I are the noobest

[MangueAilee]

Hello!

Have you ever met a beginner in this world? Which world? I'm probably the first one you should think about when wondering if someone on earth "don't know that"
Like, really, I don't know anything about managing, about sports, and its even worse about Baseball.
I played a bit of Football Manager 2024 but I wanted to try OOTP25 to taste something else. I didn't get far in this game. I feel lost, and... I don't really know why but I wanted to try OOTP.
Of course, it's even worse as at least, I already saw some football match, but I never saw anything about baseball. That's not really true as I watch two videos about the rules and a bit of the wikipedia one hour ago.
Ho, and my native language is French, that's not even english, yiha!

"Ok dude, you look cute but... what's the point of your 'cool' story."
Ho, I just look for help. Here is what I want, and I'm sure You could help me

I love stats, I wanted a game with spreadsheets, datas everywhere and I could investifate to be satisfy!
What I would like is an easy mode, the easiest possible. I know there are managers you can delegate part of your work but which one should be chosen, or not?
I don't even know where I want to go, my goals. I don't even know what I want to do.

What I would love is something like I have only one job, "one data" to check and play according to that. Then, I could add one more "data" and again, and again.
I imagine something like starting with a few or nothing and then, a clear way to start and following a guide until... it gets fun...
I know it's all my fault but I have the feeling I'm just not looking this game at the right angle.

Help me please, it makes me feel as if I'm missing something that could be great

[md40022]

With all due respect, if you don't know much or anything at all about baseball and have never really watched baseball, OOTP is something you should not yet get into. It will eat you alive.

My suggestion would be spend some time learning baseball first. See if you at least like the game. And from there spend at least several months, if not a year really studying and learning all of the intricacies (specifically the rules in roster construction) and only then would I say to give OOTP another try.

Right now, if you know very little about baseball, you have no chance in heck to know what's going on within OOTP and the learning curve would just be impossible for you right now

[jksander]

It is definitely a steep learning curve already even if you do know baseball backward and forward ... without the knowledge of the game itself, it's damned near insurmountable.

[kq76]

I don't think it's as bad as md makes it out to be, but I would recommend watching more videos, like pfholden's series of videos. He does a great job of explaining things. Maybe watch Foolish Bailey play OOTP25 from the preseason on. That would give you a better idea, step by step, of what to do.

Are you playing OOTP with the tutorials enabled? From the main start page, click settings > misc > select enabled for screen tutorials.

What exact videos did you watch to learn baseball? I wonder if we might be able to suggest better ones. I noticed that a lot of the ones that appear first from search results are about actually playing baseball, which you really don't need to know, at least not that much about. What you do need to know about, are the basics from a fan's perspective. I'd say this is a good one. That youtuber, theOnDeckCircle, has a number of good introduction to baseball videos.

EDIT: I'd start with watching theOnDeckCircle's videos and then go back to the top of this post with pfholden's videos and then foolishbailey's.

[MangueAilee]

Ok, let's play a game...
If I asked you just one question, one thing, and, according to your experience, You have one answer, what does it look like?

What is the first thing I must do to enjoy OOTP25, according to my current knowledges?

Deduce a sort of all players of your team from stats and knowledges make me think some... roles are funnier and I could conquer this game from a new point of view.

Winning games and getting higher in a rank.

Getting statisfaction from the game. Isn't why we all are here ?

[koohead]

So working with many Frenchmen who I have been trying to explain baseball to for 12 years now, I appreciate your interest and desire to learn the game and sport.
Let me zero in on something you mentioned as a reason why you are exploring OOTP and baseball to start with...the data. Baseball does offer up volumes and volumes of data and one could easily spend hours a day just looking at the data. So that would be what I would offer as far as where to start. Take over a team, does not matter which and whether or not it is a real world MLB setup or a 100% fictional league. Just pick a league and team and take it over. Now...to save you some headaches for the first 2-3 seasons, go to your Manager options and assign ALL responsibilties to your bench coach or assistant GM. This essentially allows you to watch the game/team for as long as you wish, but still feel as if you a stake in the game because you are monitoring a specific team. Sim a month at a time, taking time at the end of each month to look through your league, your organization, and your team. Spend time looking through the players up and down your org and see how their stats are. Your first goal is obviously your team record...hopefully you can maintain a winning record but if not, you can decide what direction you want to take the team in seasons 2, 3, and 4. Are you going for the championship or is it time to tear things down and look towards the future (year 5+)? After the team record (and the records of your teams in the minor leagues), you can start following a few select players. Start with who the game suggests as your Top Players and top Prospects. that'll give you 6 players out of 1500 to keep an eye on and get to know. Watch their statistics closely to see how they are performing. Are the "top players" performing as cornerstones of your franchise or are they barely delivering value? Are your prospects developing and making progress up the organization? Or are they stalled and won't turn into MLB players and will be career minor leaguers?
Do this for 2 maybe even 3 seasons. Focus on the data. look at every leaderboard and report the game has to offer. Look to websites such as baseball reference.com to learn about the various statistics that the game tracks and reports on to understand what exactly you are looking at. If you do this for a few seasons, just getting yourself familiar with the data and with a few players, the game starts meaning something to you beyond the wins and losses.
Then start taking on more and more responsibilities. leave your bench coach to manage the day to day and just focus on the draft for a year or two. Or maybe just work on signing free agents for a couple seasons. maybe take over moving people up and down your minors. Whatever you do, take on a small number of tasks each year and build up to the point where you are running the org. This might be year 10 or more in the whole scheme of things but by then you will know names and have built up a little "investment" in that team and will take every losing season personally.

[md40022]

Originally Posted by MangueAilee

Getting statisfaction from the game. Isn't why we all are here ?

Not everybody...

[kq76]

Originally Posted by MangueAilee

Ok, let's play a game...
If I asked you just one question, one thing, and, according to your experience, You have one answer, what does it look like?

What is the first thing I must do to enjoy OOTP25, according to my current knowledges?

Pursuing the answers you get to that question I don't think would be the best course of action. The reason why is we all play OOTP differently and we all get satisfaction out of it one way or another. For example, I like to play completely fictional leagues in a way that is closest to what we might call god mode. Meanwhile, others only like to play historical seasons while maybe the majority only like to play current year leagues. Others like to sim long stretches of a season at a time, some like to sim short stretches or only the first several innings of a game, while I like to play out each at bat. We're all different and what anyone of us likes very well might not be what you like.

I think koohead was right to zero in on your interest. If stats really are your biggest interest, then do what he says, and also watch videos that specifically explain the more advanced baseball stats. Ashley McLennan (90feetfromhome) does a great job of explaining stats, basic and advanced.

[Pelican]

This reminds me a bit of some helpful blokes in a pub in Auckland trying to explain a cricket match that was in progress. Everybody was fired up at the television and I was clueless. Pretty sure that I would be totally lost with a cricket simulation game. But I admire the OP for trying.

[md40022]

Originally Posted by Pelican

This reminds me a bit of some helpful blokes in a pub in Auckland trying to explain a cricket match that was in progress. Everybody was fired up at the television and I was clueless. Pretty sure that I would be totally lost with a cricket simulation game. But I admire the OP for trying.

Yeah, I appreciate everyone trying to help - personally I feel like this is probably the worst game ever to get into if you know nothing at all about the sport and you probably need a year dedicated to learning baseball before even thinking about booting up OOTP butttttt maybe I'll end up being wrong.

[jksander]

Originally Posted by Pelican

This reminds me a bit of some helpful blokes in a pub in Auckland trying to explain a cricket match that was in progress. Everybody was fired up at the television and I was clueless. Pretty sure that I would be totally lost with a cricket simulation game. But I admire the OP for trying.

For sure It's a good reminder that we were all noobs at something at one point. I am the same way with hockey, because it's the hardest for me to follow with my eyesight on a TV screen, so I have a hard time understanding all the shifts, offsides, and other rules as the puck flies around all over the place.

[snepp]

If it makes you feel any better, that's me every time I fire up Football Manager.

What I do there is simplify things as much as possible. Single loaded small league, minimal staff, limited scouting. Then when I start getting comfortable I add to it. I still don't know jack about any real strategy, but I pick up bits and pieces at a time.

[Syd Thrift]

Yeah one of the real awesome aspects of this game is, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want it. The downside is, if you’re a big data nerd, your first inclination will probably be to go insane with the complexity. It’s only natural, I get it, but baseball is the stattiest of all big sports and there are now decades of growth in that regard.

One option you might try is starting in, say, 1901. You won’t recognize hardly anybody back then - one of the superstars from that period is named Napoleon Lajoie and just try to guess how his name was pronounced - but the game is a *world* simpler. You can basically just look at how good a hitter is by their batting average, how good a fielder is by their fielding average. Pitchers are always harder but even there you only really need to worry about like 4 or 5 main guys and a couple “change” pitchers. Nobody had minor leagues back then (although I recommend adding them, as the AI doesn’t really know what to do when it needs a shortstop and doesn’t have one in the system) and there wasn’t even really free agency so it’s just very simple to keep track of (also of course no black players until 1947 but you can decide if you want to get rid of that “simplicity” or not). There’s a lot of in game strategy teams used a lot but if you’re GMing, you could just let your manager do that stuff for you (and even if you choose to play out games you can, for example, only handle substitutions, which were very rare back then, and let your manager handle everything else).

You could potentially use that to learn the game as it evolved. Homeruns became a thing in the 1920s, high strikeout pitchers pop up in the 1910s but then kind of go away until the 40s, platooning wasn’t really a thing until the 30s, even “advanced” stats like on-base percentage didn’t really get looked at by anyone until a few nerds like Branch Rickey in the 50s (the prevailing wisdom was that walks were entirely the result of poor pitcher control and not something a batter did much to influence). The minor leagues got really huge in the 30s and by the 60s were more or less in the basic form they’re in today. Free agency doesn’t come in until the 70s; before then you could just basically re-up guys automatically every year.

[sdw1000]

If you want interactive gaming where you keep stats etc, I'd suggest Stratomatic especially if you're new to baseball in general.

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by MangueAilee

Ok, let's play a game...
What is the first thing I must do to enjoy OOTP25, according to my current knowledges?

Start up a MLB quickstart, become a GM/Manger of any team you like and then play the game learning as you go.
I suggest picking a team like the NY Yankees or LA Dodgers which are more internationally known and try and win a championship or two with them. They are also generally better teams, and it's easier to learn when winning

As you go along, take the time to educate yourself on some of the basics of the sport. Then enjoy.
If aspects of the game start to confuse you, come here and explain it to us and we'll either help you understand or help you turn it off till you're able to understand it.

Think of it like not knowing anything about football either and picking up FM. The best way to learn is to immerse yourself into the game

[jksander]

I know I like to learn about stuff by reading, so if you're like that, you might enjoy something like this as well to help fill in your knowledge gaps

Baseball Field Guide (4th Edition) -- An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball

[Brad K]

No foreigner likes being told something is too complicated for them to learn.

OP, start a game with default settings. When something happens you don't like, like a player e mailing you complaining about his playing time or the owner insisting you do something stupid, turn the feature off. Do not use Challenge Mode.