AI Evaluation Settings

[progen]

Originally Posted by itsmb8

Im gonna roll with 25/25/25/25, but trade difficulty on max, TCR on 200, injuries on RMD, scout accuracy on low, and no current ratings displayed.

Make myself rely on scouting reports and stats to make decisions while making the AI decisions as realistic as possible.

As a "stats only" guy, I like this idea. I always forget when I'm setting up a new universe to use TCR on 200. So many "good ideas" in this thread.

Does it make a difference if it's fictional or starting in the real world? I usually sim 5-7 years to build some history, then take over an expansion team.

[ThePride87]

PSU and Sweed, I appreciate your yearly inputs on this topic, but I feel like you two ramble on and on about your own biases....and they don't help. One is trying to achieve some level of challenge while forever changing their opinion, and the other is stubbornly staying with 4 25s without any interest in change or understanding if it's valid
I find the best solution is to listen to the devs and what is default. Default is there for a reason, I'm not gonna assume I'm smarter than them.

[ThePride87]

Originally Posted by progen

Love this yearly thread. And I agree, as we all are trying to get the game to more realistic. Here's Lucas's small take on making the game more challenging.

"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."

I find this to be very impactful, that Lucas quote. What I'm reading from that is....don't change the AI evaluation. We have it there for a reason. If you want a challenge, increase the randomness in the game. TCR of 200 does nothing except cause more unexplained changes in development....something both you the user and the AI will have to handle, which is fair. And lowering the grading system to something simple like 1 thru 5....again, nothing with the player ratings is changing, only you have less definitive info to work with. Your randomness is increasing. This I find to be acceptable, because in a game where we are forever trying to find an edge on the AI, nothing is harder to defeat than randomness itself. And we see it in MLB all the time, especially with prospects. Often there's no rhyme or reason why a player didn't work out or rose above expectations.
I would rather trust what the devs are telling me instead of people going back and forth on this forum until we all die.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by ThePride87

PSU and Sweed, I appreciate your yearly inputs on this topic, but I feel like you two ramble on and on about your own biases....and they don't help. One is trying to achieve some level of challenge while forever changing their opinion, and the other is stubbornly staying with 4 25s without any interest in change or understanding if it's valid
I find the best solution is to listen to the devs and what is default. Default is there for a reason, I'm not gonna assume I'm smarter than them.

21 years of playing this game and you think I have stubbornly stayed with the 4-25's. You know nothing about my years with OOTP and what I have or have not changed. (in my best Bill Burr voice) The arrogance that goes into that statement, wow.

So PSU changes his mind and makes changes and is... WRONG.
I keep using what I'm using and don't make changes and I am .... WRONG.
Got it.

If it's working for me, in my solo game, please tell me.. why would I change it? For changes sake? Because the developer said "default"? Yeah, just no.

At the start of my latest season I made some changes to MiLB roster settings, due to what another user posted here, to try to help with player movement. I could have stubbornly held onto my current settings but I didn't. Go figure. The new way caused more problems than it tried to fix, IMHO, and I switched back to what I had. Switching anything "in season" is something I almost never do but... this needed to be corrected, and now. So much for stubborn. Just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean it doesn't work for the user that posted the suggestion. It's not one or the other.

Well, let's see... I think you've missed the point of my posts. My settings are not about challenge but rather the appearance of reality. IE the guy that gets the BIG extension while batting .235 with 15 HR because his ratings say he is an MVP type player that should hit 45 HR and bat .300. Take that general statement and run with it as I'm not going to write a book about all of the possible variations that can result.

Having said that, me wanting the "appearance of reality" over challenge does not mean challenge goes out the window. Whether default, 4-25's, or whatever else I've used, over the past 21 years of playing, I have not seen any big changes in my teams stat output or how many games I win. It simply doesn't make that much difference other than what I see in the transactions.

I'd guess 95% of my settings are default because I too believe the developer has tested more seasons than any user and has tools that dig deeper into the output to verify the engine. I also trust that autocalc, added by the developer, is key to having your game perform as it should. Others will tell you different and yet wonder why their balks, wild pitches, etc. etc. are off

If you've read my posts you will note I have specifically stated that I am not trying to talk anyone into using the 4-25's. I am only posting about what I use and why it works for me in a thread that asks for that information. Whether anyone uses it or not has no affect on my game. It is refreshing though to have someone that does know what is valid and plays the only "right way".

As far as default and going with what the developers have come up with how about injuries? Note default is nowhere near real life injuries. Yes, the developer does explain that and why "realistic high" is not default. IE it's to keep complaints down from the casual and new users. Though of course there are many long time serious players that still prefer default. Shouldn't "realistic high" be default and let anyone that wants less change from that? IMHO it should be but, I understand the why and it doesn't make a difference in how I play. No harm, no foul.

The developer does say there is a reason for default evaluations settings just like there is for injury. What do you think that reason is? I assume you would agree it is to help the AI and add "challenge" and not "realistic transactions based on stats"? For my game I try going for "realistic transactions" over challenge. It's no different than going with "realistic high" injuries over default. It is why we have options and can play our way.

This thread, that comes up every year, is simply a discussion of the how's and why's of how we set up our games. It's not a competition of who's right and who's wrong.

For clarity let's end this with the definition of "reality" in a solo game of OOTP..
Reality, in OOTP, is whatever each of us decides it is in our game. 4-25's, IMHO, makes for more realistic transactions. YMMV and that is ok

[Pelican]

On TCR, my concern was I might see a guy with a record of 14-16 in the low minors, high ERA, then 5-17 in the high minors, worse ERA, then 2-5 in small parts of two major league season, poor peripherals - who then proceeds to go 52-20 over three and a half major league years. Stupid, right? Defeating any attempt to scout or rate minor league players? Totally off the radar for anyone tracking prospects? You wouldn’t want a game that played so random. No way!! And, yet, those are the stats of Max “Chicken” Fried. It makes no sense. Atlanta plays with TCR at 200 I guess.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by ThePride87

I find this to be very impactful, that Lucas quote. What I'm reading from that is....don't change the AI evaluation. We have it there for a reason. If you want a challenge, increase the randomness in the game. TCR of 200 does nothing except cause more unexplained changes in development....something both you the user and the AI will have to handle, which is fair. And lowering the grading system to something simple like 1 thru 5....again, nothing with the player ratings is changing, only you have less definitive info to work with. Your randomness is increasing. This I find to be acceptable, because in a game where we are forever trying to find an edge on the AI, nothing is harder to defeat than randomness itself. And we see it in MLB all the time, especially with prospects. Often there's no rhyme or reason why a player didn't work out or rose above expectations.
I would rather trust what the devs are telling me instead of people going back and forth on this forum until we all die.

Yes, this is the quote I commonly refer back to. I am personally not a fan of using 1-5 ratings scale, but I would venture to guess that 2-8 accomplishes the same thing while still remaining a bit more realistic.