How does this game get good ratings ???

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

I don't let the lack of perfection prevent my enjoyment.

I am also grateful my wife has felt the same way about me for over 30 years.

My wife is lucky. She got perfection so she doesn't have to concern herself with that.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

My wife is lucky. She got perfection so she doesn't have to concern herself with that.

So she's got this guy on the side?

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

He just recently said on the puresim forum that he has a new major thing that popped up in his life and that he's done with puresim, and will probably make it open source.

Some one with a better memory than me can correct me on this, but didn't Shaun Sullivan retire the Puresim title on at least 2 previous occasions? I'm not saying that to put Puresim down but I recall these episodes because that was a main reason I gave up on that title many years ago - I did not have faith that it was going to stay around long.

[Petepont]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

So she's got this guy on the side?

No, no, no. He IS Mr. Perfect

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

So she's got this guy on the side?

Yeah. That's what I meant.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Some one with a better memory than me can correct me on this, but didn't Shaun Sullivan retire the Puresim title on at least 2 previous occasions? I'm not saying that to put Puresim down but I recall these episodes because that was a main reason I gave up on that title many years ago - I did not have faith that it was going to stay around long.

I think you're right.

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

I just looked at puresim (again) and was thinking of buying. It has a couple of nice features. But after playing through a couple of pbp games I didn't. After ootp it seemed very stark. Just not very much immersion playing out games.

Shaun's a good guy and puresim's a good game. Too bad I think it's too much competition and not enough of an existing fan base that really hurt his sales. Take away ootp and mogul and he'd be in fat city. Apparently he quit partly from that, partly from something negative that just came up and partly from a very good opportunity that just came up. At least that's what he said.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

Crap!!! Looks like another game that DDS: Pro Football will go onto the backburner for.

So true.. and.. so sad.

[DWK]

Yeah it's sad to see Shaun go Puresim was the only other baseball sim out there that gave OOTP some competition.

Hmm! I wonder what OOTP would look like with a Dream team of Markus and Shaun

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Some one with a better memory than me can correct me on this, but didn't Shaun Sullivan retire the Puresim title on at least 2 previous occasions? I'm not saying that to put Puresim down but I recall these episodes because that was a main reason I gave up on that title many years ago - I did not have faith that it was going to stay around long.

Yes you are right. To be fair though Shaun never hid the fact that Puresim was a sideline and that he had a day job that took priority from time to time.

[Shaun Sullivan]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Some one with a better memory than me can correct me on this, but didn't Shaun Sullivan retire the Puresim title on at least 2 previous occasions? I'm not saying that to put Puresim down but I recall these episodes because that was a main reason I gave up on that title many years ago - I did not have faith that it was going to stay around long.

Hey, if Brett Favre gets away with it, why can't I? In my defense, there have been releases of PureSim since 2002.

That said, I totally understand your concern as to why you may have stayed away. Until recently I was a one-man show, with a full time job, and doing this on the side. Add to that 4 kids and a mega stressful job... hence my somewhat mercurial past regarding "rage quitting"

I am pretty much heartbroken about leaving my dream-job fantasy (work on games full time) behind. The good news is Wolverine Studios has acquired the rights the the game IP and will be marshaling it forward. It would have been worse if it just died.

While I still think there is a market for niche sims like OOTP and PureSim, there are forces in play that concern me abou long-term viability:

- The "App-Store" world and it's influence on pricing models.
- An aging demographic
- Mobile (I know OOTP is doing this, good idea!)
- Convergence to the Web and HTML5. I think 3 years from now, apps that don't run in a browser on *any* HTML5-capable device, will be severely limiting their reach. OOTP somewhat mitigates the reach issue given it's cross platform nature, which I have always envied.

I believe to this day that success of OOTP has always been a good thing for the genre, and ultimately PureSim. OOTP brings credibility to our little niche and I hope both games will continue to prosper. Of course I'd be lying if I didn't view OOTP as a competitor, but let's face it, OOTP buried PureSim sales-wise long ago. I was going to try and make it as 2nd. Ultimately, there isn't much room to be 2nd (or really 3rd on PureSim's case, behind Mogul) in this niche, the addressable market is pretty small. Only hubris has kept me going this long.

I have no idea why I just rambled like that, but I appreciate what OOTP has done, and continue to respect (and admittedly envy) what the team here has achieved.

If my next big idea makes me a multi-millionaire, I may have to come back over here and buy Markus out On the flip-side, if my venture fails, maybe I'll call Markus for a job

Shaun Sullivan
*Retired PureSim Developer


* For the 3rd and final time?

[Muzamba]

Shaun, I think I can speak for pretty much the entire OOTP community in wishing you good luck in your future endeavors.

I know many of us wish you could have joined forces with Markus to create a baseball sim superpower, but I can certainly understand the reasoning behind handing PureSim over to Wolverine instead.

Hopefully, the new PureSim (along with Mogul) will continue to push Markus and compel all of us on the beta/design team to maintain our commitment to OOTP's excellence.

Once again, best wishes to you!

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Shaun, I think I can speak for pretty much the entire OOTP community in wishing you good luck in your future endeavors.

I know many of us wish you could have joined forces with Markus to create a baseball sim superpower, but I can certainly understand the reasoning behind handing PureSim over to Wolverine instead.

Hopefully, the new PureSim (along with Mogul) will continue to push Markus and compel all of us on the beta/design team to maintain our commitment to OOTP's excellence.

Once again, best wishes to you!

Agreed..

Appreciate the final patch to PS 3 too.. I play all 3 baseball sims and enjoy each one for different reasons. Your support has been stellar and I wish you the best.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Killing Time

Really easily! 70% of the users don't care about bugs.

I think 70% of the users use default settings in a fictional universe and just don't see the annoying bugs that happen. If you just want to start a default game and do not pay attention to every ER than the game generally works fine. It is when you start customizing too much that the game starts showing problems. I really see few if any bugs or big problems with default settings, it is when you try to veer too much from those that problems start to occur. For XI historical play has had some issues. Some are from the Lahman DB and others are unique to XI.

[PhillieFever]

Originally Posted by rich12545

I just looked at puresim (again) and was thinking of buying. It has a couple of nice features. But after playing through a couple of pbp games I didn't. After ootp it seemed very stark. Just not very much immersion playing out games.

Shaun's a good guy and puresim's a good game. Too bad I think it's too much competition and not enough of an existing fan base that really hurt his sales. Take away ootp and mogul and he'd be in fat city. Apparently he quit partly from that, partly from something negative that just came up and partly from a very good opportunity that just came up. At least that's what he said.

I actually bought it, and to tell you the truth, I found it quite lacking. I'm more of a historical player, so I bought it because of the tru-life transaction and R/L manager features, and both of these were pretty cool, but the in-game gameplay was sparse at best, the PBP was awful, and the whole flow of the game just felt clunky. I also didin't like that when playing through a career association, the lifetime leaders and hall of fame began in the year that you did, no back history. One thing I did like better is the way the ball flight reacted, it was seemingly more lifelike than OOTP, customer service was also much much better, Shaun is without a doubt dialed into his user base. Overall though, it's a double A game compared to the Major League OOTP.

[mking55]

I can't believe I'm going to make a post here again and risk the abuse I usually receive, but what the hell, here goes.

I have purchased every OOTP version from V2 on. I thought the idea was great and perfect for those of us who like to live in the past (obviously I'm an historical player). I have been the commish of 2 long running leagues (it seems anything over 1 year constitutes a long running league) and been a player in others.

I retired from online leagues in late 2005 and buy the game with every release and try it out playing solo. I find that after putting it through it's paces, that I don't play it again. Why do I buy it every year? Because I hope against hope that it can move towards being an excellent game and because I believe in supporting these independent sports sim efforts.

I have found my game of choice to be PureSim. The 2 games are different and while OOTP has more depth (enough to choke a horse but that's okay because some people like it), PureSim remembers it's a game first and for me, that makes it more enjoyable.

OOTP is buggy in areas and it's downright flawed in other areas. They seem to carry on from version to version and that shouldn't happen. Any developer (and I work in the software business) fixes the problems first before introducing new features. That is a basic "rule" and one that OOTP doesn't follow. PureSim gets bug fixes out the door before you can say Jack Robinson. What I find strange about this is that OOTP is a full-time job for Markus and crew (regardless of how few they are), while PureSim was an after-hours job for a maniac who works full-time and has four kids and a good marriage. That doesn't make sense that the part-timer fixes his creation before the full-timer fixes his.

Now Shaun is gone and I'm sure Gary, while not Shaun, is a clever guy and a talented developer/programmer so PureSim should continue to grow and evolve.

There are certain annoyances in OOTP that have been there for a while. If I go to my lineup screen and set it up to show batters and batting stats, and then I leave it, when I come back it's not sticky. Who knows what I'll see. Maybe I'll see my pitchers and their batting stats. That's wrong. If I'm looking for free agents and I subset to catchers (for example), pick a catcher to look at, and then go back it's not catchers anymore, it's everyone. It should be sticky.

If I offer an extension or a contract to a player and my offer was exactly what was being asked for, I don't like getting an email telling me my offer sucks and when I go back and see what they want, it's exactly what I just offered.

There is no excuse for these things and they're well known. OOTP comes out with more "eye candy" every version. Baseball cards??????? Cool, but fix the problems first. I don't understand the support this game gets when the bossman ignores the issues that are flaws in the game.

I've gone back one more time and tried to play. I have a well-known problem with trading and that's the fact that set on the highest level of difficulty and my lineup (1955) has Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron in the outfield with Al Kaline and Frank Robinson as bench players. I know I can have house rules and so on and so forth, but I can't get these guys in trades in PureSim. Why? Because when I and others showed Shaun these things, he worked on improving the trading module and while not perfect, is head and shoulders above what OOTP does. And when I wrote to Markus and told him that the trading needs work (as per a similar example) his response was to laugh it off and tell me that OOTP has the best trading module second to none and I must be the incarnation of Theo Epstein. That's arrogance. I wasn't being rude when I wrote but a "professional" would step back and think about this and try to make sure these kind of things don't happen.

And you can attack me for "taking advantage of the AI", but a good AI is built so you can't take advantage of it.

A developer of these niche games has to be a visible presence on the boards. Granted there are times they can't be here but you rarely see Markus. Maybe business is so good, he doesn't have to listen to his audience. That's too bad.

This could have been a great game but I think success and arrogance have derailed it. I don't think I'll be purchasing the next version without playing the demo first.

Now please remember, this is just my opinion and the last time I checked, we weren't Iran and jailing people for their opinions.

[cody8200]

Mking, what settings did you use for the trade ai? Try using the hard or very hard setting. I would be very impressed/surprised if you could get all of those guys on your team at once using that setting.

Just out of curiosity, you should try simming the season out and seeing how happy those guys are riding the bench. I have a feeling that the team chemistry would not be that high.

[mking55]

Originally Posted by cody8200

Mking, what settings did you use for the trade ai? Try using the hard or very hard setting. I would be very impressed/surprised if you could get all of those guys on your team at once using that setting.

Just out of curiosity, you should try simming the season out and seeing how happy those guys are riding the bench. I have a feeling that the team chemistry would not be that high.

Very hard. I always use very hard and very hard is not hard.

As for team chemistry, it doesn't matter. Because my team is so stacked, I have plenty of trade fodder to keep winning forever and ever.

But the post I made was expressing my overall dissatisfaction with the game and my disappointment too while trying to illustrate a few points.

I really don't want to have a trade discussion because they get ugly and cause threads to veer off topic. However, I appreciate your comment.

[The Real MD]

Originally Posted by mking55

Maybe business is so good, he doesn't have to listen to his audience.

I don't think you're too far off with this assessment. I'm guessing he gets enough long-timers who automatically purchase the new version every year (along with some new customers) that he doesn't have to address every legacy bug or flaw.

If there was a widespread mutiny among the masses that threatened his annual "renewal" sales, then perhaps he would respond differently. But right now, there's a certain "auto-pilot" mentality evident (both on his part and a majority of the customer base)...all he needs to do is add a few new features each year, and most existing customers will continue to buy it regardless.

[ukhotstove]

Maybe Markus gets people buying every version because their enjoying the game, but some people don't see that because their blinded by their bitterness that people don't agree with their views.