Player development is broken! Please fix!

[ashantewarrier]

Originally Posted by adamj

I wonder how many people even use the sounds? I know I turned them off the first night. I'd rather listen to a random radio broadcast from MLB.com in the background.

We're back on the sound thing again?

Otherwise interesting discussion.

BTW/OT- MLB.TV has it's own issues as well including their radio feeds. GO to their message boards and look at the complaints. I rather listen to OOTP sounds.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by bababui

Player development is a completely random thing in the MLB. Anyone who thinks otherwise, please provide a model that will accurately model the development and aging of players in only the major leagues. Its not going to happen. For every Ramirez and Pujols, you have Knoblach and Sexson. Then there is the case of David Ortiz or Reggie Willets. What you want wont happen because its unmoddable on an individual basis.

Are you sure that development is completely random? Is it your believe that individual ratings can't be graphed out to show arcs or trends?

It is my belief that if you want accurate development you have to look specifically at the things you're modeling, which would be players (specifically, people). The real trouble at creating truly realistic results is separating tools and skills and how they increase or decrease and how quickly and at what age. Not to mention identifying the causes for these changes.

How these players interact is also very important. Did player X's career tank because suddenly couldn't hit major league pitching in general or did he get injured, or did he develop poor mechanics, or did opponents identify and exploit a weakness, etc, etc.

Can home run power be taught or does it have to be developed physically? What about the ability to draw a walk? Running speed? Throwing arm? Pitching mechanics? You get the idea. All of these areas can and should be tweaked.

You also have to be very careful when you look at aging / development during the "steroid" era. Having guys that suddenly bloom or drop in the last few years might very well be from unnatural causes. I'm not saying Richie Sexson was using but having a guy who's career path dropped off the table that fast makes one suspicious at least.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Bears5122

Catering to that "one group" would dramatically impact the sales of the game and bring the community back to what it was 5 years ago. The "one group" has been ignored the past 5 years while the Samoan Handstand League of Eastern Chile took precedent.

I agree that it's an international game, but MLB is the main reason it is and still the overwhelming favorite amongst fans of the sport. It should be given the most attention and the game should model it well before anything else is touched.

You nailed it.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by deadringer

That would NEVER happen. He'd basically have to admit that the game will never improve except for the superficial things that we're all fighting about and that would be business suicide.

Well he's between a rock and a hard place then because being completely hush mouthed about it gives the customer the idea he is just ignoring them, and that can be suicidal as well if enough long time customers just decide the heck with it.

The thing is that there is no word what so ever from the people in the know if there are even any plans to fix stuff. They don't have to fix everything in one version, nor do they have to add 1,000 new things every version. Eventually they will run out of new things to add as does every other game that has ever come out, so drag that out as far as possible. They can fix a thing or two while adding new stuff.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by ashantewarrier

......... I rather listen to OOTP sounds.

For an hour or so then it becomes repetitive.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by RchW

This is closer to my view. I'm all for further improvements in player development but I can live with what it is now plus some tweaking of aging and development and manipulation of league totals.

Far more important to me is the apparent inability of the AI to determine a lineup based on obvious combinations of offense and defense. The fact that the game produces high end hitters with ratings at all four infield positions sucks. Such players should be rare and older. The AI puts these players at 2B and SS just to get the bat in the lineup, no matter how bad the defense. You then end up with lineups that have 30-40 HR from SS/2B but 10-20HR from 1B/3B. This skews both offensive and defensive results just as much as broken player development ever did because the lineup is unrealistic and loaded.

Fix the player creation/AI usage/AI evaluation first.

Sometimes it's the little things that really piss me off. Every year I see a left handed infielder who for some reason was inserted at second, third, or shortstop who then develops a rating for that position while it takes my left fielder a whole season to learn RF.

One of the issues I have is with the AI's development plans on players. You would think that as a rookie player is drafted that he'd be assigned a position that would take his physical skills into account. I can't count how many times I've seen guys who have low ratings at turning the double play being used in the middle infield.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

Or maybe they could just do both.

Trying to cater to the freaks and quirkmeisters as well is why the game supports the Samoan Handstand League of Eastern Chile and sound while the player developement model and the MLB model are both still broken.

There are only so many resources. Wasting them on weirdness has badly damaged the game.

[treedom]

Sound is just about as useful as my nipples.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You nailed it.

It is my belief that one of the reasons why Markus has pulled further and further away from a MLB based sim is that with each level of complexity that is added it makes it more and more difficult to get the MLB type sims to work the way it should.

Take MLB rosters for example. It's always been a whole lot of work but in the 6.5 and earlier versions it was much much quicker and easier to get an accurate real life roster set out.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by deadringer

Sometimes it's the little things that really piss me off. Every year I see a left handed infielder who for some reason was inserted at second, third, or shortstop who then develops a rating for that position while it takes my left fielder a whole season to learn RF.

One of the issues I have is with the AI's development plans on players. You would think that as a rookie player is drafted that he'd be assigned a position that would take his physical skills into account. I can't count how many times I've seen guys who have low ratings at turning the double play being used in the middle infield.

This is another valid issue. The AI has problems with lineups (and why can't we save any?). The AI has problems with depth charts. The AI has serious problems with the minors. There's no mass delete. There's no way to lock a player's position. Plus player development is still messed up, the MLB model is still messed up, and there are legacy bugs ruining people's gaming experiences.

And instead we have, courtesy of catering to freaks and quirkmeisters, such glories as sound and the Samoan Handstand League of Eastern Chile. The focus is all too often on trivia and not on what's actually important. It's a serious mistake.

Color me embittered.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by deadringer

It is my belief that one of the reasons why Markus has pulled further and further away from a MLB based sim is that with each level of complexity that is added it makes it more and more difficult to get the MLB type sims to work the way it should.

Take MLB rosters for example. It's always been a whole lot of work but in the 6.5 and earlier versions it was much much quicker and easier to get an accurate real life roster set out.

I have suspected this for some time. I am sorry to see someone else pointing it out, because that makes it more than just a personal fear of mine.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by treedom

Sound is just about as useful as my nipples.

Less. You can pierce your nipples if you want to.

[ashantewarrier]

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

For an hour or so then it becomes repetitive.

I can see that.

[ashantewarrier]

It is interesting to see the concerns regarding the talent shifts in the game. I too have some issues with the "talent randomness" factor. For example I had a player in my historical fictional league hit a league record 55 homers in year 1950 at age 28, hit 52 the following year, and 44 in the third year. Then right in the prime if his career year fall of the face of the earth. He retired shortly in at the young age of 34.

I am still not sure if adjustment of talent randomness will negate some of this but this is a concern as I have seen this with a few other players.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Less. You can pierce your nipples if you want to.

LOL...geez.

[Bears5122]

Originally Posted by deadringer

It is my belief that one of the reasons why Markus has pulled further and further away from a MLB based sim is that with each level of complexity that is added it makes it more and more difficult to get the MLB type sims to work the way it should.

Take MLB rosters for example. It's always been a whole lot of work but in the 6.5 and earlier versions it was much much quicker and easier to get an accurate real life roster set out.

I've been thinking that for a few years now. While I understand Markus' theory behind it, I just think it was too ambitious to believe that you could build a system that could accurately play the wild variations that are available as well as an MLB simulation. There are just too many variables from universe to universe to be able to not only pinpoint problems, but achieve any consistency.

While I may be in the minority here, but I never thought 6.5 was a bad game. I never felt the whole concept needed to be scrapped. Sure there were some issues and features that were needed, but it was fun. It wasn't all that hard to jump into and in fact I miss the simplicity of some of the tasks. Mods were easier to develop, especially rosters.

I have a sad feeling that the game is just so far beyond that stage that there is no turning back. I wonder what kind of game OOTP would have been if the last 5 years had been spent improving 6.5 and not trying to create some wacky open ended version of baseball. I just don't think you'll ever be able to get realistic modern day results with such a complex and open system.

[Antonin]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

A lot of us are upset over the fact that the game prioritizes quirks and ridiculous foreign leagues over having a first-class MLB simulator and focusing on real baseball.

Well, OOTP is not for everybody. Perhaps PureSim or Baseball Mogul would be better for you.






===========================

McCain = More illegal, immoral wars, fewer Americans with healthcare, more poverty, fewer jobs. Ignorance is strength!

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Bears5122

But in a way it is about US leagues vs Ghana leagues. When some of us mention that, it's because we've felt that player development and other important factors took a backseat to these new additions.

I understand that logic. And I would tend to agree with it, but in the end that conversation is a dead end with no value.

And while getting together to hold the game to a higher standard is novel idea, I don't think it'll happen. There are two different mindsets for OOTP. Those who want to simply play a functioning MLB simulation, and those who want to be able to add those dragon, elephants and 3rd base coaches who can sprinkle pixie dust on their Mongolian feeder league teams.

It certainly won't happen if we disrespect each other's favorite approach. The point is that 100% of us folks who play OOTP (who don't play with development off) are affected by the results engine and the development engine.

The reason this is important is because changing the development engine is going to be hard. It's going to require a new design, a new model of what a baseball player is and a new model of the events that occur to to create a baseball play. Markus says he rewrote the entire engine in v2006, but this is bigger, because while he may have written 100% new code, the design itself--the algorithms--are essentially unchanged. Quite honestly, no one cares about the code except Markus. We only care about the algorithms. Changing the design is a big-danged deal.

I think it's fair to say that most owners who play leagues based in Ghana want their Ghanan's to age like real Ghanan's. I think most players who want to play in European leagues want their European's to age like real human beings in Europe. I suggest that the aging curves of baseball players in each country are probably about the same.

I think there's some value in that understanding around the community.

Truth be told, there is a much tighter connection between (real?) fictional leagues playing MLB-like baseball, Euro-leagues, Ghana Leagues, and players who like sound and weird financial systems than there is between those kinds of players and those who run historical leagues that model MLB over specific eras. True historical leagues almost _require_ the kinds of rating system and player model that OOTP uses today because they rely upon stats to develop their OOTP ratings, hence the skill model OOTP needs to use needs to be based on these rates (HR/AB, BB/PA, SO/AB, etc). But improving the development and results model will pretty much _require_ at rewrite that will result in things like the Lahman database being less than valuable as sources of roster creation.

Note that I'm not saying historical leagues are not valuable (though I prefer the fictional world). I'm saying that these two types of universes are, at their root, incompatible, and the fictional OOTP model will be limited in its ability to really improve until this link is broken (or until someone smarter than me can figure out a way to truly link the two).

Realize that with recalc in place, the historical league is the exception to the rule I stated above--fictional and historical leagues share the results engine, but pure historical simmers could care less about the development engine because recalc just resets the ratings every season based on rate-stats.

So us fictional leaguers are really all in the same boat, regardless of whether we like that idea or not.

[Carplos]

I think it's fair to say that most owners who play leagues based in Ghana want their Ghanan's to age like real Ghanan's. I think most players who want to play in European leagues want their European's to age like real human beings in Europe. I suggest that the aging curves of baseball players in each country are probably about the same.

I'm all for improvements to the aging and developmental system, however, I enjoy the results and don't find the game "broken" in this regard. I don't run massive sims, export the raw data and analyze it.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by Carplos

I'm all for improvements to the aging and developmental system, however, I enjoy the results and don't find the game "broken" in this regard. I don't run massive sims, export the raw data and analyze it.

Doesn't that just mean that you aren't noticing that it's broken?