Poor talent in recent Draft Years

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

The talent ratings change between the draft and the time players reach the majors.

Looking at potentials at the time of the draft is not exactly the best way to tell if there are any issues in the range of ratings at the MLB level.

Another bad assumption. I didn't. I looked over 15 seasons. Most teams look like the Astros or the Marlins.

You need to stop assuming that all of us who are seeing this are either inexperienced, stupid, or blind. We're not. This is a major change in the game, and I and others do not like it. The Show does not consist of a few stars, a few good players and a lot of trash. There is a pyramid of talent, not a skyscraper.

[The Wolf]

And I'm not going to "adjust my expectations." I'm going to change the PCM's and use massive feeders. If that doesn't work I'll find something that does. I don't accept lemons.

To quote Cave Johnson:

"All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Another bad assumption. I didn't. I looked over 15 seasons. Most teams look like the Astros or the Marlins.

You need to stop assuming that all of us who are seeing this are either inexperienced, stupid, or blind. We're not. This is a major change in the game, and I and others do not like it. The Show does not consist of a few stars, a few good players and a lot of trash. There is a pyramid of talent, not a skyscraper.

It's not so much that I'm assuming that everyone seeing this is inexperienced, stupid, or blind as such.

But this has been discussed and tested by people on the beta team who I know for a fact are none of the above. In fact I know that they know the game very, very well and are extremely intelligent, thorough and knowledgeable.

So my tests and experiences look ok. Those are backed up by those of people who know the game even better than I do, and better than most anyone else on the board.

Then I come to this thread and see a few people who are very vehement in their assertion that the results are different that what I've seen and what's been seen and discussed by other members of the beta team. So yeah, I guess I do make an assumption or two. Especially when I see comments from many of the people who are complaining that lead me to believe that they really don't quite understand how the ratings work in OOTP.

Could I be wrong? Sure. Could the other people on the beta team be wrong? Sure. But absent some convincing proof of that, which no one here has provided, I'm not going to assume that the sky is falling.

If you want this changed then please post some convincing proof that something is wrong with the new talent rating system. Post your test league, perhaps with a comparison league from 13.

Don't just show that the ratings have changed. We know they have. Show how the ratings change is adversely affecting the talent distribution or statistical output of your league. Give us some data, and facts to work with, not just vague generalities like repeatedly calling players trash. Show some proof that this is creating issues in game. Convince us something is actually wrong and then I and some of the other members of the beta team will make a big deal about it and get it fixed.

Your article on talent distribution is a good start. Now show us how the talent distribution in your test league actually differs from that.

But if all that people can come up with are vague generalities and hyper-emotional statements, then yeah, I'll continue making less than flattering assumptions.

In the end my posts here were only to try to help everyone understand the new system a little better and to help show why it is more realistic. It appears I've done a fairly poor job of that, and I'm just getting into a situation where I'm arguing pointlessly without any benefit to you or to myself.

I don't want to waste your time anymore than I want to waste my own. So I'll bow out now and let the discussion continue.

[VanillaGorilla]

Firstly, I want to thank Lucas for the entirety of his contributions to this thread. The offered insight to the development process here is very valuable to the readers.

Secondly, since it has been assumed by some, in other threads, that I am part of the OOTP team, I want to restate that that is not the case. My opinions and thoughts come simply as an end user.

I do not play with fictional players, so I cannot offer any data from my own end use of v14 for that game selection.

One of the recurring points of discontent posted in the forum regarding previous versions of OOTP involved the "unrealistic" decline in players from when they were scouted predraft to when they were drafted.

I felt fine about this because the documentation indicated that you would receive a more accurate assessment from your scouting crew for players in your organization vs players elsewhere. This made perfect sense, to me.

An OOTP player is going to draft players rated highly. The AI will do the same. Once you have a subset of players that are more accurately scouted by virtue of them being drafted by you, and in your organization, as the game was set up, you would see many more instances in talent drop when your accuracy is improved for those players you actually drafted. The player talent did not change, you just had a more accurate gauge of those you now could look at more thoroughly. It is intuitive to grasp that you can get a more accurate assessment of the 20 players you have in house than the 600 players scattered across the country/globe.

Posts complaining about the 5 star potential guy drafted who became 1.5 stars after the draft and how sucky that was were plentiful and quite regular.

Now it appears to be the case that the high potential guys in the drafts are fewer. But are they? Could the case be that the talent is actually the same, but the scouting now simply shows fewer 1.5 star players as 5 star players than before, but rather as 2-3 star players? In concert with that, are the actual 5 star players also more likely to be shown as 2-3 stars, also?



1478 players, by my count, were drafted in 2000 amateur draft. In 2000 there were 204 players who made their ML debut. So, in 2000 there were over 7 times as many players drafted than played in their first big league game. Does this make 86 % of the drafted players garbage?

Of the 204 players that debuted on 2000, I don't see any no brainer HOFers. I see SOME guys who had nice careers, but I see a LOT more disappointments. This is RL.

If you comprised your draft of players that actually broke into the bigs in 2000, and only 4 or 5 names jump out as having solid careers, one could say that 98% of the draft class was garbage.

If that is the standard, then considering the number of drafted players in 2000, approximately 99.8% of the players in the RL draft pool are garbage.

However, it is my humble opinion that anyone who played the game well enough to get drafted is not garbage.

[David Watts]

Can I ask what might be a really stupid question? What kind of stats are these leagues producing 10 to 15 years in?

[JPL86]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

This. For everyone complaining about there not being enough "star quality" in the drafts, how many guys do you actually think there are in the draft this year that project with any certainty as MLB stars? No more than 5-10 at best. Probably not even the entire first round will be projected with MLB starter type grades.

The real draft isn't full of players that look like future MLB stars. There's only a few per draft, they're really, really rare. That's not to say that some later round guys won't develop into stars, they will. But the key word is "develop". They don't go into the draft looking like future stars.

I think the problem is that everyone got used to OOTP's old way of doing things, which was to create 10 rounds of superstar potential players and then regress their potentials. Totally unrealistic and silly imo. Now things are much better, much more realistic.

Plus it's worth noting that the ratings don't have any absolute values. So in a league where everyone's average ratings are 5, a guy with 10 average ratings projects to be a superstar. But if your league has overinflated ratings then that guy with all the beautiful 15's across the board might actually be a career minor leaguer.

I just don't see why everyone's wringing their hands and moaning so much.

Excellent post. I agree with all of what you have said. When I first started this post/thread, I meant it as an observation of the difference between OOTP13 and OOTP 14, and just wondered if anyone else noticed this or if it was just me. Just wanted to make sure this was OK and not a potential bug. Never thought this thread would cause such a backlash (7 pages of posts).

It is much more realistic now, I agree. I would rather have a few 4 to 5 star potential players at the draft rather than pages of them only to find that they have never panned out.

Thanks.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

In the end my posts here were only to try to help everyone understand the new system a little better and to help show why it is more realistic. It appears I've done a fairly poor job of that...

Quite the contrary. I learned a few things of value in this thread. For instance, I did not know that the first year downgrade of my draft picks in OOTP13 was by design and working as intended. I fired my scout because he did such a poor job of evaluating the talent in the draft pool, changing his mind only a few months after raving over these picks. It now seems that was a rash and unneccesary action. Regrettable, because the poor fellow never found work again and I never had another scout that good at finding international talent.

I will say that it would be helpful if this sort of information were known to the general public when the coding change is made. It might prevent these issues from boiling over on the forum later. I might have overlooked it, but I don't recall this coding change that you mention appearing in the patch notes. I admit that my memory is not perfect but I think I would have seen that one.

I was also reminded that the ratings are not 1=horrible and 100=Musial, but rather they are relative within the context of the league. A whole league with no player rated higher than 60 will still have stars. They will just be rated 60 instead of 100. So I cannot get too hung up on the ratings per se, but instead I should pay more attention to the ratings relative to the overall pool of players. However, that doesn't really change the conception that the draft is full of mediocre talent because the developed players are no longer mediocre.

My main complaint with the draft process in general is that it lacks a way for me to capitalize on my skills. It seems to be a complete grab bag and I am left feeling that I might as well let my scout auto-draft the whole thing and save several hours of my time. As others have said, it might be more realistic, but it doesn't seem to be as much fun. Previously, I had the fun of scoring a great pick in round 5 and then the frustration of seeing him crash in rookie ball. That was full of emotion, but the excitement was fool's gold. Now, I just have lethargy. I am not sure which is better.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by Orcin

My main complaint with the draft process in general is that it lacks a way for me to capitalize on my skills. It seems to be a complete grab bag and I am left feeling that I might as well let my scout auto-draft the whole thing and save several hours of my time. As others have said, it might be more realistic, but it doesn't seem to be as much fun. Previously, I had the fun of scoring a great pick in round 5 and then the frustration of seeing him crash in rookie ball. That was full of emotion, but the excitement was fool's gold. Now, I just have lethargy. I am not sure which is better.

From reading this thread, I think you've touched on the real issue, at least in my eyes. The talent pool may be more realistic, but if there's no possible way for the user to differentiate between a poor player and a player who appears to be poor but has the potential to blossom, then the draft truly is a grab bag, as you say. That makes anything beyond the first 10-15 picks of the first round more luck than talent evaluation, so it takes away the "fun" aspect of finding a good player later on in the draft.

[r0nster]

I willl be honest I was gonna fire my scout too but when i looked at the availible personal I didnt fire the scout and now I am thankful for it for my minor league system has become very much improved due to my trades for prospects and drafting. I am very happy with this game. I wouldnt change the system or idea of whats going on in this game. So far I give this game high marks.

Keep up the good work for those who made this game a reality and a joy to play and to give heart attacks on some errors players make and white hair for when teams lose The game is more addicting than any previous games I have had from OOTP (had 4 different OOTP CDs)

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

From reading this thread, I think you've touched on the real issue, at least in my eyes. The talent pool may be more realistic, but if there's no possible way for the user to differentiate between a poor player and a player who appears to be poor but has the potential to blossom, then the draft truly is a grab bag, as you say. That makes anything beyond the first 10-15 picks of the first round more luck than talent evaluation, so it takes away the "fun" aspect of finding a good player later on in the draft.

This is my issue, too. As implemented, scouting input for the draft is very unrealistic as there is not enough differentiation in scouting beyond the top players. In the real world scouts are evaluating guys who are longshots, but they do have reasons for preferring one or more over the rest available. The player generation/scouting process needs to be adjusted to do 3 things, in my opinion--

1-Provide more differentiation between players being scouted beyond the top prospects, eliminating the 'lottery ticket' aspect of the draft as it stands now.

2-Make better scouts/bigger scouting budgets better at #1 than others, just as in the past.

3-Continue the old 'flame-out' factor despite these changes. We don't need predictability in outcomes.

How could this be done? I don't know, but think it is crucial to restore the draft to an important and enjoyable part of the process. Perhaps restoring 20 percent of the former 'ratings juicing' would provide enough differentiation for scouts to make recommendations without the massive ratings decay we used to have.

I know this is my personal hot button, and not everyone will share my passion on the subject, but I will bet most people, over time, will be dismayed by the draft process as it stands now. Year after year of drafting guys that are scouted no better or worse than everyone else, round after round, will wear on people and detract from enjoyment and immersion.

Hope the brain trust is reading this thread and will consider making some changes.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Orcin

it would be helpful if this sort of information were known to the general public when the coding change is made

A change this big should have been discussed publicly well in advance, and data presented to explain it. In the 14th version of a game we are presented with an unexplained major change that does not make intuitive sense, that flies in the face of our experience and the data that we do have, and which yields results that we do not care for.

Originally Posted by Orcin

My main complaint with the draft process in general is that it lacks a way for me to capitalize on my skills. It seems to be a complete grab bag and I am left feeling that I might as well let my scout auto-draft the whole thing and save several hours of my time. As others have said, it might be more realistic, but it doesn't seem to be as much fun.

That's a very good summary of the situation, and I'm not even sure that's it's more realistic: a lot of MLB high-touted early-round draft choices historically crash. See Billy Beane, et al.

We are left with something that is certainly less fun and which is described as allegedly being more realistic, but in order to accept that we are going to need to see some hard data here supporting that as opposed to just rhetoric, some of which has been pretty dismissive.

Decreasing our enjoyment of OOTP is hardly a good idea, and drafting has always been a big part of the game's fun. Making the draft into a mainly talent-free crapshoot that can be handled just as well, and certainly faster, by our AI scout takes away all the pleasure from it. This type of major change should not have been done behind closed doors, nor without evidence that clearly justified it - evidence that should be presented.

There are good and valid reasons why some of us just don't care for this. I ask those who do to understand and respect that.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

1-Provide more differentiation between players being scouted beyond the top prospects, eliminating the 'lottery ticket' aspect of the draft as it stands now.

2-Make better scouts/bigger scouting budgets better at #1 than others, just as in the past.

3-Continue the old 'flame-out' factor despite these changes. We don't need predictability in outcomes.

Exactly. Well put. If I wanted predictability in outcomes I would just fire up Diamond Mind.

[oman19]

Just a thought but could the problems with the lack of talent in the draft be attributed to no longer having international players in the draft?

[milkman41]

So I'm still dealing with the issue of whether or not importing a league from OOTP13 to OOTP14 leads to some kind of decrease in the quality of the draft class. One poster had suggested simming forward some time and see if that would change anything, so here are the results:

First, the 2021 draft, right after importing to OOTP14


Now we go six years in (2027):


And two more years (2029):


And, finally, we're 10 years in (2031), so much of the original talent pool of the league has moved on:


While there are some leaner years (2029 compared to 2027 and 2031), the more talent-rich years still seem to be lacking in talent, especially when compared to a draft class generated solely using a OOTP14 major-league startup, as shown below:



So, does anybody have any explanation for this? It really seems like somehow, the conversion process has messed with the talent pool. I understand that the overal draft talent is handled differently between the two versions of the game, but that doesn't to me explain the discrepancy between having <10 players with >50 pot in one game, and then ~3 pages of such players in another game.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for all the (large) images.

[sc_superstar]

Are the lower "rated" players leading to lower stats?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by sc_superstar

Are the lower "rated" players leading to lower stats?

No. They wouldn't though, even if this was an issue. That's not how the ratings work.

The player ratings don't control the league wide stats at all. The league modifiers do.

No matter what the ratings are, the game will create stats based on the league modifiers. All the ratings do is control the distribution of the stats.

That's why the ratings being high or low in and of themselves means nothing. They only matter in the context of the ratings of the rest of the league.

If there is an issue the only way you'll see it is in the distribution of stats. So if everyone's league leaders were to suddenly start hitting 80 hr's per year, then we could assume the ratings were distributed on too broad a spectrum, without enough middle tier players. Which seems to be what folks are claiming is happening here. So if this was an issue, you'd actually be seeing stats that are far too high for the league leaders without many players having in between numbers, neither really high or low.

Or on the other end, a zillion players hitting 20 hr's per year without anyone getting higher numbers would mean that the ratings were distributed on too narrow a band.

Neither of these issues have shown up at all, which means that things are working ok.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

No. The player ratings don't control the stats at all. The league modifiers do.

No matter what the ratings are, the game will create stats based on the league modifiers. All the ratings do is control the distribution of the stats.

That's why the ratings being high or low in and of themselves means nothing. They only matter in the context of the ratings of the rest of the league.

So why on earth did they try to fix something that wasn't broken, and make the game less fun in the process?

[The Wolf]

One other thing: we don't have to show or prove that the old way works, or is fun: everyone here knows just how it worked and how much fun it was. What needs to be shown and proved is that the new way works, and is still fun.

I'll be waiting.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

So why on earth did they try to fix something that wasn't broken, and make the game less fun in the process?

Because having the ratings too high for players in the draft and/or in the majors has some negative consequences.

When the players in the draft are rated too highly as in previous versions, the top prospect lists become completely inaccurate. They ended up being dominated by recently drafted players who hadn't yet taken their scheduled ratings hits. So the lists were essentially useless.

I believe the bonuses were also thrown off a bit as the higher rated players demanded too high bonuses, which hurt teams ability to sign drafted players and messed with the overall league budgets.

People also complained a ton about the shiny new 4.5 star players they drafted suddenly turning into 1 star players a few months or a year after the draft.

If the ratings are too high in the MLB level you see other budget related issues that can be somewhat game breaking. When you have the ai evaluations set to include the ratings then you'll see salaries escalate far too quickly because players who haven't performed at an MLB level are demanding big salaries because their ratings are high, even if they haven't put up any stats yet.

There's a few other issues too, which I don't remember off the top of my head. I'll try to look them up and post them here.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

One other thing: we don't have to show or prove that the old way works, or is fun: everyone here knows just how it worked and how much fun it was. What needs to be shown and proved is that the new way works, and is still fun.

I'll be waiting.

Not really. Markus is the game maker and he made the changes.

If you want to get him to change it back you'll have to convince him. Otherwise you'll be waiting a long time and nothing will change.

If you really hate this new system you can easily adjust the PCM's or set the game to generate more rounds of players. It's a simple "fix".

You quoted the "it's your game play it your way" line before. You can really do that. The changes to get things back to where you want them aren't hard or time consuming. It'll take you less time than it took me to type this post for each league you play.

Just be aware that if you create too many over skilled players you will get some unintended negative consequences.