Suggestions for future patches/updates:

[TLBOrioles]

Some of these have probably been beaten to death in other threads, but I felt like posting something with all the little things about OOTP5 that I think could be improved. Some are bugs, some are just little details that could be improved. If you think I'm off my rocker, well, ok.

Disclaimer: Before I take a beating for being a whiner, personally attacking Markus, hating OOTP, or whatever: yes, I think OOTP5 is a great game, yes I play it a lot, yes it's better than OOTP4, yes, it's the best baseball sim in the world, but there is still room for improvement.

1) Trade AI needs to place a higher value on prospects who are already well-developed. A four-star or five-star guy who's already got major league capable ratings comes way too cheap it seems.

2) Trade AI needs to NEVER accept players who have no value in deals. The computer should laugh at me when I throw in a 1-star 5 million dollar player.

3) Fix the trade AI "we need a pitcher" bug that Martin mentioned--I think Markus is already on this.

4) Player development still seems to produce too few early debut players (players debuting 18-21 historically seemed to make up about 12% of the major league population...in my experience running leagues the figure is more like 2-4%).

5) In the Blue skin that comes with the game, the Teach position popup selector for spring training is white on sky blue. This is almost completely unreadable.

6) Superstar players should not take a year off. If nobody signs them they should continually drop their prices, to minor league status if necessary. I've never heard of the reigning Cy Young or MVP going unsigned in the real world. This problem arises because the computer aggressively resigns its own mediocre players at the expense of signing stars in FA.

7) Many of the computer generated catchers who also play other positions (I've seen LF, 3B, 1B) have no arm rating. The fact that these players exist is a great touch, but they're fairly useless as catchers.

8) There's a bug I've described with players generating a "-" rating at a position they're learning in the minors. When it happens that player for no reason becomes a 5-star player and demands 10 million dollars a year, can be traded for the best players in the league, etc.

9) Bring back the possible free agents. Yes, I love the stuff that's been added to the page, but please, is there ANYWHERE we can sneak this in?

10) I prefer buttons to pull-down menus wherever possible. Is there any way to expand on the customizability of skins, so that people can write their own button-based skins?

11) Please make more sorts sticky. Yes, some of them got sticky in OOTP5. Most of them still aren't. Barring that, can the default sort be made something more useful? In many cases it shows counterintuitive data, like placing the worst rated hitters at the top of a sort.

12) There seem to be a lot of doubles. After a few decades of simming, I have dozens of people breaking the career record for doubles. I think this may be a long-term statistical realism issue, but I haven't heard anyone else complaining. Thoughts?

13) There's not enough variance in BATTER strikeout totals. Even with Brilliant/10 in avoiding K's, batters are striking out 50-80 times a year in my fictional leagues. There should be some hitters who don't strike out often.

14) The news stories could use more variance. It's not that they're awful now, it's just that I've been reading them since OOTP3. I'd be happy to write 1000 little sentences that could be thrown into the generator, and so would dozens of other people, I'm sure.

15) Using the find player by ratings option from the league/advanced menu finds ratings that are not the ratings you're scouting. I feel that I'm cheating when I'm playing in manager mode, because there's no way for me to quickly search for players by rating and still see what my scouts see.

16) Pitchers who are 26-27 still seem to develop somewhat in the minors, as they did in OOTP4. But, when they turn 26, the AI immediately declares them worthless. I feel like the AI should still attach SOME value to such players. Right now they'll give me 5 of them for nothing.

17) When you try to negotiate with a player who's in an arbitration year, and can't agree with him, he says he's going to test the free agent market. At this point I'm inclined to respond "the hell you are, buddy!" Would be a nice touch if the player could instead say something like "Let's let the arbitrator settle this, then."

18) In coach/scout signing, if you offer someone 200,000 for 6 years, they will sign with you every time--or at least every time I've tried it. They prefer this to something like 1million/3 years, which seems kinda inexplicable.

19) I'd like to see more players at least throw out a figure, even if it's ridiculous, when it's time to resign them. "Let me hear an offer" is pretty vague.

20) When resigning, if you type in a number that's wildly out of range (I'm thinking Dr. Evil's one BILLION dollars), that offer should be disregarded. As is, once you type that in, the player will not let you back off it.

21) When resigning, I should be able to change BOTH the length and the dollar value of the contract before the player considers it a new offer and counts it against me in terms of his anger level with me.

22) In play-by-play, some things need to be sanity checked. Players don't go back, back, back, to grab a ball off their shoetops. In general, not every play is a spectacular achievement in fielding. Sometimes, players just ground out to the shortstop. It's ok if most of the plays just say that.

23) The game still doesn't know what to do with Babe Ruth, or anybody else who can pitch and hit. Is it just impossible codewise to let the game see that some pitchers can hit?

24) There seem to be lots of triples in play by play mode. I don't have the tenacity to play 5000 games in a row to have a good sample size, but there seem to be other people feeling this way too.

25) The AI makes hyper-aggressive defensive substitutions that sometimes result in things like having nobody to catch, players playing out of position, no pinch hitters left, etc. The computer needs to check its substitutions and not empty its bench wildly in a one-run ballgame.

26) Any way to get cash included in trades? This might open up some flexibility in dealing with a mix of different market sizes.

That'll do for now I guess, but I reserve the right to add more :)

[Bee]

I agree with everything except 19. I like the fact some players don't give you any idea of what kind of contract they want.

Something else I'd like to see more would be prospects "busting". I don't think it happens enough in the game.

Edit:

BTW, Very good post. It's nice to see a lot of these issues captured in one place. Good job. I'm sure Markus and the gang appreciate it.

[Wildcard88]

The squeaky wheel may get the grease but that does not mean there is always enough grease to go around.

Without knowing programming, I imagine some of these issues are a bit more difficult than just throwing it into another patch/update.

I would prefer that the developers work on straight out bugs rather than fine tune things that some people disagree with. I figure it is up to the developers to determine what they feel are those bugs.

[TLBOrioles]

Why have a forum then, Wildcard?

[Wildcard88]

Originally posted by Bee
I agree with everything except 19. I like the fact some players don't give you any idea of what kind of contract they want.

Something else I'd like to see more would be prospects "busting". I don't think it happens enough in the game.

I would tend to agree with this poster on point 19. Why should the players always throw you a bone come contract time? Part of the skill of negotiating is figuring out their market value and what they might truly want. The players want to see if you know what you are doing. I think it is fair that they put the ball in your court first, after all, you are the one desiring their services.

[TLBOrioles]

I just don't think contract negotiation that doesn't involve at least one proposal from both sides is realistic. Quite frequently you'll hear in the real-world press "Blablala player wants 15 million for 3 years, but management wont budge from their 10 million/4 year offer."

I've never heard "Management offered 10 million/4 years, then the player and his agent, deeply offended by management's lack of psychic ability, stormed out of the room chanting "Had your chance, had your chance!"

[William4192]

I think trading cash would be great to add in deals.

[Wildcard88]

Originally posted by TLBOrioles
Why have a forum then, Wildcard?

I didn't say it would not get answered at all. I just think realistic expectations have to be equated for.

You post 26 separate points. An old adage of giving speeches is, 'Don't lose your audience'. Your audience is the other players of OOTP and the developers. A list of 26 points, in my opinion, is a good way to lose them. It looks overly critical, even if the intention is not there to not be overly critical. Things are best addressed if a couple of hot button topics are brought up and supported by multiple folks.

I'm not saying they are bad points, well, except for maybe #19.

The forum is definitely a good thing as long as it is not abused.

[Bee]

Originally posted by TLBOrioles
I just don't think contract negotiation that doesn't involve at least one proposal from both sides is realistic. Quite frequently you'll hear in the real-world press "Blablala player wants 15 million for 3 years, but management wont budge from their 10 million/4 year offer."

I've never heard "Management offered 10 million/4 years, then the player and his agent, deeply offended by management's lack of psychic ability, stormed out of the room chanting "Had your chance, had your chance!"

I wouldn't mind seeing the player come back with a counter offer, but I don't think it's right for the player to let his demands be known initially every time.

[Maple Leafs]

Nice list. I'd like to add a few:

- Please, please add an option for me to let the game know what types of e-mails I want to be interupted for. I hate having the sim stop to tell me about an e-mail, saving the game, going to the game screen just to see that the backup catcher wants an extension. The "notify me about milestones" feature is done right... I can check off all the ones I want to know about. Please do the same for e-mails. Have a list ("extension request", "scouting director", "marketing guy", "player ready to come off DL", etc.) and let me choose which ones I want to hear about.

- There's still a glitch with using the 'Finish All Days" button in free agency. The game won't alert you to trade offers until after Day 30, at which point most of them have expired. Ideally, it should tell me I have an offer and ask if I want to see it. As it is, it's not worth the risk of missing an offer, so the "finish all days" button is useless.

- I'd really like to be able to generate an auto-depth chart for just one position at a time. Maybe I want to know what the AI thinks I should do about RF, or maybe I have a guy back from injury and I'm too lazy to move him back to his spot four times, but it would be nice to be able to get the CPU to do it without resetting every other position

- It would also be nice be able to set my lineup once and then click a button to have that copied over to all four lineups. I don't do a lot of platooning, and it's a pain to have to redo the lineup for times. I'd rather do it once, then copy it across the board and tinker if necessary.

[Wildcard88]

Originally posted by TLBOrioles
I just don't think contract negotiation that doesn't involve at least one proposal from both sides is realistic. Quite frequently you'll hear in the real-world press "Blablala player wants 15 million for 3 years, but management wont budge from their 10 million/4 year offer."

I've never heard "Management offered 10 million/4 years, then the player and his agent, deeply offended by management's lack of psychic ability, stormed out of the room chanting "Had your chance, had your chance!"

Ah, but the point is, the GM makes the first offer in a lot of cases without knowing what the player wants. He does not sit in his office waiting for all his free agents to come in and say, "I'd like this amount for this many years." Part of being a GM is having a strong feel for what his player is worth. A player has every right and probably does say, "no, that offer is too low", without giving a figure. Why should he make it easy on you by saying, "Nah, I don't like that offer, he's what I really want, can you give it to me?" Some players truly want to know what you think about them and contract offers are a good way to do that.

[TLBOrioles]

Bee- Yes, my complaint is that frequently you can lose a player to FA without ever seeing a single number from them. I don't feel that's realistic. I don't have a problem with "Let's hear an offer," I just don't like that the response is sometimes "No. No. See you later."

Wildcard- I don't agree. I think one of the benefits of a forum is that you can consolidate a lot of ideas into one post so that people can read them all in one place. Hence, FAQ threads and the like. I'm not trying to give a speech. If people can't be bothered to read a long post, so be it. If the devs don't want the feedback, so be it. I'd rather make a post with a lot of value than 26 separate posts.

I'm not posting this with "unrealistic expectations." If none of those points are ever addressed, the game is still fun and playable. But if people care to hear my thoughts about how the game can be improved, there they are. If the dev team says, hey, there are some good ideas in there, or there are some bugs/flaws there that need to be addressed, great.

[TLBOrioles]

Maple - all great ideas.

[metsgeek]

I agree with nearly all of these.

Another feature I would like to see deals with adding new teams in Manager Mode.

Example: I started manager mode in 1986, and wanted to add expansion teams. I added Colorado and Florida, but was unable to set their ballparks....so they currently play in Old League Park. What's Colorado without Coors Field?? They also were created with default Front Office settings of 0 Fan Interest, no Television contracts, 0 $$....and I've been unable able to change them since I'm in Manager mode. The default settings should most likely be 10 Fan Interest, Television contracts that are average compared to other teams, and they should at least have some cash to start.

[RJolley]

10 Fan interest? Why expand there if the interest rates 10 out of 100? :-)

[DonD]

The single thing I'd like to see implemented is a 'Next Team / Previous Team' button on the individual team screens.

For example, when I look at my teams transaction screen, then I want to see what other teams have on their major / minor league rosters, I need to pick each team from the drop-down team listing. Sure, it's not a big deal, but it'd be much easier (and quicker) to add that button.

The same goes for the ratings screens (batting, pitching, general)..in fact all of the team-specific screens could use this addition.

- Don

[metsgeek]

Originally posted by RJolley
10 Fan interest? Why expand there if the interest rates 10 out of 100? :-)

Oops, that was a typo. I meant 50

[PotatoPeeler]

Originally posted by TLBOrioles
21) When resigning, I should be able to change BOTH the length and the dollar value of the contract before the player considers it a new offer and counts it against me in terms of his anger level with me.

I agree. This can be frustrating sometimes. You can always exit the offer screen and then go back in a try another offer but that is somewhat of a hassle.

[theoldman47]

I agree with you TLBOrioles......This is the place to put in your suggestions, no matter how many there are. Whether we all agree or not is immaterial. It is up to Marcus to decide if he wants to include them in updates based upon the responses and other posts.
By the way, I agree with every one of the suggestions on this thread, but also agree that it is highly unlikely they will all get done......at least not in the foreseeable future.
The game is great now. No reason it can't be greater still!
My biggest request is the same one others are making about manager mode. Would like to be able to change things after starting the mode. I think this is one of the most requesting items here in the forum.

Tim

[Captain Spaulding]

I think these are great suggestions. What programmers hate is stuff like "This game sucks". I think ideas on how to make a great game better are terrific. I didn't reallize you can't add new expansion teams in custom parks. That's going to bother me. I just learned that you can't put any team you don't manage into a custom stadium and that disapointed me. Anyway, I love OOTP 5, but I think it can be even better. One thing I'd like to see is the ability to make changes like that in the management mode.