My List of Possible Improvements

[jbone]

I rarely post here, but have been playing ootp10 for some time now, and it is a huge upgrade over past games (especially draft compensation - thank you, Marcus!). Nevertheless, there are a few things that I still feel could be improved, hopefully in the next version. Before I state this constructive criticism, I want to say that I think ootp10 is a fantastic game, and I'm grateful to be able to have it to play.

Improvement issues:

1. The Great OOTP Economic Crises of 2011.

Companies become overleveraged and the financial system collapses - sound familiar? I have found that a similar phenomenon happens in ootp10 - predictably, in the year 2011 free agency (assuming that the league started in 2009). This is for custom leagues.

I have found that if a league is started in 2009, then, by 2011, the computer has oversigned/overcommitted its funds and players, star players, are signed, often for dimes on the dollar. Instances include five star relievers going for $1.2mn, five star starters going for 8.7mn per year, etc. This needs to be balanced out - the AI needs to do a better job of conserving funds and planning long-term deals.

2. Scouting Insanity

Certainly this has been debated on this board before, but the scouting function, which I always use, does not feel completely natural to me. Too often, a scouting department (okay, MY scouting department) will rank a player five stars, only for in reality he is a scrub.

Obviously, it can make the initial draft very frustrating, as it becomes hard to draft prospects early since you often don't know what you are getting. People will argue that this is realistic. I don't think it is. I believe that most scouting departments have a pretty strong grasp on who the top prospects are.

Further showing that this is a computer error, check out, for instance, my scouting departments ratings for a so-called "five-star" prospect vs. OSA's. On a 1-20 scale, my department will have the rated 20's all across, while OSA will have him rated 7/5/9, or something like that. You mean to tell me that these two groups watched the same exact guy, and on every account - contact, power, gap power, patience, etc. - they disagreed completely? I find this hard to believe/not realistic. So, I'd like to see this somehow revamped so it stops happening.

3. Player Development

The Yankees drafted Slade Heathcott late in the first round this last amateur draft. When they got him, did they really think, "gee, this guy's got the potential to be a career back-up, let's give him a huge bonus." I doubt it. They would probably consider him a four-star or so prospect. Or how about Joba, who I think was drafted in the second round. Did the Yankees think, "Gee, this guy might be good for a cup of coffee in the big leagues?" Heck no. They thought he had a chance to become a star.

Yet in OOTP, by the time you get to the second round, there a pretty much only one-star prospects left, and two-star prospects in the late first round. Not much to get excited about it you're on ootp manager. To me, this is a flaw in the programming of the game. Most second round prospects should have 3-4 star potential. That is realistic.

If you are reading this, probably many of the veterans of this board may be saying to themselves, "oh, this guy just wants all the players to be superstars". Hardly. I want the game to be realistic, but I believe that development should be more difficult - i.e., more players should be given high star potential, but they should all be less likely to develop their potential, based on snags like injuries and pure failures to realize their abilities. I think this is much more realistic than the current system.

The Yankees didn't draft a guy with an 87mph fastball in the second round, believing he would one day have the potential to have a "cup of coffee" - no - they drafted Joba Chamberlain, with a 100mph fastball, thinking he would become a STUD. Maybe the odds were slim, but in Joba's case, he made it (so far).

So, I think the ratings need to be recalibrated for the player development, so that there are WAY more 3-star potential type players, the "potential" itself isn't nearly as variable, meaning a guy's "potential" ratings don't collapse one year, because that doesn't even make any sense, I mean, it's the same guy (unless he got seriously injured, or something). But that his development is more likely to stall. In other words, the game needs more Drew Hensons. That might sound depressing, but it's true.

Thanks, everyone, for reading.

Jamie

[RonCo]

One issue OOTP doesn't deal with is signability. Sometimes those multi-star prospects in real life fall into later rounds because teams don't think they'll be able to sign the kid.

But, yeah, getting player creation and development right is the key to the game, IMHO.

[jbone]

Thanks Ron, I agree, signing bonuses would be a terrific thing to add into the game, as well as some of the more modern/realistic parts of the financials that teams have, such as marketing budgets, overhead, etc. I think it would add a lot, but it would probably require a total revamp.

Also, this has already been discussed elsewhere on the board as well, but it is still too easy to game the trading AI by offering quantity. That's a pretty obvious bug, though, and didn't feel it was quite worth mentioning.

[TribeFanInNC]

I won't disagree with any of your points; they are all pretty valid. I find using feeder leagues takes care of the third point pretty well, though you wouldn't think it would be that different than creating players for the draft. But I seem to get more players above 1 star in my drafts. I understand this is more work too, so it isn't an ideal 'workaround' so to speak.

The AI could use some additional awareness in general, including in the financial arena.

[jbone]

Thanks, another thing I'd like to mention is that, going into free agency, it would be nice to be able to adjust my scouting budget. For instance, one year i might have a 10mil scouting budget, and then when i try to sign FA's at the end of the year, a lot of my spending cash is blocked up. I think that that cash should be freed up for FA's, and then you have to readjust your sliders come springtime for the money you've spent.

[jbone]

Does anyone else want to chime in on this?

[Leland]

I agree with the Scouting, particularly in X vs 9. I've found myself having to look at stats a lot more in X to check my scouts, and often finding myself agreeing with OSA than my own 20/20/20/20 scout. Recently though, I switched from a Favors Tools scout to a Favor Ability scout. The latter seems more in line with my opinions. I still haven't trusted him in a draft though.

Player Development, I agree for rookie drafts. I'm surprised when I find anything over 1 star. For rookie drafts, I tend to do them like a lottery. It's fun to look around a pretend I can win big, but I never expect to actually find that diamond in the rough. For player development, I'm more interested in Free Agent Personnel. In fact, my problem is unhappy AAA guys wanting to play in the majors. I tend to trade them out, which is why rookie drafts mean so little to me.

Economic Crisis: I've seen something like that, but unsure of the time frame. I just hate trading with teams with negative budget, because of the engines limitation in these situations.

[mm7607]

Split screen with free agents and drop down menus for each team like the trade screen?

[Afino]

I agree with feeder leagues, but there will be a lot of instances where players are listed as a "SP" but have no chance (well, unless they get lucky) to ever be starters in the big leagues unless they get a 3rd pitch. So just because you see five-star SP's still on the board in the 5th round doesn't mean they can even be a starter in the bigs.

[Matter2003]

I've found there is a serious problem with teams bleeding red-ink in my leagues. Very few teams are making money with default financial settings. I fixed the problem by increasing ticket prices to an average of $23 as it is in MLB and by increasing average media contract to $49 million, which is about right when factoring in all the various local/regional/national contracts out there. Obviously there is no way to model that the Yankees are in the red every year but could care less because they own the YES! network that makes millions upon millions of dollars for them each year...

Somehow it seems like a crime in OOTP for the teams to make money in any given year. If this were the case, baseball teams would be folding left and right...in fact they are very profitable operations...

[sosasoser]

Originally Posted by Afino

I agree with feeder leagues, but there will be a lot of instances where players are listed as a "SP" but have no chance (well, unless they get lucky) to ever be starters in the big leagues unless they get a 3rd pitch. So just because you see five-star SP's still on the board in the 5th round doesn't mean they can even be a starter in the bigs.

I agree with this but only to an extent. You can get a huge advantage over the AI if you draft a bunch of these guys. Sometimes you can still be drafting them in the 13th or 14th round while the AI has been taking marginally talented players since the 3rd round. If you manage to draft even 5 or 6 of these guys per year, it won't be long before the law of averages gives you enough of them developing a 3rd pitch and being dominant starters. Those that don't develop a third pitch move to the bullpen and give you a dominant pen and lots of trade fodder. The human player has a huge advantage because the AI won't touch these guys in the first third of the draft or so. I'd like to see this fixed in the next version.

As for the OP's point on scouting, yeah it needs some tweaking. I got so disgusted with it in X that I just turned it off, which kind of sucks. The last straw for me was a young pitcher on my team. He was pitching well in AAA, but both my scout and OSA said he was a 1 start current and potential guy, so I wasn't eager to give him a shot in the majors. Eventually, one of my starters got hurt one May and the youngster got a shot. He went on to be in the top 5 in the league in ERA that season. I was thinking fluke perhaps...the next season he was again in the top 5 in ERA and won 20 games and because he was still listed as a 1 star guy he was absolutely worthless on the trade market. You're telling me that a guy who has been one of the best pitchers in the game two years running and the scouts think he sucks? Really? That's just crazy. I turned off scouting and discovered that he was in reality a 3 star guy, which seemed pretty accurate given his peripherals.

[Cryomaniac]

Here's a copy of the first post in my wishlist thread from release day:

1. Allow us to edit the totals required for an accomplishment.

This has been mentioned a few times before, but in certain leagues (Even "real" short season A leagues) a 20 win season isn't going to happen, same goes for 50HRs, 150RBIs, etc. These should be editable. If doing it during a game causes issues with histories, etc. Then it should be in league setup.

2. Make Feeder leagues work more like they do in real life

If you have both a high school and a college league then high school seniors should choose between going to college, going pro or retiring. Recruiting and other such things would be cool too, but I get how complex it would be to code.

3. Allow us choice of end of season and end of game tie breaking methods

There should be an option at the very least to choose whether a 2 way end of season tie is broken by a 1 game playoff or a 3 game series. Ideally there would be other non-game options (Head to head record, for example). Also make sure 3 way ties are broken correctly. Also it would be cool to allow us to have the Japanese rules for ties, where they only play 15 innings before a game is called a tie.

4. Support switch pitching

I'm not sure how difficult it would be, and yes, I know it's HUGELY rare but we should at least be able to create switch pitchers in the editor. The AI would be the same as for switch hitters, and if they face each other the pitcher chooses first (Or let us choose that in league setup ). The only issue would be bits of the ratings screen and editor being duplicated, but if this was optional the problem is negligable.

5. Allow byes in playoffs

I'm aware of the possible issues with this, but it would be cool to be able to set up NFL style playoffs, along with other possibilities.

6. Support for 7 inning double headers

They're used in the minor leagues, and would be cool as an option.

[Afino]

Originally Posted by sosasoser

I agree with this but only to an extent. You can get a huge advantage over the AI if you draft a bunch of these guys. Sometimes you can still be drafting them in the 13th or 14th round while the AI has been taking marginally talented players since the 3rd round. If you manage to draft even 5 or 6 of these guys per year, it won't be long before the law of averages gives you enough of them developing a 3rd pitch and being dominant starters. Those that don't develop a third pitch move to the bullpen and give you a dominant pen and lots of trade fodder. The human player has a huge advantage because the AI won't touch these guys in the first third of the draft or so. I'd like to see this fixed in the next version.

.

I do agree with that fully. I've already started to see that. In 1951 (the second season of my league), I took a SP that was realistically a RP in the 3rd round. 75/80 potential. He never did develop that 3rd pitch, but is now a 74/80 RP with 78/80 potential and a rock in my bullpen.

Then I had another guy who was also a 3rd round pick the year before who was already a complete bullpen stud (10/9/9 on a 1-10 scale with two 10/10 pitches) that DID get that third pitch (also developed to 10/10) and is now the #1 player in the league.