Originally Posted by RubeBaker
I have been an OOTP customer since 2013. Prior to that I was playing Diamond Mind Baseball for almost twenty years. I briefly dabbled in playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball's computer game which was fun as was Diamond Mind, but they were mostly made for replaying seasons. What I wanted to do was play seasons. Be the manager. Be the GM. And, finally, there was a computer game on the market which provided that: Out of the Park Baseball.
In the last 9 years, I have watched this game grow from a cult status to mainstream status. I watched the OOTP YouTube channel grow from a handful of basic tutorial videos to daily and weekly streaming of franchises, tutorials, and a partnership with Major League Baseball. You know you have officially made it when your baseball game is used on MLB Network as a tool for analyzing and predicting a season.
This community has also grown in the last nine years, not just here, but on platforms such as Discord, Podcasts, and Twitch where thousands, if not millions, of devoted gamers are participating in discussions and often help one another with basic strategy questions or troubleshooting. As someone who works frequently with IT, I am truly amazed at how quickly the OOTP team responds to bugs, crashes, and errors. I sincerely envy the quick turnaround time and can personally attest to how this team frequently goes above and beyond delivering world-class service to its customers.
However, it occurs to me that perusing the forums here in the past week, not to mention recent months, some of you do not share the same sentiments as I do. Let me just say that I do not think criticism is a bad thing. OOTP may have given us Perfect Team, but it is far from a perfect game. Yet I think the team is fully aware of that which is why they constantly strive year-in and year-out to make improvements on the game to get it as close to perfection as possible, fully realizing they will likely never reach total perfection. And I'm sure Markus and his team welcome constructive criticism as it will help them learn and reevaluate what's working and what's not working with regards to OOTP, FHM, etc.
Criticism is one thing; toxicity is another. I am disappointed and disheartened to read so many negative comments and personal attacks on the OOTP team and its community by some on these forums. It makes sense that you're frustrated with the delay of Perfect Team. I get it. It does not make sense that you take out your frustrations on good people, most of whom you do not know, who are dong the best they can to work on getting issues resolved or willing to help other members of the community. This is something I have witnessed on Discord, Twitch, and YouTube as well and I personally am sick of it.
Perfect Team will soon be here before we know it, and I'll miss Kris running the operation, but I'm rooting for Dishnet and confident he's going to do a fine job once everything gets up and running. I know it's difficult in these times to exercise patience, but there are far worse problems going on in this country and in this world right now than the delay of a video game or a feature within it. We have OOTP23 and I am grateful for that. I look forward to playing Perfect Team soon, but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy the hell out of running my franchise and testing out all of the new features.
To the OOTP Team, I would like to leave you with this that a friend of mine once told me, "Never let the negativity get to you. There are gonna be a lot of people you have to plow through, but as long you believe in yourself, that's all that matters." Thank you for listening.
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