This is interesting to see these different opinions on this topic.
I'm from Germany where Baseball is and probably will ever be a "third Class" sport (I'm sure you know what I mean) compared to soccer or Basketball.
In my hometown we have a German First League Team which won some german championships and international trophies. I play as 2. Baseman in their BBQ Softball Team.
On PC side right now I play different games and each of them has it's own style:
1. OOTP21
: I play OOTP since version 15, top of the notch game with it's MLB license and facegen (I love to have faces for all of my players even if they are not 100% accurate). But also a depth which can be overwhelming and frustrate from time to time. Although you can completely ignore it (which I will) I dislike the PT way because I hate games with microtransactions and I'm afraid that these part will become bigger in upcoming OOTP versions.
2. Baseball Mogul 2020
: I started with BBM with version 15. Much easier to get into and to play faster, also to take it a way on a small USB stick. But it lacks support (forum almost dead) and I dislike the many missing player pictures.
3. Action! PC Baseball 2020
: First time this year to step into APCB. Love the available mod files so far and it's easy way of modding data. I really try to dig into it at the moment.
4. Strat-O-Matic 2020
: Downloaded 2 days ago after taking a really long thought about it. I LOVE board games in all kind of ways and the idea to combine baseball with real stats and dice was so interesting I had to give it a go. The SOM board game i completely unknown and unavailable in Germany, so I also bought the Strato-O-Matic Fanatics Kindle eBook to get a feeling for the game history. On thing I really dislike is the price structure. I bought SOM2020, the HOF2020 roster and the Hi-Res Stadiums and it costs 3 times of OOTP21.
I'm really interesting in seeing which way will be the path I choose for the future, because from sight of costs I definite will have to leave half of the products behind me for future versions
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Hellenstone