possible bug in amateur draft player creation TT-2332

[Zeyes]

I'd previously mentioned this in General when I was about half-way done checking into this issue, but I think Tech Support is the better place for it, so here goes...

The Game Guide says the following about player ratings at the time they're created for the draft:

Originally Posted by page 94

A separate, complex formula calculates the current ratings for amateurs by assessing a number of factors, including player creation modifiers, the age of the player, whether he is coming out of high school or college, and a certain "inexperience factor". Additionally, the major league equivalencies of the lowest minor league within the league system are applied to the player's ratings as well.. This complex formula helps the game decide how far along each rookie is in his development toward his potential, and it helps to ensure that most rookies are at least 2 to 5 years away from being ready for the big leagues.

Based on that, I tried to set up a league with a single minor league that had its equivalencies set only slightly below those of the ML, hoping that players created in the draft would be much closer to being Major League-ready. (Essentially I was trying to create something like an indy league that has open tryouts, where even the better players are much closer to their potential ratings than a typical draftee.)

Unfortunately that didn't seem to work, and as I had set minor-league free agency to 3 years, even the most talented guys failed to reach the majors with their original club. (And in fact, failed to even be signed by anybody else afterwards, in some cases.) And after simulating some different scenarios, it appears that the minor league MLEs in fact aren't used for the draft at all, which is disappointing. Now, I'm wondering whether that just means the Game Guide got it wrong, or if the Guide is correct and it's not working as intended.

At any rate, see the attached spreadsheet for the results of my study. I simulated 16-team leagues with a 20-round draft (i.e. 320 players total), with four different setups:

AAA: Major League + AAA level
R: Major League + R Level
All: Major League + all five minor levels
Res: Major League only

All PCMs, MLEs and Development/Aging parameters were the defaults. I then sorted the created players by each skill, and calculated an average of each skill level for the best 10%, best 20%, best 50%, and all players. (I was sort-of expecting that having only a high-level minor league might boost the top prospects but not the scrubs, hence this approach.) This was done three times for each setup. The ratings listed in the spreadsheet are based on 1-20 rating scales.

There's definitely a lot of variation in the created draft classes even with identical league setups, but overall it appears that the draft classes were all created based on identical parameters, i.e. the Major League settings only.

I realize that I can boost the player skill progression by increasing the Development Speed settings, and that's probably what I'm going to try next, but Seviien's research (Thread 1, Thread 2) seems to indicate that even doing that might not result in enough of a speed-up in player development.

[Zeyes]

Since somebody just reminded me of this thread...bump!

[MadMax58]

Double bump.

Thanks,
Somebody

[Zeyes]

One more bump...I'd really appreciate an official response on this, even if it's just to tell me that it's working as designed.

[Dark Horse]

Sorry for not responding earlier.

The testers have been discussing this.

This is what we've come up with:

i'm pretty sure this is the old confusion of what each of those modifiers do.

i think if you have "minor league" that is affiliated with a parent league. The new players are created based on the level of the parent league. So it doesn't matter whether the lowest "minor league" is a Rookie League or a AAA League the players still come in the same way.

Now if you create a separate/independent minor league. The new players are then created based on the level at which the minor league is set. And that affects mostly potentials which cap how good can theoretically get. If you create a separate AAA league, the players are gonna' be slightly worse that players in a Major League. Players in a AA league will be slighly worse than players in the AAA. And so on and so on.

But i don't think there is a way to manipulate OOTP to create "major league ready" players

.

We are still waiting for confirmation on this. But either this is a bug or the game guide needs to be edited.

[endgame]

TT'd #2332

[BPS]

i'm pretty sure this is the old confusion of what each of those modifiers do.

No "confusion" exists. Rather, "a lack of information" exists.

Why can't anyone just ask Markus how these things work?

But either this is a bug or the game guide needs to be edited.

Even if no bug exists the game guide fails to provide much help in using these modifiers. It appears that even the game's greatest supporters have just given up on trying to figure these things out but you can't create a multiple country/league universe without knowing how these modifiers work.

Why can't anyone just ask Markus how these things work?

[Carplos]

We are still waiting for confirmation on this. But either this is a bug or the game guide needs to be edited.

This is possibly the first time I've ever hoped for a bug. So it can be fixed. One of the few downers left for me as far as league setup go.

Adjusting player development speed is a decent workaround... except it's universe wide, rather than league specific. Still won't allow you to have major league ready drafts, of course. And it makes players peaks come way early if you put it too high...

...well, it works for my *** where I want the players to make it a bit quicker from the one minor league to the major league.

[endgame]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

One more bump...I'd really appreciate an official response on this, even if it's just to tell me that it's working as designed.

Zeyes, the official response is "This only applies to the inaugural draft. The amateur draft is adjusted so that players take the right amount of time to develop..." (Markus)

[Carplos]

But shouldn't the "right amount of time" be based on your league setup... not a default major league setup?

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by endgame

Zeyes, the official response is "This only applies to the inaugural draft. The amateur draft is adjusted so that players take the right amount of time to develop..." (Markus)

Many thanks, Dark Horse & endgame.

I do still have one possible issue with this, though. From DH's quote of the testers' comments:

Now if you create a separate/independent minor league. The new players are then created based on the level at which the minor league is set. And that affects mostly potentials which cap how good can theoretically get.

That's certainly true in the absolute sense - if the league is set to .500 equivalencies, top prospects will get potentials of ~10 instead of 20 (ratings scale of 1-20), and current ratings of e.g. 3 instead of 6, so [potential minus current] is much smaller for the low-equivalency league.

However (and I'm really entering purely anecdotal evidence territory here, unfortunately), even that didn't seem to have much of an effect on the development time. My indy-style test league that I mentioned earlier had equivalencies set around .700 or .750 (I don't remember exactly), and most of the top prospects still seemed to take at least 5 years before they became productive ML players.

Basically, I'm left to wonder: Do the equivalencies affect the absolute development rate? Hmm, that question sounds confusing even to me, so here's an example:

1.000 Equivalency league, a created prospect has current rating of 4, and a potential of 18, so he's got to "develop 14 points" worth until he's maxed out.

Now, the same "type" of player in a .500 league would start with a rating of 2, and a potential of 9, for a development differential of 7 points. Everything is scaled down by half, but the player would still rank the same, relatively to the rest of the league.

Now the question: If you take an average of all such players, would this player type reach his maximum ratings much faster in the .500 league (in half the time, or something close), or would it take the same amount of time in both setups?

Maybe I just got unlucky in my anecdotal case, but it certainly seemed like the latter to me. I hope I'm wrong.

[Carplos]

bump.

Really hard to develop non-major leagues without using minors (and deep minors at that...) since this doesn't work as advertised. Increasing development speed works fine for single-league universes, but once you start adding more leagues, you can't really use that...

Hopefully there's some type of solution possible...

Just seems a bit silly to allow us to alter player generation to our heart's content... but then force us to have players start at lower-minor levels in future years. If I wanted a league where players have to develop through 3+ levels of minors, I would create a league with 3+ levels...

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Dark Horse

Sorry for not responding earlier.

The testers have been discussing this.

This is what we've come up with:

.

We are still waiting for confirmation on this. But either this is a bug or the game guide needs to be edited.

That's spot on...

[Carplos]

So we're stuck not being able to manipulate rookie generation at all? (Other than restricting their potential using PCM/MLEs...)

[TC Dale]

Moved to logged issues, and status is reviewed but no new changes at this time.

[andymac]

bump.

From my understanding when creating a player for the amateur draft, the game is using some sort of default modifier to decide the current ratings of the incoming players. According to the guide, as well as the way it seems most would like to see it work, instead of using this default modifier the game should use the lowest minor league MLE's.

So, when creating an amateur player instead of the basic forumula being:

Originally Posted by Zeyes

(Some OOTP default level) * (Major League PCMs) * (Major League MLEs), basically.

It should be.

(Lowest Minor League MLE) * (Major League PCMs) * (Major League MLEs), basically.

Is this still being discussed or is there any update on the thought process regarding these features that you can give us?