Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweed
I never understand why anyone wants to know under the hood stuff? The game tries to mimic reality not be a math problem to solve by running tests. The main reason I have no interest in online leagues, and I've tried them with other games, is some want to play baseball, football, basketball, etc. while others want to play "solve the game engine".
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There's a side of this where OOTP in particular, as opposed to games like MLB The Show or FIFA, is a stat-based game and it's good to know if the stat engine works out right. If it turned out, for instance, that holding runners caused runners to get thrown out 50% of the time, I'd be happy that these people took the time to "game" the system like this so that the guys at OOTPDev could fix it. We've also had people run pretty heavy regression analysis to determine that fielding is potentially a really big deal, possibly a bigger deal than IRL in fact. One thing we haven't seen people do is come up with a setting that is more "right" (I don't think top level real-life CFs actually save 7-8 wins a season) but it's still a good data point to know, both when you're playing in leagues and when you're playing games by yourself. Even in "god mode", I like knowing that the probable reason why the Pilots and Royals are over-performing in my fictional/historical league in the year 1969 is that the AI for both teams went whole-hog into getting good-field no-hit players.
I personally don't super enjoy playing against people who are so locked in on powergaming that I have to do the same in order to compete. I also don't enjoy playing RPGs with people who do this; it's totally a "play your own way" thing, although I suspect that online leagues have that potential issue where a league with 25 owners who don't powergame and 3 guys who do will see those same 3 guys win every season. But aside from my personal preference for not playing with those folks, I'm not going to crap on these folks have fun with the game and I'm definitely grateful for the enhancements they've caused the game to make.
My one gripe I guess with those folks is that they get so locked into the stats that they refuse to accept that other explanations might be possible. This is exacerbated a bit by the fact that regression analysis is a thing that makes a lot more sense to do in a game like OOTP vs real life (basketball statistical analysis in particular has some really, really awful regression issues that makes some of the advanced stats less informative than the basic ones). But I've gotten into arguments with folks - there's a really great regression-analysis guru on Reddit - about whether or not, for instance, the "twice through the lineup" malus exists at all in OOTP. It's like, look, man, the devs say it's in there and have even spelled out how it works. You saying you see no evidence of that is most likely because you're not being creative enough in your regression, not that it's actually not there (not to go too deep into a rabbit hole but it's well known that this malus is only really given to two-pitch guys or maybe 3 pitch guys where the 3rd pitch is trash; guess who the AI will never, ever start or give multiple innings to under any circumstance?).