Quote:
Originally Posted by David Watts
I haven't played OOTP as a sports management sim in over a decade. You couldn't pay me to buy this game to play the MLB quickstart. I've played fictional in the past, but probably wouldn't buy the game if that was my only option. I'm not disagreeing with you, but for me, OOTP is a lot closer to a DMB, Strat or ActionPC type game than it is a management sim. Of course, that's just me and based solely on how I play OOTP.. I also think you and Sid are selling OOTP short in terms of it's historical performance. If you eliminate stuff like development, coaching, storylines, moods and personalities OOTP can perform nicely as a replay game That being said, folks fire up hitorical and sometimes they can't even tell you if they are using recalc, what recalc they're using, if they have the development engine on etc. Playing the game with 3 or 5 year recalc, definitely turns the game into more of a whatif based heavily on reality than a replay game, but damn is it fun.
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Fair enough.
And I get that one of the great things about OOTP is that it is very flexible, allowing for many different ways of playing the game and to personalize the experience.
But as you yourself indicated here, it does require that you do some fairly significant manipulation to the basic settings of the game to get it to perform more, let's say, Strat-O-Matic-like. Essentially it requires that you strip it of much of what is at the core of the game experience. And if that is the flavor you prefer, I'm all for that. You are clearly someone who has found ways to make the game/program work for your tastes and I have always found you to be a great communicator of the joy you receive from playing OOTP your way.
I would just argue that many of the people who lodge vehement criticisms of OOTP and back those up with comparisons to games like DMB, SOM, etc., are making an unfair and irrelevant comparison. Unlike you, they don't seem to get that OOTP is not a direct comparable, or competitor to, those games. In my estimation you have made a perfectly logical decision that many of the aspects of the game that make OOTP a sports management simulation game, that, from my perspective, make OOTP OOTP, aren't for you and you have found a sweet spot for playing the game in a way that emphasizes those portions of the game that are more directly comparable to these other games. But I think you completely are aware of the primary focus and intention of OOTP while deciding that you can do without a great deal of what that entails.
And I should say that I never intended to make any judgement on how well OOTP actually simulates historical statistical realities as I have no interest in playing OOTP in this manner. But I'm glad to hear that for those who do choose to it does a good job of that as well.
It does seem though like the evidence from many of the posts here in this forum that there are people who come to OOTP wanting it to be a more cost effective direct replacement for Strat or Diamond Mind, etc, and then get quickly very frustrated and negative and to my mind this is a matter of them having a misunderstanding of what OOTP is and while I don't mean to over-sell the argument that you can't play OOTP in a fashion that is similar to these other games (you obviously have found ways to do so) I just think we need to be more clear that at its core OOTP is not the same type of game those games are, even if you can customize it to get to much the same resulting game experience.