International Leagues - Who's using them?

Originally Posted by haveband

I want to thank all you guys for playing with the international leagues. I know about a year or so ago when Lukas and I discussed the idea, we were both pretty excited about it and hoped it would be well received. We have so much more in store for you all, as we do a little work on them everyday to improve them.

I especially am most grateful for the real International leagues!!

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Garethw87

Lukas will know more but I believe in Europe the situation looks something like this...

Holland/Italy
Czech
Germany
Austria

All being Semi Pro with the odd minor leaguer from the US making the rosters and people making little bits of money, especially the imports!

Not Austria! Austria isn't even a player on the Euro level at all.

Here's the breakdown:

Italy/Holland: Both leagues are a combination of quite a few American MiLB quality players at the top and even ex-MLB players along with much lesser guys at the bottom end, guys who wouldn't likely make or at least be regulars on D1 college teams in the US.

Then you have Germany as the third quality league, pretty well in a tier of it's own. It has fewer ex-MLB or MiLB caliber guys but the bottom type guys are pretty equal to Italy and Holland's bottom type guys.

Then third tier is: Spain, the Czech Republic, France and Belgium with Spain and the Czech Republic being a bit better overall than France and Belgium.

These leagues have very, very few US pro players and are mostly made up of US D2-D3 college caliber players. This is the last level that is relevant on the level of European competition. These teams typically won't win tournaments with the Italian, Dutch or German teams in head to head matchups, but are good enough to win individual games against the those league's teams a decent amount of the time.

After that it's hard to say just what league are of what caliber. Everyone else is significantly worse than those top 7 leagues, that's for sure.

The next tier would probably be the UK, Sweden, Ukraine, Switzerland and Croatia, maybe Austria, but the play in those leagues is a huge, huge drop off from even France or Belgium.

[MUFC1878]

Any major roster/ratings changes to the international leagues for this patch?

[PSUColonel]

How do people find the int leagues work? Pretty realistically?, no? What are people's opinions?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by MUFC1878

Any major roster/ratings changes to the international leagues for this patch?

Yeah. Big changes to Italy as well as Holland to a lesser extent. Added the new IBL team Nettuno 2 and all their players and also added many minor league guys to most IBL teams. Deleted Grosseto. So most (not all, still have a couple teams to get to) of the initial IBL rosters have gone from 25ish guys to 35-50+ guys.

Italy is pretty well totally updated for 2014 now except for a few Serie A (minor league) players I still need to add.

Holland is partially updated to 2014 and also added some more minor league players there.

Also fully finished updating Korea. Had to add a few udfa's to their future league teams and also updated all numbers etc.

So fully updated for 2014 are: Japan, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Italy

Partially updated and still working on: Taiwan, Holland.

[olivertheorem]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

How do people find the int leagues work? Pretty realistically?, no? What are people's opinions?

My limited experience has been good. It seems most of the big stars in the European leagues are MLB washouts, which seems right to me. I have no idea if it is though. I was looking at the league rep numbers the other day, and it seemed odd to have the Nippon league with the same rep as MLB, but I trust that Markus, lukasberger, & company know what they're doing.

lukasberger, I don't suppose there's any chance of us getting retired players from the international leagues in OOTP 16 is there? :P

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

lukasberger, I don't suppose there's any chance of us getting retired players from the international leagues in OOTP 16 is there? :P

Most likely for the ***, yes. We added murmur to the roster team to work on integrating an updated version of his *** Lahman db into the official db.

Korea should already have many/most retired guys.

As for the other leagues, I may add a few more retired Cubans, but not likely anyone beyond that.

We really need a Lahman compatible db for most of the leagues in order to add retired players/historical team stats, and for any leagues other than the *** and KBO that seems like an impossible pipe dream.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

I have no idea if it is though. I was looking at the league rep numbers the other day, and it seemed odd to have the Nippon league with the same rep as MLB, but I trust that Markus, lukasberger, & company know what they're doing.

That's all Markus, and I trust he knows what he's doing as well

The difference is that the *** is rated as Int level whereas MLB is Major League level. That puts the MLB way ahead, even though the rep is the same.

[jaysdailydose]

I was going to use them in an earlier patch but was having crash problems when I threw together multiple leagues in the same configuration.

As most of you know, I destroyed my saves directory thinking it was my quickstart directory the other night... so I'm building a new game for the dynasty report forum, and while its wholly fictional, its setup like an 1901-1969 MLB structure wise...

I just don't know if I can reconcile them into my story -- but I *LOVE* this feature. Anything that adds immersion is great, and not only does this provide immersion, but gameplay as well! ROCK!

[dward1]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

That's all Markus, and I trust he knows what he's doing as well

The difference is that the *** is rated as Int level whereas MLB is Major League level. That puts the MLB way ahead, even though the rep is the same.

can you explain what rating leagues as international vs independent vs Major league does when it comes to players deciding? why is that separate from the league rep?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by dward1

can you explain what rating leagues as international vs independent vs Major league does when it comes to players deciding? why is that separate from the league rep?

I'm not really sure exactly how that breaks down, haven't seen an explanation of that from Markus.

Guess I should've said I assumed that's how it works. I know that the ML vs Int vs AAA etc rating makes more of a difference in some stuff than the league rep seems to but I'm not entirely certain exactly how all that specifically breaks down.

[Caporegime]

I just started a new game with all the International leagues included. I definitely like what I've seen so far. However (and I offer this not as a criticism of the inclusion of international leagues or of the game itself, but merely as my opinion), having these leagues in my game coupled with OOTP's existing global database makes me wish that we could schedule international tournaments, like the WBC or World Cup. That would certainly take the internationalization of the game to its logical conclusion, as MLB has done IRL.

[ThatSeventiesGuy]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Most likely for the ***, yes. We added murmur to the roster team to work on integrating an updated version of his *** Lahman db into the official db.

Korea should already have many/most retired guys.

As for the other leagues, I may add a few more retired Cubans, but not likely anyone beyond that.

We really need a Lahman compatible db for most of the leagues in order to add retired players/historical team stats, and for any leagues other than the *** and KBO that seems like an impossible pipe dream.

Historical ***? If so, can I preorder OOTP 16 now?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by MUFC1878

Any major roster/ratings changes to the international leagues for this patch?

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Yeah. Big changes to Italy as well as Holland to a lesser extent. Added the new IBL team Nettuno 2 and all their players and also added many minor league guys to most IBL teams. Deleted Grosseto. So most (not all, still have a couple teams to get to) of the initial IBL rosters have gone from 25ish guys to 35-50+ guys.

Italy is pretty well totally updated for 2014 now except for a few Serie A (minor league) players I still need to add.

Holland is partially updated to 2014 and also added some more minor league players there.

Also fully finished updating Korea. Had to add a few udfa's to their future league teams and also updated all numbers etc.

So fully updated for 2014 are: Japan, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Italy

Partially updated and still working on: Taiwan, Holland.

Next patch will have Taiwan fully updated for 2014. Just finishing up on them tonight.

Probably will include a fully updated Holland as well if I get the time to finish them up.

[reds1869]

I love the international leagues and have really enjoyed playing the ***.

[Rockfan616]

Where do you get your info for all the international leagues Lukas?? I don't see much available stuff online for the Cuban league that's why I'm asking....and since there's been a lot of Cuban defectors lately I'm very interested in that league especially. Is it from scouting bureaus that you get your info from or somewhere online??

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Rockfan616

Where do you get your info for all the international leagues Lukas?? I don't see much available stuff online for the Cuban league that's why I'm asking....and since there's been a lot of Cuban defectors lately I'm very interested in that league especially. Is it from scouting bureaus that you get your info from or somewhere online??

What bio info I can find comes from various Cuban sites. The stats we've used come partly from one of the official Cuban sites and partly from Clay Davenport's site. I also use Clay's translations of Serie Nacional stats as the basis for the ratings.

I'll try to post links to some of the better sites, but really the best info comes from Clay Davenport's stats and translations as well as Peter Bjarkman's English language columns on baseballdecuba.com

[Stanton Like My Daddy]

While being a GM for a team in lets say Italy, will other leagues offer you a GM job or will you just have to take a look at the available jobs screen?