New scouting system

[nyy26wc]

I am currently playing with scouting off. I am in the middle of a season, playing in real time. So, I'm at June 8 in my season.

Since according to the manual, the OSA scouts are supposed to be so bad and unreliable, I guess that means I am being forced to turn scouting on.

What would happen if I turn scouting on now? What kind of problems will I have with the facts that nobody was assigned scouting budgets, or a scouting staff, at the start of the season going to be a problem?

[jlredsox]

With scouting off the OSA ratings are the actual ratings of the player. Only if you turn scouting on does the OSA numbers stink.

[andymac]

Correct. If scouting is off, you are seeing true ratings. By the way, I'm not sure OSA scouting "stinks". I believe it is the equivalent of an "average" scout.

[nyy26wc]

Thanks for the input.

I had based my conclusion that the OSA scouting stinks based on the comments at http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...osa-scout.html and in the manual, which said it was highly unreliable. If there was any identication from those sources that it is only unreliable when scouting is on, I must have missed it.

[Jared]

I think it's a mistake to turn scouting on. In my limited experience, the scouting is AWFUL. I have a scouting director with perfect ratings across the board and scouting accuracy is set to Normal. A couple of months into the season, several of my superstars are hitting below the Mendoza line. So I turned scouting off and went back to look at their actual ratings. Thje most egregious examples from my team:

Javier Ibarra, 3B. Scout says 76 overall. Sounds like a great ballplayer right? Well, if you turn scouting off, he's a 36 overall. That's not a typo. He went from superstar to borderline bench player. My catching prospect also went from 64 overall/80 potential to 37 overall/42 potential.

I love the idea of a scouting system because I want there to be a little bit of the unknown in terms of just how good a player is. But this is ridiculous. It's the equivalent of the best scout in MLB telling you that Kevin Millar is really just as good as Albert Pujols.

Is anybody else experiencing this? Should I set scouting accuracy to High or even Very High? Or just turn the whole thing off and treat it like a broken feature?

[Linenoise]

Originally Posted by Jared

I think it's a mistake to turn scouting on. In my limited experience, the scouting is AWFUL. I have a scouting director with perfect ratings across the board and scouting accuracy is set to Normal. A couple of months into the season, several of my superstars are hitting below the Mendoza line. So I turned scouting off and went back to look at their actual ratings. Thje most egregious examples from my team:

Javier Ibarra, 3B. Scout says 76 overall. Sounds like a great ballplayer right? Well, if you turn scouting off, he's a 36 overall. That's not a typo. He went from superstar to borderline bench player. My catching prospect also went from 64 overall/80 potential to 37 overall/42 potential.

I love the idea of a scouting system because I want there to be a little bit of the unknown in terms of just how good a player is. But this is ridiculous. It's the equivalent of the best scout in MLB telling you that Kevin Millar is really just as good as Albert Pujols.

Is anybody else experiencing this? Should I set scouting accuracy to High or even Very High? Or just turn the whole thing off and treat it like a broken feature?

Rebuilding oragnizations is my favorite part of the game. For 8 years now, I have focused on this aspect in my gameplay. Ever since OOTP 2007, the ratings system has grown less and less reliable. It has gotten to the point where I have considered turning off scouting all together, but that ruins part of the fun of picking long shots that turn into ALL-Stars or watching a sure thing turn into a bust.

I've been playing with the different settings to see how it effects the scouting and quite frankly I can not make any sense out of it. As it stands at the moment, I will be turning scouting off, delete my current league and start anew. I dunno if it will be as fun to have the true ratings displayed but it will at least revive a little trust into the ratings system that is, at the moment, severely lacking.

[endgame]

Originally Posted by Linenoise

Rebuilding oragnizations is my favorite part of the game. For 8 years now, I have focused on this aspect in my gameplay. Ever since OOTP 2007, the ratings system has grown less and less reliable. It has gotten to the point where I have considered turning off scouting all together, but that ruins part of the fun of picking long shots that turn into ALL-Stars or watching a sure thing turn into a bust.

I've been playing with the different settings to see how it effects the scouting and quite frankly I can not make any sense out of it. As it stands at the moment, I will be turning scouting off, delete my current league and start anew. I dunno if it will be as fun to have the true ratings displayed but it will at least revive a little trust into the ratings system that is, at the moment, severely lacking.

Another alternative is to widen the range of uncertainty with scouts on by narrowing the rating scope, i.e. instead of 20-80 or 1-100, use 1-5. By that count, even with scouting variances that end up being way off, it won't appear that far off than many of the other evaluations. While I do prefer the 20-80, I'm really struggling myself as to whether to move to this rating system rather than abandon one altogether.

[Jared]

Originally Posted by endgame

Another alternative is to widen the range of uncertainty with scouts on by narrowing the rating scope, i.e. instead of 20-80 or 1-100, use 1-5. By that count, even with scouting variances that end up being way off, it won't appear that far off than many of the other evaluations. While I do prefer the 20-80, I'm really struggling myself as to whether to move to this rating system rather than abandon one altogether.

Unfortunately I don't think this is going to help much. You'll just have players that you thought were "5's" that are really "1's".

I think I'm going to have to start my league over as well. The scouting feature has definitely been in a decline since OOTP6. Hopefully this is something that can get turned around.

[Rand]

You can try altering the league wide scouting accuracy settings in the game setup. I play with Scouting enabled and generally find it alright with scouting accuracy set to high, though the scouts are still inaccurate fairly often.
With scouting accuracy set to normal you may as well be throwing darts in selecting players in my experience.

Worth playing around with anyway, worst case scenario you could try setting scouting accuracy to 'Very High'.

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by Jared

Is anybody else experiencing this? Should I set scouting accuracy to High or even Very High? Or just turn the whole thing off and treat it like a broken feature?

I had a problem like that. I once turned scouting on and, in my first draft, in every single round, I was able to get a player with a potential overall of 78-80, on the 20-80 scale. That was with a scout of average abilities.

When I turned off scouting, every single player, even my 1st round pick, dropped from 78-80 potential to 20.

[Linenoise]

Originally Posted by Jared

Unfortunately I don't think this is going to help much. You'll just have players that you thought were "5's" that are really "1's".

I think I'm going to have to start my league over as well. The scouting feature has definitely been in a decline since OOTP6. Hopefully this is something that can get turned around.

Actually, I originally started with the 1 to 5 ratings system, because it provided more uncertainty. However, and over the course of the last 3 versions of the game, my problem is not understanding the manner in which the ratings I see are derived. I am not saying I need to know the formula but I do need to see a correlation between similar players and their ratings. Because I fail to see such a correlation, the scouting system serves as a source of mild irritation at times. But, again, I focus on this aspect of the game a lot, due to my style of game play (playing as the meddling GM)

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by Jared

Should I set scouting accuracy to High or even Very High? Or just turn the whole thing off and treat it like a broken feature?

This is the answer. Turning it off, I mean.

If I recall the events correctly, there was a... let's call it a "faction" of folks around here who were crying in public about the fact that the game was "too easy", that scouting was "too accurate". Some of them reported that they had to resort to turning off ratings altogether and go by stats only just to give themselves a challenge. So, apparently, what Markus and Co. decided to do was listen to this "faction" and create a scouting system which was EXACTLY THE SAME AS TURNING RATINGS OFF ALTOGETHER. Go ahead. Play with ratings on or off. IT'S THE EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE. THE RATINGS DON'T MEAN ANYTHING ANYWAY!!! Isn't that great? Don't you just love the "challenge"? Bah.

Sorry. It's not my intent to bash Markus or the game, overall. Markus, you've put out a great product, the best available. I just REALLY hate the new scouting system. That is all.

[RichardL]

personally i love the uncertainty

remember, when picking a guy to trade for, or to promote to ur major league roster that you should factor in ratings and stats.

so if a guy is hitting .320 with an OPS of over 1.00 in the minors but his ratings suck then i think you should give him a shot.

in truth ratings dont win games, hits win games. if GUY IS PERFORMING I DONT CARE ABOUT HIS RATINGS

[Jared]

Originally Posted by RichardL

personally i love the uncertainty

remember, when picking a guy to trade for, or to promote to ur major league roster that you should factor in ratings and stats.

so if a guy is hitting .320 with an OPS of over 1.00 in the minors but his ratings suck then i think you should give him a shot.

in truth ratings dont win games, hits win games. if GUY IS PERFORMING I DONT CARE ABOUT HIS RATINGS

I think this is taking it too far. What I'm looking for (and I think other people are too) is a scouting system with some level of uncertainty, but not one where your scout ROUTINELY thinks scrubs are superstars and vice versa. Some players should be accurate, some players should be a little off (perhaps your scout thinks he's a 65 (out of 80) but he's really a 55, or maybe a 72, and a FEW players should be considerably off (the guy who becomes a superstar out of the blue or the stud prospect who never gets it together).

This last category needs to be a much smaller percentage though. In my (admittedly limited) experience, with scouting accuracy set to normal and a high-rated scouting director, nearly every superstar is actually crap. That's not fun to spend days drafting your inaugural team and finding out your best players who you thought were up in the 70s are actually in the 30s.

Plus, I don't have any stats to go on. For those of us who play new leagues, there are no stats, only ratings. Thus the importance of having a good system. If you want to play with horrible scouting and lots of uncertainty, turn your scouting accuracy to very low and hire the worst scout you can find. But if I select "normal" scouting and get a great scouting director, I expect better than normal results, and I'm not seeing it in the current system.

[endgame]

Sure, there's a certain amount - sometimes an uncomfortable amount - of uncertainty with the scouting. It's supposed to reflect, in part, the human tendency to be wrong some of the time, even most of the time, not perfect in their assessments of anything. In the latter respect, it would be more a modeling of how some contributors here view themselves, without flaw and without room for debate; the equivalent of scouting off.

But put the entire package in perspective to a degree, whatever 'scale' you might be utilizing: if it's evaluations are off, they're off across the board. It's relative to the league and off perhaps as often as on, but not just limited to one player. It's a bit akin to talent changes and randomness. They happen. So does good and bad assessment of talent. And again, it's relative. A lot of 20's in the league doesn't necessarily mean the players are crap. It means they represent the bottom tier of players able to play at the major league level and often their potential reflects that, sometimes it doesn't. But if a game-owner wants a better player at that position, using scouts or not, generally you look at the numbers. A 34 should be a bit better than a 20 or a 21, and probably will be, but nothing's certain.

If you mangled the evaluations until you were able to have a lot of 56/80s around the league or 53/53s around the league, the only real difference you've achieved is having established a new lower tier. It's just a lens and filled with as many successes and surprises and disappointments and letdowns. That's the real spirit of using the scouting option, being relegated to a level of faith - however virturally - in your personnel.

I'm the first one to admit there are perpetual and perceptual hurdles to overcome. I'm still working through some of them myself. But first and foremost is a somewhat pervading idea that even if the system is broken in some fashion, it's broken across the continuum of the system, not just an isolated case and, as such, equally penalizes and benefits. It's still your personal world, flaws and all. No different than the one on the other side of the monitor when you turn and look away from the game.

Does it need work in the way it may present itself? Sure, it does; the same way we do.

for now. Sorry. Sometimes I just say screw it. Was it Dylan that said, "Want somebody to trust? Trust yourself!" Maybe he meant play with scouting off, or maybe he meant make your choices with confidence. They're your choices.

[Linenoise]

Originally Posted by endgame

Sure, there's a certain amount - sometimes an uncomfortable amount - of uncertainty with the scouting. It's supposed to reflect, in part, the human tendency to be wrong some of the time, even most of the time, not perfect in their assessments of anything. In the latter respect, it would be more a modeling of how some contributors here view themselves, without flaw and without room for debate; the equivalent of scouting off.

But put the entire package in perspective to a degree, whatever 'scale' you might be utilizing: if it's evaluations are off, they're off across the board. It's relative to the league and off perhaps as often as on, but not just limited to one player. It's a bit akin to talent changes and randomness. They happen. So does good and bad assessment of talent. And again, it's relative. A lot of 20's in the league doesn't necessarily mean the players are crap. It means they represent the bottom tier of players able to play at the major league level and often their potential reflects that, sometimes it doesn't. But if a game-owner wants a better player at that position, using scouts or not, generally you look at the numbers. A 34 should be a bit better than a 20 or a 21, and probably will be, but nothing's certain.

If you mangled the evaluations until you were able to have a lot of 56/80s around the league or 53/53s around the league, the only real difference you've achieved is having established a new lower tier. It's just a lens and filled with as many successes and surprises and disappointments and letdowns. That's the real spirit of using the scouting option, being relegated to a level of faith - however virturally - in your personnel.

I get what you are saying an to a degree can even agree, but I do think that when a league has 1/3rd of its MLB level players rated in their 20s that it is poorly proportioned. Surely you can see that it is more than appearances when 30 percent of the MLB players are no better than their minor league counterparts. Player ratings have to remain relative and if that large of a population is reaching the Big Show, you gotta ask how big of a show it really is, no?

[neojonas]

Has scouting changed much since v9? I was under the impression that it hasn't.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Linenoise

I do think that when a league has 1/3rd of its MLB level players rated in their 20s that it is poorly proportioned. Surely you can see that it is more than appearances when 30 percent of the MLB players are no better than their minor league counterparts. Player ratings have to remain relative…

This, I agree with. 2006 did a much better job of discriminating among the lower level player than any version since. In my favorite 2006 universe there are very few 20 rated players, and they're mostly sitting in free agency wondering why they aren't getting picked up. '20' doesn't mean anything since 2007/8 came out.