Talent Changes

[tcblcommish]

This is something that has frustrated me from 2006 becuase I was always getting hit with drops and few ups.

In my fictional league, I have played 3 seasons. 2007, 2008 and 2009. Here is what has happened.

In 2007, 44 total talent changes. 29 have gone down including my 1st, 2nd and 3rd round selections. Overall, all of the 'good' talent changes have been on crappy players that will never see any time in the majors even after they got a little better. However, I had 1 5 star prospect become a 1 star, 2 4 star prospects become 1's and numerous 3 star guys become 1's. This wiped out all of my talent in the minors completely.

In 2008, 36 total talent changes. 27 were bad talent changes including my 1st rounder, 2nd rounder, 4th rounder and 6th rounder. All solid prospects that are now trash. I did have one guy that went from being a 1 star to a 2 star and that was the only good change that I had. Everyone else, again was crap before and after.

In 2009, 21 total talent changes. (not finished the year yet) 18 were bad. Very bad. Once again, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th drafted all became crap. None of the guys that got ups are any good after the change and I lost EVERY decent prospect. I have 2 2 star guys left in the minors.

Now I ask, what the heck is going on? Am I the only one that is having this problem? I am going to have to turn this off if I can never get anyone that can be any good. I am tired of losing all of my players to talent drops.

If these player that got talent drops were players that were playing over their heads and getting killed daily in their respective levels, I could see some of this. However, most of the guys are where they should be. Very few are having bad years and I even had a guy hit .322 with 48 homers in the majors and the damn game said he was struggling at the plate.

Could someone PLEASE help me.

[CaLíKrAzY]

Are scouts on or off?

[John]

That seems reasonable to me. In RL, what percentage of 1, 2, 3rd round players live up to their initial hype? Not every one turns into a Hall of Famer... many never even get that first cup of coffee.

[RonCo]

The development engine is strongly negative. I've had conversation with Markus about this in the past, and will probably have more in the future. But your data is in line with expected performance of the current OOTP engine.

[zukes]

Yep, it's frustrating, but it's how it is in real life. Why do you think the baseball draft is as long as it is? No other sport's draft is as big a crapshoot as the MLB draft.

[injury log]

I find the new development engine one of the biggest improvements in '07- in '06 it seemed like good prospects were almost sure things, which I didn't find realistic. I also get a lot of negative talent reports. I wonder whether the prospects you're drafting are high risk? I started a thread a while back about prospect risk and reward (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...php?p=2206748), and I think you're more likely to see talent hits with high risk prospects. From the discussion, those would be:

-very young prospects, and normally high school draftees;
-prospects whose current overall ability is very far from their projected potential.

I'd add, if your scouts don't agree on someone's potential, then one of them is probably being overly optimistic. Player personality (Work Ethic in particular) can play a role in development, as can coaching if you have that on, so there may be other factors at work besides the development engine.

[CaLíKrAzY]

I just had a guy get a talent bump then 13 days later gets caught in the talent drop tornado. He had no injuries at the time.

So I'm with you it's pretty frustrating and also pretty random.

[statfreak]

Originally Posted by RonCo

The development engine is strongly negative. I've had conversation with Markus about this in the past, and will probably have more in the future. But your data is in line with expected performance of the current OOTP engine.

there should be some balance between realism and making the game enjoyable. It has been too frustrating to continue playing solo leagues and I was almost at the point of quitting the online league I am in because all my top picks recently had talent drops between 3 and 4 points (on a 10 point scale). I'd rather see 1 or 2 point drops over the course of a couple seasons than BOOM!, a 4 point drop in one offseason. If it were just one or two players, fine, but it happened to 5 players in one offseason.

[Curtis]

I got limited response to my own thread on talent changes, so I'm going to try piggy-backing on this one.

Does anyone have an idea how often talent changes take place? I'd like to adjust the frequency so it averages once a year per player, but until I know what the starting frequency is I won't know how much to adjust by. In my own thread I was informed that younger players get more frequent changes (but not how much more frequent). I was also advised to find out for myself by simming, but my computer, which misses the supposed minimum requirements to play this game by a wide margin, will not sim.

On the thread orininator's issue, I have a question: Do you have the box checked that reports all talent changes, or are you only getting a fraction of them? Eighty talent changes in two years doesn't seem like much, but I suppose that would depend on whether you have a 25 man organization or a 200 man. Regardless, if you're not being notified of all changes that may have an effect on your up/down proportions.

[rasnell]

RonCo did the most extensive testing of anyone on the beta team, with phenomenal details and charts of aging, progression, talent changes.

OOTP 2007 is the closest to the real thing of anything on the market in these areas. Now you know how frustrated GMs and Owners really are. How about Cashman and Steinbrenner, knowing they bought the best that money could get you?

[statfreak]

Originally Posted by rasnell

RonCo did the most extensive testing of anyone on the beta team, with phenomenal details and charts of aging, progression, talent changes.

OOTP 2007 is the closest to the real thing of anything on the market in these areas. Now you know how frustrated GMs and Owners really are. How about Cashman and Steinbrenner, knowing they bought the best that money could get you?

again, I'm going to call for a balance between realism and a fun gaming experience. I think everyone will agree that realism does not always equal fun in a game.

I should have mentioned none of the players with huge talent drops (seemingly 30 to 40% reductions) suffered any injuries. It was just like "hey, I'm an 8 yesterday and now I'm a 4". It would be nicer and less frustrating if the players in question dropped 10 to 20% gradually over the course of a couple seasons.

[tcblcommish]

Originally Posted by CaLíKrAzY

Are scouts on or off?

Scouts are on

Originally Posted by John

That seems reasonable to me. In RL, what percentage of 1, 2, 3rd round players live up to their initial hype? Not every one turns into a Hall of Famer... many never even get that first cup of coffee.

I do agree that not everyone should be a hall of famer and that things should be a little tougher to determine who will become good and not but I do have a full minor league. 3 levels all with 25 players and I have nothing in the minors. Everytime i get decent players in the minors, they get talent losses. Every guy that I have becomes crap. The Expos built team upon team with good solid drafting. Lots of players go through organizations and are still good. I don't think that there is any team in any baseball league that ALL of the minor league players are garbage and you need to look elsewhere to even have a shot at playing .500 ball.

This does seem wrong to me. I can see if there were some players that get pretty decent but not everyone should become wasted picks.

The part that also makes NO sense to me is that a lot of people that are getting hits like that are having decent years.

To me, this doesn't make sense.

[USN Squid]

Originally Posted by statfreak

again, I'm going to call for a balance between realism and a fun gaming experience. I think everyone will agree that realism does not always equal fun in a game.

I should have mentioned none of the players with huge talent drops (seemingly 30 to 40% reductions) suffered any injuries. It was just like "hey, I'm an 8 yesterday and now I'm a 4". It would be nicer and less frustrating if the players in question dropped 10 to 20% gradually over the course of a couple seasons.

You're right it would be much easier if big drops didn't hap

[tcblcommish]

Originally Posted by USN Squid

You're right it would be much easier if big drops didn't hap

good to see that in a serious discussion that this kind of sarcastic approach happens because this really helps things out a lot. No one here is saying that these things don't happen in real life. Obviously they do, there are numerous examples of this. However, there is also people that don't have this happen also.

[monte213]

Originally Posted by statfreak

again, I'm going to call for a balance between realism and a fun gaming experience. I think everyone will agree that realism does not always equal fun in a game.

Heh...and here I thought that OOTP's realism is exactly what made it a fun gaming experience.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/draft...re=decade2000s

Just looking through the 90s and 2000s in this list and my experiences with OOTP, I'd say OOTP is doing a pretty good job in terms of the percentage of 1st rounders that pan/don't pan out.

[RonCo]

Talent changes happen a lot in the age range of 17-24. In the end, though, the ratings are what really matter in-game, and from a macro level the process is working to provide a realistic level of talent to the majors. In addition, the skills are growing in a way that is far more realistic (and playable) than in any version in the past. What bugs me, though, is the raw magnitude of real talent changes. I don't think it is proper that a player's real talent changes serveral times a year. In fact, I think it unrealistic if it changes downward very often without some kind of forcing function.

If I were king for a day, a player's talent would rarely change downward, but some players would just never reach it. There's no in-game value to taking a AA-quality talent and giving them a talent hit. The kid isn't going to make the majors anyway. Why do you need to turn him from a AA player to a guy who couldn't hold his own against a good Little League team. The overall talent development engine could be made much less aritrary if it were made more stable (note, random = good to me, arbitrary = bad...if that makes sense).

At the end of the day, almost every player in the league will eventually receive a series of micro-talent shifts that are essentially meaningless, a lot of guys will just be decimated, and a few will be made into stars. This is a fairly major issue for the game's ability to do a good job of simulating a realistic flow of talent through the minor leagues.

If I get some time, I see if I can publish some more detailed material.

[RonCo]

Dola...as an example of why my "king for a day" situation is better...I don't hink you'll ever hear a scout say of a 22-year-old "Man, that kid used to be talented, but now he's dogmeat." Instead, you'll hear them say "That kid has real talent, but he's not developing like we thought he would, so now we're getting worried." The talent/potential is still considered great (unless the guy has gotten hurt or something). Also, it's not like the 22-year-old's raw skill are any _worse_ than they were. It's just that those who bust don't get any better.

[monte213]

RonCo, but aren't you essentially achieving the same end game either way? With the potential drops that occur now, your scout is essentially saying "That kid isn't developing like we thought he would and we don't expect as much from him anymore."

Atleast this way, as GMs, we know we have a probable bust on our hands. Maintaining a high potential that is never achieved would be ten times more frustrating. I would imagine that as organizations re-evaluate the talent they have, their expectations of the potential of any given player fluctuates.

[CaLíKrAzY]

It would be cool if talent drops were more from injury occurences and in alot of other cases players just didn't reach their potential.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by monte213

RonCo, but aren't you essentially achieving the same end game either way? With the potential drops that occur now, your scout is essentially saying "That kid isn't developing like we thought he would and we don't expect as much from him anymore."

Atleast this way, as GMs, we know we have a probable bust on our hands. Maintaining a high potential that is never achieved would be ten times more frustrating. I would imagine that as organizations re-evaluate the talent they have, their expectations of the potential of any given player fluctuates.

You can say the game achieves the same end, but I would disagree with that. I acknowledge that's partially a personal preference. But in the end, I still keep coming to the what I consider to be a fact--that a real player's true skill/talent rarely changes. Young players still are able to jump the same, and run just as fast, and have the same basic batspeed. They are just as strong as they were. It's just that they never learn how to avoid Ks or their power never comes in. A guy who fails at A ball doesn't leave the game asa worse player than they were in High School (unless they were injured and are just incapable of perfroming as they did).

Ultimately there are two factors at play in the OOTP game: (a) scouting error, and (b) true talent changes. I don't use scouts at all (for reason's I think I've discussed elsewhere). At the end of the day, they really are not necessary, though, as the talent change engine alone is enough to cause draft day busts and booms. In fact, in reality, that's the only thing that is really causing them today--afterall, for a great player to be passed over, all 30 scouting organizations need to miss him by a wide, wide margin...and testing has shown that scouts on the whole are really pretty accurate.

It's always going to be frustrating for owners to have players not pan out, regardless of how they fail. So to some degree this is a YMMV issue. But from the perspective of modelling talent flow through the minors (and feeders, for that matter), my opinion is that the massive talent attrition process causes a lot of issues. So as a modeling person, I would prefer to base my fundamental model on a process that more closely conforms to "real" because it will almost always make a big, messy system like an OOTP environment work better overall.