Why were 6.12 and 6.5 so good?

[rem]

FWIW, when OOTP 6.5 hit the streets a lot of people swore that OOTP5 was superior.

[crazyeights]

Nothing against OOTP 9, but I do like OOTP 6 much better for online leagues. I have an OOTP 6 league that I have been running for years. I considered switching to OOTP 9, but nobody in our league liked it for an online league. So we stayed with OOTP 6, and will continue with OOTP 6.

[Giants44]

In its day I loved 6.5, as I did with 6,5,4,etc

today I love the current version and couldn't image going back.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by kq76

6.x really wasn't that good. I mean, it was pretty good, but some people make it out to be the best game ever and it just wasn't.

I think the reason why it was so revered was because OOTP2006 was in a

I find it baffling why 6.12 is revered too.

Try the double steal. It's remarkable how many SB you can rack up. An average team can get 200. If you had the Cardinals or Reds in the 1980's, 350 to 400 SB was doable.

If you knew what to look for, there was always a C in the draft pool that would turn into King King. Make sure to trade him when he turned 30, though.

Find excellent young MR with endurances in the 40's. Spend time in Spring Training stretching them out. By the time they were in their late 20s, they were superb SP.

Is there a 19 yr old LHB outfielder with excellent power/speed numbers? Trade for him, and make him the centerpiece of your championship teams.

Want to win perpetually? Schedule event dates against bad teams, boost your fan interest to the max, and offer contract extensions to the 26 and 27 year old players. They sign cut-rate contract extensions.

When a player turned 32, trade him. Preferably that day.

Towards the end of my 6.12 days, I was averaging 130 wins a season.

[Prodigal Son]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

I find it baffling why 6.12 is revered too.

Try the double steal. It's remarkable how many SB you can rack up. An average team can get 200. If you had the Cardinals or Reds in the 1980's, 350 to 400 SB was doable.

If you knew what to look for, there was always a C in the draft pool that would turn into King King. Make sure to trade him when he turned 30, though.

Find excellent young MR with endurances in the 40's. Spend time in Spring Training stretching them out. By the time they were in their late 20s, they were superb SP.

Is there a 19 yr old LHB outfielder with excellent power/speed numbers? Trade for him, and make him the centerpiece of your championship teams.

Want to win perpetually? Schedule event dates against bad teams, boost your fan interest to the max, and offer contract extensions to the 26 and 27 year old players. They sign cut-rate contract extensions.

When a player turned 32, trade him. Preferably that day.

Towards the end of my 6.12 days, I was averaging 130 wins a season.

This is the key post of the thread, IMO. Version 6 was very predictable. Some folks like that in a baseball sim; others don't. I don't, because I feel that if it is predictable...then it ain't baseball.

It was quite possible to have all 8-9 position players in your lineup play 150+ games for 6-7 straight seasons without one suffering a serious injury or a drop in talent. Player development--especially decline--was ridiculously predictable.

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by Prodigal Son

This is the key post of the thread, IMO. Version 6 was very predictable. Some folks like that in a baseball sim; others don't. I don't, because I feel that if it is predictable...then it ain't baseball.

It was quite possible to have all 8-9 position players in your lineup play 150+ games for 6-7 straight seasons without one suffering a serious injury or a drop in talent. Player development--especially decline--was ridiculously predictable.

Yup, yup. OOTP9 has a much better player developmental module...

[Boom Boom]

I am/was a the biggest Baseball Mogul Fan Boy...I played Season Ticket Baseball, which introduced me to the genre...then high heat, finally Baseball Mogul, Baseball Mogul has been my game of choice since 2003. I bought and still own OOTP4, 5 and 6. The most I have ever played OOTP was maybe 1 month, then I got sick of all the bugs and went back to Mogul, Mogul I would play 11 out of the 12 months of the year, and only play OOTP a little bit. I remember when I bought either OOTP 4 in November of 2002. I thought of Season Ticket Baseball, and thought it was a good game, but slow as heck, OOTP 5 I played only a month.....then went back to mogul...then back to BMO.

All in all, when you fastward, it wasn't till June of this year, I have played only OOTP since June. The only Mogul I played was BMO....but for the offline version. OOTP 9 is the best baseball Simulation I have ever played.

I thought that OOTP2006 was beyond a bad game, and didn't even try OOTP2007, but bought OOTP8 just out of curiousity. Then I bought OOTP9 in June. I haven't looked back, since.

[satchel]

Originally Posted by Prodigal Son

[Raidergoo's] is the key post of the thread, IMO.

I agree. Excellent points.

[Eckstein 4 Prez]

As many others have said, a big part of the nostalgia for OOTP6 was that OOTP 2006 was an unmitigated disaster that was released when it was not "tested and ready." This was corrected in OOTP 2007, and OOTP9 is now considerably better than any of the pre-SI versions.

However, IMO the game won't be any better than a solid B-plus until Markus really commits to going back and squashing the many, many little bugs that have existed since time immemorial.

[zekester91]

IMHO, I would say that there was a lot more Moders for 6, if you needed a staduim or schedule or just about anything else the comuity could get it for you or make it. Most of those people really really didn't like 2006's game and left so there is a big whole that really hasn't been filled. Plus there are some of them who are still here Iunder allis) and I don't think they have really given it a chance and are the ones that are the loudest against the game now.

In wrap up, The Community was a lot tighter back then, where now we are more scattered and think that certain things that are not like 6 are major "bugs" that are deal breakers....

[treedom]

Originally Posted by ashantewarrier

One word: Catobase.

Cato was awesome, but it's even better built into the game itself, like it is now.

[bp_]

6.5 was a great game but OOTP9 is far and away a better game

[Malleus Dei]

They're both great. They're just great in different ways.

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by treedom

Cato was awesome, but it's even better built into the game itself, like it is now.

Yeah, that thing could be a pain to get working properly back in the day. I like having it built into the game, so many better things about OOTP9...

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by Eckstein 4 Prez

As many others have said, a big part of the nostalgia for OOTP6 was that OOTP 2006 was an unmitigated disaster that was released when it was not "tested and ready." This was corrected in OOTP 2007, and OOTP9 is now considerably better than any of the pre-SI versions.

However, IMO the game won't be any better than a solid B-plus until Markus really commits to going back and squashing the many, many little bugs that have existed since time immemorial.

.

[hydrostar]

Originally Posted by Raderick

The simplicity of 6.5 and the lack of bugs trumps all versions released after it. Also it's much much better for online leagues.

Cosign.

[lahoward]

Originally Posted by RchW

I took v6.5 off my computer after v2006 was released and have never missed it.

Same here

[stevebydac]

I read all of these posts, and really I think it boils down to this: If you have a lot of time available in your life to learn the latest version and get used to it, then you prefer OOTP9 with all of its features and superior immersion. But if you have a very hectic life, can only play an hour here or there, might miss a week or month without playing it (and forget how to do certain things), then versions 5 and 6 probably fit your lifestyle better.

I have some family members and friends that are baseball fans but very busy guys. I think trying to get them to play OOTP9 for the first time would overwhelm most of them. Unless they really got committed time-wise, I think they'd give up. I think I could walk them through OOTP5 or 6.5 pretty easily and ramp up their enjoyment more quickly.

Ferraris are better than Camaros. Filet mignon is better than hamburgers. But if you don't have time to maintain the Ferrari or prepare a filet properly, you can still put a smile on your face tearing off in a Z28 to have a Whopper at Burger King.

[Antonin]

Excellent points. I've been thinking of introducing a friend to the OOTP world, and would direct him to the free version of OOTP5 before even trying the current version.

OOTP5 is a fun baseball management sim with lots of stats and is more than adequate for casual wannabe Joe Torres.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Eckstein 4 Prez

As many others have said, a big part of the nostalgia for OOTP6 was that OOTP 2006 was an unmitigated disaster that was released when it was not "tested and ready." This was corrected in OOTP 2007, and OOTP9 is now considerably better than any of the pre-SI versions.

This. Why do people like 6.5? It's simple, really. It's basically the exact same game they'd been playing since 1999 (okay, more realistically 2001 or 2002) and they'd taken all that time to learn the clunky interface, bypassed the fact that it was very, very hard to run historical leagues without a great deal of effort, lived with the slow speeds because there wasn't anything on the market that was better, accepted the numerous bugs because they knew exactly what the bugs were and had created workarounds for them, and so on. 6.5 is the devil these people know whereas 9 is the one they don't. To top it all off, OOTPDev linked up with SI at that time and it was easy to scapegoat

At the time that 2006 came out, I had actually moved over to PureSim, and it was only the complete rebuild of OOTP that brought me back to this company.* This is really what gets me about 6.5ers. If you really, really think that 6.5 > 9, you shouldn't be playing 6.5, you should be playing PureSim, because PureSim >>>>> 6.5 and PureSim is still supported by the developer. No, the only reason people still play 6.5 is because they're used to the old engine and don't want to learn how to play an entirely different, albeit far superior, game.

However, IMO the game won't be any better than a solid B-plus until Markus really commits to going back and squashing the many, many little bugs that have existed since time immemorial.

A B+ compared to Football Manager, perhaps, but on that scale everything else that's out there in the text-based baseball sim market gets a low D or an F.

*FWIW the anvil that broke the camel's back for me was the fact that the league modifiers, which had worked passably well (albeit backwards) since I started playing OOTP, were irretrievably broken with the implementation of the DIPS model in version 6. I can't express how frustrating it is to manually change the league totals year after year with the expectation that you would end up with a league history that looked like real baseball, only to find that a. many of your changes weren't really taking all that well, and b. the game would physically crash if you input too "extreme" a total into the modifiers (for example, if you wanted to replay 1930 and the NL's league BA of .300). I would bring up the fact that left/right splits and park effects also didn't work but that seems like piling on. Nonetheless, those effects were just as broken as the era modifiers, so the game was vastly less playable than games that did utilize park effect properly such as Baseball Mogul and PureSim.

My point here isn't just that 6.5 isn't as good as 9, it's that not only is it nowhere near as good, it's vastly inferior to PureSim. At least with PureSim you could create a "tune" file that, after lots and lots of tweaking, would fairly accurately simulate different eras of the sport. No offense to Markus, but the part where he laid an egg came 2 years before 2006 was released, and IMO much of the anger over the latter release was a combination of pent-up anger over the issues with the former and the fact that it took 2 years to come out.