Every young major leaguer with collapsing ratings at once

[voxpoptart]

I need y'all's help: 70% of the way through my league's 2nd season (I play an immersive style, so that's a lot of game time), I may be about to abandon OOTP for good. I've just noticed that almost every major leaguer under age 25 has Potential that's fallen below Current ratings -- often to the point where the player will soon become unplayable above AA.

What the heck is going on, and how can I stop it?

1) Philosophically, I've disagreed all along that a young batter's potential should *ever* drop below his established ability (barring major injury). Current ratings, sure: Elvis Andrus, Starlin Castro, Dustin Ackley, we can all think of real life examples. But we can also see that the Potential remains: Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas had their performance collapse well below their fine debuts for two or more years, Josh Hamilton and Josh Reddick did ... obviously, they were still potential stars. So are Andrus and Castro and Ackley, whether they ever get there or not; OOTP is a great game in so many ways, but it's just wrong about player development.

2) Because of that, in both of my long-term OOTP leagues from last decade, I ended up periodically scanning the young major league players in Commissioner Mode and creating (randomized) systems for bringing their Potentials back up. Which I now remember is why I abandoned the game both times. Watching young major leaguer stars collapse into bad minor leaguers destroys the fictional world -- but so, in the end, does stepping in and playing God of Talent. Especially since that's a tedious God to be.

3) The problem is much worse this time. Again, *almost all* the young good players are headed towards worthlessness.

4) If you guys aren't experiencing that, a possible cause is that almost all the game's managers and coaches are low-rated: Unproven, Inexperienced, Poor, a few Averages and Decents, almost nothing better. I don't know why they are; I didn't cause that. If I turned coaching off, would the declines become rarer? Failing that, would something else help?

5) The game really needs to make Potential a much more common resource, as it is in life: where 3rd- and 4th-round draft picks are still regularly imagined, with cause, as solid major league contributors, and for years instead of fading right away. Still, if I can just get to a place where 21-year-old stars tend to get better, instead of much worse, maybe I'll go back to having fun with this.

[olivertheorem]

Two clarification questions.

1) Is this fictional?

2) Can you post a pic of the player dev settings?

[voxpoptart]

It's fictional, yes. And I left the player development settings at default. I did start with a league where every player was between ages 20 and 28, if that makes a difference. (I turned the age limit off as soon as the first draft pool was created.)

[olivertheorem]

Thanks. I don't really have a recommendation, but I knew others would ask for that info so I thought I'd get it out of the way for you.

Well, one other question that you may have addressed already. Did you try turning scouting off to see what happened to the potentials?

[voxpoptart]

I'm in Commissioner Mode, so when I realized what was happening, I started looking at all the Potentials by going into Editor. Although turning off scouting would've been faster, now that you mention it.

[TLB1975]

Since you said you went with default settings, does that mean your talent change randomness is set at 100? If so, that may be the cause of what your seeing. I play with mine very low (22).

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by TLB1975

Since you said you went with default settings, does that mean your talent change randomness is set at 100? If so, that may be the cause of what your seeing. I play with mine very low (22).

I hate responses like this. You shouldn't have to change any settings to make the game more realistic. The most realistic settings should be the default settings. That way if you want to play in a manner that is different from reality, you can change the default settings and know that you are changing it from the baseline of reality towards whatever fictional universe you are trying to achieve.

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

I hate responses like this. You shouldn't have to change any settings to make the game more realistic. The most realistic settings should be the default settings. That way if you want to play in a manner that is different from reality, you can change the default settings and know that you are changing it from the baseline of reality towards whatever fictional universe you are trying to achieve.

What are you talking about? All he said was he plays with his TCR at 22. He said nothing about it being more realistic.

[TLB1975]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

I hate responses like this. You shouldn't have to change any settings to make the game more realistic. The most realistic settings should be the default settings. That way if you want to play in a manner that is different from reality, you can change the default settings and know that you are changing it from the baseline of reality towards whatever fictional universe you are trying to achieve.

You hate responses that offer the OP an option that could help his experience??

[Rain King]

I'm assuming you have your ratings set to be relative to your league?

By creating only young players you have talent coming into your league (via a draft I presume) and no players who are declining...so the potential talent in your league is increasing and if you are using relative ratings it makes sense that most players' potential is below their current abilities.

[voxpoptart]

TLB1975: Thanks for an option to consider! That said, I'd like to know more about your experience with low talent-chance randomness. Does it lead to predictable drafts, where the early draft picks go on to be stars and you hardly ever get Matt Adams/ Ben Zobrist/ Jarrod Dyson-like surprises? That's what I'd be afraid of. Or do you actually still get a nice mix?

[Rain King]

Or what may be happening is that the game is trying to balance out the talent coming in and so being really harsh on the players currently in the league (even though they aren't at a typical decline age). This IMO would be a disappointing way for the game to handle this type of league.

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by Rain King

I'm assuming you have your ratings set to be relative to your league?

By creating only young players you have talent coming into your league (via a draft I presume) and no players who are declining...so the potential talent in your league is increasing and if you are using relative ratings it makes sense that most players' potential is below their current abilities.

That makes sense. The game needs declining players to offset the new guys and vice versa.

[voxpoptart]

Originally Posted by Rain King

I'm assuming you have your ratings set to be relative to your league?

By creating only young players you have talent coming into your league (via a draft I presume) and no players who are declining...so the potential talent in your league is increasing and if you are using relative ratings it makes sense that most players' potential is below their current abilities.

I took a look, and no: I do *not* have "All player ratings are displayed relative to league" checked. I'm talking about the underlying 1-200 ratings.

Besides which, it's the older players, not the younger players, who should be subject to decline. To a lesser extent this was a frustration in last decade's OOTP versions for me as well: the under-25 set were treated as "prospects" whose potential could swing wildly, even if they were already established ML successes. It's more extreme this time, that's all.

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by voxpoptart

I took a look, and no: I do *not* have "All player ratings are displayed relative to league" checked. I'm talking about the underlying 1-200 ratings.

Besides which, it's the older players, not the younger players, who should be subject to decline. To a lesser extent this was a frustration in last decade's OOTP versions for me as well: the under-25 set were treated as "prospects" whose potential could swing wildly, even if they were already established ML successes. It's more extreme this time, that's all.

Yea, I saw that as I read down (that you are looking at the under-the-hood ratings). However, I'm pretty sure that Markus has some things built in to keep the talent level of a league balanced over time and your setup of all 28 & under guys may cause some weird things to happen (like a bunch of guys getting talent hits). As I said, it is kind of disappointing if that is why those players are falling apart because that makes some fictional setups tricky and/or impossible to set up as intended.

[TLB1975]

Originally Posted by voxpoptart

The game really needs to make Potential a much more common resource, as it is in life: where 3rd- and 4th-round draft picks are still regularly imagined, with cause, as solid major league contributors, and for years instead of fading right away.

I did some quick unscientific research as your comment about 3rd and 4th rounders got me curious. Here are results for players drafted in rds 3-5 from 2006-2010.

3rd rd players - 42% appeared in a ML game, 12% became established on a 25 man roster for more than 2 years

4th rd players - 28% appeared in a ML game, 7% became established on a 25man roster for more than 2 years

5th rd players - 33% appeared in a ML game, 9% became established on a 25man roster for more than 2 years.

I agree that these guys are imagined as regular contributors but the reality is most of them are somewhere between AA-AAA in their ability.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

What are you talking about? All he said was he plays with his TCR at 22. He said nothing about it being more realistic.

He said he might be seeing the problems he's seeing because he is using the default settings and didn't change it to "22". The OP's problem is he believes the way the game deals with potential is unrealistic.

Originally Posted by TLB1975

You hate responses that offer the OP an option that could help his experience??

No. I hate responses that imply that it is standard to change the default settings to get more realistic results.

[TLB1975]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

No. I hate responses that imply that it is standard to change the default settings to get more realistic results.

Not sure how you could imply anything "standard" about my response. And I never mentioned anything about realism.

And further, I don't get your fascination with needing the out of the box version of this game to perfectly match your interpretation of reality.

[voxpoptart]

TLB1975: I'm guessing your research is about real-life 3rd-to-5th-round picks? If so, it sounds about right, yes. They have potential, and a few of them reach it. Has your own game universe gone on long enough that you can compare the results from your own league's drafts?

I'm not implying, btw, that your results *need* to match up to reality. I'm just curious how they compare.

[TLB1975]

Originally Posted by voxpoptart

TLB1975: Thanks for an option to consider! That said, I'd like to know more about your experience with low talent-chance randomness. Does it lead to predictable drafts, where the early draft picks go on to be stars and you hardly ever get Matt Adams/ Ben Zobrist/ Jarrod Dyson-like surprises? That's what I'd be afraid of. Or do you actually still get a nice mix?

I haven't found that it has lead to predictable drafts and I have played with talent-change randomness low since OOTP 10. In OOTP 16, I'm playing MLB real rosters and it's only 2022 so not all of my drafts are a valid sample. For me, what it does is protect against this:

1. Prospect who's scouting reports consistently validate him as a 3+ star player,

2. Players stats at whatever minor's level are good to great. Shows competence and is earning promotions.

3. On some random day, usually the start of spring training, his potential will completely disintegrate.