Does anyone here actually enjoy playing offline mode?

[jfb1985]

I have a TON of fun with it. AND I'm an O's fan.

Just like someone else said, I kind of treat offline like a sandbox mode.I have 10 different saves cause I love the idea you can do anything you want with rules and demographics and such.

The other part of this to take into consideration is that Im a truck driver, 6 days out of 7, if not all, I don't have internet anyway...

[TomVeal]

There's a simple impediment to tanking: Turn off the amateur draft, and turn on high school and college leagues. As players graduate, they'll enter the free agent pool, where all teams can compete to sign them.

[Syd Thrift]

So... one way of looking at this is that this is a game that people commonly sink hundreds of hours into per version. Even if you haven’t, you’ve likely sunk that much time into the game as a whole. I feel like OOTPD tries to make incremental, shoring-up style fixes every year but just playing the game a lot will cause you to find brand new ways of cheesing the AI. To some extent this can’t be resolved. The Paradox games have exactly the same issue, as do a number of war games people sink lots of hours into (the AGEOD series, for instance, is wonderfully complex but the AI can’t keep up with you eventually).

I don’t like games that handle this by just giving the AI more stuff, which is what EU4 and for that matter the Civilization series do, but by and large that’s how it gets handled nowadays.

I do think that controlling the flow of information works a lot better. I can tell you that playing stats only, for example, makes drafting in particular a loooooot harder. I know the argument against this is that scouts exist in real life and give you ratings but even there I think those ratings are way, way, way more predicated on what they actually see on the field (and which therefore directly translates into stats) than people realize or accept. My big issue with scouting is that scouts should be more resistant to update their opinions on players than the stat line might indicate, not less, as is the case right now. I do feel like doing that would make the AI weaker, not stronger, as it’d be operating on assumptions that the guy you’re trading away who just fell off a cliff is still potentially a good hitter, for example.

Again, I think the “bad boy points” thing would at least be a way of preventing wholesale cheese. There are GMs who do call up other guys and offer them dumb trades. Over time, those GMs get hung up on. I believe Jim Bowden was a prime example of this from what I heard. If you don’t come to the table initially with a reasonable offer, the other guy not dealing with you, period, should be a thing. Yet, the trade screen is kind of built around you adding and removing parts until the GM will accept the lowest offer.

As for in-game tanking, again I don’t think you really have to right now but I think, too, that if you wanted to make the game more realistic you could have something like “bad boy points” that make it easier for you to get fired and then harder to get rehired by someone else. You want to run a 4 man rotation in the modern era? Okay but it’s going to cost you points. As long as you’re winning, the owner might ignore this (maybe not as much if he has a Hands-On style) but if you’re deliberately losing by overworking your pitching staff in unreasonable ways or doing something else that’s way against the grain for the time period, you probably won’t even last the season.

Also, players being used in wonky ways should blame you if they aren’t putting together “money” stats, which they already do to some extent but which could be heightened if you’re breaking rules. Like, if you’re an established modern starter and your manager comes in and tells you you’ll now be pitching every 4th game with no bullpen support, how likely are you to just accept that? At the very least when it comes time to look for a new deal you’re probably going to tell your GM to shove it, and in extreme circumstances you might even quit the team / retire abruptly.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

I (shameless plug alert!) designed a mixed real and fictional league for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and I'm kicking around expanding it. What's the challenge? Take the worst team in the league, run it up till you wins a WS. Then quit and start over again with the worst team. A big part of my enjoyment has come in starting to go to the towns I put teams in. Just Sunday, Mrs. Cobb and I went to Grand Marais (Lake Superior shoreline town) for the first time. It was breathtaking, and the sunset incredible. That trip helped me to connect my real life with my fantasy league...made it more alive.

Bottom line in my humble opinion: Offline mode is as much fun as you make it. If it isn't a challenge, you've got your settings wrong, or you've not put enough time and effort into it.. Work at it, nurse it, create a league of your own, don't always draft the best players, try winning with the 59 White Sox or turning around the 1930 Phillies...use the game to its full potential! Manage a minor league team...THAT is a fearsome challenge.

Your mileage may vary.

Do you have a team in Paradise Michigan with a catcher named Alex Mcknight?

[Scottiedog43]

I only play solo.
Don’t need the noise or drama of an on-line league.

[Ty Cobb]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Do you have a team in Paradise Michigan with a catcher named Alex Mcknight?

No McKinght with the Paradise Birds, sorry...

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

No McKinght with the Paradise Birds, sorry...

So you do have a team in Paradise. So cool. You may already know, but Alex Mcknight is a private detective an a series written by Steve Hamilton The stories take place in Paradise. Mcknight is an ex minor league catcher.

[SirMichaelJordan]

I went 4 versions dating back to OOTP 11 before I won my first World Series...

If you want an extra level of difficulty and realism, increase TCR.

[progen]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

I went 4 versions dating back to OOTP 11 before I won my first World Series...

If you want an extra level of difficulty and realism, increase TCR.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is TCR?

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by progen

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is TCR?

Talent Change Randomness

It changes the rate of potential ratings getting better or worse.


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[progen]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

Talent Change Randomness

It changes the rate of potential ratings getting better or worse.


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Thanks. I see the default is 100. What setting do you suggest that offers more of a challenge.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

Talent Change Randomness

It changes the rate of potential ratings getting better or worse.


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There are so many options to make the game more challenging if you're just too good at it

Boosting the TCR is definitely one of the biggest ways to increase the unpredictability of the game and increase the difficulty for a human player.

If you boost the TCR to 200 and also either turn off visible ratings or at least use a smaller ratings scale like 1-5 (and if you want, along with that can even have the ai use ratings more in its evaluations at the same time), those are probably the two biggest things you can do to make the game much more challenging.

[progen]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

There are so many options to make the game more challenging if you're just too good at it

Boosting the TCR is definitely one of the biggest ways to increase the unpredictability of the game and increase the difficulty for a human player.

If you boost the TCR to 200 and also either turn off of at least use a smaller ratings scale like 1-5 (and if you want, along with that can even have the ai use ratings more in its evaluations at the same time), those are probably the two biggest things you can do to make the game much more challenging.

Thanks Lukas,

I'll try that in my next universe. Many times, I will play stats only, mainly because it makes me really pay attention to the players stats, but I'll try the 1-5, as right now I have 20-80. I never play with stars on, and also I'm thinking to eliminate "potential ratings scale", and just show current.

I almost always sim 5-8 years, and then take over the Expos as an expansion team, and every season have the lowest payroll, as I like to see how far I can go on a very small budget. So many different ways to play the game, a lot of the fun for me is experimenting.

And appears I should change AI settings, as right now, I have 30-25-25-20, as majority of people on another post like 25 across the board. I decided to tweak that a bit.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by progen

Thanks. I see the default is 100. What setting do you suggest that offers more of a challenge.

Personally I’ve been using it at 200 for years.


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[DustyElbows]

I exclusively play with expansion teams. You can make the expansion draft arbitrarily hard. Your farm system will suck for a long time and it will basically never have depth. You'll probably be in a small market and thus have little money to spend. Your owner will slowly lose patience with during the inevitable two years (or more) of being really bad at the start. It's a great challenge and a fun way to play with fictional teams.

[wodi]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

Personally I’ve been using it at 200 for years.


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Do you find it impacting the league’s superstars? I like the theory of 200 but I’m worried it will cause change in most players, leading to you not being able to have HOF careers from some stars.

Maybe I’m just paranoid

[eldur00]

I only need 3 words to make the offline game a million times harder for the OP...

Play.Manager.Only.

/Mic drop.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by wodi

Do you find it impacting the league’s superstars? I like the theory of 200 but I’m worried it will cause change in most players, leading to you not being able to have HOF careers from some stars.

Maybe I’m just paranoid

No, it only change talent aka potential. Superstar players are already developed.

You’ll see more early round busts and late round steals. But nothing at extreme levels.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by TomVeal

Unless man-decades of analysis and mega-hours of computer time have been devoted to a game with relatively simple rules (chess, checkers, backgammon - go is apparently still too much of a challenge), AI will be barely competent at best. I've played plenty of computer games that any human can win the first time he plays.

.

:You are woefully behind the times. Chess grandmasters need pawn and move odds to be competitive with AI and they still lose. Many of these programs are free and run on any computer, supercomputer not required. The last match between computer and human in go ended 4-1 in favor of the computer. Subsequently, that computer program lost a match 100-0 to a better program.

The point is, a baseball AI could be made so that you would rarely win even on easy level, but would that be fun?

[quillenl]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

No, it only change talent aka potential. Superstar players are already developed.

You’ll see more early round busts and late round steals. But nothing at extreme levels.

Even at 100 some real life hall of famers will be busts. In my most recent league Walter Johnson was a borderline 5th starter by the time he turned 26. That example is what I believe the poster is concerned about.

[edit] https://statsplus.net/asahi/reports/...yer_14038.html
Link above is to the report for Walter Johnson in a recent Online League I was in where TCR is set to 100. This is not unusual. If that would bother you playing a historical league then you need to lower TCR to near 1 or play with Recalc on.