be to try an mimic real life. Obviously the best players go first and usually the top contracts are considered to be overblown but contracts quickly fall back to reasonable levels after the top 1% of players are signed. (OOTP tries to do this, I think, but it runs into trouble because every AI team is going after every player at the same time not spread out like IRL). Player demands wouldn't be the starting point for contracts. Player demands would be pretty close to the signing point or close to the point where a contract becomes toxic. Contracts wouldn't be able to be backloaded to extremes. In past madden games they curbed the backloaded contract exploit by coding into the game no more then a ?22%? (I think) raise from year to year. (I vaguely remember it being a sliding scale based on the first years salary but 22% was I think the largest year to year margin you could have). The FA signing period would be more drawn out. As it is in the game the first week-two weeks is a mad dash and then signing is down to nothing. If signing was more drawn out it wouldn't really help the AI any but it would be a bit more realistic. AI would take more consideration into what it actually needed. If a team (minors included) had a glut of quality players at a position they shouldn't be going after high priced FAs. The same goes for if a team has an aging high end player they should be going after reasonable younger players of that position for the future. If the team has a 5 star player at a position locked into a long contract they shouldn't be going after another high end player as a backup. They should be looking at 2.5-3 star guys as backups. Or properly evaluating their minors and bringing someone up. Then replacing that guy lower down the FA list. Overall the AI in normal conditions should want to play moneyball (i.e. best value not best available) with modifiers based on budget, current payroll, short term needs, long term needs, etc moving the scale up or down as to how free wheeling the AI is with money.

I could go on but this post is already way to long. Anyway OOTP isn't perfect but it isn't horrible either. It's actually pretty good. their are flaws here and there but that's with all games. And I can say from personal knowledge the devs here are WAY WAY more receptive to comments and criticism then most.

Again (I'm almost done really), the financial aspects of a game are hardest to program. I'm sure the devs could completely rework the financials to make them work better BUT all that time would come at a overall cost. Would you buy OOTP17 if it was the exact same as OOTP16 but with better financials? Remember everything else is the same and oh yeah they didn't have time to update rosters either.

In the end no game is perfect and the way some people are acting currently on the forums it's either pile of garbage or rose tinted glasses. This game is neither it's right where it should be for a game of it's type. It's the best baseball sim on the market by a long shot and we even as players should want nothing more then to keep it that way. Petty back and forth does nothing to further the game.

nice read.

I've always thought a variable that take into account players hometown/college/previous MLB stints vs offers.

Allow a small home team advantage if say the guy grew up in Georgia, played BB at Alabama and the Braves and Yankees made offers. Yankees would have to bring way more real $'s into the contract.

Having said that I would think prestige of the MLB clubs should be included. I think it is in that a level 2 league dont usually sign Alex Rodriguez types. Could just be a $ thing.