Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweed
Which is why it is optional and you are free turn it off and continue on with how you've been playing. Hard mode in OOTP is not the "be all- end all" for trading AI that all sports games should copy. One can argue "realistic"/ "not realistic" but in the end it's code trying to close a loophole in trading that some users either wouldn't, couldn't, or maybe even shouldn't have to close on their own.
The new hard mode is not for everyone, and that is fine, but I don't think one can argue it hasn't accomplished it's objective. Curbing the fleecing of the AI and the posts complaining "I traded "X" for "Y" LOL, the trading in OOTP is broke". Sure you may very well be making fair offers and not intentionally fleecing the AI. That's cool, it's the way I've played for years along with probably the majority of users. Perhaps with the new AI advancements sports game AI can "learn" to make better evaluations and trades in real time? IDK. Probably more likely if AI becomes that good the computer will trade less than it does now on the hardest mode in OOTP 
The trouble in my eyes is, in the old system, the AI can't understand that the human is making an offer as an opener, so can't really respond accordingly. It doesn't see the CF as only opening a discussion that ends up with a LF taking his place. It just takes each offer "one at a time" and evaluates it as a new offer. While it's counter offers are set in stone. If you include any of the players on the list it provides the deal will be completed. The AI won't say "hey, instead of that 55/60 SP maybe you'll take this 45/50?". Hard mode along with "submit" sets the human's offer in stone, except you are at least allowed to renege.
As I said one can argue for a different trading module or suggest ways to make OOTP more realistic. I'm not holding my breath for actual "realism", ie no game has come up with a "true to life" trading module, at least none I know about. NBA games may come the closest because contract values have to match cutting down the ability to fleece the AI so easily. NFL probably second with the hard cap and a knowledge of how draft picks are valued. Even with that I don't think there is a NBA or NFL where the trading is much better than any other sports games. |
The underlying problem is that OOTP's strategy for player valuation is flawed. Essentially regardless of whether you're on hard or normal mode the strategy for building up a team mostly relies on objectively winning trades. In real life most of what teams do to gain value over other teams is get guys they value for certain attributes whom they think they can make better, and using player dev and analytics to get more out of these players. The OOTP coaching and development system is too barebones for this to reliably work and be an engaging system. All hard mode does is lower the rate at which you can build value over other teams, but it mostly functions the same way as normal mode.
The one aspect of hard mode that I'd like to see incorporated into normal mode is the emphasis on trade discussions taking multiple days and needing to overwhelm a team to get them to accept right away. It's silly how in normal mode you can pry franchise players at any point in time for fair market value, without any obvious bidding war type of dynamic at play. Hard mode still needs to work on improving AI opponents shopping their players around but what they have is an improvement.
Problem that I have comes down to the GM rep stuff and removing make this work now functionality without adding a good replacement. Especially on harder trading difficulty it isn't intuitive what players will be valued at what, which make this work now alleviates. And the default difficulty's still too easy.
Other problem is how they'll manage balancing and adding new features with two "official" difficulty modes, and making new features compatible with each.