Creating a Worldwide Player Pool

sbrylski · 06-21-2011, 02:24 AM

Can anyone tell me how to create a fictional league with a truly international player pool?

I set up my league with half the teams (28) in the United States and half in other countries - Japan (12), Korea (8), Mexico (4), Cuba (1), Dominican Republic (1), Puerto Rico (1), Venezuela (1). All these teams are in one league, two sub-leagues.

Because you have to select a league nation (as I understand it), I have it set to the United States. I set the foreigner percentage to 65%, seeing as I wanted players from all around the globe. But while I ended up with the proper ratio of American players, I was getting way too many from North American countries and only a handful from Asia. I got 31 Japanese players, compared to 126 from Mexico.

Japan actually has a slightly larger population, so it seems the game is biasing the player pool towards North America, because the league is set in the United States. EDIT: Japan and Mexico are also both a "5" for baseball level.

Is there a way to fix this? I have all the teams assigned to the proper nation, but that doesn't seem to do anything. This thread talks about setting the foreigner percentage to 0, but I tried that and I just got 100% American players. Help!

deanemj · 06-21-2011, 02:26 AM

Hmm...I wonder if the disproportionate number of North Americans is because OOTP labels their baseball programs "Excellent" as opposed to "Good" for most of the Asian programs.

I am interested in creating a worldwide baseball league myself, so this would be helpful to know.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sbrylski

Can anyone tell me how to create a fictional league with a truly international player pool?

I set up my league with half the teams (28) in the United States and half in other countries - Japan (12), Korea (8), Mexico (4), Cuba (1), Dominican Republic (1), Puerto Rico (1), Venezuela (1). All these teams are in one league, two sub-leagues.

Because you have to select a league nation (as I understand it), I have it set to the United States. I set the foreigner percentage to 65%, seeing as I wanted players from all around the globe. But while I ended up with the proper ratio of American players, I was getting way too many from North American countries and only a handful from Asia. I got 31 Japanese players, compared to 126 from Mexico.

Japan actually has a slightly larger population, so it seems the game is biasing the player pool towards North America, because the league is set in the United States.

Is there a way to fix this? I have all the teams assigned to the proper nation, but that doesn't seem to do anything. This thread talks about setting the foreigner percentage to 0, but I tried that and I just got 100% American players. Help!

The league biases players based on the baseball level of the countries, not the population and I'm pretty sure geography is irrelevant for foreign players.

So to change the amount of players from each country, change the Baseball level.

sbrylski · 06-21-2011, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

The league biases players based on the baseball level of the countries, not the population and I'm pretty sure geography is irrelevant for foreign players.

So to change the amount of players from each country, change the Baseball level.

But Japan already is a five. So it isn't giving me less Japanese players because their baseball level is low.

5's
Canada Japan Mexico Puerto Rico Venezuela Cuba Dominican Republic The United States
4's
Australia Netherlands Taiwan South Korea Nicaragua Panama Colombia Costa Rica
3's
South Africa England Italy Germany Aruba Curaçao Brazil Chile El Salvador Guatemala Argentina

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 02:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sbrylski

But Japan already is a five. So it isn't giving me less Japanese players because their baseball level is low.

5's
Canada Japan Mexico Puerto Rico Venezuela Cuba Dominican Republic The United States
4's
Australia Netherlands Taiwan South Korea Nicaragua Panama Colombia Costa Rica
3's
South Africa England Italy Germany Aruba Curaçao Brazil Chile El Salvador Guatemala Argentina

I am 99% positive that you will get as many players from Japan as Mexico over the long haul. In one particular season, there may be large discrepancies in either direction.

sbrylski · 06-21-2011, 02:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

I am 99% positive that you will get as many players from Japan as Mexico over the long haul. In one particular season, there may be large discrepancies in either direction.

I deleted the entire player pool and generated new players four times, with almost the exact same results. (Between 21-32 Japanese players.) So I don't think that's it either.

I just tried deleting all players, setting a limit on the number of foreign players by team nationality at zero, and then again at five, and then filled teams with fictional players. This method gave me zero foreign players, all American, and only on American teams.

Hmm...

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:03 AM

I just tried the same thing, setting up a league as you have and I get the same results as you have seen. A lot more players from Mexico as Japan.

This has to be some anomaly with the new World DB. I will look into it.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:06 AM

I tried the same thing, but this time setting the league home in Japan and all the foreigners were evenly spread out by Baseball level.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:08 AM

With the league home as the US, the D.R. and Venezuela are seriously over-represented, Mexico and Puerto Rico are as they should be, but Canada, Japan, and Cuba are seriously under represented.

Some of the GOOD countries have 0 players.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:14 AM

I will log this as an issue.

Work around would be to create the league as a Japanese league and foreigners are evenly distributed by baseball level.

Seems very odd.

sbrylski · 06-21-2011, 03:39 AM

I tried this as a workaround... set the league in Greenland, which has a baseball level of 0, and set the foreigner percentage to 100.

And it basically worked. All level 5 countries had the most players, level 4's behind them, and so on. Here's the rough and rounded data:

Baseball Level 5 - 9.5% of player pool per nation, 76% in sum (8 nations)
Baseball Level 4 - 2.0% of player pool per nation, 16% in sum (8 nations)
Baseball Level 3 - 0.5% of player pool per nation, 6% in sum (11 nations)
Baseball Level 2 & 1 - Negligible

I had 2577 players in the pool I generated, and checked all level 5 teams, four level 4 teams, and a sample of three or four of level 1-3 teams.

I'll be playing with these numbers tomorrow to see how they react to database changes. I'll probably be able to get the numbers to where I want them per nation by adjusting baseball levels.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sbrylski

I tried this as a workaround... set the league in Greenland, which has a baseball level of 0, and set the foreigner percentage to 100.

And it basically worked. All level 5 countries had the most players, level 4's behind them, and so on. Here's the rough and rounded data:

Baseball Level 5 - 9.5% of player pool per nation, 76% in sum (8 nations)
Baseball Level 4 - 2.0% of player pool per nation, 16% in sum (8 nations)
Baseball Level 3 - 0.5% of player pool per nation, 6% in sum (11 nations)
Baseball Level 2 & 1 - Negligible

I had 2577 players in the pool I generated, and checked all level 5 teams, four level 4 teams, and a sample of three or four of level 1-3 teams.

I'll be playing with these numbers tomorrow to see how they react to database changes. I'll probably be able to get the numbers to where I want them per nation by adjusting baseball levels.

I'm glad you can get it to work, but it's still a problem for regular leagues set in the USA who will not get the proper mix of foreigners entering the league. Hopefully, this can be fixed soon. The World DB is all new and with new things there are always growing pains.

damientheomen3 · 06-21-2011, 06:21 AM

I've had a problem with the international system too. I made my first OOTP12 league with 70% foreigners since I like running a WBC in the leagues I care about, and the first thing I always do is set Poland's baseball program to excellent (nationalism FTW!). In 2 seasons of Poland having an excellent baseball program, there has been 1 Polish player, a scrub reliever picked in the 25th round of the 25 round draft. It made me sad.

Questdog · 06-21-2011, 03:45 PM

OK. Here's the explanation I have been given.

If you set a league up in the USA, the foreigner distribution is hard coded into the game to replicate real life. You can change the total percentage of foreigners, but not the spread from country to country. It apparently doesn't matter what you set the baseball levels to.

However, if you set a league up in another country, then all foreigners will be distributed according to the baseball levels.

So, if you want a league based in the USA and you want to control the foreigners by country, use another country as the league's home (i.e. Greenland, as above.) You can then put ALL the teams in the USA, if you want and it should work the way you expect it to.

SetonHallPirate · 06-21-2011, 03:55 PM

Is the hard-code based on real-life percentages of foreigners in the majors, or throughout the minors as well? In the latter case, it would make sense that the Dominican Republic and Venezuela would be overrepresented, as they have MLB-affiliated minor leagues in those respective countries.

sbrylski · 06-21-2011, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

OK. Here's the explanation I have been given.

If you set a league up in the USA, the foreigner distribution is hard coded into the game to replicate real life. You can change the total percentage of foreigners, but not the spread from country to country. It apparently doesn't matter what you set the baseball levels to.

However, if you set a league up in another country, then all foreigners will be distributed according to the baseball levels.

So, if you want a league based in the USA and you want to control the foreigners by country, use another country as the league's home (i.e. Greenland, as above.) You can then put ALL the teams in the USA, if you want and it should work the way you expect it to.

That makes a lot of sense.

I guess my question though is that the game clearly generates percentages for each country from data in the world_default.xml file. Why doesn't the game just give us access to those percentages? For example, you start a game with the standard world template. After the league is created, you can go into a nations page that lists all the countries and the percentage of players from each country, completed editable. Seems like that would strip away a lot of the "cloudiness" surrounding this issue and add an extra layer of customization.

06-21-2011, 02:24 AM	#1
sbrylski Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 331	Creating a Worldwide Player Pool Can anyone tell me how to create a fictional league with a truly international player pool? I set up my league with half the teams (28) in the United States and half in other countries - Japan (12), Korea (8), Mexico (4), Cuba (1), Dominican Republic (1), Puerto Rico (1), Venezuela (1). All these teams are in one league, two sub-leagues. Because you have to select a league nation (as I understand it), I have it set to the United States. I set the foreigner percentage to 65%, seeing as I wanted players from all around the globe. But while I ended up with the proper ratio of American players, I was getting way too many from North American countries and only a handful from Asia. I got 31 Japanese players, compared to 126 from Mexico. Japan actually has a slightly larger population, so it seems the game is biasing the player pool towards North America, because the league is set in the United States. EDIT: Japan and Mexico are also both a "5" for baseball level. Is there a way to fix this? I have all the teams assigned to the proper nation, but that doesn't seem to do anything. This thread talks about setting the foreigner percentage to 0, but I tried that and I just got 100% American players. Help! __________________ The International Baseball Association - A Quick-Start League Last edited by sbrylski; 06-21-2011 at 02:43 AM.

06-21-2011, 03:08 AM	#9
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	With the league home as the US, the D.R. and Venezuela are seriously over-represented, Mexico and Puerto Rico are as they should be, but Canada, Japan, and Cuba are seriously under represented. Some of the GOOD countries have 0 players. Last edited by Questdog; 06-21-2011 at 03:11 AM.

06-21-2011, 03:39 AM	#11
sbrylski Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 331	I tried this as a workaround... set the league in Greenland, which has a baseball level of 0, and set the foreigner percentage to 100. And it basically worked. All level 5 countries had the most players, level 4's behind them, and so on. Here's the rough and rounded data: Baseball Level 5 - 9.5% of player pool per nation, 76% in sum (8 nations) Baseball Level 4 - 2.0% of player pool per nation, 16% in sum (8 nations) Baseball Level 3 - 0.5% of player pool per nation, 6% in sum (11 nations) Baseball Level 2 & 1 - Negligible I had 2577 players in the pool I generated, and checked all level 5 teams, four level 4 teams, and a sample of three or four of level 1-3 teams. I'll be playing with these numbers tomorrow to see how they react to database changes. I'll probably be able to get the numbers to where I want them per nation by adjusting baseball levels. __________________ The International Baseball Association - A Quick-Start League

06-21-2011, 02:26 AM	#2
deanemj Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 185	Hmm...I wonder if the disproportionate number of North Americans is because OOTP labels their baseball programs "Excellent" as opposed to "Good" for most of the Asian programs. I am interested in creating a worldwide baseball league myself, so this would be helpful to know.

06-21-2011, 03:03 AM	#7
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	I just tried the same thing, setting up a league as you have and I get the same results as you have seen. A lot more players from Mexico as Japan. This has to be some anomaly with the new World DB. I will look into it.

06-21-2011, 03:06 AM	#8
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	I tried the same thing, but this time setting the league home in Japan and all the foreigners were evenly spread out by Baseball level.

06-21-2011, 03:14 AM	#10
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	I will log this as an issue. Work around would be to create the league as a Japanese league and foreigners are evenly distributed by baseball level. Seems very odd.

06-21-2011, 03:45 PM	#14
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	OK. Here's the explanation I have been given. If you set a league up in the USA, the foreigner distribution is hard coded into the game to replicate real life. You can change the total percentage of foreigners, but not the spread from country to country. It apparently doesn't matter what you set the baseball levels to. However, if you set a league up in another country, then all foreigners will be distributed according to the baseball levels. So, if you want a league based in the USA and you want to control the foreigners by country, use another country as the league's home (i.e. Greenland, as above.) You can then put ALL the teams in the USA, if you want and it should work the way you expect it to.

06-21-2011, 03:55 PM	#15
SetonHallPirate Minors (Triple A) Join Date: May 2002 Location: Boynton Beach, Florida Posts: 205	Is the hard-code based on real-life percentages of foreigners in the majors, or throughout the minors as well? In the latter case, it would make sense that the Dominican Republic and Venezuela would be overrepresented, as they have MLB-affiliated minor leagues in those respective countries.