Quote:
Originally Posted by 32koufax
I've played the Strat computer game since the DOS version. The PBP is really hokey, IMO. Really repetitive stuff such as "There's Phil Rizzuto chomping on a piece of pizza. Boy, I'm getting hungry just watching him."
Or... "Look at Bill Veeck making those little guys happy by autographing their baseballs." The PBP is also very repetitious describing gameplay with routine plays often turning into a possible blunder by the fielder involved. I feel that OOTP PBP is much better. The real time out of town scoreboard blows STRAT away. OOTP game stories, despite some repetition are better than STRAT. This is the 1st time I'm NOT ordering Strat and the 1st time I pre-ordered OOTP. I got hooked on OOTP 17 after comparing the "game engines" of STRAT and OOTP. I only replay 1 historical season at a time and OOTP has produced amazing numbers. So much so, that it is the only game I play. From the league news screen to the real time out of town scoreboard screen, this game is awesome!!
Jack
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I want to state that I am overly interested in OOTPB News Stories and PBP and I realize that not everybody is concerned with them... they don't play out their games... they just sim... and they are probably the vast majority of the gamers and the most important customers... but I would still like to make the News and PBP as good as it can be for the gamers that play out their games.
The only solution to solving the overuse of quotes in the News and PBP is VARIETY... you need to have
MANY, MANY VARIATIONS, so that you don't see the same thing too often... the problem is that it is extremely time-consuming to create more variations.
It is also very important to limit the use of items that should only come up once in a blue moon... like the Phil Rizzuto comment you listed in SOM... comments like that should only come up once a year.
pstrickert does an absolutely great job on the PBP and has been at it for 10 years or so... but he can only do so much... a lot of the overused and repetitive phrases are in the HARD CODE, which is controlled by
Markus, who I greatly respect as a person and a computer programmer... OOTPB is the greatest baseball game ever created... I love it dearly... having said that I think Markus can improve the News and PBP... here is some constructive recommendation and suggestion: I know from being on the Beta Team that Markus is not bothered by overuse of repetitive phrases... the News Team and PBP Team made corrections to the Hard Code way back in 2006, but Markus didn't act on it and revise the Hard Code... at that time only Markus had access to the Hard Code.
At that time Markus had very few variations for the final game wrapup... maybe 5 at most... he always described a rout this way: "St. Louis destroyed New York 13-5"... I sent him 20 different ways to describe a rout... "drubbed, routed, demolished, trounced, torched, slaughtered, clobbered, stomped, bashed, battered"... it took him almost 10 years to add some additional variations... I would be willing to bet there are still only about 10 ways to describe a runaway game, when there should be 30 or so.
Although I will say Markus has worked on the Hard Code since then... I see much improvement... but the Hard Code still need to be edited and improved... a good example is a line out to the pitcher... I see it way, way too often described this way;
"Liner back to Maddux... GOOD REACTION !!!"
Another example of lack of variety: OOTP3 had only five shutout stories in the News... what this means is EACH SHUTOUT STORY WOULD BE USED EVERY FIFTH TIME THERE WAS A SHUTOUT... Markus was satisfied with that because he just programmed to add Shutout stories to the News... he does that for all of the News categories... then its up to someone like pstrickert or the Beta Team to expand the PBP and News, to refine them and make it so they are not repetitive to the point of ad nauseam.
With the help of several other 2006 Beta Team members, many variations were added to all of the News Stories and PBP.
In the case of the News about 150 shutout variations were added for OOTP2006... that meant an individual shutout story would appear only once every 150 shutouts...
sadly with the creations of the game recaps... repetition and redundancy have returned to the game... the game recaps are poorly designed and are in drastic need of revision.