OOTP 13 - Discussion of the new Features & Screenshots...

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by tward13

What are the requirements to run the game? OOTP12 takes forever to load and I'm wondering if the old PC might finally fail me here.

Same as OOTP 12. I suggest getting more RAM, that always helps and is relatively cheap.

[Ceej]

First post in two years! The last couple editions didn't really have enough of what I was looking for, so I took a pass on them and just kind of went away. I think I should get back on board for this one.

The interactive storylines sound like they might finally reach their potential in this version; it sounds like fun to watch a "Bronx Zoo"-like era unfold in a particular city, or watch a notoriously temperamental slugger hit the free agency market and see how much of a risk the other teams want to take on him

Since graphical improvements/clean-ups are a big feature of this edition, is there any chance of giving each team "road colors" used when displaying the players' names on the in-game ballpark screen? The single most headache-inducing sight in this game for me is actually this screen, when both teams have identical or near-identical team colors (like, say, Cardinals vs. Reds), especially when the bases are loaded.

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Realism in historical leagues will be improved as well, However, we have not yet decided in what form, so it was left out of the feature list.

Originally Posted by rich12545

May I make a few suggestions?

1. Be able to trade a player for cash.

2. Independent minors based on actual historical leagues and teams.

3. Realistic scouting and signing from historical time periods.

I'm also heavily into historical play and would like to see inside-the-park home runs modeled accurately for the age of the dead ball and cavernous outfields. I guess that probably would require the park dimensions/fence heights to be more than just cosmetic, a development that would open up a lot of other neat things, but I guess you can't have everything...

[Cooleyvol]

Last question on associations, if we have no playoffs, are we able to select the teams that would move forward to a Eurocup type competition?

[BusterKing]

Originally Posted by tward13

What are the requirements to run the game? OOTP12 takes forever to load and I'm wondering if the old PC might finally fail me here.

Get rid of all the messages in your message folder. If you have a lot of them it will slow down the loading of the game.

[Cras]

Originally Posted by BusterKing

Get rid of all the messages in your message folder. If you have a lot of them it will slow down the loading of the game.

Yes. Do this. I do it quite often. Old messages if they get to copious can create bad things. A few versions ago I discovered the massive amount of old messages was causing OOTP to CTD, and I have gotten in the habit since to delete those things.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Ceej

I'm also heavily into historical play and would like to see inside-the-park home runs modeled accurately for the age of the dead ball and cavernous outfields. I guess that probably would require the park dimensions/fence heights to be more than just cosmetic, a development that would open up a lot of other neat things, but I guess you can't have everything...

Agreed, ITPHR should be modeled better.

[soadeathdealer]

loved the new additions and all

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yes.

I just peed my pants.

[Goldash]

Thank you for your reply to my original post, Markus. It's going to be another great season!

[BMD]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yes, but this is already a feature of OOTP 12. Sometimes pitchers learn a new pitch and hence improve their stuff.

But in OOTP 13 this can be a result of a storyline too...

Okay, you have my attention now.

[jmknpk2]

I was saying "Wow!" to myself as I read each new feature in the newsletter.

I was going to pre-order no matter what. But now that I see the improvements that I'm going to be getting, I can't wait!

Did I really see promise of an April release? That would be totally awesome.


Requested minor improvement:
The one thing that sorely needs improvement is the interaction on contract negotiations. This seems like a very easy coding/developing area to address and the way things currently work really detracts from the immersion factor. I would hope it could easily be slipped into the OOTP 13 additional features without too much trouble.

There is nothing worse than offering a player $2,000,000 on a one year contract, then getting the following type feedback from the game.

Pending Free Agents Screen says "Wants more money".

The player or his agent sends an email saying something like. I know you are trying, but I have a much better offer from team X (when team X happens to be my own team). You really need to increase the amount of money or go seek someone else.

Then when I go to negotiate a different contract offer with the player, the profile lists a player demand of $1,500,000 ($500,000 less than what I previously offered).

This type of situation is extremely annoying and difficult to deal with or explain away in my imagination as anything approximating reality.

While I'm on the topic, I would think that most of the time that I meet the player's demand, he should sign with my team (I gave him exactly what he asked for).

[GMLoophole]

Every year I think "eh, I don't need a new version". ESPECIALLY this year since I have been enjoying both OOTP 11 and OOTP 12.

But you had me at league associations. You jerks.

[Lee]

League associations secured my order. Now at least we can run the Federal League or the Pacific Coast League as a third major league, or maybe run them both and have 4 associated major leagues.

This addition is awesome!!!

[bp_]

I can't wait to import a draft from ootpou! (assuming that is going to work with the new import/export feature)

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

[simcrazy]

Markus - Can you please address the following list? I have already identified a friend to buy the game for (perhaps he will become a repeat customer!) in addition to my purchase, and may try to identify one or two more if I see more issues addressed beyond the DH THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ADDRESSING THE DH!:

• If a defensive player or pitcher gets injured on the last pitch of a half inning, you must immediately replace him. In real life, you wouldn’t have to identify the replacement until the next inning where the defensive player or pitcher is required. I HATE this. Sometimes I put in a pitcher and he doesn't even pitch. Or I have to make a decision before I would have to normally and then the next half inning changes my decision so I waste a player.
• Cannot put the DH in the field.
• If there are two pinch runners in a half inning, and one is for the DH, the runner pinch running for the DH is allowed to assume a defensive position. This should not be allowed.
• It is possible to take out a pitcher before he has completed an at-bat. This is a deviation from reality, as this is only allowed in real life in the case of injury. Markus told me this was fixed, but it is not. I just tried it and was allowed to do it.
• The second pinch runner in a half inning is recorded in the box score as a pinch hitter, not a pinch runner as would be correct. Also, a pinch hitter or pinch runner for a DH is not recorded as a pinch hitter or pinch runner.
• When there are runners on base, the bunt for a hit option is not available. There is a difference between a sacrifice bunt and a bunt for a hit in the bunter's technique.
• Too many players, and too many good players, are placed on waivers. This happens in some leagues and not in others and it's hard to understand what settings cause it to happen.
• When a player is optioned down, he can't be recalled until 10 days have passed. However, he can be recalled sooner than that if a player on the major league roster is placed on the disabled list. In OOTP you can recall him without an injury at the MLB level.
• The game sims by at bat and not by pitch. This is illustrated by the take pitch issue, where if you use the take pitch feature (which I love! and is used in real life all the time) until two strikes you get unrealistic results - high walks without high corresponding strikeouts. In other words, there is no disadvantage to going down 0-2, which also affects base stealing strategy.
• Passed balls and wild pitches seem to occur more frequently with a man on third base.
• I know work has been done and progress realized in this category, but: man on 3rd, 1 out, pitching team up 4-0 in the bottom of the 7th and I get intentionally walked. This would never happen. It's better than OOTP 10, but unrealistic intentional walks are still issued occasionally.
• Injured players cannot be replaced on the playoff roster.
• Short relievers, who are not stretched out, can pitch too long and too effectively in a spot start.
• Players on rehab assignments who suffer set backs are forced to be released.

[JMDurron]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yeah. The usage tracker of OOTP 12 showed us that contract info is the 2nd most viewed section in the player screen (trailing the profile). So we thought we'd add that info to the profile to save you some clicks.

Awww, Big Brother is a benevolent overlord!

J/K, love seeing that information put to use so quickly, as that is a nice little addition for me as well.

Originally Posted by markprior22

I'm excited for this one too. Really hoping team finances work much better than in the past...especially out of the box.

Also hoping that real life ball parks will be available for fictional leagues with BP factors already calculated (at least somewhat realistically). It takes quite a while to go through and change all those settings for doubles, triples, HR, etc.

I share the hope on team finances, but those real life ballparks might be a tall order. If I understand correctly, there might be licensing issues involved, therefore we will always be dependent on mods for this data. Marcus, please correct me if I am wrong on this.

Originally Posted by Harry Chiti

Quick question -

Wishlist question

Will there be a place on each player page where I can designate an organizational role for each player and than sort them by such designation?

Eg - Star, Regular, AAAA replacement/backup, bluechip prospect, promising youngster, organizational fodder?

It would be nice to be able to bring this info up in an instant for an organizational standpoint -

eg) when sorting thru your major league team and endless minor league teams, in a trade or pre-draft release situation (or just to ensure that the 'right' minor leaguers are getting started)...rather than having to click on each player to check your 'notes'

I don't just like this idea, I love it. This would be hugely useful to me.

Originally Posted by Goldash

Another question concerns stat tracking and news features...is there a possibility we may see news stories about team accomplishments (winning streaks, clinching divisions, et cetera) and broken records (if, say, "Joe Smith" breaks Cy Young's all-time pitching win mark in 2077).

What I've seen and heard has been extremely intriguing already...can not wait to hear and see more OOTP13!

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yes

I would love to see broken records and team accomplishments as well, I'm very curious to see what has been added on this front.

This is my first year as an OOTP customer, and I must say that I'm quite impressed by the feature list for OOTP 13. I was a likely repeat customer anyway (there's blind loyalty, and then there's "I finally found something that my in-laws can give me every year as a birthday present that doesn't involve giving a 20+ year old guy a TIE Fighter rocket ship"), but given how many different things are being fixed/tweaked/added, I would have bought it with my own money anyway.

That said, for those among us who see new features named that they have been clamoring for for years, I'd ask that we all keep a few things in mind.

1) New features will almost always have kinks that have to be worked out across patches, and yes, even future releases. There might be some bugs, and no, those bugs are NOT worse than not having the feature at all, because bugs will eventually get fixed.

2) Even if the new feature does not touch on all of the aspects of what you want (say, you can only do customized playoffs in certain ways), that's still better than what you had, and is another step closer to your ideal, so try to be tolerant/understanding.

3) The world will not end if the release date (gasp!) slips a little bit to fix issues found during beta testing. That said, a slight release date slip does not mean that every single bug is guaranteed to be fix, so no lynch mobs please!

Very excited overall, thanks Marcus. Those screenshots look sharp, and I'm very anxious to see what the new Widgetcast (just made that up, but why not?) screen looks like.

[tejdog1]

Historical full and complete minor leagues? Please say yes Markus... I wanna start a Mets dynasty in 2003 with Reyes, Wright and Kazmir in the minors!

[mgom27]

Winter Ball Leagues Yes or No or will that be in 14 to?
Sort by team that drafted them?
Futures Games,Minor League E. League Option,To have Computer set their Opening Day Rosters well before opening day,Interm people,Interview like a 3B Coach for Manager Postion and Trading like GM'S and so on for Players or Pitchers,Home Run Derby and TV/Radio Contracts This Year or next?
Like these

• New rules for free agency, draft pick compensation, salary arbitration, and the amateur (Rule 4 but isn't it still 5) draft
• Houston's move to the AL West at the beginning of the 2013 season, with the corresponding schedule adjustment
• A second wild card team in each major league, starting with the 2013 playoffs

[rjl518]

Me likey very much...just one question...since we have to wait till april for this wonderful game...if i start a new league in OOTP12...can it be transferred into OOTP13 when released?

[Eephus Swift]

Originally Posted by rjl518

Me likey very much...just one question...since we have to wait till april for this wonderful game...if i start a new league in OOTP12...can it be transferred into OOTP13 when released?

Check out post #60.