Stats and UI: Various Observations & Suggestions

[Anthropoid]

On the whole, the useability, clarity and detail of your interface and the backend processes that are generating these stats is just absolutely amazing! If you guys get tired of making baseball sim games, you might have promising careers in database sciences.

But a few observations I've made. Few caveats: I have played the game very little. My only experience so far is a Historical "alt history" campaign starting in 1902, with as many settings as possible to promote only historical players and rookies, league emergence over time, etc., but without the full "historical simulation" settings on, i.e., I'm using full scouting with "normal" accuracy, and the financials and player development I've tried to set to be flexible.

I also just couldn't resist using the Inaugural fantasy draft and I guess it shouldn't be surprising that I led the Cardinals to a 1902 Championship!

So, it may be that some of the things I've observed are because I do not fully understand the game, baseball or I've got some rogue/bad settings going somewhere.

1. I've noticed the exhibition games (off season at least), even though there is a row in the popup scroll bar for "Split" for this category, doesn't seem to have any data recorded. When I select "All Levels" and then exhibition, all my Batting stats are zeros. Point of note here: having won the championship, I went into Commissioner mode and setup a fairly grueling exhibition game schedule between mid Nov 1902 and late Feb 1903, basically a series of 4 away games against every other team in the league with a day or two break in between (gotta get my money's worth outta these players!). My intent with this was to give my rookies experience/practice, and ideally to promote development. Not sure if based on how the development engine works I'm undermining that latter goal or not. A related goal was to see how my rookies were performing and decide on my penultimate lineup going into spring training.

Unfortunately, if I cannot see any stats from their off-season exhibition games then the last goal is not attainable.

2. This is from memory as I cannot seem to replicate it right now, but I recall that the Double Split menu does not include a "Career" row.

3. I'm not finding any split, or double-split option that would correspond to something like: "the last 30 days" or "the last 60 days." If it was doable to code, one option that would introduce a great deal of utility would be a row that was listed as "Previous ___ Days" and which, when selected opened up a dialogue window that allowed the player to plug in a number.

4. Blocks of time. Similar to the previous suggestion, a row that was listed as "From __ to __" and which when opened allowed the player to plug in two dates. Say you want to compare how Cy Young is doing during this season compared to last season or two seasons ago. It may be that other existing options allow this sort of parsed selection but I'm not seeing it exactly.

5. In the Lineups and Depth Charts screen(s). I'm finding the lack of a couple of options here to be a pretty annoying PITA. If I have a pretty rich roster, with lots of rookies that I want to try out, or injury prone players, or a variety of other factors that can cause my rosters to switch around a good deal, the existing interface leads to a lot of labor for the player (unless you just let the AI insert or trust your managers to come up with your setups).

Under "Available Actions" the following selections would be helpful:
A. Copy lineup to all contexts (e.g., if I setup a lineup in vs RHP, it would be nice to be able to just plug it in to the other three with one click)
B. Copy depth chart to all contexts
C. Copy depth chart and lineup to all contexts
D. Save lineup (creating a file that can then be opened and plugged in later)
E. Save depth chart.
F. Save lineup and depth chart.

6. Going back to stats, under the "View: Customize" option (which btw, is an amazingly good design overall!): not sure if it would be a nightmare, out of scope or just not of interest, but I'd really like the option to calculate my own on-the-fly stats. Basically, the option to "create" new stats using existing ones. Say for example, I'm weighing which one of my hitters to put in the #1 and #2 spots in my lineup. I want them both to be high wOBP or OBP hitters with low SO%, but the second one also needs to have the optimum low rate of GDP and the first one perhaps a bit faster/better-at base running and stealing. If two of my hitters are very close on several of these stats, it can be a bit of guess work to decide which one is best for each role, and the capacity to create columns in which ratios or other complex output from two or more stats were calculated might be neat.

Probably way beyond what is easy or would be widely popular, but just an idea

ADDIT: on further observation it appears to me that pre-season games are simply not counted in terms of statistics?

I've just completed a scheduled pre-season game (17 March 1903) in which I let it play on its own and just watched to see how the computer implemented my lineups, strategies and such. Mainly I just wanted to see how the computer handles relief pitchers and also to see some ballpark (get it BALL PARK!?) estimates of pitch counts so that I can optimize the assignments and settings for my pitching staff. I watched in Webcast with speed at about Factor 10 and kept as good of notes as I could but still found it a bit difficult to record how many pitches a pitcher had thrown at the end of his time at the mound. In the event he resumed pitching next inning, it was easy and there is a nice long delay to allow this.

Once I noticed that I wasn't getting all the tallies written down perfectly, I tried to look into the player list to do a pitch stats (with PI stat plugged in extra) table with something like "Today" as the split or double-split.

It was then I noticed that, all of the stats were zeros for the current time frame, and which leads me to surmise that: the game doesn't record player performance data on the off-season?

So more suggestions based on this:

7. If possible, a toggle to turn on data capture for off-season play in OOTB16 might be worth doing?

8. There does not appear to be a category in either the split or double-split windows for either "Today" or "Yesterday."

More suggestions for OOTP16 (assuming it isn't too late):

9. I noticed there was a "pause on event" sort of option at some point in one of the play or replay interfaces. I'd say it would be nice if, in the live webcasts there was an option to pause at each half-inning and/or with each player change. A fairly small thing, but depending on how the user is using the live interface it could be handy. Related to this would be an option to tell simulated real-time to just keep on playing indefinitely. Not sure, it might be possible to do this now, but I have yet to find how to set it that way.

10. I noticed while I was in real-time simulation mode, that I can "Watch game" for other teams that are in progress, which invokes the experimental voice announcer. Evidently one cannot do this with one's own games though, and I find that a bit of a shame. If that functionality could be added in OOTP16 I'd use it!

ADDIT*3

11. I'm not seeing an easy way to look at both teams lineups while in real-time sim webcast window. If that could be squeezed in on the right hand it would be nice.

12. A toggle or something that allows the following in the Strategy/Player Strategy tab: Toggle all in list to Override Team Strategy Settings / Toggle all in list to Adjust to Team Strategy Settings.

ADDIT*4

13. Sorry if this is a repeat of a comment I made above, but if it is, I think it will only be so in part, and it is an important issue that really deserves consideration so I think even some repetition is good.

A. I do not find it clear or easy to select periods of time in the splits, and double-splits of player lists or similar lists (e.g., in the Lineups window). I would suggest that in OOTP you include specific rows for: (i) This season (opening day to last day before playoffs); (ii) This pre-season (spring training); (iii) This off-season (after last years championship to sping training; (iv) Last season.

B. If possible, a boolean tool that allowed AND or possibly even NOT or OR statements, now that would be wicked!

My reason for commenting on this area of the interface again is that, it is not clear to me what all of these various context-specific splits are doing. If I have Major Leagues as the main level, and then choose "Bases Empty" does it calculate stats for all plate appearances for the players in the list where they faced bases empty for their whole career or only for this season. I'm thinking it is for only this season, and if so then:

C. An additional level of splitting that allows all of the context-related splits to be specified at any other level that is not contradictory. It seems this is possible in some windows (and with some splitting functions) but apparently not in all windows. For example I notice that in the players list I seem to get more options. But making the thing (for example) tell me Batting Stats for a list of players, that focus on all at bats they faced with bases empty for their entire career, and then doing it again but specifying only THIS season (or this week, or this month or any other specific interval of time) doesn't seem to be possible, at least from some of the windows.

Again, my apologies if these breakdowns are in fact possible.