Historical play

[Scoman]

Any changes or updates planned for historical play in OOTP 25?

[warneke]

Yes, and I wonder if the new Player Development Lab will work in leagues created with the Historical League Option.

[fredbeene]

I would like to import a season, all new players get added with peak potential, but then apply say 25% talent change randomness, and apply player dev options.
I think that way you can still play with players you are familiar with but you won't know who will rise or fall...or stay healthy....you can still have a good idea that George Brett woulld be a stud when enters the game, but there is a chance he will fizz out
We can sort of do this now.

[warneke]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

I would like to import a season, all new players get added with peak potential, but then apply say 25% talent change randomness, and apply player dev options.
I think that way you can still play with players you are familiar with but you won't know who will rise or fall...or stay healthy....you can still have a good idea that George Brett woulld be a stud when enters the game, but there is a chance he will fizz out
We can sort of do this now.

You kind of described my favorite way to play OOTP. I will use the Historical Mode to create a game, and begin with a certain season, be it 1922 or 1973, and then have the annual rookie drafts include players from all eras. I do not use the stat-recalc every year; I have the OOTP development turned on, with remaining career years as the potential.

Sometimes OOTP will give what I think are funky numbers to certain players, and it will often make a guy who played only a season or two have extremely high ratings; I usually delete those guys from the annual draft list. I have talent randomness at about 105 or 110; I still play with that.

So, even though I've created a game using Historical Mode, my games are sort of What-If scenarios. And it would be cool for someone in the know to answer the question that I posed on this thread. I think OOTP in general doesn't pay much attention to Historical Mode. And I am so far not excited about connection to the HOF because I've been there, and I don't know what it will do to the game (I can read HOF plaques online!) except make the Game Files bigger.*

[fredbeene]

yup historical mode is an after thought, although i would assume all the people who love the price increase are older.

[WestCoastGuy]

Historical mode is where I spend 99% of my playing time. (So, I hope it's improved.)

[tayloraj]

I also spend the vast majority of my time playing historical mode, and in OOTP24 it was basically unplayable after about 1985 with the settings I normally use (recalc off, dev on). No matter how I would try and mess with the settings I was regularly getting hitters post-1987 hitting 70-80+ home runs a year, even when the overall HR/PA numbers were very close to history. I'm really hoping there's some under-the-hood tweaking that corrects this issue and I can play past that point again without watching Chris Carter hit 104 home runs or something (I really did have a game where he did that).

[Supermercado]

I'm interested in this too. I've been an OOTP fan for years but unless there's something new in the historical world I don't see the point in upgrading this year. Fingers crossed for changes that aren't sexy enough to be included in the opening announcements but will benefit historical players.

[OleDylano23]

Hopefully they change it where if you try to do a historical league in challenge mode, you can only have the recalc based on IRL stats. Feels like it should be locked the other way.

[Hrycaj]

Originally Posted by tayloraj

I also spend the vast majority of my time playing historical mode, and in OOTP24 it was basically unplayable after about 1985 with the settings I normally use (recalc off, dev on). No matter how I would try and mess with the settings I was regularly getting hitters post-1987 hitting 70-80+ home runs a year, even when the overall HR/PA numbers were very close to history. I'm really hoping there's some under-the-hood tweaking that corrects this issue and I can play past that point again without watching Chris Carter hit 104 home runs or something (I really did have a game where he did that).

I don’t know if this is a help for you but on opening day I run a season on simulation mode. I then check to see if my league is going to produce any gigantic homer numbers that I do not want. If it does I knock down the league modifier and then run another simulation. I’ll do it until I feel like the results are what I’m looking for and then I play the season out.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

I would like to import a season, all new players get added with peak potential, but then apply say 25% talent change randomness, and apply player dev options. I think that way you can still play with players you are familiar with but you won't know who will rise or fall...or stay healthy....you can still have a good idea that George Brett woulld be a stud when enters the game, but there is a chance he will fizz out. We can sort of do this now.

Yes, you can already do this. I play games with player potential based on their remaining peak seasons, and I use historical minors, plus talent change randomness of 125. Some people use a setting that's even higher.

If you play games this way, you get to see a really interesting alternate history play out, where a lot of players still develop as you'd expect, but you also get some surprises and some minor league players who end up developing into MLB regulars or stars, whereas they may have never really gotten a chance in real life, or they struggled in limited opportunities and never became MLB regulars.

If you want to see more variation, use more talent change randomness. I've seen some people use a setting as high as 200, but I prefer a more modest uncertainty.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by tayloraj

I also spend the vast majority of my time playing historical mode, and in OOTP24 it was basically unplayable after about 1985 with the settings I normally use (recalc off, dev on). No matter how I would try and mess with the settings I was regularly getting hitters post-1987 hitting 70-80+ home runs a year, even when the overall HR/PA numbers were very close to history.

I'm not sure why you would have seen these results. Did you have dynamic league evolution enabled? If that's enabled, your league can start to develop more power overall, or more pitching, or any number of random possibilities.

Using development and no recalc with historical minors, I haven't seen anything like what you're describing. I just ran a game a few months ago, testing to see how players such as Brady Anderson, the Bash Brothers, and other batters produced home runs during the late 80s and early 90s. All of my home run totals were perfectly realistic.

You might want to check your league settings and your league total and talent modifiers, to see if everything is historically sound, or if there is an incorrect or evolved setting somewhere.

[Charlie Hough]

Based on the number of historical improvements that have been discussed and requested throughout OOTP24's release cycle, I would definitely expect to see some new features, changes, or fixes. Typically, we see improvements with each new release, but a lot hinges on how active people are in discussing and requesting changes, how easily certain improvements can be coded, whether they might break other things in the game, how many users are impacted, and all the different development priorities.

Sometimes, it takes years to achieve specific improvements because they're difficult to code, risk breaking other things, or require some major changes to the sim. So, you have to be careful and hopefully get it right. Sometimes it's frustrating to wait, and I've certainly waited for a number of major improvements over the years, but thankfully almost all of them have eventually made it into the game.

We'll have to see how it goes this year, but I always buy each version, as the price remains quite low compared to other games, and I consider it an investment in the future. Even if some things don't make it into a new version, other things do, and my purchases help fund ongoing development. Also, when I think about how little it costs to play any historical season or any historical era in OOTP, compared to spending hundreds of dollars on season data from other baseball sims, it's a continuous bargain. Plus, we get all the deep career mode options that you can't get in other sims.

However, I understand that other people might not feel the same way. Plenty of people wait to see what's new before they buy, or they keep playing an older version until there's a big enough improvement to motivate the investment.

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by OleDylano23

Hopefully they change it where if you try to do a historical league in challenge mode, you can only have the recalc based on IRL stats. Feels like it should be locked the other way.

Is the IRL actual IN REAL LIFE of what really happened in history.
or
recalc the ratings based on the stats of season you completed

Are there finer granularities where rating get updated on monthly basis of whatever historical season you are playing?

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by Hrycaj

I don’t know if this is a help for you but on opening day I run a season on simulation mode. I then check to see if my league is going to produce any gigantic homer numbers that I do not want. If it does I knock down the league modifier and then run another simulation. I’ll do it until I feel like the results are what I’m looking for and then I play the season out.

I haven't found that to be a good reflection of expected stats. How many interations are you running?
I usually run around 5 or so, multiple times and see results of under 50 HR's or so yet when I've simmed those same games I had players breaking Bonds record.

Also wish it provided more stats then just the leader board

[Hrycaj]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

I haven't found that to be a good reflection of expected stats. How many interations are you running?
I usually run around 5 or so, multiple times and see results of under 50 HR's or so yet when I've simmed those same games I had players breaking Bonds record.

Also wish it provided more stats then just the leader board

Wow! I have not had a similar experience. I sometimes only run it once and I'm good to go. I do account for some variance. If the simulations are showing several hitters with gaudy power numbers I would adjust that down. I usually aim for the results to show a player around whatever the historical league leader was for that year. So if the leader was say 55 homers I would scale it to about 49 or 50 and know there is a bit of plus or minus based injuries/development engine etc. I can honestly say I have never had a projected 50 homer guy shoot 25+ and smash existing records. (Now that I have put it into the universe it will probably now happen to me all the time). Also, I 100% agree with you in wanting to see more stats than just what the leaderboard has to offer.

[GDawg]

I have switched to Action PC Baseball for Historical replays, I think they work better for it, though they are year-by-year (and you need to buy every year seperately) but I enjoy their seasonal replays. OOTP really shines in fictional I think and of course in franchise managing if that's your jam. Like starting in present day and take a franchise to 2040.

[igor7111]

Originally Posted by GDawg

I have switched to Action PC Baseball for Historical replays, I think they work better for it, though they are year-by-year (and you need to buy every year seperately) but I enjoy their seasonal replays. OOTP really shines in fictional I think and of course in franchise managing if that's your jam. Like starting in present day and take a franchise to 2040.

Big problem with this is that seasons are sold separately.

[GDawg]

True, but they have a lot of sales, they are at times sold for 7 USD a season. I once bought like 4 seasons for 20 bucks. Also, you don't need to update the main game every year, am still playing the 22 version, it does the job just fine. The only reason why I'd play OOTP for historical play is if I want to, say, GM the Red Sox in the '50s and see if they could do better than in real life. But for seasonal play I prefer APC.

[Matt Arnold]

There's a lot of really nice historical updates this year