[Déjà Bru]

Well, I toured this thread and I feel good about paying up front for this version. There are a couple of points I would like to support by reiteration.

I agree with Eugene on this, although perhaps not to the extent of his emphases; news in particular is a big factor in immersion for me:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

First of all, I dearly love OOTPB... OOTP18 is a superb game.

Having said that, I would like to know if any work was done to improve the News and PBP for OOTP19?

The game recaps really need some work on them... they are poorly designed and poorly written... with very little variety... they need to be rewritten and expanded, so they don't repeat so much.

The PBP is really good when pstrickert is in control... but Markus' hard code really needs to be edited.

Markus, let pstrickert edited the Hard Code, too.

Markus is a great programmer, but he comes up short as a writer, at least on the News and PBP.

I get the feeling that he wrote the game recaps.

Come on, Markus... give us well-written News and well-written PBP.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

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.

I agree with The Game as to his concern for this; I appreciate Lukas' response; and I support Jamee999's suggestion given 1) the arrangement in 18 had to be changed to the way it is in 19, and 2) it's not too late to make another change but I fear it is. This awards thing has been great for immersion; please don't let it slide away:

Originally Posted by The Game

In the screenshot the awards are now on the left side going diagonally along the seam next to the profile picture.
1. what will it look like when there are many awards and will the old Icons mod work with 19? And if so where will those icons be?

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

The award icons are a bit tricky. if a player has a million of them, then they will run behind the player picture.

There's not much we can do, other than maybe reduce the size of the icons if a player has more than 20 of them or so....

As far as old mods, afaik they should still work, but they'll display in the same place the default award icons do in 19.

Originally Posted by Jamee999

I probably would prefer if the display showed like "7x [glove icon]" or "3x [MVP icon]" rather than awkwardly shoving in more and more little pictures.