Opening Day Dice Roll?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Abnerdoubleday

I don't think the developers ever did give a definitive answer as to whether morale is off. If morale is on, it would probably play a fairly significant role in variability

I asked... twice. They said it is off.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by bobbycockstrong

Maybe i mis read whathe meant, but he said "everyone" - as in all players.

Im not suggesting any of those things you mentioned are coded into the game, im just saying the game itself HAS to choose people to keep down/have bad years/etc, if there are other players having good years/hot/whatever. There is literally no other choice because annual league totals are relatively static. That doesnt mean its an intentional choice/dice roll for X player/whatever, it just means its a natural order of things because the annual totals are set in stone, so to speak, and thus all simulation has to align with that.

I'm not even sure what this discussion is about. It's random. Nothing is chosen other than what is "chosen" by random numbers. There is nothing in the game that determines which of your players are going to be bad or great this year. It just worked out that way randomly.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by bobbycockstrong

Maybe i mis read whathe meant, but he said "everyone" - as in all players.

Im not suggesting any of those things you mentioned are coded into the game, im just saying the game itself HAS to choose people to keep down/have bad years/etc, if there are other players having good years/hot/whatever. There is literally no other choice because annual league totals are relatively static. That doesnt mean its an intentional choice/dice roll for X player/whatever, it just means its a natural order of things because the annual totals are set in stone, so to speak, and thus all simulation has to align with that.

The game doesn't have to chose anyone.

Look, if the league "normal" random number range is 1-100, every player starts there and is then adjusted based on their own ratings. If the league numbers are averaging 55 instead of 50, then the game reduces the initial random range to 1-95 - and again, the players are then further adjusted based on their own ratings.

Your assuming there's some taboo rule at play in that the league totals can't be touched. If they are producing numbers too high (or too low) that would be the easiest way internally to adjust the balance of the season to steer toward the target.

ANY coding that would have to look at players and their current performance would be unfair, period.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why some people can't believe that Mike Trout can have a 10 game slump and another .200 BA backup player can have a 10 game hitting streak.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

Of course not every player does better or every player do worse. It's spread out, some up and some down. Why would only certain players be 'chosen' to do better or worse?

And when it comes to what is easier, I'm sure it doesn't matter because it's computers making the calculations, not people with calculators and dice.

Developers have given insight and have denied everything you're suggesting. No one player is ever chosen to be better or worse. No player has a hidden hot or cold streak rating. No player has a hidden clutch rating.

But some odd results here and there suggest the spread is not equally distributed. There was that guy that talked about Mike Scioscia legging out an inside the park home run against him.


Don Money has 10 speed and 18 baserunning. I've had him in my lineup since the very first season (that's like what, 14 seasons worth ?). He's had 2 triples once, one triple 3 times. Zero triples the rest of the time. Except one season, where he hit THIRTEEN. That's without me changing anything, not even my batting order.


If that was an even spread, my strategies, quality of opposition or other team's ballpark factors somehow all had triples galore triggered, you would have seen the triples for my team go up across the board. That didn't happen. It was only Don Money.


So what are the odds of only that one (really slow, bad at running) player on my team getting the perfect stat rolls, in only that one season, to generate so many triples compared to all other seasons he's played ? The odds of the engine playing catch up logic to meet season totals are a lot higher than rolling that perfect number so often that one season only.


And machines are great, yes, but run by code made by man. We don't know how the engine works to meet league totals, because we weren't told. We weren't told because that would be proprietary information, so we can only use educated guesses to explain certain things.


So you don't know for a fact a certain player is targeted or not (neither do I). But every time I look at those 13 triples in one season, I can't help but think there's more than just the player stats going on.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by eldur00

But some odd results here and there suggest the spread is not equally distributed. There was that guy that talked about Mike Scioscia legging out an inside the park home run against him.


Don Money has 10 speed and 18 baserunning. I've had him in my lineup since the very first season (that's like what, 14 seasons worth ?). He's had 2 triples once, one triple 3 times. Zero triples the rest of the time. Except one season, where he hit THIRTEEN. That's without me changing anything, not even my batting order.


If that was an even spread, my strategies, quality of opposition or other team's ballpark factors somehow all had triples galore triggered, you would have seen the triples for my team go up across the board. That didn't happen. It was only Don Money.


So what are the odds of only that one (really slow, bad at running) player on my team getting the perfect stat rolls, in only that one season, to generate so many triples compared to all other seasons he's played ? The odds of the engine playing catch up logic to meet season totals are a lot higher than rolling that perfect number so often that one season only.


And machines are great, yes, but run by code made by man. We don't know how the engine works to meet league totals, because we weren't told. We weren't told because that would be proprietary information, so we can only use educated guesses to explain certain things.


So you don't know for a fact a certain player is targeted or not (neither do I). But every time I look at those 13 triples in one season, I can't help but think there's more than just the player stats going on.

Someone has to win the lottery eventually (and that lottery is Money hitting 13 triples).

At some point, you're going to have to decide whether or not the developers are lying because that's the only option in believing what you want to believe when they have said it isn't true.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

At some point, you're going to have to decide whether or not the developers are lying because that's the only option in believing what you want to believe when they have said it isn't true.

Key to the entire discussion.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

Someone has to win the lottery eventually (and that lottery is Money hitting 13 triples).

At some point, you're going to have to decide whether or not the developers are lying because that's the only option in believing what you want to believe when they have said it isn't true.

Can you link where the devs talked about how the league totals are handled to ensure a realistic spread ? I haven't seen that post. I'm not talking about hot and cold streaks. I'm talking about the engine running checks at regular intervals during the season and adjust distribution of certain stats to reach a %variance of league totals.


And wouldn't saying winning the lottery (in other words, randomly selecting a number) kind of prove the point that some players are targeted to do better ?

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by eldur00

Can you link where the devs talked about how the league totals are handled to ensure a realistic spread ? I haven't seen that post. I'm not talking about hot and cold streaks. I'm talking about the engine running checks at regular intervals during the season and adjust distribution of certain stats to reach a %variance of league totals.


And wouldn't saying winning the lottery (in other words, randomly selecting a number) kind of prove the point that some players are targeted to do better ?

It's not true. The developers had said it's not true. If you want to believe otherwise, you have that right - but it still doesn't make it true.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

It's not true. The developers had said it's not true. If you want to believe otherwise, you have that right - but it still doesn't make it true.

I'm not disupting it's true or not, I'm asking for a link to it so I can read for myself.


I don't pretend to know the absolute truth. I don't know how the engine works in the backend, so I'm making educated guesses based on things I know outside of the world of OOTP (like how different types of randomizations are implemented in various games).


But if someone can point me to where it's clearly stated the engine does not compesate at any point to meet league totals, I'd be happy to read on that. My point is not to try to prove the devs are lying or not. I'm trying to figure out why such a statistical anomaly is possible other than by the "it's baseball" statement.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by eldur00

I'm not disupting it's true or not, I'm asking for a link to it so I can read for myself.


I don't pretend to know the absolute truth. I don't know how the engine works in the backend, so I'm making educated guesses based on things I know outside of the world of OOTP (like how different types of randomizations are implemented in various games).


But if someone can point me to where it's clearly stated the engine does not compesate at any point to meet league totals, I'd be happy to read on that. My point is not to try to prove the devs are lying or not. I'm trying to figure out why such a statistical anomaly is possible other than by the "it's baseball" statement.

Maybe if you had followed the discussions of this game for the last 15 years like I have, you would feel differently. And let me clarify something... no one said that the game doesn't adjust for a random number generator that goes too high or too low. What we are trying to make clear is that any adjustment (if it exists) is applied to all players - not just a targeted group. If that was the case, the entire foundation of this game would be a joke.

A adjustment of the league numbers to manipulate the expected target would be significantly minor compared to the range of variables represented by the player ratings. And I don't even believe that adjustment is in the code.

your right on one issue - we likely will never know for sure because the OOTP staff isn't going to give us the code - but since they have gone on record for years that there is no player-specific adjustments in the code, then I believe them.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by eldur00

Can you link where the devs talked about how the league totals are handled to ensure a realistic spread ? I haven't seen that post. I'm not talking about hot and cold streaks. I'm talking about the engine running checks at regular intervals during the season and adjust distribution of certain stats to reach a %variance of league totals.


And wouldn't saying winning the lottery (in other words, randomly selecting a number) kind of prove the point that some players are targeted to do better ?

This is the only post I have bookmarked, but it has been stated many times. It's not talking exactly about what your question is.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...7&postcount=28

You think lottery winners are chosen to win before they play or do they randomly win when they play?

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

This is the only post I have bookmarked, but it has been stated many times. It's not talking exactly about what your question is.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...7&postcount=28

You think lottery winners are chosen to win before they play or do they randomly win when they play?

Thanks for the link.


That explains the 13 triples in a way, I guess that year the league was filled with slow runners unable to hit with a wet noodle, and therefore Money hit 13 triples more in contrast to the lack of ability from the rest of the league rather than with his own (limited) ability to run the bases.

[bobbycockstrong]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

The game doesn't have to chose anyone.

Look, if the league "normal" random number range is 1-100, every player starts there and is then adjusted based on their own ratings. If the league numbers are averaging 55 instead of 50, then the game reduces the initial random range to 1-95 - and again, the players are then further adjusted based on their own ratings.

Your assuming there's some taboo rule at play in that the league totals can't be touched. If they are producing numbers too high (or too low) that would be the easiest way internally to adjust the balance of the season to steer toward the target.

ANY coding that would have to look at players and their current performance would be unfair, period.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why some people can't believe that Mike Trout can have a 10 game slump and another .200 BA backup player can have a 10 game hitting streak.

Im not talking about 10 game slumps, I thought we were talking about 162 game slumps.

[bobbycockstrong]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

Someone has to win the lottery eventually (and that lottery is Money hitting 13 triples).

At some point, you're going to have to decide whether or not the developers are lying because that's the only option in believing what you want to believe when they have said it isn't true.

I'm not saying there is any lying going on, and i cant speak for the others but i hadnt thought they suggested that either.

The devs have apparently stated that there is no individual dice roll/pre-season modifier/morale/whatever. And I believe them. I'll take their word on it.

I just think there are other factors at play, and how the game simulations handle them is "key". Not whether anyone is lying. I havent seen the devs address any of that, and they dont have to - but it doenst mean that the game engine itself doesnt handle things a certain way in order to meet the annual league totals.

Someone above suggested how the game handles these things - but again, is that a fact? or just how they think the game handles these things? Ultimately we dont know, and some people such as myself believe that there is more at play (how the game handles these things), than the pure ratings of the same card.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by bobbycockstrong

Im not talking about 10 game slumps, I thought we were talking about 162 game slumps.

Ok, let me restate what I meant. I can't get my head around why it is so unbelievable that a "perfect player" could post the stats of a "gold player" over one season - or any other variation you wish to define.

Each "Mike Trout" faces different variables and can result in a wide range of possibilities. If he always was within 10% of the same stats I would be very suspect.

[bobbycockstrong]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

Ok, let me restate what I meant. I can't get my head around why it is so unbelievable that a "perfect player" could post the stats of a "gold player" over one season - or any other variation you wish to define.

Each "Mike Trout" faces different variables and can result in a wide range of possibilities. If he always was within 10% of the same stats I would be very suspect.

Got it. And its not unbelievable to me (the post by Lukas explains it, and I never needed this explanation to begin with since it seemed common sense to me. To some others it has been "unbelievable", but im not arguing the unbelievable-ness of it, im arguing what factors into it.

What Im saying, is the game itself (because of an adherence to annual league totals) is also a variable that factors into "Mike Trout"'s output in any given scenario. And for me its a more important variable than minor ones like park factors (which AVG and HRs apparently min/max at .9 and 1.1 - perhaps its the most important variable.

If you have 15-20 Mike Trout players in a league, they are all literally the same exact player/card with the same identical ratings for offensive performance. But aside from the general variables of everyday play - pitchers, parks, etc - the game itself demands that some of these Mike Trout's have what appear to be awful/sub-par seasons.

You seemed to indicate that the game itself regulates all players equally, but we dont know that do we? How do we know that? In the post Zrog linked, Lukas explained why some "great" players have bad seasons - because the game demands it due to annual league totals/overall combined player performance/overall number of elite players in the league/etc.

The devs never said how that is achieved, particularly how it impacts individual player/game simulations. You are speaking as if your view is the authoritative view. But is it? All I'm proposing is that the game itself has a major impact on performance. And that it may impact at the individual player level. Lukas confirmed the first part in the linked post, that the game itself impacts performance. It has to. But it is never explained how that occurs, and it may never be. This doesnt mean its "targeted", it may simply be chance/randomness, but that doesnt mean it cant occur at the individual level and factor into why Mike Trout or whoever has an abysmal season.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by bobbycockstrong

Got it. And its not unbelievable to me (the post by Lukas explains it, and I never needed this explanation to begin with since it seemed common sense to me. To some others it has been "unbelievable", but im not arguing the unbelievable-ness of it, im arguing what factors into it.

What Im saying, is the game itself (because of an adherence to annual league totals) is also a variable that factors into "Mike Trout"'s output in any given scenario. And for me its a more important variable than minor ones like park factors (which AVG and HRs apparently min/max at .9 and 1.1 - perhaps its the most important variable.

If you have 15-20 Mike Trout players in a league, they are all literally the same exact player/card with the same identical ratings for offensive performance. But aside from the general variables of everyday play - pitchers, parks, etc - the game itself demands that some of these Mike Trout's have what appear to be awful/sub-par seasons.

You seemed to indicate that the game itself regulates all players equally, but we dont know that do we? How do we know that? In the post Zrog linked, Lukas explained why some "great" players have bad seasons - because the game demands it due to annual league totals/overall combined player performance/overall number of elite players in the league/etc.

The devs never said how that is achieved, particularly how it impacts individual player/game simulations. You are speaking as if your view is the authoritative view. But is it? All I'm proposing is that the game itself has a major impact on performance. And that it may impact at the individual player level. Lukas confirmed the first part in the linked post, that the game itself impacts performance. It has to. But it is never explained how that occurs, and it may never be. This doesnt mean its "targeted", it may simply be chance/randomness, but that doesnt mean it cant occur at the individual level and factor into why Mike Trout or whoever has an abysmal season.

What I am trying (desperately) to say is that there is no specific player "adjustments" made. If there were, the whole concept of OOTP would be false. League averages are set (whether historical or current) and players are given ratings based on their actual performance. The theory is, if all players either play to their potential - OR - there's an equal number of underperformers as over performer's, the league totals will be met.

We have discussed what might happen if the season tracks too high or too low - maybe there is an internal "adjustment" across all players to pull things back to center - but I honestly don't believe even this adjustment is there - because it falsifies randomness and the law of averages.

If your going to have a game that recreates an actual season, you have two choices; (1) set up the formulas so randomness will aim for the target... and accept that all the variables within the structure will sometimes be high, be low, or hit dead center. Or; (2) force the results to hit dead center all the time. The second option would be boring as hell, and any forced internal adjustment of the second makes the game a farce.

That's what I believe, and the OOTP staff has more-or-less said this over a number of years. They obviously aren't' going to give us the coding or supply us with an explanation of the process that could be used elsewhere - or even argued over by the general customer base.

Each one of us has to come to terms whether we think it's realistic enough. I have. If some feel it's not, then they can make their own decisions.

[Thalion]

Let me see if I can explain it based on how I understand OOTP Standard, and thus PT works.

HRBaker talks about it but I'll try to address it more specifically. My understanding is that the base OOTP engine is driven by a combination of two things. Player ratings and LTM (also known as League Total Modifiers).

I believe the idea between LTMs are that a baseline set of statistics (Hits, HR, K's, and BB) that represent a given season is loaded into the OOTP season. This is done with the intent that after the season is complete, the total stats from that season will be close to the LTMs loaded for that season.

So, if you want to replicate the 1927 season, LTMs for 1927 will be preloaded, This is the way the base game works and this is probably how the PT game works, I've read somewhere that the LTMs for PT reflect either the MLB stats for either 2010 or 2011.

Note that these stat baselines are going to be met regardless of who the individual players are in the league.

You can verify this by checking HR league totals across all leagues. I can safely predict that every league is going to generate approximately 4550 HRs in the season.

Note that this occurs whether you have a league of all power hitters or all single hitters.

Now, exactly how they arrive to this is buried in their code, but it's possible that every AB is weighted so that after all plate appearances occur at the end of the season, the correct ratio of HR to PA are approximately reached.

And this is checked for every plate appearance against the coding of the ratings for the two players involved (pitcher and hitter) and modified by such things as park factors etc. I'm guessing all it does is check ratings. It doesn't care if the rating is for a Mike Trout on HRBaker's team or a Mike Trout on Thalion's team.

Think of it this way. The total number of hits or home runs is a giant pie. Some years the pie is going to be bigger than others, but it's always going to be one pie.

Now, every player is a strand of DNA (ratings). All the game sees is DNA strings, not the names attached to them. Every piece of DNA is used to a certain amount of pie (the actual stats of that player during the season those stats were generated). Because of this, certain strands of DNA are accustomed to getting a larger share of the pie than other strands of DNA (reflected by that player being better than the other players in the season those stats were generated) which is reflected by their ratings.

Now, take that strand of rating super DNA and throw it into a kitchen with a ton of other strands of super DNA without increasing the number of pies. Now, all of those players are competing for their piece of the pie.

The chef (the game engine) sees this and apportions servings of pie knowing full well it only has one pie and needs to give some pie to everyone and people will be coming back multiple times (plate appearances) so it tries to anticipate accordingly. It doesn't know one player from another. All it knows is that some people are hungrier than others (have higher ratings) and thus TRIES to give them a bigger serving. At the end of the day, all it knows is that he only has the one pie and everyone needs to share it.

Now, will some people get more or less than they're normally accustomed to? Yes, because there are now hungrier people than that player/person is used to compete against. Will everyone receive their fair share of the pie based on how hungry (ratings) they are? No, because the pie isn't divided up at the very end a single time based on how hungry everyone is. The pie is divvied up every single time a person steps up with a plate. Sometimes, he'll get a piece of pie (HR) other times he's told to wait until next time... or the time after that.

In the end, players will GENERALLY get the share of the pie associated with how hungry they are compared to the other players in the kitchen, but there is no guarantee.

Sure, the game COULD ensure that every player with a POW of 80 hits X home runs every season and every player with 95 STU strikes out Y number of batters every season, it really stops being a baseball sim and simply becomes a card collecting game only. I have better cards than you so I will always win,

Is that the game we want?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by bobbycockstrong

If you have 15-20 Mike Trout players in a league, they are all literally the same exact player/card with the same identical ratings for offensive performance. But aside from the general variables of everyday play - pitchers, parks, etc - the game itself demands that some of these Mike Trout's have what appear to be awful/sub-par seasons.

You say this as if it is true and a known fact. However, it is not true. There is nothing that prevents every Mike Trout in the league from having an above-average season.

[bobbycockstrong]

Originally Posted by Orcin

You say this as if it is true and a known fact. However, it is not true. There is nothing that prevents every Mike Trout in the league from having an above-average season.

But there is something that prevents every mike trout from having an above average season - annual league totals. If every other play has an average season, then all mike trouts cant have a great season (its technically impossible based on what we apparently know about annual league totals) - thats what im getting at. Obviously not all other players will have an exactly "average" season, but we are talking hypotheticals and theory here. Thats all i mean by the game demands it. All else equal, if some mike trouts have a great season then the game will demand some of the other mike trouts have a subpar season to balance things out.

You are correct though, theoretically all mike trouts could have a great season (although I have never seen this), but its dependent on the performance of all the other players in the league and the overall annual league totals.