Coming from OOTP6, the interface is completely alien and non-sensical

[ComputerFreek129]

Does anyone else feel completely overwhelmed by everything in OOTPX?

I'm not exactly new to OOTP, but I hadn't picked up a new version in awhile - the last I had bought was OOTP6, which worked very well. I had started with OOTP3/STB.

OOTP6 improved vastly on STB in terms of features, but I felt still kept the basic mechanics of the game intact. I had no problems at all making a transition from 3 to 6. I had thought OOTPX sounded like it had some interesting features, so I went ahead and pre-ordered it and have been playing around the past few days, and I just can't wrap my mind how to do anything in the league efficiently at all.

Just some examples that completely bewilder me:

WHY is the home page a web page in HTML format? And many other pages for that matter? It seems almost all of these pages could just as easily have been rendered in-game. This web page format is terrible because I can't click any names or teams to actually get me to the player or team pages - I just get taken to a dumb HTML page that doesn't have the information and has wildly inaccurate ratings.

EVERY single time I change the view when looking at a list of players, it COMPLETELY resets the sorting. So it is now impossible to say, look up the pitchers with the top Stuff Potential, and then switch to a view to analyze their actual ratings. This seems completely broken so I'm hoping it's a bug, and not a feature that was intentionally unimplemented.

Large lists are now sorted into PAGES?!? This is the most unintuitive system ever. I can't scroll through the list now, I can't directly compare the last player on page 1 with the first player on page 2. Why would this be implemented, especially without an OPTION to use a standard scrollbar?

Trading
-Every single time I change a trade partner, it clears my entire list. WHY? If I want to shop a particular player around a few teams, I have to re-add the player every single time.
-The "players that would make the deal work" feature has completely disappeared. It was a very easy way to gauge trade interest. It seems to be replaced by this "Shop a player" function, which is nice for multiple teams, but you completely lose the ability to gauge trade value for MULTIPLE players, and there is a dumb arbitrary restriction of only three players a day. WHY would you hard-code 3 players into a feature like that - it easily could and should be customizable.
-Browsing for players is now a tedious process. In previous versions, you could click "Add Player" and be taken to basically a full roster view where you could see all players in an organization at once, and browse and sort by any ratings or stats just like browsing the roster regularly. In the trading screen now I get a roster view that gives me very, very limited information - I can only see one level at a time, CANNOT sort ratings or statistics at all, can't filter by position or anything like that. I can click for a team "report" - this takes me to a positional strength page that's equally as useless to me. From here I can go to the team roster where I can get a similar view to what I actually want, but I can't simply add any player to the trade from here - I've now completely exited the trading screen.

Here's an example of the process of finding and adding a player in OOTPX:
1. Click (team) Report
2. Click Roster tab
3. Change listed players to: All Players of organization
4. Find player
At this point I can't just add the player to the trade, I *have* to go through the roster list at the trade screen. So then I have to:
5. Click player (open player info)
6. Find which team he is on
7. Go to the Recent tab and find Initiate Trade
8. Change roster view to the team the player is on
9. Find player in roster view
10. Right-click context menu.
11. Click "Add player to trade"

5 clicks
3 Drop-down menu changes
2 list searches

And here's the process in OOTP6:
1. Click "Add player" button
2. Find the player.
3. Right-click on the player

2 clicks
1 list search

To me, the interface of OOTPX is so unusable to the point of being broken. Am I the only person who feels this way, coming in from OOTP6 or earlier? When did this sudden interface revolution take over? Would versions 8 or 9 be closer to OOTP6 than 10? If they were, I would seriously consider just gifting my OOTPX and picking those up - far far before all the feature bloat, the things that made OOTP far more enjoyable than other sims was the statistical accuracy and ease-of-use/management. The latter I feel is critical to a game like OOTP which is basically all about micromanagement, and I feel that it's been completely lost in this version.

[cody8200]

Almost everything your trying to do can be done in OOTP X. I'll try to answer some things but you might want to read the manual or watch the video posted on top of the forum

[cody8200]

WHY is the home page a web page in HTML format? And many other pages for that matter? It seems almost all of these pages could just as easily have been rendered in-game. This web page format is terrible because I can't click any names or teams to actually get me to the player or team pages - I just get taken to a dumb HTML page that doesn't have the information and has wildly inaccurate ratings.

right click on a players name in the html and click open profile. Thats the page you are looking for.

Large lists are now sorted into PAGES?!? This is the most unintuitive system ever. I can't scroll through the list now, I can't directly compare the last player on page 1 with the first player on page 2. Why would this be implemented, especially without an OPTION to use a standard scrollbar?

This is an option in the game preferences tab on the main page. You can do pages or scrolling.

Trading
-Every single time I change a trade partner, it clears my entire list. WHY? If I want to shop a particular player around a few teams, I have to re-add the player every single time.

You can right click on a player and shop him to all teams at the exact same time. Saves a ton of time.

-The "players that would make the deal work" feature has completely disappeared. It was a very easy way to gauge trade interest. It seems to be replaced by this "Shop a player" function, which is nice for multiple teams, but you completely lose the ability to gauge trade value for MULTIPLE players, and there is a dumb arbitrary restriction of only three players a day. WHY would you hard-code 3 players into a feature like that - it easily could and should be customizable.

You receive an email after you send over a trade offer of what players would make the deal work.


-Browsing for players is now a tedious process. In previous versions, you could click "Add Player" and be taken to basically a full roster view where you could see all players in an organization at once, and browse and sort by any ratings or stats just like browsing the roster regularly. In the trading screen now I get a roster view that gives me very, very limited information - I can only see one level at a time, CANNOT sort ratings or statistics at all, can't filter by position or anything like that. I can click for a team "report" - this takes me to a positional strength page that's equally as useless to me. From here I can go to the team roster where I can get a similar view to what I actually want, but I can't simply add any player to the trade from here - I've now completely exited the trading screen.

Use the roster screen to sort all team data and change the filter to whatever data you would like to see

Here's an example of the process of finding and adding a player in OOTPX:
1. Click (team) Report
2. Click Roster tab
3. Change listed players to: All Players of organization
4. Find player
At this point I can't just add the player to the trade, I *have* to go through the roster list at the trade screen. So then I have to:
5. Click player (open player info)
6. Find which team he is on
7. Go to the Recent tab and find Initiate Trade
8. Change roster view to the team the player is on
9. Find player in roster view
10. Right-click context menu.
11. Click "Add player to trade"

To add a player to any trade, right click and click add to trade. For a player that is not on your team, use the search bar at the top of the game and search by last name.

To me, the interface of OOTPX is so unusable to the point of being broken. Am I the only person who feels this way, coming in from OOTP6 or earlier? When did this sudden interface revolution take over? Would versions 8 or 9 be closer to OOTP6 than 10? If they were, I would seriously consider just gifting my OOTPX and picking those up - far far before all the feature bloat, the things that made OOTP far more enjoyable than other sims was the statistical accuracy and ease-of-use/management. The latter I feel is critical to a game like OOTP which is basically all about micromanagement, and I feel that it's been completely lost in this version.[/QUOTE]


You'll get used to it. OOTP X takes a bit of time to really get the hang od, especially if you missed the three iterations of the game in between but you'll get the hand of it. It's defiitely worth the effort.

[Giants44]

this was my personal experience:

I loved the old interface (v6 and prior) and everything was exactly where I wanted it to be.

I HATED with a passion the new interface when it was launched in v7. I mean hated it! I thought Markus has killed my favorite game.

However, once I started to learn it and Markus started to tweak it, it started to grow on me.

At this point I think it is the greatest software UI I have ever used and I wish every game I played used it. It is the biggest strength of the game for me.

Your mileage may very, but you can't possible hate it as much as I did when I first used it. Try to stick with it and you might just come around.

The 2 things that you should learn that will go a long way is to right click and choose open player profile and to use bookmarks to get to frequently visited pages.


I would absolutely kill for a football game with this interface (an yes I know there is one, and no, I don't mean that kind of football)

[Malleus Dei]

Going from 6 to 10? Yeah, you'd hate the interface change. Perfectly understandable.

[vesuvius]

Yep, this was a reaction many folks had when the UI changed. You won't believe this, but it is true for most people. Grit through learning it for 3-4 days and you will actually like it (or at least find it completely usable).

Handy Tip - Add a Bookmark for the pages you use most...it assigns that page to a function key and makes things awesome.

[OldFatGuy]

I was TOTALLY turned off by the interface, to the point of quitting on the game (2007) twice for several months.

Now I'm fine with it, although never having played 6 I had nothing to compare it too. I was just turned off as a new OOTP player with this interface. Now I get around easy as pie, so if you stick with it, it will become easier. I might recommend the tutorial videos, as they helped me. But I won't lie to you, it's not a short term thing. It will take longer than a few days to get used to I'm afraid.

[jbergey22]

Utilize the manager screen as well. Pretty much anything you need to do or look at can be accessed from that screen.

[Dargone]

Keep at it, it is actually pretty good. I think all of us felt this way after 6...

[ComputerFreek129]

Originally Posted by cody8200

WHY is the home page a web page in HTML format? And many other pages for that matter? It seems almost all of these pages could just as easily have been rendered in-game. This web page format is terrible because I can't click any names or teams to actually get me to the player or team pages - I just get taken to a dumb HTML page that doesn't have the information and has wildly inaccurate ratings.

right click on a players name in the html and click open profile. Thats the page you are looking for.

Okay, thanks, this seems to work fine. Is there any way to just make this the default view when clicking through. The HTML page is frankly useless to me.

Originally Posted by cody8200

Large lists are now sorted into PAGES?!? This is the most unintuitive system ever. I can't scroll through the list now, I can't directly compare the last player on page 1 with the first player on page 2. Why would this be implemented, especially without an OPTION to use a standard scrollbar?

This is an option in the game preferences tab on the main page. You can do pages or scrolling.

Is this OOTP preferences? I have this set to Lists:Scroll bars, but most of the pages still use pages (for example, Free Agent list). Maybe this is a bug then?

Originally Posted by cody8200

Trading
-Every single time I change a trade partner, it clears my entire list. WHY? If I want to shop a particular player around a few teams, I have to re-add the player every single time.

You can right click on a player and shop him to all teams at the exact same time. Saves a ton of time.

Yes, this is a useful feature that I appreciate. But there seem to be so many limitations with this. What if I want to gauge interest in a trade package with multiple players. Or do this with more than 3 players a day. This was all possible in previous versions (although you'd have to do it team-by-team), but doesn't seem possible here.

Originally Posted by cody8200

-The "players that would make the deal work" feature has completely disappeared. It was a very easy way to gauge trade interest. It seems to be replaced by this "Shop a player" function, which is nice for multiple teams, but you completely lose the ability to gauge trade value for MULTIPLE players, and there is a dumb arbitrary restriction of only three players a day. WHY would you hard-code 3 players into a feature like that - it easily could and should be customizable.

You receive an email after you send over a trade offer of what players would make the deal work.

Yes, but this takes several days, which isn't always feasible (trying to trade at the deadline, for instance). In addition, what is really missing for me is a "players that would make the deal work" from the OTHER team. In OOTP6 you could add a group of players to offer, open up a trading partner and it would instantly pop up with a list of all players they would send you for the package.

Originally Posted by cody8200

-Browsing for players is now a tedious process. In previous versions, you could click "Add Player" and be taken to basically a full roster view where you could see all players in an organization at once, and browse and sort by any ratings or stats just like browsing the roster regularly. In the trading screen now I get a roster view that gives me very, very limited information - I can only see one level at a time, CANNOT sort ratings or statistics at all, can't filter by position or anything like that. I can click for a team "report" - this takes me to a positional strength page that's equally as useless to me. From here I can go to the team roster where I can get a similar view to what I actually want, but I can't simply add any player to the trade from here - I've now completely exited the trading screen.

Use the roster screen to sort all team data and change the filter to whatever data you would like to see

Yes, this is what I've been doing. But I cannot add these players to the existing trade. And it takes an unecessary amount of clicks just to get to the roster page, when it all used to be a one-click process.

Originally Posted by cody8200

Here's an example of the process of finding and adding a player in OOTPX:
1. Click (team) Report
2. Click Roster tab
3. Change listed players to: All Players of organization
4. Find player
At this point I can't just add the player to the trade, I *have* to go through the roster list at the trade screen. So then I have to:
5. Click player (open player info)
6. Find which team he is on
7. Go to the Recent tab and find Initiate Trade
8. Change roster view to the team the player is on
9. Find player in roster view
10. Right-click context menu.
11. Click "Add player to trade"

To add a player to any trade, right click and click add to trade. For a player that is not on your team, use the search bar at the top of the game and search by last name.

As far as I'm aware, this only works from the trade screen. You cannot right click and add to the existing screen when you get to the roster - this will start a new trade and erase your existing trade.

Originally Posted by cody8200

To me, the interface of OOTPX is so unusable to the point of being broken. Am I the only person who feels this way, coming in from OOTP6 or earlier? When did this sudden interface revolution take over? Would versions 8 or 9 be closer to OOTP6 than 10? If they were, I would seriously consider just gifting my OOTPX and picking those up - far far before all the feature bloat, the things that made OOTP far more enjoyable than other sims was the statistical accuracy and ease-of-use/management. The latter I feel is critical to a game like OOTP which is basically all about micromanagement, and I feel that it's been completely lost in this version.

You'll get used to it. OOTP X takes a bit of time to really get the hang od, especially if you missed the three iterations of the game in between but you'll get the hand of it. It's defiitely worth the effort.[/QUOTE]

[codyg19]

Originally Posted by ComputerFreek129

Does anyone else feel completely overwhelmed by everything in OOTPX?

Large lists are now sorted into PAGES?!? This is the most unintuitive system ever. I can't scroll through the list now, I can't directly compare the last player on page 1 with the first player on page 2. Why would this be implemented, especially without an OPTION to use a standard scrollbar?
......
If I want to shop a particular player around a few teams, I have to re-add the player every single time.

A couple of things...this was all really confusing to me too when they first switched. I guess you just get used to it. There are things I would like to see simplified as well. As far as the two things I quoted:

A) this is an option, in the OOTP Prefences screen. Under the game menu, click "OOTP Preferences." There is an option that says "Lists." You can use scroll bars OR page selectors. I prefer scroll bars too.

B) Have you tried the "Shop a Player" tool? Under the MLB menu, select "Trade." The general trading screen comes up. At the top there is an option that says "Shop a Player." Click on that and simply drag and drop the player you would like to trade into the white box. On the right, a list of all possible ONE-FOR-ONE trades appears.

[Boom Boom]

It took me two versions to learn the new interface. TWO VERSIONS!

[mafia geek]

Originally Posted by Giants44

At this point I think it is the greatest software UI I have ever used and I wish every game I played used it. It is the biggest strength of the game for me.

I would absolutely kill for a football game with this interface (an yes I know there is one, and no, I don't mean that kind of football)

Agree on both accounts.

OOTP interface + FOF would be good enough for me.. make it happen!

[bwd]

Originally Posted by vesuvius

Handy Tip - Add a Bookmark for the pages you use most...it assigns that page to a function key and makes things awesome.

As someone who is also just coming back to the game after missing a couple of iterations, I am shocked that there still aren't hot keys, preferably customizable ones. Yes, having function key bookmarking helps, but why not allow us to map the entire keyboard?

[Rondell Tate]

There's one navigation thing that seems totally busted to me:

Say I'm in a draft, and have narrowed my list down to Fergie Jenkins, Tom Seaver and this kid, Joe Armpithair, who my scout says is the next big thing.
I hop back and forth between the three of them about 15 times searching for the wisdom of a Yogi (Berra, that is) before finally settling on Armpithair (natch, every time I fall for this) ... and the back button scrolls back through every single view of every single page, like 45 clicks, or else I have to to go to the scrolldown for continue draft from the top of the page and start over. Is there some way to have the computer understand that those are 15 reps each of 3 pages and to show me Armpithair, Seaver and Jenkins once each before I'm back to the pick-a-player page?

[Giants44]

Originally Posted by Rondell Tate

There's one navigation thing that seems totally busted to me:

Say I'm in a draft, and have narrowed my list down to Fergie Jenkins, Tom Seaver and this kid, Joe Armpithair, who my scout says is the next big thing.
I hop back and forth between the three of them about 15 times searching for the wisdom of a Yogi (Berra, that is) before finally settling on Armpithair (natch, every time I fall for this) ... and the back button scrolls back through every single view of every single page, like 45 clicks, or else I have to to go to the scrolldown for continue draft from the top of the page and start over. Is there some way to have the computer understand that those are 15 reps each of 3 pages and to show me Armpithair, Seaver and Jenkins once each before I'm back to the pick-a-player page?

you should be able to manage that fairly easily using the "recent" pages

[fantom1979]

4 years later I still don't like this interface.

[Ghetto Anthony]

Only thing that bothers me is pressing the backspace to go back only works SOMETIMES. Really gets on my nerves.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by cody8200

Trading
-Every single time I change a trade partner, it clears my entire list. WHY? If I want to shop a particular player around a few teams, I have to re-add the player every single time.

You can right click on a player and shop him to all teams at the exact same time. Saves a ton of time.

But you can't shop 2 players in the same trade. I've found I wished I could do that a lot and it's not possible. He has a very valid gripe here.

If I'm looking to trade Bob and George off I'll go talk to Atlanta for a while... can't find a good match there so I switch so I can talk to Philly for a while, but I have to go find Bob and George again. Why is a good question...
I'm wanting to talk to multiple teams about trading Bob and George, no good reason(beyond possibly code issues) why I should constantly have to add Bob and George back into the window.

Originally Posted by cody8200

-The "players that would make the deal work" feature has completely disappeared. It was a very easy way to gauge trade interest. It seems to be replaced by this "Shop a player" function, which is nice for multiple teams, but you completely lose the ability to gauge trade value for MULTIPLE players, and there is a dumb arbitrary restriction of only three players a day. WHY would you hard-code 3 players into a feature like that - it easily could and should be customizable.

You receive an email after you send over a trade offer of what players would make the deal work.

You also get a message from the other team immediately. Nothing as simple as the old "who would make it work" button but you get feedback.

I just tested this out and tried to trade someone to KC... throw up a KC player and it says "I'm sorry, but I will not accept trades that include vastly overpaid veterans." I know it's useless to continue talking to KC about my player now.
I change my player and it now says "OK, that doesn't sound to bad. I agree to execute this trade now."

Personally I like challenge, but I want instant gratification and feedback as well. IMO this does both, it's more challenging to put together a trade, and I get feedback so I don't sit and waste my time waiting on an email that probably won't be worth reading anyhow (especially when it comes near the trading dead line).

[tysok]

Also, I never click on a team name... ever.
If I want to go see Atlanta I go to the top menu bar and the "teams" pull down and select Atlanta. I believe the first time you do so it goes to that ridiculous HTML page, but click "roster", "transactions", whatever... next time you select a team in that pull down it will take you to that page. (that makes no sense)

I go to Atlanta and it brings up the silly HTML.
Click Roster.
Now go do whatever I darn well please... play games, look at trades, my manager home page... whatever.
Now I go back to the "teams" pull down and select Baltimore...
I'm taken to the "roster" page of Baltimore instead of the silly HTML page.

I call it silly because it takes longer to load... instant gratification remember.

And I never just click a player... silly HTML page comes up again (unless I'm in the roster, lineup, pitching screens for the team that is). Always right click and choose profile... HTML must never appear on my screen!