Please no new features!

[Pronkytonk]

First, many thanks to all of the developers for creating such a great game. I am playing OOTP since version 9 and still enjoy it, though in the last couple of versions I noticed an increasing amount of very annoying flaws in general gameplay, especially since I play out all my games in one-pitch-mode.

For OOTP 22 and beyond, I would prefer not to see too many flashy new features, but to invest some time into fine-tuning the gameplay to get rid of those flaws. To me, the most annoying things are :

- there are way too many wild pitches, passed balls and hit batsmen if you play out your games. The overall numbers are significantly higher than those you get if you fast sim the games. Errors and balks are also a bit up, but not so dramatically.
- the number of infield hits is also ridiculously high and seems not related to factors like the running speed of the batter ... very slow footed guys also get infield singles on a regular basis. The latter was very much different in earlier versions IIRC.
- the outcome of a base stealing attempt appears to be completety random and has nothing to do with speed/stealing values of the batter or the catcher's arm rating. This also used to be different until app. v17 or 18.
- there are too many blowout games (15+H, 10+R) during the course of a season. hot and cold streaks are also too extreme, for individual players as well as for teams. To me it seems the routines that are aimed to simulate streakiness are running amok a little bit from time to time.

To me, improvements concerning the mentioned problems would be so much more valuable than shiny new features ... just my opinion.

[pgjocki]

One thing that is tricky is observation bias but I agree with you that games I play out "appear" to have significantly more errors, wild pitches, catchers who don't bring a glove but have laser cannon arms, and my paraplegic 3B getting multiple infield hits on ground balls to the pitcher.

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[BirdWatcher]

This is something I seem to read here nearly every day- that when you play out your games the wild pitch, passed ball, and hit-by-pitch totals are abnormally high.

But I can't think of any time when I've seen data to support this, and the few times that people making this complaint have then gathered data it generally led them to change their perception.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. The fact that it is mentioned here by so many people might lend credence to the reality of this phenomenon.

But I will say that I play out all the games for my team in my fictional league (see below in signature) and have never observed this to be true. In our current season, just at the beginning of August in the 162-game schedule (most teams have 102 games in the books) my team has the lowest number of wild pitches in the league, we are roughly middle of the pack in passed balls, and in the bottom half of teams in batters hit by a pitch (by our pitchers, that is- our batters are tied for first in most times hit by a pitch, but that number is inflated by 2 players who are particularly prone to taking one for the team.) Granted, the fact that I play out every game for my team means that other teams also have many games which are not simmed. But as there are two leagues in the W.P. Kinsella League, and there is no inter-league play, no games in the other league are played out rather than simmed. And the totals in these three categories are very similar between leagues.

tl;dr: A great many people say that wp's, pb's, and hbp's are abnormally high when you play out your games. I don't see it and unless someone gathers data to support this I remain highly skeptical.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by BirdWatcher

tl;dr: A great many people say that wp's, pb's, and hbp's are abnormally high when you play out your games. I don't see it and unless someone gathers data to support this I remain highly skeptical.

The engine is the same whether you're simming or playing out games. This is definitely just a feel sort of thing for a lot of folks, but there's no difference in the rate of stuff like this when playing out games and when simming.

Beyond that, I've never seen an excess of wp's, pb's, and hbp's in the hundreds of games I play out personally while testing and as you mention, for anyone who brings it up as far as I know, now one's ever really given us any data (beyond some super small samples) to support the position. So realistically, our feeling here is that nothing is wrong and there's nothing to fix.

Basestealing, some folks have definitely mentioned/discussed some issues there in how steals are getting distributed and provided us with some data on that. So it's on the list of stuff to try to have the beta team test a bit more during beta this year, and we'll likely make some tweaks here depending on their findings.

Infield hits, again this is the sort of thing we'd need to see data on to even have an idea if anything is wrong, but obviously it's hard because it would take a lot of time playing out games to even get enough data. Again, just from my personal experience while playing out games, I do not see that there is particularly a problem here.

On the blowout games etc, there are no routines that are aimed to simulate streakiness in the game. There's no need for them. Normal probability takes care of this. So there's nothing you could change or fix here, other than to start rigging the results in some way to decrease the likelihood for streaky results that come from how probability works and messing with probability is a Pandora's box that we really don't want to get into.

One thing that can influence the amount of blowout games though, is whether bullpens are fresh or not, and there does seem to be a bit of an issue with ai bullpen management/stamina levels at times, which can lead to a lack of fresh pitchers, which can lead to more blowouts etc. So that's another thing that's on our list of stuff to look at and make some tweaks where needed.

[DEH]

First, let me say that I am relatively new to the game and really enjoy it. And I have gotten really good at wheeling and dealing on the trade market. I started with the 1997 Rockies earlier this year and have now made it through 3 seasons (and won the World Series with the 1999 Rockies!). Here are some of my thoughts having played about 500 games in the last six months.


1. I thought that the wild pitches were slightly high, the passed balls seemed about right, but the hit batters were definitely too high. As one example (I could give several), poor Larry Walker was beaned 23 times in 1997 and 25 times in 1999 (as compared to real stats of 14 and 12 respectively). I have had several games where there were 5 batters hit over both teams. I don't remember a single real game that I have ever watched where 5 batters were plunked in a single game.


2. I have also seen way too many infield hits and have had a few games where one team had at least 5 infield hits (including some really slow runners). I didn't keep any stats on that, but that seems a little excessive unless all of your infielders have awful arms.


3. I have had multiple players that had twice (or more) their actual errors for the year, especially infielders.


4. I have had a number of blowout games as well (especially playing at Coors Field), but I don't consider it excessive. I keep 12 pitchers on the roster as a result and believe that a tweak to the Relief Pitcher recovery rate might be in order. But I have had opposing teams run out of relief pitchers and use position pitchers to finish out games several times.


5. The visual portion of the game is the one area that I would love to see fixed. Between the slow motion runners, the runners being thrown out by 40 or 50 feet, the slow motion throws, the first baseman who runs towards second base during the pitcher's windup (it will be a double to left center or right center), the first baseman who fields a ground ball right next to the bag and then waits for the pitcher to cover first (and then sometimes makes a late throw), the shortstop or second basement that runs out to the outfield wall and then throws a runner out at first, the disconnects between the play-by-play and the actual field graphics, etc., it detracts from the otherwise great feel of the game.


6. Lastly (for now), I still get on average about one screen freeze during a game before getting the pop-up on whether or not I would like to send a runner home (or sometimes to third). Then the action disappears and I have to check the score to see whether the runner actually made it safely or not.


Just some thoughts from a newbie who started with OOTP 20 and is now using OOTP 21 (which reduced some of the items mentioned in #6 above, but they still occur). This game is really addicting, especially all the general manager portions of the game where the trading, free agency, waivers, contract talks, etc. occur. I look forward to seeing the improvements in the next version!



Don

[Sweed]

Wild pitches, passed balls, and hit by pitches are not an issue in my game, never have been, and I play out all of my games. I'm copying in a couple of posts I made in another thread because new users read these posts, as the one that just posted in this thread, and believe that there are issues when there are not. Or at least the issues claimed are not supported with real data.

If one runs auto-calc to adjust the LTM's (league total modifiers) one should get realistic numbers. If they do this and do not get realistic numbers then they should report the issue in the bugs thread. Note: I play with default settings as far as player creation, aging, development, etc.

Onto my posts with data from my OOTP game where I play out every inning of every game.

Originally Posted by Sweed

Well the OP asked for realistic percentages and stated it "seemed" like there are too many during the game. The trouble is he doesn't tell us how many too many is? Hard to answer the question in that light.

I've played OOTP since v4. and used to manually do my LTMs. When autocalc was added I recorded my League Totals (target numbers) and the resulting OOTP season actual league totals to compare. Though I look over the totals now and haven't bothered writing them down for a few versions. I did find my old notebook and will share a few numbers v12 - v18. Excluding v15 that I didn't write down, too long ago to remember why.

The format will be..
OOTP version # (league total) My OOTP results ###,

Balks..
v12 (146) 138, 190, 222
v13 (146) 72, (LTM was at .405 maybe my error? long time ago not sure)
v14 (146) 203, 114
v15 not sure why but didn't write these down
v16 (146) 118, 137,
v17 (146) 213, 122
v18 (146) 121, 121 yes same total back to back

Wild pitches
v12 (1458) 1406, 1399, 1606
v13 (1458) 1029,
v14 (1458) 1705, 1542
v15 none
v16 (1458) 1526, 1789,
v17 (1458) 1538, 1885
v18 (1458) 1873, 1784

Real life numbers MLB 1995-2019

Balks MLB highest total 205 ........My OOTP high 222
lowest 128 ..............lowest 114 (discard 72,my error?)

Wild pitches
MLB highest 1847 .......My OOTP high 1885
low 1414 ........................low 1029 (also v13, again my error?)
.............................next lowest 1399

Not sure what happened in v13. Only completed one season. I was going through a divorce then so maybe I just lost concentration on what I was doing.

Stats from https://www.baseball-reference.com/l...itching_totals

Looks pretty good to me.

Originally Posted by Sweed

I play out all of my games. 132 games into the season I have been called for 4 balks. My opponents have been called for 3 balks.

So far league average is 4.866 per team.

WP: League avg is 45.56. I've thrown 24. Opponent 36.
How could I have only thrown 24 when I play 'em out?

PB: League avg 10.5 I've thrown 9. Less than league average and I play 'em out. There's no sort for opponent.

HBP League avg. 47.36 I've hit 57 I'be been hit 33.
League high is 70 League low is 31.

So, no that's not it. Same game engine whether you sim or play.
This is what happens, in my experience, when you look at the numbers and don't rely on feel.

All data is welcome.

Both of these posts are from the same thread https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...=312505&page=2

I have posted real OOTP data in many other threads over the years but am not going to go search for all of them

So if anyone else has real OOTP data to add from seasons where you have played out all of your games, feel free. If there is an issue Markus cannot, nor will, attempt to fix without actual numbers.

Also screen shots from my just completed season where I played out every game as the Cubs. Note my WP, PB, and HB are all in line with league averages.

[DEH]

Sweed, thanks for the info and the links to the other threads. I will check them out as well as document some of the issues (and not perceptions) that I am having. I tried to differentiate between the two in my comments, and I have sufficient documentation on the HBP and error issues. I am more concerned about the individual player instead of the league average, though, so we may not be talking about exactly the same thing. (And yes, I play out all my games as well.) After I get through Thanksgiving week, I will take the time to post a comment with documentation/stats in the "Bug" area of the forum once I find it...

Don

[mkirshenbaum]

I very much agree with this sentiment previously posted by DEH:

5. The visual portion of the game is the one area that I would love to see fixed. Between the slow motion runners, the runners being thrown out by 40 or 50 feet, the slow motion throws, the first baseman who runs towards second base during the pitcher's windup (it will be a double to left center or right center), the first baseman who fields a ground ball right next to the bag and then waits for the pitcher to cover first (and then sometimes makes a late throw), the shortstop or second basement that runs out to the outfield wall and then throws a runner out at first, the disconnects between the play-by-play and the actual field graphics, etc., it detracts from the otherwise great feel of the game.

I love single pitch playing the games and the graphics overall are pretty darn good for what OOTP is, but some of these flaws in the visual logic of what we're seeing vs. the actual game play are quite glaring. I'm used to it now, but it'd be great to fix these.


I'd also like to be given the opportunity more often to decide whether to send a runner home or to third base or not -- a choice only seems to be presented about 10% of the time (just guessing there).