Some things I've noticed after 200+ hours of gaming that aren't mentioned in guides

[kgor93]

Now granted, some of those hours are straight simulating, but I've still logged a ton of hours in this game. Have noticed some things that I wanted to make a thread for. I haven't seen anything that's mentioned these topics from Googleing, so hopefully this thread will help someone in the future. I will update it as I think of new things.

-I always set the ratings to absolute compared to MLB. One thing I've noticed is that ratings are quite top-heavy. Realistically, a player that averages above 150-175 (out of 250) in ratings is a hall of fame player. Above 200 is god-tier. We're talking under 1.25 in ERA, or .45+ batting averages with ridiculous amounts of homers.

-Don't bother with the almanac unless you MUST have HTML data. It takes FOREVER (hours) to export, even without box scores. Just use the in-game viewer. Similarly, turn off player pictures and cards to speed up simulation speed.

-I don't know why but there's no way to search manager ratings. This makes finding a manager difficult.

-Active Roster age restrictions are not enforced. I noticed this when I created &quot;Old Geezer's Retirement League&quot;, which has a minimum age of 40 and maximum of 65. The player pools are sufficient, I gave them 3x the amount of money as the MLB so contracts aren't an issue, but still there were young players that were on the rosters and played. Checked player creation, draft info, and more. There needs to be a hard restriction that if they are < minimum age, they CANNOT play.

-ALWAYS delete minor leagues before deleting the parent league. It usually is fine but a couple times I've ended up with ghost leagues that I could assign players to and view stats for, but not edit in any way. I made a thread on this in the bugs forum.

-I've been trying to figure out a way to have different regions for different divisions of auto-generated city names (i.e. Div1 is Maryland teams, Div2 is Virginia, etc.) I was creating individual leagues. Don't do this. Instead, a workaround is to change the region after creation and then press &quot;add new team&quot; in the structure menu.

-I still don't know how to make leagues of the same level play each other.

-Injuries happen way too often. I'd suggest moving it to low.

-I still don't know the difference (if there is one) between Independent Leagues, Major Leagues, and International Leagues.

-I don't know why but lineup changes don't persist when auto-simming, even when &quot;do not disturb&quot; is off. Like if I change to a 6 man rotation, it will default back to 5.

-I personally think 20 to 80 is a stupid range for ratings and would rather be able to make it 1 to 100 for everything, or 1 to 250 to make it uniform with individual attribute ratings.

-I've had the best results using 2N helper threads, where N is the number of CPU cores you have. 2N is also the number of threads. Also unless you really want them, turn off game logs and box scores for all leagues (except major maybe).

-I wish that manual player assignment to teams was available in the right-click menu from the player list.


-Really wish that there was an easy way to see an entire organization, with a listing of all the teams from Majors to Minors.

-Death would be a nice feature, both random and expected (old players). I shouldn't be able to unretire Babe Ruth. He's not a zombie.

Overall I love this game and how it continually improves vs the Mogul or Wolverine Studios games which they re-release every year with a bug fix or two and call it new.

[Romagoth]

Babe Ruth playing baseball as a zombie is full of awesome.

[kgor93]

Originally Posted by Romagoth

Babe Ruth playing baseball as a zombie is full of awesome.

I might have to create a "Reanimated Corpses" league now lol.

[Dyzalot]

I'm surprised how many people think injuries in the game are unrealistic. I play on "high" and it seems pretty standard to me.

[NoOne]

that's because 99% of the time someone uses "unrealistic" in these forums it's really a disconnect between reality and perception.

i'll trust that the game developer's research is better than my 'eye' if i have a feeling of frustration due to injuries. a string of inuries hits your team and all of a sudden it's "elevated."

spot on for batters -- contact @ 150-160+ with any other complimentary skills and they are HoF with health. pitching is a bit more complicated, but similar. you get a SP with ~max scale stuff they are wicked (only takes a few 150-175 pitches and average velo/move+/control+).

the age stuff: if oyu have minimum age requirment, make sure the ages of created players jive with that value. ie you likely don't want to leave it at 0/0 min/max age if you want 40year old rookies. maybe i am wrong, but either way do a little trial and error with relative settings and you should be able to iron this out. (i am making assumptions*)

phantom teams? something odd happened if that's true or they weren't removed correctly. double check League Settings -> League Structure. make sure to select the mil with the phantom team in the drop-down in top-right. also, on any page, look for "available actions" - some option/functions are only in this drop-down or just simply easier from here.

difference between independent and major and international etc: mostly just semantics, but the defaults of each are slightly different. for example, an independent league starts with a very low default reputation, and it's PCM's are different. all of the differences can be edited to be equal to each other, if you wanted to do so.

if you want an independent league with ML talent, make sure it's rep is high, it's salary settings are high enough to compete with any other leagues in world, change PCM's to "1.000", amend LT/LTM (leauge totals/league totals modifers) ... etc etc.. you get the point..

basically it's just setting a skeleton for the league so that you don't have to do all that work... maybe just amend them a small amount to get what you want, insteadof re-doing the entire thing for each type of league.

regional stuff: not sure if you can use a State as a region. someone else either this release or last made a league similar to what you are expressing interest. i'd search forums, i cannot recall specifics, but he did get it to work if i recall.

you can make a world and structure it as you need, at the least. or edit an existing one -- XML editor will be useful.. notepad++ is a free one that's good. color-codes stuff, makes it easier to read/edit etc.

so if it can only be a "country" then you make Maryland a "country" in game terms only. asthetic only. never delved into the xml labels, but likely don't have to set it as a "Country" maybe not.

i want to say the old thread was a league in Australia.. so do a "ootp" + "<regions of australia>" like queensland (spelling) ... heh they call them states there.. 6 in one, half dozen the other. a rose is a rose is a rose blah blah.

in this game retired essentially equals dead... the game will never unretire a 150year old in my experience. so, if you don't want zombies, refrain from doing so easy fix there, since it's self-inflicted.

just a guess:
but seriously, i wouldn't care either way if tehy "died", since it's not real. i think some people get a lil emotional about that topic though. they anthropomorphize an inanimate object like software. i think ootp avoids the situation on purpose. i wouldn't blame them. someone freaked out in forums that they didn't remove someone that died recently... not a big name like the floriday pitcher. a bit unreasonable to expect them to check obits for 10,000's of people constantly. a little lag should be forgiven for something as unimportant as a video game.

[kgor93]

you can make a world and structure it as you need, at the least. or edit an existing one -- XML editor will be useful.. notepad++ is a free one that's good. color-codes stuff, makes it easier to read/edit etc.

Actually how do you import an edited world structure? I was quite irritated because there's an export world structure option but no import option.

if you want an independent league with ML talent, make sure it's rep is high, it's salary settings are high enough to compete with any other leagues in world, change PCM's to "1.000", amend LT/LTM (leauge totals/league totals modifers) ... etc etc.. you get the point..

Yeah I usually do 1 of 2 things depending on HOW I want the ind league to compete. Sometimes I might make the PCM's 1.25 so they're better than the MLB but give them little $ with 1 year free agency so players are always leaving. Other times I do something in between AAA (.85) and MLB (1) like 0.9 or 0.95. So they're very close and the games will be competitive but the MLB will be the winner more often than not.

I still haven't figured out how to make MLB play independent or international leagues. Do you know how? I tried manual scheduling but it never seems to actually schedule.

[CraigBShuman]

Interesting to read all the comments in this thread. Some are very helpful.

[jpeters1734]

I hope to god that no one new to this game looks at this thread. It's filled with misperceptions and nonsense. I am sorry for being harsh, but it's warranted if you title your thread as an "expert's" guide.

[kgor93]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

I hope to god that no one new to this game looks at this thread. It's filled with misperceptions and nonsense. I am sorry for being harsh, but it's warranted if you title your thread as an "expert's" guide.

Elaborate please.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

I hope to god that no one new to this game looks at this thread. It's filled with misperceptions and nonsense. I am sorry for being harsh, but it's warranted if you title your thread as an "expert's" guide.

I dunno about this. I think he was "spot on" with at least these comments:

-I don't know why but there's no way to search manager ratings. This makes finding a manager difficult.

-Injuries happen way too often. I'd suggest moving it to low.

-Also unless you really want them, turn off game logs and box scores for all leagues (except major maybe).

-Really wish that there was an easy way to see an entire organization, with a listing of all the teams from Majors to Minors.

-Death would be a nice feature, both random and expected (old players). I shouldn't be able to unretire Babe Ruth. He's not a zombie.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by kgor93

Elaborate please.

Since you asked nicely. For starters, if you're going to post a tidbits guide that you hope future players will use, don't fill it with comments about you not understanding the game and your personal gripes. I'll go down the line for you.


-I always set the ratings to absolute compared to MLB. One thing I've noticed is that ratings are quite top-heavy. Realistically, a player that averages above 150-175 (out of 250) in ratings is a hall of fame player. Above 200 is god-tier. We're talking under 1.25 in ERA, or .45+ batting averages with ridiculous amounts of homers.

Ratings are based on PCM's. Depending on your settings, 150 could be below average, average, or even 10 times the average.

-Don't bother with the almanac unless you MUST have HTML data. It takes FOREVER (hours) to export, even without box scores. Just use the in-game viewer. Similarly, turn off player pictures and cards to speed up simulation speed.

Yes, not creating cards will speed it up because it doesn't take the time to make them. turning off pictures keeps the faces.dat file small so it'll take less time saving. This in not related to almanacs though. I've never had an almanac take hours with a normal sized league. Maybe not tell people to not do something without explaining what it is?

-I don't know why but there's no way to search manager ratings. This makes finding a manager difficult.

Agreed. Though, you should post in the suggestions forum, not on a "tips" thread.

-Active Roster age restrictions are not enforced. I noticed this when I created &quot;Old Geezer's Retirement League&quot;, which has a minimum age of 40 and maximum of 65. The player pools are sufficient, I gave them 3x the amount of money as the MLB so contracts aren't an issue, but still there were young players that were on the rosters and played. Checked player creation, draft info, and more. There needs to be a hard restriction that if they are < minimum age, they CANNOT play.

I'd question your settings

-ALWAYS delete minor leagues before deleting the parent league. It usually is fine but a couple times I've ended up with ghost leagues that I could assign players to and view stats for, but not edit in any way. I made a thread on this in the bugs forum.

Good tip

-I've been trying to figure out a way to have different regions for different divisions of auto-generated city names (i.e. Div1 is Maryland teams, Div2 is Virginia, etc.) I was creating individual leagues. Don't do this. Instead, a workaround is to change the region after creation and then press &quot;add new team&quot; in the structure menu.

no comment

-I still don't know how to make leagues of the same level play each other.

Is this a tip? Perhaps ask a question.

-Injuries happen way too often. I'd suggest moving it to low.

Extremely subjective. Injuries at high are accurate with what you'd see if you actually paid attention to every single major league system.

-I still don't know the difference (if there is one) between Independent Leagues, Major Leagues, and International Leagues.

NoOne answered this, but I thought this was supposed to be a guide for future players...

-I don't know why but lineup changes don't persist when auto-simming, even when &quot;do not disturb&quot; is off. Like if I change to a 6 man rotation, it will default back to 5.

This comes from a lack of understanding

-I personally think 20 to 80 is a stupid range for ratings and would rather be able to make it 1 to 100 for everything, or 1 to 250 to make it uniform with individual attribute ratings.

20-80 is literally what real scouts use. It's not stupid, you just don't understand it

-I've had the best results using 2N helper threads, where N is the number of CPU cores you have. 2N is also the number of threads. Also unless you really want them, turn off game logs and box scores for all leagues (except major maybe).

No comment about helper threads. thanks, i will turn on box scores because i want them.

-I wish that manual player assignment to teams was available in the right-click menu from the player list.

I assume you mean as a commish mode option. 100% agreed. Post fit in the suggestions forum.

-Really wish that there was an easy way to see an entire organization, with a listing of all the teams from Majors to Minors.

Is this a tidbit of knowledge? you can do this in many places.

-Death would be a nice feature, both random and expected (old players). I shouldn't be able to unretire Babe Ruth. He's not a zombie.

as NoOne stated, if you don't want zombie Ruth, why would you unretire him? Do you need someone to prevent you from doing things you don't want to do?

[pgjocki]

Originally Posted by Romagoth

Babe Ruth playing baseball as a zombie is full of awesome.

I literally only want this now...

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

20-80 is literally what real scouts use. It's not stupid, you just don't understand it

I knew I took a note down on this some time back; here it is:

The 20-80 Scouting Scale

The invention of the scale is credited to Branch Rickey and whether he intended it or not, it mirrors various scientific scales. 50 is major league average, then each 10 point increment represents a standard deviation better or worse than average. In a normal distribution, three standard deviations in either direction should include 99.7% of your sample, so that’s why the scale is 20 to 80 rather than 0 and 100.

Originally Posted by pgjocki

I literally only want this now...

You're starting to scare me. Are YOU a zombie?

[The Game]

I'm Going to pick at this a bit

Originally Posted by kgor93

Now granted, some of those hours are straight simulating, but I've still logged a ton of hours in this game. Have noticed some things that I wanted to make a thread for. I haven't seen anything that's mentioned these topics from Googleing, so hopefully this thread will help someone in the future. I will update it as I think of new things.

-I always set the ratings to absolute compared to MLB. One thing I've noticed is that ratings are quite top-heavy. Realistically, a player that averages above 150-175 (out of 250) in ratings is a hall of fame player. Above 200 is god-tier. We're talking under 1.25 in ERA, or .45+ batting averages with ridiculous amounts of homers.
Not even close to being true. I edit stats for 90% of the players in my EBL league and have many players who are over 200 in most categories, yet Bart Simpson hits .255 with 40 HR when his edited stat line was .320 65 hr. A player who should have only hit 29 HR in Joe Robbie hit 93 in Coors. Some pitchers are extreme i do have a Maddux type with a 1.80 ERA and he was edited that way but another SP was supposed to be better and had a 3.30 ERA. Stats reflection is for 1998

-Don't bother with the almanac unless you MUST have HTML data. It takes FOREVER (hours) to export, even without box scores. Just use the in-game viewer. Similarly, turn off player pictures and cards to speed up simulation speed.
While i no longer use the almanac because i am too impatient to wait and at the time i had a crappy PC. There iis no need to turn off player pics or BB cards unless your PC sucks or might be infected
-I don't know why but there's no way to search manager ratings. This makes finding a manager difficult.

-Active Roster age restrictions are not enforced. I noticed this when I created &quot;Old Geezer's Retirement League&quot;, which has a minimum age of 40 and maximum of 65. The player pools are sufficient, I gave them 3x the amount of money as the MLB so contracts aren't an issue, but still there were young players that were on the rosters and played. Checked player creation, draft info, and more. There needs to be a hard restriction that if they are < minimum age, they CANNOT play.

-ALWAYS delete minor leagues before deleting the parent league. It usually is fine but a couple times I've ended up with ghost leagues that I could assign players to and view stats for, but not edit in any way. I made a thread on this in the bugs forum.
The only issue i had was not zeroing out the schedule for the CBF prior to the season which then lead to the game creating a new game each day until december. Do you have a ink to teh bug. just want to see it.

-I've been trying to figure out a way to have different regions for different divisions of auto-generated city names (i.e. Div1 is Maryland teams, Div2 is Virginia, etc.) I was creating individual leagues. Don't do this. Instead, a workaround is to change the region after creation and then press &quot;add new team&quot; in the structure menu.

-I still don't know how to make leagues of the same level play each other.
Associations
-Injuries happen way too often. I'd suggest moving it to low.
This has been disputed numerous times by people who know more then i so i'll defer to them. i will say this much, the fewer minor leagues you have the more the ML will be affected by injuries it seems.
-I still don't know the difference (if there is one) between Independent Leagues, Major Leagues, and International Leagues.
Indy leagues are mostly has beens or never was players, ML are the best and International Leagues like *** and Cuba are future MLers
-I don't know why but lineup changes don't persist when auto-simming, even when &quot;do not disturb&quot; is off. Like if I change to a 6 man rotation, it will default back to 5.
Then either A. you dont have full control of your team or B your MGR has too much say.

-I personally think 20 to 80 is a stupid range for ratings and would rather be able to make it 1 to 100 for everything, or 1 to 250 to make it uniform with individual attribute ratings.
I use 1-10. i dont like 20-80 either.
-I've had the best results using 2N helper threads, where N is the number of CPU cores you have. 2N is also the number of threads. Also unless you really want them, turn off game logs and box scores for all leagues (except major maybe).
I've never kept game logs or box scores for leagues i am not a part of. they all get deleted january 1st.
-I wish that manual player assignment to teams was available in the right-click menu from the player list.
yeah me too

-Really wish that there was an easy way to see an entire organization, with a listing of all the teams from Majors to Minors.

-Death would be a nice feature, both random and expected (old players). I shouldn't be able to unretire Babe Ruth. He's not a zombie.
Many have been asking for something like this for 3+ versions
Overall I love this game and how it continually improves vs the Mogul or Wolverine Studios games which they re-release every year with a bug fix or two and call it new.

Never played Wolverine, but i gave up on Mogul 15 years ago. i still get emails from them for releases but they dont compare to OOTP.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by pgjocki

I literally only want this now...

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

hows this.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by kgor93

I still haven't figured out how to make MLB play independent or international leagues. Do you know how? I tried manual scheduling but it never seems to actually schedule.

Never tried this myself. I have a ML that acts as an indy league. Rep is around 5 and financials are from 1968.I like to keep it as a ML because Indy League dont have awards to my knowledge. Their best player who has 300 career IBL HR would be a 5th OF in MLB or EBL.

[PSUColonel]

Just out of curiosity...what is the age of the op?

[PSUColonel]

The 20-80 scale comment, is the one I don’t get. It’s what actually scouts use, when I hear people who want 1-250, I start thinking “uh oh, a young button masher who doesn’t necessarily care about realism”

[kgor93]

Originally Posted by pgjocki

I literally only want this now...

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

I tried it. Even in a league with other zombies, Babe Ruth couldn't manage even a 0.100 average. I suppose he was slightly better at pitching with a 7 and change ERA.

[kgor93]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

Just out of curiosity...what is the age of the op?

24. Been a sim gamer my whole life. I was simming seasons at a time of Madden 05 on the PC when I was 12.

More familiar with football but I'm learning baseball.