Draft pool low quality of players?

[sprague]

This has been an interesting thread.

I have a question that seems not to be brought up here. It is,

Under the new system, players are rated lower at the draft than previously, then are more likely to develop over time (than they used to.)
The question is- how much will the talent change randomness affect this? Would a TC of 10 mean very few of these players will develop, as opposed to say a game ay 85?
Or is the changes to talent that come from this rating be different than a hidden modifier to "growth" of the lower initial rated draftees. If TC plays a part, then those wanting to see higher ratings should also raise the TC modifiers as well?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

I agree. I use the 20-80 scale, mainly because that's the accepted scale among real-life scouts and teams, but it also gives enough differentiation that I can find a one-star player with a good skill or two. But I also understand that others use much smaller scales that don't provide that range.

My answer was simply an attempt to give you some talking points. The ideas I came up with would provide me personally with a deeper level of immersion, but won't necessarily change my draft experience greatly because, as I said, I'm pretty satisfied with the current draft model.

I think one big problem is the overall ratings. They are in fact very generic and of limited use, since nearly everyone, even very nice valuable players, gets tagged with a 1* ratings or 20 of 80. So to me, maybe the best solution would be to expand the overall ratings to 10* or to change the 20-80 scale so that more guys get tagged with slightly higher ratings. Then a lot of guys who are now stuck at 20 might have 22-30 overall ratings f.e.

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

I agree. I use the 20-80 scale, mainly because that's the accepted scale among real-life scouts and teams, but it also gives enough differentiation that I can find a one-star player with a good skill or two. But I also understand that others use much smaller scales that don't provide that range.

My answer was simply an attempt to give you some talking points. The ideas I came up with would provide me personally with a deeper level of immersion, but won't necessarily change my draft experience greatly because, as I said, I'm pretty satisfied with the current draft model.

I mentioned it earlier, but I too am a 20-80 user. I have dabbled in some leagues with stats only as well, but I'm a feeder junkie.

You can solve damn near any discrepancy with that feeder system.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I think one big problem is the overall ratings. They are in fact very generic and of limited use, since nearly everyone, even very nice valuable players, gets tagged with a 1* ratings or 20 of 80. So to me, maybe the best solution would be to expand the overall ratings to 10* or to change the 20-80 scale so that more guys get tagged with slightly higher ratings. Then a lot of guys who are now stuck at 20 might have 22-30 overall ratings f.e.

Expanding the overall ratings might help, because a 10* system would effectively give us 20 different ratings when you consider the half-star ratings, as well. I personally would not use a 20-80 scale for overall ratings that goes in increments of one because I'm a slave to the 20-80 scouting scale that I learned about when I first picked up Baseball America 20 or so years ago. But more variance in overall ratings would certainly help.

[Ruthian23]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

That's a valid point.

For the folks that don't like the new system, what would you propose to make it more fun for you?

The old system of creating higher ratings and knocking them down was equally unpopular with a different group and also led to some other side issues. So I don't think there's any chance of it coming back.

My point being that any proposal should probably not just be" bring the old system back".

But beyond that, do you guys have some ideas on what would make things more fun for you again?

As I said in my post that Wolf replied to, I think it's a matter of giving us some sort of information that differentiates prospects. For instance, I'm not sure if anyone here plays Front Office Football by Jim Gindin, but I think his draft mechanics are pretty strong and make me feel like I'm making a choice, even deeper in the draft. He has the benefit of the real life Combine to add to the game to add some hard data about prospects, but in addition to the bars showing ability and potential, he also includes information about how close to fully developed the player is and a "volatility" rating, which indicates how likely the player is to have a significant boom or bust in talent levels. In the later rounds, a lot of times you're looking at a lot of guys who might only have one or even no tools, but you're generally looking for someone who had as many good combine numbers as possible and as few bad ones as possible with a higher volatility rating. In other words, there's still something differentiating them.

Obviously, football and baseball are entirely different, but it might be useful to have something like boom and bust potential (according to your scout, of course) or boom and bust potential in each tool or whatever to help us determine who we think is most likely to break out and actually become a player. Obviously, most of these guys never do amount to a hill of beans (in FOF a lot of the low round picks get cut in training camp or whatever), but when you do do a great deal of draft preparation and draft a guy in the 6th round who looks like perhaps if everything goes right he might have potential and he ends up as a solid backup or even starter, it's immensely satisfying.

[Ruthian23]

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

I mentioned it earlier, but I too am a 20-80 user. I have dabbled in some leagues with stats only as well, but I'm a feeder junkie.

You can solve damn near any discrepancy with that feeder system.

I've been around for a long time, but I've never tried a feeder league. Are there any threads or quickstarts or anything you could recommend explaining how to properly set one up (or that already have one set up?)

[sjshaw]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Well, I clearly was wrong on that, as I didn't realize that they were using such different settings, no int fa's etc.

That wasn't explained, and I had no way to know. The FOBL guys jumped into this conversation without explaining that anything was different about their settings or that they were talking about a totally different issue than what the thread is about. I still don't understand even now why they were posting in this thread about something totally unrelated to the issue of OOTP14's lowering of potentials at draft time

The title of the thread is "Draft pool low quality of players?"

The main point of the OP was, "Is anyone else noticing a really low quality of draft eligible players? In my imported game from 14, I'm at the 2022 draft and I've noticed that only 35 of the available 1050 players have more than 1 star potential."

We just imported from v13 (through v14) and I'm seeing the exact same issue. Draft pool low quality of players. I posted our solution to the issue.

How is that off-topic? It's the exact same issue.

Then you jump in and basically call us morons and how dare we use a modifier setting that Markus provides because now we're hosed.

Do you understand how that is a bit off-putting, and why I (and others in the FOBL, who have a combined 400+ years of working with OOTP, including RonCo and a ton of beta guys) might react as we did? I'm fine with dropping it, but I did not start the tiff/argument/whatever this turned into.

[byzeil]

Originally Posted by Ruthian23

I've been around for a long time, but I've never tried a feeder league. Are there any threads or quickstarts or anything you could recommend explaining how to properly set one up (or that already have one set up?)

I am testing out feeder leagues in v15 using the choice to set up the default feeder leagues (don't remember the exact wording but that is close). When you go to add a feeder league it will give you 3 choices; default feeder setup, add COL feeder league and add HS feeder league. I have used the default.

Early in my testing this is looking pretty good. I'd recommend setting up a fairly simple league with minors and the default feeder setup and run it and check to see if you like what you see. I believe the 'default setup' bases the size/number of feeder leagues based on your league size.

Also added in v15 is the ability to say when players in the feeder leagues are available in the draft. This allows underclassman in college to enter the draft.

There is a "feeder league guide" posted in the OOTP14 forums HERE but I'm not sure what is/is not applicable to v15.

[Avindian]

I don't want to bring up an entirely different point, but it is germane to the discussion, in my opinion.

The major problem seems to be the clustering of 1* draft players, without an easy way to differentiate between them. The draft should be fun: by that, I mean that if I spend a bit of time comparing players, I'll have a better shot at telling which players have a future and which do not, 1* rating aside.

So... why not make high school/college stats (especially college stats) more relevant? It could be that the stats are already very relevant, but I seem to recall discussions from a year or two ago that indicated that purely sabermetric scouting (that is, ignoring ratings entirely) was almost entirely useless. Am I mistaken?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

Then you jump in and basically call us morons and how dare we use a modifier setting that Markus provides because now we're hosed.

Do you understand how that is a bit off-putting, and why I (and others in the FOBL, who have a combined 400+ years of working with OOTP, including RonCo and a ton of beta guys) might react as we did? I'm fine with dropping it, but I did not start the tiff/argument/whatever this turned into.

No. I don't understand why it's a bit off-putting.

Frankly I don't understand your reactions at all, or why you had to get a bunch of your friends in here as well to contribute nothing more to the discussion than attacks on me. You most certainly did start this.

I explained that what you were doing would cause issues, which it would, if you used the default settings. Just because Markus provides modifier settings does not mean that they can be used at any level indiscriminately without repercussions and without careful balancing. Your league's issue, as explained in this thread, of low MLB player ratings has nothing whatever to do with the lower draft pool ratings. The lower draft pool ratings do not result in lower ratings once players reach MLB.

I never called you morons, implied you were morons or anything even remotely like that. Anyone could make a mistake in changing settings, even the smartest person on the forums.

I've been civil throughout this entire discussion and focused on the issues at hand, rather than personal attacks. That hasn't been the case for most of the FOBL people in this thread. In response members of your league have attacked me, misquoted me, attributed arguments I never made to me, attributed motives I don't have to me and more.

I was trying to provide you with info that would help you. I think you guys are way too sensitive and were clearly looking for a fight, considering the way you gang-attacked someone who was only trying to help you out. You've made everything in this thread personal, and about how much experience or knowledge you have or how well known your league is. Why? Who cares about that stuff?

I'm not trotting out my credentials here though they are in fact quite weighty. If my arguments don't stand on their own merits, no credentials I can post would mean anything. Anyhow this isn't about me, it's about the game. Apparently for you guys it's not about the game, it's about you.

You guys might want to think over how your league members deal with people on the forums, cause you sure haven't enhanced its reputation with your actions in this thread.

[sjshaw]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

You guys might want to think over how your league members deal with people on the forums, cause you sure haven't enhanced its reputation with your actions in this thread.

Yeah, you've definitely never heard of us. Probably for the best all-around.

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by Ruthian23

I've been around for a long time, but I've never tried a feeder league. Are there any threads or quickstarts or anything you could recommend explaining how to properly set one up (or that already have one set up?)

There is a guide in the OOTP 14 "New To The Game" forum. I'd be happy to answer any questions pertaining to how you would want to set your league up, just IM me.

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

Yeah, you've definitely never heard of us. Probably for the best all-around.

Another guy with the "don't you know who I am" complex?

You're just another guy who paid for the same game we did. You aren't special.

(Guy has made 180 posts in over 12 years. Why would anyone have heard of you?)

[sjshaw]

[snipped]

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

Yeah, you've definitely never heard of us. Probably for the best all-around.

Who hasn't heard of forum trolls?

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

Yeah, you've definitely never heard of us. Probably for the best all-around.

I've never heard of the FOBL either. And I'm beginning to wish I never had.

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by sjshaw

But you are. Just not in the way you might like to be.

Listen, I've got better things to do.

It's pretty funny, you people come to the forums with a problem, and this is how you treat people? I'm sure your concerns will rate high on the development list. LOL

And good luck getting anyone to help you with your problems... I'll not respond to anymore such idiocy as this, and I definitely won't personally attack you which I'm quite sure is against the forum rules.

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

Listen, I've got better things to do.

It's pretty funny, you people come to the forums with a problem, and this is how you treat people? I'm sure your concerns will rate high on the development list. LOL

And good luck getting anyone to help you with your problems... I'll not respond to anymore such idiocy as this, and I definitely won't personally attack you which I'm quite sure is against the forum rules.

This is a prime example of why I'm glad I'm not a mod, and everyone else should be too. His argument(and account) wouldn't have made it past the first post. And I'd be even more stressed having to deal with that which would be no good for me.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

I think its quite pretentious to expect that any of us has the foggiest idea of your league settings. Guess what, if you aren't simulating the MLB, you've got to figure out how you want your player sources to work.

Given what you say here...can you see why some of us might have taken issue with the following...

Originally Posted by lukasberger

It's your league and your choice to make but that absolutely will lead to major problems in the future. Your star players won't perform how you expect them to and the overall talent level in your league will look great on paper, but actually be really, really flat statistically.

......

Why not just trust that Markus knows what he's doing with stuff like this, understands the game, tests thoroughly, and is doing it for a real reason, not just out of a random desire to make changes?

...when sjshaw came here to try to figure out how we should best get our player sources to work?

[RonCo]

Just realize that feeder leagues do not solve the problem.