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I agree with RD's post too—though I'd stress I still love playing the game and will continue to buy it every year.
My enthusiasm is just drained a little by where the developers' priorities seem to be (3D modeling, Perfect Team) and the relative stagnancy of the stuff I buy the game for: cavernously deep simulation of modern baseball.
The game feels a little bit too much like a random number generator. It doesn't give you enough information (deep statistical data, ways to slice and dice that data and "beat" the AI through statistical insight), much of the information that's there isn't actionable because of the way the simulation actually works (exit velocity is a surface stat you can't draw comparisons or conclusions from), and you don't have enough "levers" to pull to influence what happens in your gameworld.
RD mentioned the financial side, infrastructure and coaching investments, data analytics investments, and I agree with all that. Another example here: the complexity and nuance and expense of international scouting is reduced to a very rote set of interactions once a year.
The game also doesn't let you do enough to influence player development, convert players to new roles or positions, tweak their pitch mixes, have them work on a particular aspect of their game, etc. One of the things that kept me coming back to Football Manager (which has also stagnated) was guiding youth players through the system. In OOTP, I can do very little to "own" the success of a prospect or draft pick.
If you're playing GM only, as I do 90% of the time, you don't have enough say over what your managers and players do or how. You're their boss, but they can flatly decide to play the wrong way, and there's no negotiation involved; you can't argue or compromise with them. The game just has a set of sliders with some hard limits, and forcing player roles or lineup spots—or managing young pitchers' innings—is clunky. With 162+ games a year, it's strange that the middle ground between "micromanage literally everything" and "click continue and see where the dice land" isn't well-defined.
Trades still feel extremely game-y, with endless tweaking to find the perfect deal the robots will accept rather than fluid, back-and-forth negotiations with a halfway competent AI peer. Ditto contracts. This year saw some improvements in coaching and personnel, which was nice.
I love OOTP, always will, but I'm not in love with it right now.
Honestly, the thing that most excited me in this version was the windows on the rosters screen respecting your sort preference and scrollbar position properly for the first time ever. (The game still doesn't remember your scrollbar position on scouting reports, though!)
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