+++ Possible OOTP 6 Features +++

[JoeRockEHF]

Here's a suggestion. Don't know if this has been brought up or not but during the season you have day games and night games but only one stadium picture to use. Most of the stadiums out there have daylight in them but for those who want more realism it would look a little out of place playing a night game with a bright blue sky in the background.

You can of course, switch the picture manually but that takes time. My suggestion would be to put two pictures of a stadium for each team. One night and one day. If the game couldn't tell you had a night or day game you could at least get to choose.

For example it could be:

cubsday.bmp for the day game and cubsnight.bmp for the night game. Then at the beginning of the game at the Game Setup screen you could choose which stadium picture you wanted to use.

Just a suggestion.

[white wolf]

How come nobody thought of this before? Awesome idea!

[player196]

Sounds good. Can't wait

[Jason]

Please add a "skip pick" feature to the amateur draft so leagues that don't get lists from some owners can have those owners lose their picks...

[Ktulu]

Here is a simple one. When the game automatically goes to the lineup screen for substitution purposes it would be nice if the current inning and score was displayed.

It doesnt happen all the time but every now and then when I am not paying 100% attention to a game(like if you have the tv on in the background ) I end up at the bullpen screen and I cant remember if Im in the 6th or the 7th inning . Do I bring in my setup man or my middle man?

Im sure/hope Im not the only one that has encountered this dilemna

[Aztecs - WLB]

I appreciate your efforts and your communication with the people who play your games. I'd like to offer my perspective on some things the game could use to help increase my enjoyment.

1) I'd like to see the interface be a bit different where as it doesn't bury my screen when I play it. It is the only program I own that I have to minimize to see anything else on my screen. This is particularly annoying when I am trying to write articles and either have to save a report (that can be partial screen) or flip back and forth from OOTP to Word.

2) I'd like to see the online league exports feature greatly enhanced. Right now it appears that Commishs' have to manually zip the file and post it. This typically means that everything under the sun comes with it. Old emails, old boxscores, retired player list, almanacs, etc. I'm on a dial-up and the 13 Meg size files by season end are _almost_ enough to get me to quit OOTP leagues altogether. It couldn't be that hard for the game to neatly package all the updated or new files together for a small download.

3) I'd like to see a feature that allows online leagues to see EVERY single action the Commish takes that alters ANY sort of aspect of the game. Some kind of unalterable file log that makes it impossible for Commish's to cheat and makes the league bulletproof and beyond consideration of unethical behavior. This feature would eliminate some major issues I've seen in leagues that collapse.

4) I'd like to see less extremes in the statistical models. I think we can all agree that the overall league stats are impressive in how close they can come to real world models, but my league has had one pitcher who has 7 no-hitters in one season. This is WAY beyond the acceptable standards of deviation. There always seems to be 3-7 players in the league that put up monster numbers. Please try to level it out so that the difference between stars is not so extreme.

5) Please make the financial model more sophisticated. The market size/fan base levels seem to jump totally at random and there doesn't seem to be any benefit for having a dynasty or sucking for a decade. The mechandising revenue should have a major connection to gate sales. My merch revenue seems to increase about 1-2% annually regardless of how well my team does. It would be nice to have the option to have different levels of seating costs and maybe different benefits/costs for them. No stadium has all $9 seats. Maybe there could be a sliding mix of scales for the % of total seats and how many bleachers, folding indiv seats, box seats, luxury boxes, etc there are. You could have a system that charges a team to make changes to the mix or to modify the ballpark. Essentially the financial model could be much much more interesting and dynamic. It's almost embarrassingly simplistic currently.

6) I'd like to see the ballpark factors handled differently. I don't know how it works now, but when I break the numbers down it appears that if you have a park with a 1.20 hit for avg and a .80 hit for homer rating you end up with about a 1.20 hit for avg result but about a 1.05 homerun result. Does it figure for hits first and then decide if you hit a homer or not? If so then this totally screws with the ballpark figures. I also question the method for figuring homeruns. I don't think it has a thing to do with field dimensions but instead whether the ball was hit and if it was a homer or not. Then I think the game assigns a distance to the homer. As a test I made a ballpark that was 500' to both left and right and 550' down the middle. I gave the park 30' wallls all around. I simmed a game and there were 2 homeruns. One went for 503' and the other went 505'. Forget the fact that both of those would have hit the wall and been doubles, there is no chance that there would be 2 homeruns in park like this. There might be a couple homeruns a year. I'd encourage you to not allow anyone to set %'s of the various types of hits. That should be determined by the engine determining a hit, deciding on a direction, vertical angle and power to see where it ends up. Then the fielder would be determined if he could get there or not. This would actually be simming baseball, not assigning percentages to make players fit into some range. With this anyone could look at a stadium and see the ratings for the park as they develop instead of knowing what it will be before the ball is thrown.

That's all I'll throw out there for now. Please understand that I love your game and that I will continue playing. I am giving you feedback because you are requesting it and because I think I know what makes games cool. If you ever want to discuss this in more detail I'd be happy to. I've thought a lot about your game and could help you make some major improvements.

Never stop until you have achieved perfection. Then make it even better.

ben d ferguson at yah oo dot com (no spaces + proper symbols)

[Treches]

Originally posted by Aztecs - WLB
2) I'd like to see the online league exports feature greatly enhanced. Right now it appears that Commishs' have to manually zip the file and post it. This typically means that everything under the sun comes with it. Old emails, old boxscores, retired player list, almanacs, etc. I'm on a dial-up and the 13 Meg size files by season end are _almost_ enough to get me to quit OOTP leagues altogether. It couldn't be that hard for the game to neatly package all the updated or new files together for a small download.

Not everything has to be uploaded every time. There are a few ways to go. Easiest one is this (as explained by Kezzek):

"Using WinZip: Zip the league file, sort by date within the zip file, extract the ones that changed (be sure the "Use Folder Names" option is on), rezip the result."

Depending on the size of the league, the zip should be around 2MB.

[sporr]

I'm always pushing for more commissioner-specific reports and utilities. Won't satisfy the solo gamer, but would enhance the online experience.

[blmeanie]

Originally posted by Aztecs - WLB
6) I'd like to see the ballpark factors handled differently. I don't know how it works now, but when I break the numbers down it appears that if you have a park with a 1.20 hit for avg and a .80 hit for homer rating you end up with about a 1.20 hit for avg result but about a 1.05 homerun result. Does it figure for hits first and then decide if you hit a homer or not? If so then this totally screws with the ballpark figures.

One thing I remember hearing/seeing is that these factors are relative to other teams/stadiums factors in the league. Meaning if you have 1 team set to 1.3 and 9 teams set to 0.8, your 1.3 will likely not behave like 1.3. League averages would be calculated and then factors to be used are recalculated.

Maybe somebody else can elaborate or correct me on this f I am wrong.

[Lawley]

Maybe something ese you could spend your money on is equipment, better things to help your players get over an injury faster, tihngs for the club house. Maybe somethings could help your players get better like you could set the times they practice, and how many times a week and for how long. This could be helpfull sometimes and make them better or sometimes get them tired. Buying better weight lifting equipment for your players, and upgraded gym or something. This is just another way you could spend your money.

[PBRmeASAP]

A manager and a GM for each team. In MM you are only the Manager, AI makes transactions for you until you get to be credible and than you can have both roles.

40 man rosters

Expansion and Contraction

[Vajracchedika]

Azteces, field dimensions only affect the play-by-play. They do not determine the likelihood of home runs or other types of hits. The ballpark factors are the only things that affect actual gameplay results. The field dimensions merely determine the description of the plays, as you have seen. If you set the ballpark factors to 100, but you have a 30-foot wall and 500-foot fence distances, you're going to see players hit home runs at the same rate they always do, but they'll all be phenomenal 500-foot moon shots.

I think this needs to be adjusted somehow. It would require a major overhaul in the game engine, but the fence distances and the wall heights, combined with weather and elevation, should be what determines the park factors. The park factors should be automatically calculated based on the park dimensions. I know that DarkHorse has a utility in Excel that does something like this, but I don't know how reliable it really is. If it works well enough, then Markus could use that as the basis for changing the game.

[ChuckB]

I've tried to read through most of these replies, but something that would significantly affect my enjoyment of the game would be more of a role by the coaches. As it stands, coaches play a background role -- and perhaps they always should -- but in real-life a manager can go to his pitching coach and inquire about a player, or perhaps even have his coach speak to a player. This seems complex and complicated, but it doesn't have to be: it can be a simple "click on coach, click on player" and the coach, based on his experience and talent level, can give you an assessment of the player that you've selected. That coach could tell you that a player would benefit from rest, needs to play out of his slump, or totally looks clueless. A pitching coach could tell you that a starter can give you a good effort on short-rest, is tired (in between innings for example, when a player that might normally throw 90 pitches has 65, and winds up tired the next inning), or has a tired arm. Also, in the style of FPS:Baseball, being able to settle your pitcher down during a rough stretch, or just delay the game while you get a reliever warm, would be not only a nice touch, but add to the realism.

Just a thought. There are many times I'd love to have my awesome pitching coach tell me what's wrong with my ace who has a 9.00 ERA in his last five starts (in the form of his "assessment"), or why my star hitter is 0 for his last 54.

Just some thoughts

[rem]

First off, I have to say that OOTP5 is about as close to perfect as it gets. It’s the best game I’ve ever owned (PC or otherwise), the gameplay is great, the compatibility for online play, the player histories, and the support (well it would be nice it the patches would work) are wonderful. The one thing that I really feel is missing is the head-to-head online play. Add that and I’ll be happy for ever. Additionally, I think the arbitration system quite frankly sucks and the Free Agent system is pretty bad too. However, it is much better than Madden or Mogul and is probably as close to real as it gets. Eitherway, I’ll buy OOTP6 no matter what.

I just wanted to add that I skimmed every post and read close to 85% of them.

P.S. an easy conversion from OOTP 5 to 6 would be great.

[white wolf]

Here are a few ideas, relatively simple to implement:

1. The substitution screen: make batting/hitting hand visible on the first page. I have to go to the pitcher/batting ratings page to see which left-handed/right-handed pinch hitter/reliever I have available.

2. Lefty/righty stats aren't mentioned in the PBP.

3. The ability for users to create their own statistics

4. In manager mode, arguments with players, media interviews and newspaper reactions (ex. "You open the (CityName) Globe and read the headlines. You feel all excited about your team getting all the praise over that meaningless football franchise across town"). including some of the nicer stuff such as taking a few players out to yr house for some beer and cigars, Vermeil-style . Markus may now what I mean, there was a German game called 'On the Ball' (Anstoss -sp?), a manager simulation in which for instance you could run into yr players playing poker, and decide what to do with it (release them, play with them or say 'this is the last time you'll be doing this). Sounds too complicated to put in the game? Make it something mod-able, like injury.txt. There will be events.txt files (if that's how you want to call them) floating all over the OOTP cyberspace.

5. Ability to attach intro wavs to players. MP3s might be even better, I'm not sure about the license. Again, the beauty of it is that OOTP Developments doesn't have to do much, just provide the avenue for us to change the game and we'll do it. If anybody here has looked at the modding crowd for High Heat, they know what I mean. For instance, Jason Isringhausen is player 123 (p123.bmp). If p123.wav (or p123.mp3) is present in sound directory, p123 is played when player
a) is subbed into the game
b) makes a great fielding play
c) scores a home run
d) strikes out the side.

Similarly, say for example Tampa Bay is team29 (logo29.bmp).
File logo29.wav (or logo29.mp3, or team29.wav, or whichever format/name you want) is played when team29 wins at home.

I'll think of a few more things later

[ChuckB]

What gives most any game legs is the ability to play and re-play it over and over again. Adding white wolf's ideas would do that -- allow us to alter event files, injury files, attach sounds to certain events. It wouldn't preclude us from buying OOTP6 (and 7 and 8 etc) because you'd move those features from version to version, and allow us to build the game to our tastes as it develops. Wonderful concept, and I'm sure that simple things like sounds and user-defineable injury and event files wouldn't be too difficult to build into the next engine.

OOTP is a great franchise, and with a solid player base the possibilities are endless. Toggles for turning on/off certain things would be nice, too; like the endless 3-2 foul balls for example (foul balls on/off) By doing so, you silence a lot of critics just because they can turn off a feature that they don't like, and therefore can't criticize.

[medlinke]

I'd love to see an XML based statistical tracking engine that could be exported. In this way it would be possible to turn all those static league pages into something prettier, and much more database driven.

Essentially it would open up a whole new world for online leagues. People wouldn't really even have to send their files in any more. They could set their lineups online, make their trades online, etc because everything from the game could be put into a database and then exported back into the game if the files were all XML based.

That would be amazingly useful, powerful, and hecka fun!

[digi]

I don't think that the trading block feature works that well right now as it's a passive approach to trading. Is there a way that you can shop a player (or multiple players) to all teams at once and see if any teams have interest.

The reason I ask is right now, you need to poll each team individually. This way, you can gauge which teams (or none) would be interested in what you're offering.

Thoughts?

[TRO]

Originally posted by medlinke
I'd love to see an XML based statistical tracking engine that could be exported. In this way it would be possible to turn all those static league pages into something prettier, and much more database driven.

Essentially it would open up a whole new world for online leagues. People wouldn't really even have to send their files in any more. They could set their lineups online, make their trades online, etc because everything from the game could be put into a database and then exported back into the game if the files were all XML based.

That would be amazingly useful, powerful, and hecka fun!

It would also allow them to not have to purchase OOTP to play. While I do want greater statistical reporting, I don't think we'll see something to the effect it allows for lost sales.

[white wolf]

(a pretty huge addition would be):

The ability to see cold/hot streaks before going to the option screen which precedes the game (i.e. the ability to see them in the lineup screen)

In addition, if I change the lineup in the lineup screen, then go to the option screen, see that I've forgotten a change or another and come back to the lineup, all changes are lost.

(in the above post, by the lineup screen I mean the screen in which the lineup can be changed; and the option screen is the one in which the two lineups are displayed, but can't be changed).