My BIG overall impressions

[Erithtotl]

Ok, I played OOTP5 all weekend. After over 300 seasons of OOTP4 solo plus being in an online league, here are my impressions of OOTP5.

Interface: I like the new interface alot. Especially all the hyperlinking of players in the reports. The Almanac rules, especially for online leagues, but also in general. There are a few places where links would be incredibly useful but are missing, most notably the Player Development Report, which is vital because you are always looking at that then going to check out the player in question. Skinning is a great way to keep the game fresh, btw.

Performance: The game is SLOW. Everything about it is about half as fast as OOTP4. Simming, playing the game, play-by-play, etc. I have a 2 GHz machine with a gig of ram, and its acceptable, but thats about it. If I was playing on say, a P III 750 the game would be a nightmare I think. Still, its a lot faster than Puresim baseball or Championship Manager.

Manager Mode: This is very cool. Not so much for the marriage, having kids part (which needs to be fleshed out a lot. For example, a little more feedback on how my relationship is going would be nice. As far as I can tell there are only 3 pre-marriage messages 'You met a girl', 'You're in a relationship', 'She dumped you'.), but rather, the whole dealing with an owner, reputation, firing thing. It makes the game MUCH more challenging. In OOTP4, I used to start a new league with a draft, then pick all the top prospects, tank the first year or two, and be completely dominant after that. When I tried that in OOTP5, I got fired after the first season, and someone else took over the beautiful farm system I'd built! Some parts don't make sense though. For example, I won the World Series for the first time and had to take a pay cut!!?!?

Player Development: This has been much improved, with some exceptions. Prospects especially are a lot more random, with a lot of talent drops and raises, making prospects a much less predictable item. But I think there needs to be more work on this. For example, I think its unlikely that young pitchers will LOSE endurance or velocity unless they have an injury, for example. If anything, prospects could be even more random on the whole though, as it seems to add a lot of challenge to the game.

But, I've noticed a lot of established players in their mid-20s getting talent drops, which should be very rare except in the case of a big injury. Also, players in their early 30s often decline too rapidly. I'm all for earlier average declines, but guys just fall off a cliff, going from a superstar to absolutely worthless in one season. Except in rare circumstance, or injury, a player should show a more gradual decline, giving the player a chance to figure out that the guy is getting worse.

The star system is pretty good. I don't always agree with the ratings but on the whole it makes things a lot easier to manage. I would suggest that the stars show up on more of the reports, though. It would be nice to see the stars on the 'By talent' or 'By ratings' screens.

Finances: Team finances seem unchanged for the most part. But here are a couple things I've noticed.

First, when relegating a player to AAA, he can refuse the assignment if he's a vet. Thats very cool, but your only option is to keep him on your 25 man roster or cut him, which is not. In real life I can waive the guy, and keep paying him but remove him from my roster. But here I'm forced to pay his whole salary at once, which can be devestating if its one of those superstars who went in the toilet overnight (like I mentioned above). I need to be able to waive players and get them off my roster, without having to pay their whole salary at once. Also, while on the topic of arbitration, it'd be nice if this was based on major league service time (games played or innings pitched) instead of on years. Too many guys get screwed up because they played a game in the majors when they were 18 for some reason. This hurts the AI a lot worse than the player, because the AI frequently makes these mistakes.

As someone else mentioned, there is a problem with Arbitration. The info in the salary window is a year behind, meaning I don't see the guy is in his Arb years until he's already gotten one arbitrated salary.

In free agency, its clear the AI cheats big time. Frequently I'll have the prefered offer, then an AI will swoop in and snag the player in one day without me getting a change to counter offer. I'll look at the signing log and see it only offered $10K more than I did. I'm all for giving the AI an edge, but this is a bit too obvious.

There is a bug with contract extentions, though right now, with the state of player development, its nice to have. If you sign a guy to an extension, you can release him before the extension kicks in and never have to pay it. This is real handy when you sign a guy to a big extension and then his talent goes into the tank.

Manager Strategies: This has been expanded and much improved. I love the player specific settings. But there could be some more feedback on this. Specifically, does setting a pitch count actually help anything? For example, if I set my pitch count to 100 for my young starters, will it keep them healthy? I can't tell for sure, but that would be VERY cool.

One problem, though, is that right now the team strategies will often get reset at the start of a next season, but not ALWAYS.

Trading: Trading is in some ways much improved and in others its worse. I've noticed the AI will often if not always absolutely refuse to accept any trade for a prospect. As noted somewhere else, I could offer the #1 prospect in the league for a washed up, 38 year old with ratings of 2 across the board and the AI will reject in. In fact, I could offer the Top 5 prospects in the league and the same is still true. It makes it impossible to better your team by trading away the future for the present.

Conversely, the AI will offer to trade established players for prospects occasionally if it sees I have a need. This is cool.

The AI refuses to give up mid to top level prospects for talented Major leaguers unless they are absolute top-notch 5 star guys. This is a little frustrating but acceptable. But then, when you do offer a top notch 5 star player, the AI will give you ALL Their prospects (basically pick their top 5 prospects and trade for them). This was a problem in 4 and is still a problem now. I would suggest something where each additional prospect added to the trade should be valued higher than the last, to make this harder to do.

The AI will never take on a bad contract. This is fine except I think it should be willing to do it if you sweeten the deal enough with other talent. Still, this is hardly a priority.

Inuries: At the default setting, injuries seem a lot more frequent than in OOTP4. For the most part this is a good thing. One thing that is REALLY annoying, is that a guy will go on the DL for 4 weeks, then I will get bombarded by messages saying he's not healing as fast as expected and it will take another 2 weeks. I've sometimes gotten 3 of these messages in a week long period for one player! I think increased randomness is a good thing, but that is too much!

I THINK young pitchers have more of a chance of breaking down than they used to. I tried to put them on a pitch count and it seemed to help, but the sample size is too small for me to know for sure. I'd be curious to know how the new injury algorithms work.

I would suggest that the injury rating actually be based on the number of injuries a guy has had. For example, instead of just being 'Prone', a player should become prone by having a number of injuries. The longer he goes without a big injury, the less prone he should be, etc. Obviously, age should be a factor as well, with very young and very old players getting hurt more.

Coaches/scouts: Coaches and scouts now seem to come in more levels. I'm not sure if they have as much effect as they did in 4. I have all top notch coaches but my minor leaguers still seem to develop pretty randomly. Scouts are interesting. I had a high rated scout (Excellent I think) and then upgraded to a Legendary scout, and found that my old scout had overrated pretty much every player on my roster! I always felt scouting should be less reliable, though it seems that all the ratings were overrated, and none underrated. More mistakes both ways would be better I think.

One place that still needs work is that area where the player has gone from a Prospect (blue) to a Established player (gold). The scouting report doesn't give any indication of what sort of potential a gold-star guy has.

I would ask for one relatively simple feature for those of us who are pretty good at the game. A NO RATINGS mode, where we can't see talent OR ratings. This would be pretty cool, having to base our management totally on stats, the scouting report, and the STAR rating.


In conclusion, I would say I really like where the game has gone. OOTP4 got WAY too easy after awhile. In playing this weekend on Manager mode Hard level, it took me 8 years to win the World Series, from a drafted, fictional league. But more importantly, many of those years I had a losing record and was worrying about my job as I tried to build up my team. This is a huge improvement after playing careers in version 4 where I would post 30 Division winning season in a row. The game seems deeper than ever, and with a few tweaks, specifically, player development, AI and performance, I think it will really be kicking ass.

[AJTrenkle]

I was reading this and looking to comment, but I really agree with everything. Again, I just have to echo your point about the new player development. It is so so so so important. I hope the patch looks at your suggestions if they havent already. Injuries should be the key determiner before 32 or so, and then things should generally be a bit more gradual (though I dont have a problem with some completel collapses) in decline phase.

I have gone to liking the new system a thousand times more and I think it will REALLY be great for online leagues once people get used to it bc it will make it more harder and volatile and the rampaging synasties common to many leagues will be less easy to maintain.

Another note and we are not there yet, but I hope development can be gotten right so in future additions online leagues dont have their plans in deep do-do with each new version. I guess the answer would be just getting it right once and for all, and I think most would agree its not quite right yet, although it is better.

But the game is great and I dont mean to make it sound that i think otherwise.

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Erithtotl
Performance: The game is SLOW. Everything about it is about half as fast as OOTP4. Simming, playing the game, play-by-play, etc. I have a 2 GHz machine with a gig of ram, and its acceptable, but thats about it. If I was playing on say, a P III 750 the game would be a nightmare I think. Still, its a lot faster than Puresim baseball or Championship Manager.

At first I was having problems with this, but then I turned off Norton's Anti Virus and the sim speed sped up a ton. Have you tried turning off applications running in the background? I know it helps a lot of people.

I would suggest that the injury rating actually be based on the number of injuries a guy has had. For example, instead of just being 'Prone', a player should become prone by having a number of injuries. The longer he goes without a big injury, the less prone he should be, etc. Obviously, age should be a factor as well, with very young and very old players getting hurt more.

What about all those players that come into the draft with known injury problems? Those guys should be given prone ratings, but guys who last like 5 years without an injury should be awarded with a 'durable' rating.

Other than that, I agree with what you say. Good post.

[gamadict]

Agree on most things, especially about the AI trading. They seem willing to give up any player over 26 quite freely, but just clam up when you want any younger player. This is annoying, prospects are fun to trade for, developed players really aren't...

For example, I just got SF to accept a trade with Mike Williams, Pokey Reese, Aramis Ramirez, Randal Simon and Brian Meadows for Barry Bonds...They wouldn't accept the same deal for Foppert...

Ah, damn. Now nobody will accept Barry in a trade, he just eats $$...I know he's 38, but come on...

[treedom]

good summary...

i sim slow, so i haven't had first-hand experience yet with these drastic talent drops...so far my only experience has been a 34 year old SP getting hurt bad (10 weeks) and going down in talent as well as in ratings (from 5 er rating to 1)...this was pretty cool, because it's very realistic...

but if natural drops are as prevalent and drastic as people have been saying for guys in their prime and in their mid-30s i hope markus reconsiders and tones things down...i'm up for randomness and unpredictability...but when guys can routinely go from star to nothing in one year in their mid-30s without an injury, it could make things frustrating...

[Erithtotl]

One of the more frustrating ones is pitcher endurance. I had a whole stable of good young pitchers, all of them 4 or 5 star pitchers. By age of 28 3 of them had gone from B or C endurance to E. I just don't think this is something that happens much in real life. Also, by 30 every single one of them had suffered at least one, and often several talent drops. This is with an top ranked pitching coach and 'Pitchers' as my manager ability.

I do think that talent changes in pitchers under 25 should be common. As the guys at Baseball Prospectus say, 'There is no such thing as a pitching prospect'.

Oh, one thing though. A lot of pitchers in real life break down in their mid-late 20s because they were ridden too hard in their early years. Does OOTP5 simulate anything like commulative pitcher abuse? If it did that would be awesome. But it should also have less injuries amongst young pitchers who aren't pushed too hard.

I don't think it should be easy to get prospects and youngsters
away from the AI. But it should be POSSIBLE. I should be able to trade 3 established 3 1/2 to 4 star guys who fill positions the AI needs for a top prospect. Though this should also be very much depending on the AI team's financial situation and their level of compeditiveness. AI should never trade top prospects for old established guys if they are in 'rebuilding' mode which I think it did way too much in OOTP4. Also, it should be possible to trade prospects for prospects. For example, if the AI has two top RF prospects, it should be willing to trade for an equally talented prospect at another position. Finally, prospects in single-A should be worth less than AAA prospects or guys ready for the majors.

That said, I don't want to turn this into a bitch thread. I'm loving the game so far these are just some observations.

[x94blair3]

And they're good observations. Still haven't purchased so I can't say from experience, but I would say that trading prospects is a big part of MLB. It's what happens when the rich are looking to upgrade for competitive reasons. You don't usually see a ton of mid season "top for top" trades.

In the offseason I guess you'd be more likely to see "blockbusters" or equal talent levels...Like Closer for Closer between the whitesox and the A's.

It would be nice if it was kind of depicted that way.

Of course what do I know? I haven't even tried it . Only going off what I'm reading.

-Nick