Historical Simulation Stats Issue

[majesty95]

I'm having some issues trying to do a semi historical replay. The stats are WAY off. I've always thought OOTP did a good job of historical sims. However, this recent league and subsequent test league has things WAY out of whack.

I started off my game with 3-year recalc. I had several guys hitting over 50 home runs in the early to mid-80's when that was not seen (including Eric Davis who had 52 HR and 69 SB). I decided because of this and amateur draft compensations issues to run a test league.

In my test league I did 3-year recalc and double weighted current year. The home runs were mildly more realistic but that could have been just variance. However, I was seeing a lot of examples of guys who had never hit better than say .300 hitting .350. I then changed the settings to only use a one-year recalc. I then had John Olerud hit .340 in a season which he hit .265 in real life.

I always thought OOTP was able to do historical replays and have the stats come out more similarly yo real life. I understand things can affect this like facing different pitchers, variance, etc. I just find it hard to fathom that a guy who never hit better than .304 over a 10-year period would magically break out and hit .350 or that a rookie who hit .265 in real life would somehow hit .340 and lead the league.

Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing (I use import historical modifiers) or is the sim engine just way more random than I remember?

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I'm having some issues trying to do a semi historical replay. The stats are WAY off. I've always thought OOTP did a good job of historical sims. However, this recent league and subsequent test league has things WAY out of whack.

I started off my game with 3-year recalc. I had several guys hitting over 50 home runs in the early to mid-80's when that was not seen (including Eric Davis who had 52 HR and 69 SB). I decided because of this and amateur draft compensations issues to run a test league.

In my test league I did 3-year recalc and double weighted current year. The home runs were mildly more realistic but that could have been just variance. However, I was seeing a lot of examples of guys who had never hit better than say .300 hitting .350. I then changed the settings to only use a one-year recalc. I then had John Olerud hit .340 in a season which he hit .265 in real life.

I always thought OOTP was able to do historical replays and have the stats come out more similarly yo real life. I understand things can affect this like facing different pitchers, variance, etc. I just find it hard to fathom that a guy who never hit better than .304 over a 10-year period would magically break out and hit .350 or that a rookie who hit .265 in real life would somehow hit .340 and lead the league.

Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing (I use import historical modifiers) or is the sim engine just way more random than I remember?

OOTP17 and OOTP18 seem to run somewhat "hotter" than OOTP16 did. See this thread, and this thread to see if your experience is somewhat similar, and feel free to comment there if you wish. Some good news on this front comes later on in the second thread I linked to. Early testing so far is demonstrating that OOTP19 may be "cooling" things off a bit. We shall see.

[majesty95]

Thanks for the reply. I've read through and its sad to see how off the historical sims have become. Is there any way to fix it in 18? I just picked it up a month or so ago and 19 hasn't really enticed me with new features (neither did 18 which is why I waited so long to buy it). I hate to think I wasted $30 on 18 since historical replays is all I play. It's just not fun seeing guys hit 100 points higher than they do in real life. OOTP used to always pride itself on its simulation engine. I'm sure it wasn't intended but unfortunate how far it has strayed from what it accomploished in 16,

[pstrickert]

I agree with you to a certain extent, majesty. And I can assure you the beta team for 19 is working hard on refinements.

[majesty95]

Another thing that I noticed on this is that Roger Clemens almost always has an ERA right around 2.00 Doesn't matter the year. He'll have one year where its like 2.26 but almost every other year is between 1.98 and 2.06. It's almost like he's performing off of his best season every year vs getting a new set of ratings every year. Or the ratings used are too ambiguous and unable to replicate the individual seasons.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Another thing that I noticed on this is that Roger Clemens almost always has an ERA right around 2.00 Doesn't matter the year. He'll have one year where its like 2.26 but almost every other year is between 1.98 and 2.06. It's almost like he's performing off of his best season every year vs getting a new set of ratings every year. Or the ratings used are too ambiguous and unable to replicate the individual seasons.

Yep. Basically, there are a lot more outlier individual seasons in the two versions that have come out since OOTP16, both on the pitching and on the hitting side of things. Not sure why this happened, but it seems to hold up regardless of what settings one uses.

[majesty95]

What's interesting is, looking at the historical simulation accuracy, the AVG, 2B/AB, SB%, FLD% and BABIP are within 2.1%. However, 3B/AB, HR/AB, BB/PA, R/G are all 2.6% to 9.6% high consistently. SB/1B even dropped to -8.8% and -9.9% the last two seasons. Is that type of variance usual? I thought it was typically always within 2-3%.

[majesty95]

Passed balls were also 13% too low in the most recent season while wild pitches (9%) and hit by pitch (8%) were too high.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Another thing that I noticed on this is that Roger Clemens almost always has an ERA right around 2.00 Doesn't matter the year. He'll have one year where its like 2.26 but almost every other year is between 1.98 and 2.06. It's almost like he's performing off of his best season every year vs getting a new set of ratings every year. Or the ratings used are too ambiguous and unable to replicate the individual seasons.

In regards to this issue, are you using a recalc only, or are you a combo of recalc and development?

[majesty95]

I did not adjust those when creating so just noticed development was on. Seems counter-intuitive to have both recalc and development on by default doesn't it? Although I remember some players who had short careers would never retire if you didn't do that. Was that ever resolved?

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I did not adjust those when creating so just noticed development was on. Seems counter-intuitive to have both recalc and development on by default doesn't it? Although I remember some players who had short careers would never retire if you didn't do that. Was that ever resolved?

As I only play random debut, and therefore can't retire players according to RL, I have to have recalc and development on, and it worked well in OOTP16. Not as sure about versions after that because I've really only run test leagues in the last two versions.

[majesty95]

Well, even with development off it didn't seem to make a difference. Howard Johnson hit 52 home runs and drove in 156 runs and Cal Ripken hit 40 points over his real life average.

[mitchkenn]

possibly your modifiers are too high? Or not set for the years you are testing? just a thought.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

possibly your modifiers are too high? Or not set for the years you are testing? just a thought.

Can't speak for Majesty, but based on all my tests, it's not the modifiers. You can use adjust modifiers for historical accuracy and you are still going to get a lot of clown seasons. Too many players are having monster seasons. I did run a test where I manually lowered the hits modifier the game imported prior to the seasons start. This brought a lot of the silly high averages down, but I was still seeing too many high averages..

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I did not adjust those when creating so just noticed development was on. Seems counter-intuitive to have both recalc and development on by default doesn't it? Although I remember some players who had short careers would never retire if you didn't do that. Was that ever resolved?

The reason I asked that question in regard to Clemens, is I started a thread about that type of thing in the bug report forum. With recalc and development all too often you see guys(often guys that never did so) string together runs of flat out insane seasons. See the screenshots of Ellis Burks, Shane Mack etc. Those screenshots are from a league using one year recalc and development. There's simply no way guys like that could have those years together if 1 year recalc is working like it should.

[majesty95]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Can't speak for Majesty, but based on all my tests, it's not the modifiers. You can use adjust modifiers for historical accuracy and you are still going to get a lot of clown seasons. Too many players are having monster seasons. I did run a test where I manually lowered the hits modifier the game imported prior to the seasons start. This brought a lot of the silly high averages down, but I was still seeing too many high averages..

Yeah I didn't adjust the modifiers. I just use automatically import for historical accuracy.

[majesty95]

I tried turning off player morale and personalities hoping that would help. Then turned off coaching. Tried turning dev back on and changing TCR to 1 and nothing works. This game is bound and determined to have some guys outperform their season average by 70-80 points and their home runs by 30-40% in some cases. So frustrating. Almost completely eliminates any desire for me to play.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I tried turning off player morale and personalities hoping that would help. Then turned off coaching. Tried turning dev back on and changing TCR to 1 and nothing works. This game is bound and determined to have some guys outperform their season average by 70-80 points and their home runs by 30-40% in some cases. So frustrating. Almost completely eliminates any desire for me to play.

I can empathize with this. I console myself with the greatness of OOTP16, but it's hard to get past the fact that Correa, Lindor, Seager etc, etc, etc are not in there. I believe OOTP19 will get this back on track, but it must be hard for you to get past having spent this money just a month ago. I guess I'm sorry us historical guys didn't catch this earlier in the development cycle. It would've helped you out.

[majesty95]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

I can empathize with this. I console myself with the greatness of OOTP16, but it's hard to get past the fact that Correa, Lindor, Seager etc, etc, etc are not in there. I believe OOTP19 will get this back on track, but it must be hard for you to get past having spent this money just a month ago. I guess I'm sorry us historical guys didn't catch this earlier in the development cycle. It would've helped you out.

Yeah I even tried your 5-year recalc idea which you would think neuters outlier seasons and nope, guys that didn't hit over .295 in that five year period are hitting .340 plus. I might have to see if I can find my license for 16. I'm still baffled as to how this has gone on for two years and even happened to begin with. Crazy.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Yeah I even tried your 5-year recalc idea which you would think neuters outlier seasons and nope, guys that didn't hit over .295 in that five year period are hitting .340 plus. I might have to see if I can find my license for 16. I'm still baffled as to how this has gone on for two years and even happened to begin with. Crazy.

I've got a great 62-season random debut going in OOTP16. I hope to eventually be able to start one in a more up to date version, but until I see results, OOTP16 it is.