Storylines Turned On With Patch?

[RchW]

By personal choice I don't use the storyline feature. However the latest patch apparently turns it on. By a lucky fluke I was changing a setting and caught it.

I would have been steamed if this had changed something in my league.

[Shinobu]

Originally Posted by RchW

By personal choice I don't use the storyline feature. However the latest patch apparently turns it on. By a lucky fluke I was changing a setting and caught it.

I would have been steamed if this had changed something in my league.

Good find RchW. In case people want to check, it's at Game Setup, Global Setup (first menu), second from the top in the right column (under "Misc. Options")...

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by RchW

By personal choice I don't use the storyline feature. However the latest patch apparently turns it on. By a lucky fluke I was changing a setting and caught it.

I would have been steamed if this had changed something in my league.

Hat tip to my fellow Torontonian/Canuck.

[kckid4u]

I'm not even sure what storylines do. I can't find anything in the manual.

[Malleus Dei]

They're IMO useless at this point in time. Designed to increase the immersion factor, you get trivial events like players missing practices. YMMV.

[Malleus Dei]

I'm ticked that the patch turns storylines on in existing leagues. That ain't right.

[edm]

Not everyone will see this warning. so I am sure there will be some angry posts here over the next week.

it probably wasn't intentional, but no patch should change any setting for an existing league

[RandyTiger]

If storylines have been toggled "on" by default by the patch, what other settings have been changed by accident?

Not an encouraging sign.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by kckid4u

I'm not even sure what storylines do. I can't find anything in the manual.

My sentiments exactly. For a potentially significant influence on game results (quoted from newsletter, these are "unfolding stories which can influence your players in a variety of ways"), there's been remarkably few discussions of this new feature here. In a quick search of the forums, these are the only threads that directly address storylines that I could find:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...torylines.html

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...s-develop.html

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml-thread.html

The last one is the most informative. From that thread, I got the impression that storylines could affect player development, personality, and happiness. Is this true?

I'm just getting into OOTP 11 this weekend with a new league. I would love to read more feedback on this storylines feature before I need to decide whether to use it or not. For example, as a fictional player, does it make more sense for me to use it than it would an historical player? I would imagine the latter would not want storylines to inadvertently affect results.

Storylines sound interesting. Anybody want to share some here?

[Afino]

I feel like I need to speak up here as one of the heads of the Storyline project....

There is NOTHING currently in the storyline file that will materially affect your game. No long-term injuries. No long-term suspensions. No significant player changes (morale, demanding trades, etc). So despite the fact it has been turned on, I would not worry about it. I've played six seasons in OOTP11 and have yet to see one. They are designed to pop up VERY infrequently.

It was always the plan to get a framework in there for OOTP11 and expand on it for OOTP12. Whether the dev team played up something that was not going to really be there is debatable.

The project took a back seat during the latter stages of the process, and for that, I apologize. I know that there have been a lot of questions regarding the functionality of the Storylines file itself - what can be done, what format they need to be put in to work, how do triggers work, etc.

I don't want to throw anyone under the bus and I will not. Myself, Corsairs, DesertFox, and others have been working hard to do what we can. But at this point, we're also waiting on answers, and considering the near finality of OOTP11, it looks like the majority of the project will have to wait until OOTP12.

I realize a lot of people were really looking forward to this. It can bring a whole new level of immersion to your OOTP universes. And I personally apologize for the fact that this project did not deliver as planned for OOTP11, and for the lack of communication by pretty much everyone involved. Just wanted to let everyone know storylines are NOT being ignored as a feature.

[Killing Time]

Originally Posted by RandyTiger

If storylines have been toggled "on" by default by the patch, what other settings have been changed by accident?

Not an encouraging sign.

+1

Not encouraging at all! Don't install patches promptly any more!

[Killing Time]

Originally Posted by Afino

Just wanted to let everyone know storylines are NOT being ignored as a feature.

Can we get them ignored? Maybe get earned runs fixed instead?

[lt2cents]

Originally Posted by edm

Not everyone will see this warning. so I am sure there will be some angry posts here over the next week.

it probably wasn't intentional, but no patch should change any setting for an existing league

For me this is more evidence of another big OOTP problem.

That is- how many settings (not only storylines) get changed when a league is converted from one version to another, when a new release of the program comes in, at season rollover time, sometimes just by saving, exiting, and then the next time the program is run, some settings have been changed.

It is frustrating finding a bunch of the league settings have been screwed up.

[Andreas Raht]

Originally Posted by RchW

By personal choice I don't use the storyline feature. However the latest patch apparently turns it on. By a lucky fluke I was changing a setting and caught it.

I would have been steamed if this had changed something in my league.

I just tested it. There is a file db.cfg in the /settings folder where you can see the setting as "storylines_enabled", values are either 1 or 0.
I made sure it's 0 and loaded the league, opened the Game Setup screen (checkbox was not ticked), simmed a day, saved the league, closed OOTP, opened it again - it's still noct ticked and the setting is still zero.

Originally Posted by lt2cents

For me this is more evidence of another big OOTP problem.

That is- how many settings (not only storylines) get changed when a league is converted from one version to another, when a new release of the program comes in, at season rollover time, sometimes just by saving, exiting, and then the next time the program is run, some settings have been changed.

It is frustrating finding a bunch of the league settings have been screwed up.

I think the problem is that we all should only post about errors and how bad they are, when we check ourselfs wether they actually happen.

It is frustrating finding a bunch of the league settings have been screwed up.

Please, I need exact and reproducable bug reports, everything else is a bit unfair

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Afino

I feel like I need to speak up here as one of the heads of the Storyline project....

There is NOTHING currently in the storyline file that will materially affect your game. No long-term injuries. No long-term suspensions. No significant player changes (morale, demanding trades, etc).

...Whether the dev team played up something that was not going to really be there is debatable.

...But at this point, we're also waiting on answers, and considering the near finality of OOTP11, it looks like the majority of the project will have to wait until OOTP12.

I try to not get too excited about this stuff, but this to me is a huge disappointment. The storyline feature that has been delivered is a far cry from what was promised (and is even promised to this day, on the official ootp11 what's new document.):

"imagine unfolding stories which can influence your players in a variety of ways and which drawn[sic] you further into your virtual baseball universe!"

I guess I do need to "imagine", since what was delivered is (as Malleus describes) just a collection of trivial events and is not what was promised. And what's more important than the simplicity of the events is the simplicity of the event triggers.

Afino mentions that the goal for ootp11 was to create a framework, but I even question whether the framework is robust enough to support a storyline feature that will be complex enough to be anything more that a trivial layer. The goal should be FM-type immersion and I question whether the XML-based storyline engine will ever be able to deliver that.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by lt2cents

For me this is more evidence of another big OOTP problem.

That is- how many settings (not only storylines) get changed when a league is converted from one version to another, when a new release of the program comes in, at season rollover time, sometimes just by saving, exiting, and then the next time the program is run, some settings have been changed.

It is frustrating finding a bunch of the league settings have been screwed up.

Seriously, care to document that? I've been playing since version 4 and have NEVER had a setting change at season rollover, saving\exiting, or conversion.

Then only exception to the conversion would be when something totally new is added to OOTP that has a toggle, one example would be drug suspensions.
In a case like that it either has to be on or off by default. Some would argue it's new and should be off by default and we should have to add it to our league if we want it. While others would complain after getting half way through a season that they just figured out this new feature was off by default and it should have been on. There is no right answer. In these cases it is up to us to check out any new feature settings. IIRC drug suspensions were on by default and I turned them off. Not sure what year\version that was but that setting has never changed since.

Did this patch turn on story lines? I don't know for sure, I do know that mine is set to on now. Haven't a clue what it was prepatch other than it would have been whatever default is as I never changed it. If this patch did turn on story lines it is not evidence that we should never patch again until some later time. It is evidence that in this one case an error slipped by nothing more, nothing less. It is certainly not evidence, barring any documentation or proof, that other settings change while playing as you describe.

[lt2cents]

To Andreas Raht and Sweed:

I don't pay any attention to storylines so I took someone else's comment about it- so I admit I did not test that one. If it was reported wrong I am wrong in referencing it.

I did use it as a takeoff for the more general comment- and these are about settings that have been overridden by the program from settings I had chosen.

I specifically see facial hair settings changed, I see some financial settings changed, arbitration years is one of them, I see league schedule settings changed, I have seen autosave and log options changed, amateur draft settings have changed.

There may be others I have not noted. The pattern of this problem has been building up in my attention and now I have seen some of them repeated. Many of them occur less frequently in the year cycle but arbitration year setting is one that occurs on save/reload of a league.
Since I play out games it has taken awhile for me to catch some the pattern of problems like those that occur once annually.

I would just ask that attention be paid in programming OOTP to preserving settings that have been chosen. Clearly the game does preserve many settings, but it needs to preserve all (unless of course it is part of an overall feature that has been changed).

[Andreas Raht]

I would just ask that attention be paid in programming OOTP to preserving settings that have been chosen.

I agree 100% and I promise that we pay attention to that.

But I still need exact bug descriptions which I can reproduce. I do not see settings being changed.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Afino

I feel like I need to speak up here as one of the heads of the Storyline project....

There is NOTHING currently in the storyline file that will materially affect your game. No long-term injuries. No long-term suspensions. No significant player changes (morale, demanding trades, etc). So despite the fact it has been turned on, I would not worry about it. I've played six seasons in OOTP11 and have yet to see one. They are designed to pop up VERY infrequently.

It was always the plan to get a framework in there for OOTP11 and expand on it for OOTP12. Whether the dev team played up something that was not going to really be there is debatable.

The project took a back seat during the latter stages of the process, and for that, I apologize. I know that there have been a lot of questions regarding the functionality of the Storylines file itself - what can be done, what format they need to be put in to work, how do triggers work, etc.

I don't want to throw anyone under the bus and I will not. Myself, Corsairs, DesertFox, and others have been working hard to do what we can. But at this point, we're also waiting on answers, and considering the near finality of OOTP11, it looks like the majority of the project will have to wait until OOTP12.

I realize a lot of people were really looking forward to this. It can bring a whole new level of immersion to your OOTP universes. And I personally apologize for the fact that this project did not deliver as planned for OOTP11, and for the lack of communication by pretty much everyone involved. Just wanted to let everyone know storylines are NOT being ignored as a feature.

This is quite a post. Thank you very much for being forthright, not that you needed to explain the situation at all. I appreciate your doing so, however.

So, no big deal, other than a promised feature is really still under development. I'd rather know that and be mildly disappointed than to be wondering in ignorance what it's doing to my game and league.

Well, that explains the lack of buzz about storylines. Just a bit of eye candy, for now. Thanks again, Afino, for coming forward with the explanation.

[Troy30]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

This is quite a post. Thank you very much for being forthright, not that you needed to explain the situation at all. I appreciate your doing so, however.

So, no big deal, other than a promised feature is really still under development. I'd rather know that and be mildly disappointed than to be wondering in ignorance what it's doing to my game and league.

Well, that explains the lack of buzz about storylines. Just a bit of eye candy, for now. Thanks again, Afino, for coming forward with the explanation.

I agree with your post 100%