Bad AI? Specifics please :)

[Erithtotl]

One thing I saw was that most if not all of the best free agents signed just a few days after the free agent period began, often for relatively low contracts. Now that we have several months between the beginning of free agency and spring training, top tier players should hold out much longer for the best contract, unless they've been given an offer they can't refuse.

[floorman81]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but teams trading and offering me trades after the trade deadline, that needs to be fixed

[markprior22]

Originally Posted by andymac

I like these suggestions and would like to add one.

3) Accuracy as far as scouting goes should start off being largely inaccurate, but should improve as a player gets playing time to the point where their reports on major league veterans have an extremely small deviation. This would have two effects. 1. It should make the draft much less predictable...even good scouts should be wrong quite a bit of the time here. 2. It should help transaction issues at the major league level. I think some of the problems that go with unbalanced trades come from scouts just being quite wrong when evaluating the players. That should happen with prospects, but no scout should be "off" significantly when evaluating a major league veteran.

I'm not sure about this. I agree with the fact that, the longer a guy plays the more accurate the reports are going to be. The problem is...that's when you least need a scout. This is an extreme case but I don't need a scout to tell me about Albert Pujols potential. I do need some input on the draft or a AA player who I think might have long term value to my team. With a minor league player, at least they are accumulating stats so you can make some decisions yourself. With the draft though, we really don't have anything to go on other than ratings/potential. If the scouting accuracy goes too far in the other direction, the draft would become a crapshoot. The real life draft isn't an exact science by any means but I don't believe it's totally random either. One scout may project a guy as a first rounder and another may say he's a third rounder but they both would feel the guy has decent potential. You will always have breaks/busts but when the talk starts of "largely inaccurate" and "good scouts should be wrong quite a bit of the time", it makes me nervous.

Don't get me wrong. Part of me agrees with what you're saying...I guess "getting it right" is what has me hesitant.

[markprior22]

Originally Posted by floorman81

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but teams trading and offering me trades after the trade deadline, that needs to be fixed

You can trade after the deadline if the players involved clear waivers. Are trades occuring in other situations after the deadline?

[andymac]

Originally Posted by floorman81

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but teams trading and offering me trades after the trade deadline, that needs to be fixed

Not a bug, trades can be made after the deadline as long as all players clear waivers. This happens in MLB.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Just remember, your scouts drink whisky, and SISA scouts chase their booze with acid.

SISA reports must be taken with a great deal of skepticism.

Yes, SISA isn't very good and you have to take the idea that IT says their team is weak at 2B with a grain of salt... or a whole salt lick at times. However, the computer isn't doing so in trying to trade for my guys.

It says I'm weak at 2B... first it's a prospect project (which I wouldn't expect they'd really think about) and second he's hitting .298 with 35 HRs... but SISA reports I'm weak there so the game is sending me offers for 35 year old 2B that are hitting .245 with 1 HR trying to get another prospect that's hitting .280 with 15 HRs.

This, of course, falls into the category that the AI isn't looking at stats at all in any decision making... but trying to send me a 35 year old second baseman and expect a 23 year old LF power hitting prospect in return is gibberish.
After I refused that deal they came back with a counter offer of their 35 year old 2B and a SWEET 42 year old middle reliever that looks like he's been buried for several years already.

[plannine]

Drafting Issues:

[this is with a historical - with only reserve rosters]

I've had in one 'mock' draft, a team with no returning catchers, not take a catcher in the draft
and another team, which needed at least 3 position players, take 15 pitchers.

In another draft (league startup) 30 players, i had one team take 25 pitchers & 5 players, while another took 10 catchers and only 5 pitchers. Niether team took any aditional players from the free agent list before opening day.

[turdfurgeson]

I have seen, on occasion (i am about to begin season two of matter 2003's universe) the AI of different teams offering wide ranges of trades.

My team was out of the race, and I had a 39 year old stud 2b who had great power numbers. On one day I recieved 3 trade proposals from 3 different teams. One was the 2b, a middle of the road cf prospect I drafted that year, a middle of the road reliever who might be better than replacement level in a year or two and 3 million in cash, and they offered a decent LF who made way too much money, for too many years and was 31, plus a over the hill scrub. The next offer was a little better, my 2b and a prospect for two "borderline" prospects and no money changing hands. The third offer (all from the same day) was easily the best. A 25 year old catcher who was PCL player of the year, a pretty good out field prospect for my old, expensive, yet very productive 2b. And they asked for no money in return. I accepted the last one.

So I liked the spectrum of trade proposals offered to me. It would be nice to see some tweaks to the human initiated trades to make it a bit less daunting.

[andymac]

Originally Posted by markprior22

I'm not sure about this. I agree with the fact that, the longer a guy plays the more accurate the reports are going to be. The problem is...that's when you least need a scout. This is an extreme case but I don't need a scout to tell me about Albert Pujols potential. I do need some input on the draft or a AA player who I think might have long term value to my team. With a minor league player, at least they are accumulating stats so you can make some decisions yourself. With the draft though, we really don't have anything to go on other than ratings/potential. If the scouting accuracy goes too far in the other direction, the draft would become a crapshoot. The real life draft isn't an exact science by any means but I don't believe it's totally random either. One scout may project a guy as a first rounder and another may say he's a third rounder but they both would feel the guy has decent potential. You will always have breaks/busts but when the talk starts of "largely inaccurate" and "good scouts should be wrong quite a bit of the time", it makes me nervous.

Don't get me wrong. Part of me agrees with what you're saying...I guess "getting it right" is what has me hesitant.

Well, now we are getting into implementation issues that is hard to discuss without knowing exactly how the game creates players, but there should be a bell curve there as well. The top of the bell curve (elite players) is going to be extremely small compared to the bottom. Even with fairly widely varying scouts, the players who are "considered" to be the top players are going to be similar groups for almost all scouts. Reports should vary quite a bit individually, but as a group I would think things would be all right (remember, you have a group of scouts per team...not just one). The player evaluation alone isn't going to fix the problem of too many first round draft picks turning out, the development AI needs to have a hand in that as well.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by markprior22

I'm not sure about this. I agree with the fact that, the longer a guy plays the more accurate the reports are going to be. The problem is...that's when you least need a scout. This is an extreme case but I don't need a scout to tell me about Albert Pujols potential. I do need some input on the draft or a AA player who I think might have long term value to my team. With a minor league player, at least they are accumulating stats so you can make some decisions yourself. With the draft though, we really don't have anything to go on other than ratings/potential. If the scouting accuracy goes too far in the other direction, the draft would become a crapshoot. The real life draft isn't an exact science by any means but I don't believe it's totally random either. One scout may project a guy as a first rounder and another may say he's a third rounder but they both would feel the guy has decent potential. You will always have breaks/busts but when the talk starts of "largely inaccurate" and "good scouts should be wrong quite a bit of the time", it makes me nervous.

Don't get me wrong. Part of me agrees with what you're saying...I guess "getting it right" is what has me hesitant.

For veterans he's not talking about potential ratings, but current ratings. The reason you don't need anyone to tell you what Albert Pujols potential and current ratings are is because of the stats he has already put up....
The problem (I think) that they're talking about with the draft is that all the prospects that will actually turn into something useful is being taken in the first couple rounds. If you have a 25 round draft, everything after round 5 (at the least) is just fluff to fill out rosters.

Also, I haven't done enough looking to see if this is really true, but it seems the computer knows more than you... hahaha of course it does... but when I hit ask for head scout recommendation some of his suggestions make no sense compared with the potential he's told me to expect....
Not exact, but it was like Stuff 10, Movement 11, Control 13
I picked a different guy (again not exact but was something like stuff 16, movement 18, control 15) with better potential and short listed the player he suggested... after 6 years my guy is barely making it as a middle relief mop up player, the other is striking out every major league hitter with enough nerve to step into the box against him. They were both 23 yo college players at the time.
Not a problem since it's potential of young guys... but it's stupid that he would pick a potentialy worse player to draft when that potential god is sitting there.

[james17]

I don't know if this qualifies as a problem with the A/I or not but it's been widely reported that in converting 6.5 leagues to OOTP2006, the pitchers' ERA's are resoundingly low and team hits and batting averages are thus too low as well.

[jwstern]

I play out my games...things I have seen often

1) Too many pinch hitters for other position players. This often happens such that all PHs are used up and none available for when the pitcher is going to hit.

2) Pitching replacements logic seems rudimentary. Either a huge number of runs and they are pulled mid-inning, a pitch count. Or an early defecit and they are pulled between innings early. For example, in real life a pitcher will almost never be pulled mid-inning with no one because they hit a pitch count or got "tired", but it happens all the time in ootp.

2) Weird intentional walks, lots of times putting the winning run on board.

3) Players going for the extra base when their run is meaningless

4) Small one, but I have notice that on a double steal the AI always tries to throw out the runners based on each stealing the base independently. In reality, it will more often be the runner at third. The reason is with runners on first and second, the runner on first will not be held on and will get a great jump, so his stealing rating for that attempt is much higher than if he was just stealing second with noone else on.

5) It seems like any player in the 9th position sacrifices a lot

6) The players in game stats do not appear to impact PH decisions

[rdomico]

Maybe my sample size isn't large enough....

I've played out maybe 50 games, but it seems like the AI likes to intentionally walk too much.

[HolyCow98]

My biggest issues AI related are...

Trading and releasing of the players the AI acquires. It seem like they will sign, trade or claim a player at times...have problems figuring out where to put the player which leads to the AI attempting to DFA the player...in which case he either goes on waivers but more often than not just gets released out right.

Too many intentional walks. In the league that I play out my games on I've had the AI walk guys intentionally early in games (4th and 5th innings in few cases), as well as far too frequently walking the tying or go ahead runner on base late. I also think the AI needs to look at who is on deck as well. In my play out all my games league....my #3 hitter is a 10 in contact and 9 power (1-10 ratings scale)...and he gets regularly walked to face my #4 hitter who is has a 10 in both contact and power. Once in a while...I could see...maybe the AI is simulating playing a hunch. Stats wise my #3 hitter is hitting .298 with 16 HR and 43 RBI just past the AS break..he however has an on-base % of over .500..while my #4 hittter is hitting .374 with 30 HR and 79 RBI's...granted...he is actually only hitting .227 with runners in scoring position...but still.

Not so much an AI as a game mechanics (I think anyway)...I wish there was a mode where the AI didn't touch your team at all (but leave the option to delegate aspects if we wanted. It's more of annoyance that was never there before.

Everything else I can thnk of off the top of my head that I hope eventually makes it in the game is all related to a few of the reports that used to be in there (things from the record books, the milestones report, trade block, and one I really miss was the minors report where you got suggestions if a guy should be promoted or demoted....always went with what I thought...but miss seeing what the AI thought.) Really dig the history section added to 2006

Sure you will more in-depth suggestions and definately people with far more complaints then me...but just sharing what areas I'd liked looked at.

[McBruce]

Still early days for me, but I have seen the AI manager allow his "get out there and try to hold things down for a few innings" middle reliever to come to bat in a clutch situation with men on base too often. Maybe there should be separate strategies for DH and non-DH games.

[JimG]

Bunting with two strikes:

0-0: Called Strike
0-1: Ball
1-1: Called Strike
1-2: Sac Bunt - play at first, batter OUT!

[andymac]

Originally Posted by JimG

Bunting with two strikes:

0-0: Called Strike
0-1: Ball
1-1: Called Strike
1-2: Sac Bunt - play at first, batter OUT!

Are you saying this should never happen or that it happens to often?

[tysok]

Originally Posted by JimG

Bunting with two strikes:

0-0: Called Strike
0-1: Ball
1-1: Called Strike
1-2: Sac Bunt - play at first, batter OUT!

I see your bunting with 2 strikes and raise you SACRIFICE bunting with 2 OUTS!

I think I have 4 of a kind Aces!

Seriously though, I forgot about that. It happend to me twice, once in the 9th inning, they were "trying" to get the tying run into scoring position...

[james17]

Originally Posted by markprior22

You will always have breaks/busts but when the talk starts of "largely inaccurate" and "good scouts should be wrong quite a bit of the time", it makes me nervous.

Don't get me wrong. Part of me agrees with what you're saying...I guess "getting it right" is what has me hesitant.

This is a good point. We wouldn't want this to become a crapshoot.

[andymac]

Originally Posted by tysok

I see your bunting with 2 strikes and raise you SACRIFICE bunting with 2 OUTS!

I think I have 4 of a kind Aces!

Seriously though, I forgot about that. It happend to me twice, once in the 9th inning, they were "trying" to get the tying run into scoring position...

Yea, that is a big one...I don't necessarily see the bunting with 2 strikes to be a problem unless it is determined to happen too often. Teams do bunt with 2 strikes.