Sim Quality Worse?

[doubles]

A lot of people forget that once you press "Finish Day" one time with standard settings it becomes a fictional world.

If you want to recreate real life and have the ratings stay the same, turn off all scouting, development, and anything that could cause randomness.

Weird things happen in baseball. Players fall off a cliff and players emerge out of nowhere.

I get that having an MLB license can make people want the world to develop in their way, but the game with default settings isn't built for that. For that to happen, you need to turn off the settings that can make those things happen.

If I'm playing a historical game and want randomness, then I can't suddenly get mad when Babe Ruth doesn't become Babe Ruth. Same with anything
current day.

Are there issues with the game? Undoubtedly. This isn't a bug, though. It's a feature.

[ayaghmour2]

Originally Posted by polydamas

From a steam review:

OOTP never had perfect simulations, but by year two's all-star break I saw Ezequiel Tovar outslugging Nick Kurtz! and Kody Funderburke with a 2.29 ERA through 17 starts! Edouard Julien hit 17 HR! Michael Toglia has a higher BA and slug than Juan Soto! Like I know you want some degree of uncertainty, but it's really a vibe killer to have things that no sane human would ever think are possible happening all over your sim. My early impressions are that the MLB The Show chalky sims may actually be better than OOTP 27 because at least the outcomes aren't an insult to my awareness of baseball. Feel free to make fun of my and call me a dumb idiot if Nolan Gorman has a higher OPS+ than Judge, Witt, Soto, or Ohtani halfway through 2027 but it seems pretty unlikely!

Edit: ran through another half-season and saw Jacob Young outslugging James Wood 100 games into 2026 ya something is CLEARLY wrong with the sim. Jacob Young hit 7 HR in 100 games! My man has 5 HR in 300 career games!

OOTP might have been on to something here! Jacob Young had 6 homers through 52 games! Sometimes reality is stranger than simulation

Edit: Should have waited one more day. Just hit his 7th in 53

[AstroDeke]

We as gamers of OOTP have the ability to adjust the modifiers and ratings to suit whatever type of game you prefer. Think a player's stats are unrealistic, change his ratings to your fancy. Play a season and see how he does. He might just put up worse numbers or maybe even better.

I play a 100% fictional league, so I have no pre-conceived notions about the stats of any particular player. So, if there is an outlier, I typically won't know it unless I look at and compare stats from previous seasons.

We know that outliers happen even in real-life MLB. So, if someone wants the players to produce exactly as in real-life, then that would be a replay more or less and very boring. But even then, you can still have outliers.

When I do historical replays/simulations, players don't always play true to their stats. Why? Because THAT'S BASEBALL!

[BaseballATeam]

Originally Posted by Bagpipes5

I saw too many players again this year with an OPS less than 650 and more than 450 PAs. I ran 1 sim and saw that there were 15 qualifying players with less than a .650 which is roughly twice what usually happens at in IRL MLB. One of those players was Aaron Judge who had a .350 slg pct at years end. Then Giancarlo Stanton posted a .197/.216/.368 slash and I requested a refund. Sorry, not this year OOTP.

I think there might be an overemphasis on defense (or at least, a misbalance relative to irl). I'm generally good about fielding a team of 60-grade defenders (20-80 scale), and I often have negative defensive stats. Which tells me the AI is averaging 65+ grade defense.

[BaseballATeam]

Originally Posted by doubles

A lot of people forget that once you press "Finish Day" one time with standard settings it becomes a fictional world.

If you want to recreate real life and have the ratings stay the same, turn off all scouting, development, and anything that could cause randomness.

Weird things happen in baseball. Players fall off a cliff and players emerge out of nowhere.

I get that having an MLB license can make people want the world to develop in their way, but the game with default settings isn't built for that. For that to happen, you need to turn off the settings that can make those things happen.

If I'm playing a historical game and want randomness, then I can't suddenly get mad when Babe Ruth doesn't become Babe Ruth. Same with anything
current day.

Are there issues with the game? Undoubtedly. This isn't a bug, though. It's a feature.

I mean, that's all supposing the initial ratings are anywhere close to accurate. They're wildly off for a third of the player population--which is not a criticism! They'd need the entire staff of FanGraphs to get everything "right," and that only lasts for one moment in time.

[Todd R]

Correct ratings doesn't guarantee output close to real life.Especially this early in the season.