[Syd Thrift]

So... one way of looking at this is that this is a game that people commonly sink hundreds of hours into per version. Even if you haven’t, you’ve likely sunk that much time into the game as a whole. I feel like OOTPD tries to make incremental, shoring-up style fixes every year but just playing the game a lot will cause you to find brand new ways of cheesing the AI. To some extent this can’t be resolved. The Paradox games have exactly the same issue, as do a number of war games people sink lots of hours into (the AGEOD series, for instance, is wonderfully complex but the AI can’t keep up with you eventually).

I don’t like games that handle this by just giving the AI more stuff, which is what EU4 and for that matter the Civilization series do, but by and large that’s how it gets handled nowadays.

I do think that controlling the flow of information works a lot better. I can tell you that playing stats only, for example, makes drafting in particular a loooooot harder. I know the argument against this is that scouts exist in real life and give you ratings but even there I think those ratings are way, way, way more predicated on what they actually see on the field (and which therefore directly translates into stats) than people realize or accept. My big issue with scouting is that scouts should be more resistant to update their opinions on players than the stat line might indicate, not less, as is the case right now. I do feel like doing that would make the AI weaker, not stronger, as it’d be operating on assumptions that the guy you’re trading away who just fell off a cliff is still potentially a good hitter, for example.

Again, I think the “bad boy points” thing would at least be a way of preventing wholesale cheese. There are GMs who do call up other guys and offer them dumb trades. Over time, those GMs get hung up on. I believe Jim Bowden was a prime example of this from what I heard. If you don’t come to the table initially with a reasonable offer, the other guy not dealing with you, period, should be a thing. Yet, the trade screen is kind of built around you adding and removing parts until the GM will accept the lowest offer.

As for in-game tanking, again I don’t think you really have to right now but I think, too, that if you wanted to make the game more realistic you could have something like “bad boy points” that make it easier for you to get fired and then harder to get rehired by someone else. You want to run a 4 man rotation in the modern era? Okay but it’s going to cost you points. As long as you’re winning, the owner might ignore this (maybe not as much if he has a Hands-On style) but if you’re deliberately losing by overworking your pitching staff in unreasonable ways or doing something else that’s way against the grain for the time period, you probably won’t even last the season.

Also, players being used in wonky ways should blame you if they aren’t putting together “money” stats, which they already do to some extent but which could be heightened if you’re breaking rules. Like, if you’re an established modern starter and your manager comes in and tells you you’ll now be pitching every 4th game with no bullpen support, how likely are you to just accept that? At the very least when it comes time to look for a new deal you’re probably going to tell your GM to shove it, and in extreme circumstances you might even quit the team / retire abruptly.