Impressions thread for people who really, really didn't like 2006 - Page 2

Scoman · 03-22-2007, 02:31 PM

Whats liking or disliking 2006 have to do with the 2007 version impressions?

TNCubsFan · 03-22-2007, 02:34 PM

I quit playing 2006 by the All-Star break and went just into trying to figure out what sorts of settings you needed to get a long term sim league to produce good stats and aging patterns.

The interface was a pain and I felt at times I couldnt find what I wanted to find because of all the trees in the forest.

I have been around since 3 and have loved OOTP in every version, except 2006. I didnt expect 2006 to be a polished jem on release, it was to big to expect that. But 2006 to me by the time I threw up my hands in frustration wasnt even a lump of coal but a hard horse apple.

My experiences so far... to quote Frank Barone "Holy Crap"!!! Its very good so far. I was able to start a MLB full minors league in 1969 (fictional) in under 15 min, and it was easy. It was click what you want and what you dont and sit back and play. I am starting and stopping that league to check to see if the players are performing like they advertised and what would be expected. They Are.

Navigation is so much easier and intuitive. Where you want to go you can get there.

Honestly so far, IMO, it isnt going to be fair to compare 06 to 07. We should be comparing 6.5 to 07 instead. Using that criteria, 6.5 isnt close from what I have seen so far.

I am going to continue to look and poke around and dig. This isnt going to be my final opinion. But from a first drive I would say that 07 is a buyer.

Cooleyvol · 03-22-2007, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattH3322

That is a quote they should put on the main page, since you said it.

The same statement from anyone who disliked 2006 should carry the same weight.

waltwa · 03-22-2007, 02:42 PM

please don't take this as any sort of definitive review. But here is an initial reaction. this is a very deep game and because of its depth it is a complicated game to get started on. I have owned every edition of the game and i really need help getting started just as i did last year. I have every hope that it will all fall into place but right now it is not doing that. It reminds me exactly of christmas morning. i am excited about the kids reaction to the gifts we bought them but i am not looking forward to reading directions and then putting the gifts together.

I also have the new Baseball mogul game. I dl it and then 2 seconds later I am playing the game. Is it as deep a game as OOTP- absolutely not! But the bottom line is still that i have to post a number of questions in order to get started. i hope that after getting the initial set-up done things will fall into place.

silvam14 · 03-22-2007, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waltwa

I also have the new Baseball mogul game. I dl it and then 2 seconds later I am playing the game. Is it as deep a game as OOTP- absolutely not! But the bottom line is still that i have to post a number of questions in order to get started. i hope that after getting the initial set-up done things will fall into place.

Well, you kind of answered your own dilemma here didn't you? You either enjoy the amount of detail, or you play BB mogul. You seem to enjoy BB Mogul.

Its not like you have to like OOTP. I'm sure its not for everyone.

Edit: In addition, you don't find the league creation wizard to be of any help?

enuttage · 03-22-2007, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

I hated 2006. It was public knowledge.

This version is so far ahead of 06 and, IMO, is the game that everyone expected 06 to be.

I echo Cooley's sentiments exactly.

My 'Late Preview Impressions' thread is prolly off the front page, but dig it up. Just one person's thoughts, but I quite disliked last year's version.

enuttage · 03-22-2007, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scoman

Whats liking or disliking 2006 have to do with the 2007 version impressions?

You're gonna have to use a little logic on that one on your own!!!

KCRoyalsFan · 03-22-2007, 02:51 PM

I'm impressed so far. I didn't play OOTP 6 like I did OOTP 5. It just didn't feel that good. So I passed on 6.5. However, I'm back for 7 and hoping for good things. So far, I am really enjoying myself. I have yet to play it too indepth but it does seem easier to navigate. It also simulates really fast. I get some errors in some of the help screens, I'm not exactly sure why. I haven't downloaded the manual yet, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

waltwa · 03-22-2007, 02:54 PM

Silvam you don't have it quite right. I do want a great deal of detail- i want a game that is as close to real major league baseball as possible. But I also want to be able to get going on the game and I am not crazy about getting stalled on the procedures involved. I am not ready to give up on it. I am going to give it an honest shot because this game may be worth it.

I will just keep posting questions and things may just work out. That's why i didn't want this taken as any sort of review on the game but only that there are some confusing points on getting started.

Erithtotl · 03-22-2007, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scoman

Whats liking or disliking 2006 have to do with the 2007 version impressions?

I'm a huge James Bond fan. I've seen every movie up until the recent ones multiple times. I thought the last two with Pierce Brosnan were horrible, horrible films. When the new film came out I swore I wouldn't see it unless people I knew whose taste I respected on the subject really liked it. Someone who loved the last two films I would have trouble thinking their judgement would line up with my own. But when my friends who didn't like the way the franchise was going saw Casino Royale and said they liked it, then I felt like I might like it too.

Seems like a pretty straightforward concept to me.

silvam14 · 03-22-2007, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waltwa

Silvam you don't have it quite right. I do want a great deal of detail- i want a game that is as close to real major league baseball as possible. But I also want to be able to get going on the game and I am not crazy about getting stalled on the procedures involved. I am not ready to give up on it. I am going to give it an honest shot because this game may be worth it.

I will just keep posting questions and things may just work out. That's why i didn't want this taken as any sort of review on the game but only that there are some confusing points on getting started.

What about the league creation wizard?

fauteuil7 · 03-22-2007, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waltwa

Silvam you don't have it quite right. I do want a great deal of detail- i want a game that is as close to real major league baseball as possible. But I also want to be able to get going on the game and I am not crazy about getting stalled on the procedures involved. I am not ready to give up on it. I am going to give it an honest shot because this game may be worth it.

I will just keep posting questions and things may just work out. That's why i didn't want this taken as any sort of review on the game but only that there are some confusing points on getting started.

This franchise has never been forgiving to new players, especially those who don't use the message boards. I didn't start posting here until just before the 2006 release. I couldn't imagine having ever been able to make that game into a fun historical-sim experience without the people on here. OOTP is like buying an old guitar - it may take a lot of expert work, but once you get everything set up the way you want, it plays beautifully. This game isn't really for a casual PC user, and I don't know how to make it that way. Adding the Lahman database out of the box like it is in Mogul would be a start. I'm looking forward to seeing the changes for historical leagues. If they all work fine, that'll mean it's a step closer.

Assos · 03-22-2007, 03:02 PM

So far, I have seen some of the biggest dislikers of 06 praise 07. I am thinking that game met their wishes and for those who do not like the deep, baseball stat-o-matic joys of the game, then perhaps this is not their type of game. This is, a free board and everyone has their right not like this game. Just do not make it personal!

fhomess · 03-22-2007, 03:07 PM

waltwa, if there are specific areas of the game you're finding difficult, please pose some questions. I'd be more than happy to help you find the answers you need. The game is indeed deep and complex, and that can be somewhat confusing at first. Personally, I'm the type of person who likes to just play around first and once I feel comfortable, commit to a league. That was the best way for me to learn the interface.

edm · 03-22-2007, 03:18 PM

The only thing I liked about 2006 was the splash screen. After that, I was lost and never got used to the game before giving up. So far, I've only been playing a few minutes (I'm still in the process of setting up a fictional league), but I really, REALLY, love this new league setup wizard.

Kelric · 03-22-2007, 03:19 PM

Ian, you know my history with OOTP and that I really didn't like 2006. The usual complaints apply with that game. I can't give you detailed impressions yet since I've only done a few short automated sims just to play around with world creation, the interface, and the history pages. I'll reiterate some of the points I mentioned here and bring up a few new ones.

The game sims a bit faster for me than 2006 did and this is with FaceGen on and the Almanacs putting out a lot of information. I lightened the load on the Almanacs for my second sim that is running right now. My initial sim ran about an hour to cover four seasons which is about what '06 did (but with Facegen this time, as I said). That sim had nothing running in the background. This second sim has a slightly smaller Almanac output, but I am also running iTunes and Firefox in the background. It still takes about fifteen minutes a season, which is fine with me. '06 bogged down dreadfully when I ran several programs at once.

The UI is much more responsive this time around. The Stop Autoplay button actually stops autoplay on one click, menus pop up instantly and there's no lag when scrolling through the menus either. This is pretty important for me and removes some of the frustration I had with last year's effort.

Having sortable HTML columns in reports is a nice addition. Ultimately not important to gameplay, but useful and enjoyable. My one complaint here is that when sorting by position that the game sorts them numerically/alphabetically (1B/2B/3B/C/CF/LF/P/RF/SS and vice versa) rather than 1-9 in baseball terms (P/C/1B/2B/3B/SS/LF/CF/RF) like I would have expected.

The league creation process is nicely streamlined with the wizard, yet still gives you the option to go into Advanced Mode (basically last year's method) and tweak some of the details at any time.

The Manager Home Page makes browsing through your team screens much simpler. I haven't started running a team yet, but I have looked through a couple.

I've yet to get in depth with the guts of the game, but the outside layers are all much improved over last year so far. The ease of use is much, well, easier, and things are laid out a bit more simply.

Ultimately I'd say keep your eye on the OO forums and try the demo tomorrow. I hope the game will be enough when I really get into it and start playing to justify the good impression it has given me so far.

Markus Heinsohn · 03-22-2007, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waltwa

Silvam you don't have it quite right. I do want a great deal of detail- i want a game that is as close to real major league baseball as possible. But I also want to be able to get going on the game and I am not crazy about getting stalled on the procedures involved. I am not ready to give up on it. I am going to give it an honest shot because this game may be worth it.

Give it a couple of days. Browse around, bookmark your favorite places, play out a few games. Trust me, if you like detail then OOTP 2007 is far superior to Mogul.

fauteuil7 · 03-22-2007, 03:26 PM

I'm sold on this already and regret not being able to download the game tonight. I guess this is just another argument in favor of blind faith...

phillypaul · 03-22-2007, 03:59 PM

Same with me. I'm kind of kicking myself for not doing the preorder but after my issues (MY Issues only)

with 2006 I didn't want to do the same thing over again. And, it has been hard not to preorder due to having all versions prior. But, I'm going to troll the boards for a couple days and see if all I'm reading now (and kicking myself) holds true. I sure hope it does!!

Thanks to everyone for posting their impressions because it will help those of us that had less faith

Enjoy

DreamTeams · 03-22-2007, 04:01 PM

Brief thoughts...

I did a lot of tinkering with 2006 before I could get into it, even after I had set up my league it seemed that I had to do more tinkering. The tinkering seemed never ending and so the game was a chore to to work with. I kept wondering when am I going to be able to just play this game without the tinkering. It was just not a good product. But it had promise.

My opinion is that 2007 delivers on that promise and more. When I finally fired up my beta copy, I was thrilled with how quickly I was able to actually play the game without all the tinkering. Well, really all I did was import my league from 2006, so most of it was already set-up. But it took me only minutes to start playing games and the bonus was the games were fun again.

Anyway, in this version I still tinker, but only when I want to. The rest of the time I find myself having fun actully playing the game and easily utilizing it's various features. That's all I want. This is a solid product in my opinion.

03-22-2007, 02:34 PM	#22
TNCubsFan Major Leagues Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 300	I quit playing 2006 by the All-Star break and went just into trying to figure out what sorts of settings you needed to get a long term sim league to produce good stats and aging patterns. The interface was a pain and I felt at times I couldnt find what I wanted to find because of all the trees in the forest. I have been around since 3 and have loved OOTP in every version, except 2006. I didnt expect 2006 to be a polished jem on release, it was to big to expect that. But 2006 to me by the time I threw up my hands in frustration wasnt even a lump of coal but a hard horse apple. My experiences so far... to quote Frank Barone "Holy Crap"!!! Its very good so far. I was able to start a MLB full minors league in 1969 (fictional) in under 15 min, and it was easy. It was click what you want and what you dont and sit back and play. I am starting and stopping that league to check to see if the players are performing like they advertised and what would be expected. They Are. Navigation is so much easier and intuitive. Where you want to go you can get there. Honestly so far, IMO, it isnt going to be fair to compare 06 to 07. We should be comparing 6.5 to 07 instead. Using that criteria, 6.5 isnt close from what I have seen so far. I am going to continue to look and poke around and dig. This isnt going to be my final opinion. But from a first drive I would say that 07 is a buyer. __________________ "If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out" George Brett HOF

03-22-2007, 03:07 PM	#34
fhomess Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 3,693	waltwa, if there are specific areas of the game you're finding difficult, please pose some questions. I'd be more than happy to help you find the answers you need. The game is indeed deep and complex, and that can be somewhat confusing at first. Personally, I'm the type of person who likes to just play around first and once I feel comfortable, commit to a league. That was the best way for me to learn the interface. __________________ StatsLab- PHP/MySQL based utilities for Online Leagues Baseball Cards - Full list of known templates and documentation on card development.

03-22-2007, 04:01 PM	#40
DreamTeams Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 2,522	Brief thoughts... I did a lot of tinkering with 2006 before I could get into it, even after I had set up my league it seemed that I had to do more tinkering. The tinkering seemed never ending and so the game was a chore to to work with. I kept wondering when am I going to be able to just play this game without the tinkering. It was just not a good product. But it had promise. My opinion is that 2007 delivers on that promise and more. When I finally fired up my beta copy, I was thrilled with how quickly I was able to actually play the game without all the tinkering. Well, really all I did was import my league from 2006, so most of it was already set-up. But it took me only minutes to start playing games and the bonus was the games were fun again. Anyway, in this version I still tinker, but only when I want to. The rest of the time I find myself having fun actully playing the game and easily utilizing it's various features. That's all I want. This is a solid product in my opinion. __________________

03-22-2007, 02:31 PM	#21
Scoman All Star Starter Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: heath ohio Posts: 1,831	Whats liking or disliking 2006 have to do with the 2007 version impressions?

03-22-2007, 02:42 PM	#24
waltwa All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 906	please don't take this as any sort of definitive review. But here is an initial reaction. this is a very deep game and because of its depth it is a complicated game to get started on. I have owned every edition of the game and i really need help getting started just as i did last year. I have every hope that it will all fall into place but right now it is not doing that. It reminds me exactly of christmas morning. i am excited about the kids reaction to the gifts we bought them but i am not looking forward to reading directions and then putting the gifts together. I also have the new Baseball mogul game. I dl it and then 2 seconds later I am playing the game. Is it as deep a game as OOTP- absolutely not! But the bottom line is still that i have to post a number of questions in order to get started. i hope that after getting the initial set-up done things will fall into place.

03-22-2007, 02:51 PM	#28
KCRoyalsFan All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 599	I'm impressed so far. I didn't play OOTP 6 like I did OOTP 5. It just didn't feel that good. So I passed on 6.5. However, I'm back for 7 and hoping for good things. So far, I am really enjoying myself. I have yet to play it too indepth but it does seem easier to navigate. It also simulates really fast. I get some errors in some of the help screens, I'm not exactly sure why. I haven't downloaded the manual yet, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

03-22-2007, 02:54 PM	#29
waltwa All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 906	Silvam you don't have it quite right. I do want a great deal of detail- i want a game that is as close to real major league baseball as possible. But I also want to be able to get going on the game and I am not crazy about getting stalled on the procedures involved. I am not ready to give up on it. I am going to give it an honest shot because this game may be worth it. I will just keep posting questions and things may just work out. That's why i didn't want this taken as any sort of review on the game but only that there are some confusing points on getting started.

03-22-2007, 03:02 PM	#33
Assos All Star Starter Join Date: May 2004 Location: Just on the fair side of the foul pole! Posts: 1,768	So far, I have seen some of the biggest dislikers of 06 praise 07. I am thinking that game met their wishes and for those who do not like the deep, baseball stat-o-matic joys of the game, then perhaps this is not their type of game. This is, a free board and everyone has their right not like this game. Just do not make it personal!

03-22-2007, 03:18 PM	#35
edm All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 1,999	The only thing I liked about 2006 was the splash screen. After that, I was lost and never got used to the game before giving up. So far, I've only been playing a few minutes (I'm still in the process of setting up a fictional league), but I really, REALLY, love this new league setup wizard.

03-22-2007, 03:19 PM	#36
Kelric Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Greater Boston Area Posts: 3,992	Ian, you know my history with OOTP and that I really didn't like 2006. The usual complaints apply with that game. I can't give you detailed impressions yet since I've only done a few short automated sims just to play around with world creation, the interface, and the history pages. I'll reiterate some of the points I mentioned here and bring up a few new ones. The game sims a bit faster for me than 2006 did and this is with FaceGen on and the Almanacs putting out a lot of information. I lightened the load on the Almanacs for my second sim that is running right now. My initial sim ran about an hour to cover four seasons which is about what '06 did (but with Facegen this time, as I said). That sim had nothing running in the background. This second sim has a slightly smaller Almanac output, but I am also running iTunes and Firefox in the background. It still takes about fifteen minutes a season, which is fine with me. '06 bogged down dreadfully when I ran several programs at once. The UI is much more responsive this time around. The Stop Autoplay button actually stops autoplay on one click, menus pop up instantly and there's no lag when scrolling through the menus either. This is pretty important for me and removes some of the frustration I had with last year's effort. Having sortable HTML columns in reports is a nice addition. Ultimately not important to gameplay, but useful and enjoyable. My one complaint here is that when sorting by position that the game sorts them numerically/alphabetically (1B/2B/3B/C/CF/LF/P/RF/SS and vice versa) rather than 1-9 in baseball terms (P/C/1B/2B/3B/SS/LF/CF/RF) like I would have expected. The league creation process is nicely streamlined with the wizard, yet still gives you the option to go into Advanced Mode (basically last year's method) and tweak some of the details at any time. The Manager Home Page makes browsing through your team screens much simpler. I haven't started running a team yet, but I have looked through a couple. I've yet to get in depth with the guts of the game, but the outside layers are all much improved over last year so far. The ease of use is much, well, easier, and things are laid out a bit more simply. Ultimately I'd say keep your eye on the OO forums and try the demo tomorrow. I hope the game will be enough when I really get into it and start playing to justify the good impression it has given me so far.

03-22-2007, 03:26 PM	#38
fauteuil7 Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 356	I'm sold on this already and regret not being able to download the game tonight. I guess this is just another argument in favor of blind faith...

03-22-2007, 03:59 PM	#39
phillypaul Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 21	Same with me. I'm kind of kicking myself for not doing the preorder but after my issues (MY Issues only) with 2006 I didn't want to do the same thing over again. And, it has been hard not to preorder due to having all versions prior. But, I'm going to troll the boards for a couple days and see if all I'm reading now (and kicking myself) holds true. I sure hope it does!! Thanks to everyone for posting their impressions because it will help those of us that had less faith Enjoy