Historical League how does it work (Career)

bestbrother · 07-13-2023, 07:37 AM

Im interested in starting as a team in a historical setting (i say historical, probably late 90s as thats when i got into baseball with it appearing on UKTV).

Anyway, if i select career play does the game do the following:

1 - Bring in real life players as they appeared in real life and do they go to that relevant team.. or will the game make its own path?
2 - Does the league expand / change as it did irl? Or do you have to do all that manually?
3 - Is it as simple as playing a modern day MLB career, in that i can load it and play, no manual changes annually etc

I have a dream of just putting together a team of studs and seeing how it pans out in an era that i sort of know a little bit more about (player names) than i do now.

Brad K · 07-13-2023, 09:40 AM

1. Career play has to do with how the ratings are handled. There are settings for whether you want players to enter the game with their historical teams, enter via draft, or enter as free agents.

2. The league expands historically if that feature is enabled. It has nothing to do with selecting career play.

3. I have no idea what this question means.

Pelican · 07-13-2023, 10:12 AM

As to the last question, I can help. Going in, you’ll need to choose whether your goal is to replay historical seasons, with rosters, lineups, injuries, drafts, trades, missed seasons as they were, recalculating ratings each year based on actual statistics. Or, do you want to start at a historical point, but allow player development with “talent change randomness” set high, making your own trades, setting rosters and lineups, real injuries and missed seasons toggled off, and no annual recalc based on real stats. In other words, do you want to duplicate as much as possible the real seasons, or do you want to use history as a point of departure, and ask “what if” things had developed differently.

I’m partial to the latter option, the “what if”. I figure the actual seasons have already been played, I don’t need to do that again (and OOTP set up properly should yield results very close to IRL). I’d rather see how things could have changed, thanks to my intervention. For example, I don’t like the rich team and poor team inequality, so I give small market teams more generous owners, impose a hard salary cap, and a spending floor. This tends to yield much more competitive pennant races. And for the late 90’s era you mention, I would probably dial back HR to reduce the impact of PED’s.

No disrespect meant to those “replay” folks. It’s a completely valid way to play the game. And, if you have a team in mind you want to run, you can leave everything as is, except for your trades and rosters and lineups and strategic decisions. Starting from exactly the same place, could you have done better? That’s a real challenge. Most folks who report in these forums seem to take expansion or small market teams, and try a makeover, with some benefit of hindsight, I’m sure.

So, not simple. Lots of changes and settings to think about. Plenty of advice available here as to those choices. As you will hear, set it up and then run a test, saving and backing up, in case you want to start over with refined settings, closer to your goal.

07-13-2023, 07:37 AM	#1
bestbrother Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2015 Posts: 371	Historical League how does it work (Career) Im interested in starting as a team in a historical setting (i say historical, probably late 90s as thats when i got into baseball with it appearing on UKTV). Anyway, if i select career play does the game do the following: 1 - Bring in real life players as they appeared in real life and do they go to that relevant team.. or will the game make its own path? 2 - Does the league expand / change as it did irl? Or do you have to do all that manually? 3 - Is it as simple as playing a modern day MLB career, in that i can load it and play, no manual changes annually etc I have a dream of just putting together a team of studs and seeing how it pans out in an era that i sort of know a little bit more about (player names) than i do now.

07-13-2023, 09:40 AM	#2
Brad K Banned Join Date: May 2016 Location: St Petersburg Florida USA Posts: 6,693 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	1. Career play has to do with how the ratings are handled. There are settings for whether you want players to enter the game with their historical teams, enter via draft, or enter as free agents. 2. The league expands historically if that feature is enabled. It has nothing to do with selecting career play. 3. I have no idea what this question means. Last edited by Brad K; 07-13-2023 at 09:41 AM. Reason: typos

07-13-2023, 10:12 AM	#3
Pelican Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2021 Location: Wilmington, Delaware Posts: 2,996	As to the last question, I can help. Going in, you’ll need to choose whether your goal is to replay historical seasons, with rosters, lineups, injuries, drafts, trades, missed seasons as they were, recalculating ratings each year based on actual statistics. Or, do you want to start at a historical point, but allow player development with “talent change randomness” set high, making your own trades, setting rosters and lineups, real injuries and missed seasons toggled off, and no annual recalc based on real stats. In other words, do you want to duplicate as much as possible the real seasons, or do you want to use history as a point of departure, and ask “what if” things had developed differently. I’m partial to the latter option, the “what if”. I figure the actual seasons have already been played, I don’t need to do that again (and OOTP set up properly should yield results very close to IRL). I’d rather see how things could have changed, thanks to my intervention. For example, I don’t like the rich team and poor team inequality, so I give small market teams more generous owners, impose a hard salary cap, and a spending floor. This tends to yield much more competitive pennant races. And for the late 90’s era you mention, I would probably dial back HR to reduce the impact of PED’s. No disrespect meant to those “replay” folks. It’s a completely valid way to play the game. And, if you have a team in mind you want to run, you can leave everything as is, except for your trades and rosters and lineups and strategic decisions. Starting from exactly the same place, could you have done better? That’s a real challenge. Most folks who report in these forums seem to take expansion or small market teams, and try a makeover, with some benefit of hindsight, I’m sure. So, not simple. Lots of changes and settings to think about. Plenty of advice available here as to those choices. As you will hear, set it up and then run a test, saving and backing up, in case you want to start over with refined settings, closer to your goal. __________________ Pelican OOTP 2020-? ”Hard to believe, Harry.” Last edited by Pelican; 07-13-2023 at 10:15 AM.