[greenOak]

After the latest patch released I started a new standard MLB game and simmed 200 years into the future (all settings are standard except league evolution which was turned off, scouting accuracy which I set to 100%, and all ratings are on the 20-80 scale). Here are my thoughts:

PROSPECT DEVELOPMENT

Prospect development is better but is still slower than IRL. Currently in 2224, there are 3 21 year olds on the opening day roster (all under 30 OVR), 15 22 year olds (only 4 are 40 OVR+), and 25 23 year olds most of whom actually appear ready for the MLB. The number of 21-22 year olds seems reasonable, but the vast majority of them do not seem MLB ready. Excluding relievers who seem to have naturally high ratings, there isn't a single 21 year old rated over 30, and only eight 22 year olds are rated 40+.

Looking at the HOF, the vast majority of game generated hall of famers broke into the league at 21-24, with a couple being older and a couple getting their start playing ~90 MLB games at age 20. I didn't see one guy who played a significant amount of time at 19. Obviously teenagers are rare in the MLB, but I would've expected to see a few. IRL, hall of famers show a much wider spread in terms of when they entered the league. You'll see guys who broke into the big leagues as teenagers and guys who didn't make the MLB until their mid to late 20's.

PLAYER AGING

With the default settings, players don't really have a chance at breaking a lot of records because they don't get to play enough games in their careers. Among non generated players, the average age at retirement of the top 10 batters in WAR is 41.2 years old (Mantle is the only guy under 40), and for the top 10 pitchers in WAR it's 42.8 years (Mathewson is the only guy under 40). Among generated players, those averages are and 38.9 and 40.5 respectively.

2686 was the most games played by any generated batter of which ranks 38th all time. Only seven generated batters were able to break the 2500 game mark, as opposed to the 68 non generated players. This (along with the current MLB environment), leads to things like not a single generated player reaching 3000 hits (top 3 are 2840, 2835, 2803), 2000 RBI (top 3 are 1969, 1792, 1777), or 1800 runs (top 3 are 1755, 1673, 1664).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Obviously some of these discrepancies can be remedied by mucking around with the development and aging settings, but in limited testing, slowing aging and/or speeding up development significantly increases the talent level in the league. Players may improve their ratings faster, but it's unlikely they'll reach the majors anytime sooner since the requisite level for playing in the MLB will increase. The default settings (in my opinion) do a very good job of maintaining a similar distribution of talent to the initial settings and fiddling with the messing around with development / aging settings messes this up. Which settings you use really depends on what is more important to you.

One of the core issues which I hinted at earlier, is that there is far less variance in aging curves in OOTP than in real life. OOTP doesn't really ever produce players who enter the league at 20/21 only to never to get better (eg. Delmon Young), or players who don't really figure things out until their 30's (eg. Jose Bautista). Instead every player has a fairly typical aging curve which for an average hall of famer looks something like break into the league at 22-23, peak at 26-28, remaining highly productive (if healthy) into their early 30's before not being good enough to play sometime in their late 30's.

There are plenty of other interesting things I noticed in this long term sim, but I don't want to clutter this thread with a bunch of largely unrelated observations.