Getting Hooked

[heyericiscool]

(If you don't feel like reading all of this below, any general "noobie/welcome" feedback would be appreciated, as would any encouraging stories or gimmicks/ideas to try to get me "hooked" on the game.)

I'm sure there are other people who have asked this before but here goes.

I purchased this game last summer, and for the most part it has laid dormant on my task bar. I have talked to a few people, asking how they played OOTP and they have given me solid answers but nothing that has made me come home from school/work each day and want to sit down and play this like Football Manager used to make me--an equivalent soccer management game, if you have not heard of it. Baseball is now my love, and i love SIM type games so I really want to like this game more, but for some reason I cannot.

• Could it be that I play on a Macintosh?
• Could it be that I like the in-game management more than the GM type stuff?

  Or, that is to say, i think I don't understand the GM stuff well enough to play

• Could it be that I haven't found the correct player pool/universe?

I know a lot of people play online, but I feel that I don't have enough solo experience to move to online yet--i don't want to ruin (or hold back) someone else's league online. I play in a SOM league and when i started I made a trade that I thought was great for me but it caused 2 people to leave the league (in the end, looking back i really did win that trade, but still, i am very averse to joining new leagues)

Anyhow, i will be looking to get 13 and give this game one more try. I just don't know where to start playing this game. It seems like "so much" and that I am only scratching the surface, but yet, I get a couple games into the season and I find myself bored. I played one save for about 3 seasons, simming all games, but i felt all I was doing was making trades and moving guys to the minors and it just wasn't all that I thought it would.

I love my SOM league and I love fantasy baseball and watching it, so i assume I will love this game when i find out how to play it. I have no interest in the historical side of it, and very much prefer the fictional aspect of the game. But present-day startups are fine too, i suppose.


One last question--basically, from my FM days--does anyone play in a Table type system with promotion/relegation? If so, i would like that a lot more than the playoff setup. Is it possible to set something like this up, and if so is there a template. Baseball is my favorite sport, but I feel American sports do a poor job of rewarding regular season success, and that playoffs--driven by revenue--have too much emphasis in our culture.

Thanks for the time and sorry for the long winded rhetoric.

Take Care,

EC

[oman19]

:::British Baseball Society......Promotion/Relegation done OOTP style!::: is a promotion/relegation league ran by Cooleyvols that I just joined. Sounds like what your looking for. Cooley is great to work with.

To get you going solo though. Make your own universe with teams close located close to you. Usually a good way to get involved.

I personally do a GM/manager hybrid. I control all line ups and rotations and sim one day at a time and go over the box scores and then rinse and repeat.

Watch your recrod books. This is what I usually find that gets me to immerse myself in my league. Look at your teams record book and the leagues.

Change any rules you don't like that major league baseball uses. I personally play my solo league with a salary cap. I turn off the rule 5 draft and draft pick compensation and use a set of custom made schedules that rotates interleague play similiar to the NFL.

When they say it's your game play it your way they really mean it. Your only limited by your imagination.

[Mortimer]

heyericiscool, welcome to the forum. Personally I always liked the management better than the GM'ing and I never go the hang of simming my games. when I started i was quite confused so I had to scale it down.

At first I did an mlb quick start picked a rookie team and managed it letting the AI do all the roster stuff. I quickly found the rookie teams are harder to play because they have 30+ players, so if you want to just manage I would go short A or higher, you can also have the AI take care of minors, transactions, drafts and all the GM things while you play as manager only.

after that I wanted to make my own leagues so I played around with old time teams or make my own small league with 1 lvl of minors, once I even made a European league where every country had a team and could only have there nationality on a team, this let me sign and make a team without dealing with trades and drafts and scouting, i just had to find a guy from my nation sign him and play.

For the last few years i have got into the gm stuff more and currently I control pretty much everything, often I will let my minors choose lineups, but i still play out ever single ML game.

hopefully this will give you at least something to get you started, and you will find something that works for you. It can be a bit daunting at first if you keep it simple it will find you pick it up pretty fast.

If it helps i am in the same boat as you but with Football Manager I tried a demo once and could barely make heads or tails out of it, but I am a rather novice football fan.

[heyericiscool]

Thanks to both of you.

Mortimer, I actually got realllllllly into FM for quite some time. I learned a lot about the players and i wasted days of my undergraduate career playing that game. That's kind of what I am hoping OOTP will be for me--an oasis of sorts.

I like the european idea. I'd be interested in trying to set that up and play it out. Seems like a very fun idea. I am going to be putting 13 on my windows computer so that way I can make sure I am on the same page as everyone else.

Any further ideas are still appreciated. I'm using the MLB setup with fictional teams, but i think I should maybe pick a barebones set of rules and start from there.

What do you guys do in terms of games? Do you stick with the 162? I think I would like the GM side of the game more if there were less games/more off seasons (or half-seasons). I am big on making trades when I know I am out of it, so that I can get prospects, and things of that ilk.

Just trying to get some ideas of what to do. The new simulation mode for 13 looks pretty sweet.

[Skyflame21]

I know you said you're not into historical leagues but that's one that I really seem to enjoy. I began with the 1990 season, just because I was 12 then and was the first year I really got into watching a lot of baseball.

I picked the Atlanta braves, they were always on tbs so I got to watch a lot ofbthosevgames and got real familiar with their team. I found that because I remembered a lot of the guys from that point on it made playing multiple seasons fun. Drafting guys that I had heard of made the experience mor enjoyable then say a fictional league would.

After multiple years into the 2000s it was great to see guys that were HoF in real life not be and guys that were role players develop into stars. Record books were great to look at also, Willie McGee for st. Louis broke DiMaggio hit streak. Barry bonds resigned with the pirates and they continued to be great throughout the 90s. One of the highest grossing teams. Just goes to show what one decision might have changed an entire franchise. After bonds resigned, Clemens came on board a few years later they continued to add pieces instead of shipping them out of town.

Just thought I'd pass that along. The game is what you make of it. Find something that you really enjoy and you should be all set. Best wishes with ootp13

[heyericiscool]

Thanks, Skyflame. I appreciate the warm words. One idea I have toyed with is starting the season Mark McGwire came to St. Louis. It was the first season I really began watch baseball (at age 12 as well) and I just think it would be interesting to see how it played out. However, from about 15-18 i took some years off and really don't know too many players. I would be interested in seeing what happened to guys like Frank Thomas, Bonds, Griffey Jr., etc. So i might consider that. I'll try some stuff out on OOTP 13 and i'm sure i'll be around these forums to report back.

If anyone has any ideas that are unique, i'd be willing to try them out, though I may need help setting them up.

[TommyHerr]

I imagine I'm a lot like you in terms of my PC game style and probably baseball knowledge and love as well. I have played this series OOTP off and on for a while. I find a PC game and I get into it...INTO IT...for a while and then I move on it seems. What brought me back to purchase 12 a few months ago was the Pujos free agent thing...that and probably watching Moneyball (being a Pro GM ranks up there with being a Navy seal in my book of "oh man I shoulda done that with my life")...but I saw the Pujos thing unfold and I thought about this game and how cool it has been to "wheel and deaL".

So, I got the game and I started out with the current season and I played a year. I gotta say the GM aspect of the game has gotten so amazing and I loved that...but I felt out of touch with the players, cause as much as I follow MLB I still felt like I didn't have a grasp on a lot of players and what they could really do.

I thought back (like others have done) and 1987 was my "time" when I knew baseball in an out. I started a "historical" league in that year. I made it so the players develop randomly, not according to real life. I'm loving it. And as I play, and get furhter along I see players I'm not too familiar with but playing the game helps me get to know them....so basically its a smooth transition into the modern era.

As the modern era hits, and I move past the current year this league will turn into more of a fictional league. It gets me pumped to think about how the game makes "random" changes. For example, I may end season 2018 and the Braves move to Las Vegas or something like that.

But that is what has me hooked right now. The greatest thing about it this game is also its biggest downfall....the depth. There are so many possibilities and ways to play the game, you just have to find your own. And that is a challege with in itself.

Oh, I also am liking the idea of "earning my way" as a GM. Starting off unemployed and seeing if I can really make it without getting fired left and right.

[heyericiscool]

Does anyone play less than 162 game schedules? I would like that, i think, but I don't like going away from the historical context. i.e., if i guy has a 30-100-100 season, that's pretty fantastic, but i don't want to extrapolate that to say, 120 games, or 81 games. It doesn't feel right...

[Skyflame21]

No, the 162 is the standard. Like you noted if you shorten then the numbers all look very weak because you're use to the .300 / 30 / 100 line.

[OutS|der]

once you get hooked how do you stop?
is there a support group or meetings?
how do we know when we need help?