OOTP 24 has an increased random factor than previous versions.

[Samueltbaum]

Hi all,

To start I'd like to say I'd enjoy to get any feedback from a developer.

I've spent many many hours, trying to accomplish a complete monster team that destroyed the league.

I've had a great deal of assistance from the OOTP community, thank you all very much for this, and most keeping it civil!

For those that don't know, At some point with a baseball game I load my team filled with the best offensive players at each position (without adjusting any of their ratings), and all the best pitchers. The goal is to create a monster that is pure destruction to the league. I've played over a dozen different baseball games, and never had a problem with accomplishing this until OOTP 24. I did have a 10 year stretch of world series wins (95-105 win teams), when I played normally, and had some of but not all the best players in the game.

If anyone wants to see all the settings I've adjusted or more details, you can check out my previous posts on the matter.

I don't ever do the historic gameplay, so it may be different than standard.

My finding up to this point, is that there is a random factor that discredits ratings/statistics that regularly allows terrible/much lesser teams to become monsters when they play the best historic offensive team of all time (if it were in real life). Because of this my win totals on the season are decreased by 10+ compared to previous versions of OOTP I've played

Some may say a small sample size, I have 50+ seasons over 10 different save files in OOTP trying to accomplish this. Almost every year, the teams that beat me the most, are the ones that are under .500. My team destroys 95+ win teams but loses the seasons series 1-5 (my team often gets shut out) against 95+ loss teams.

I've never asked for anything to change for OOTP. Its a great and very elaborate game. This said If anyone knows a setting I can adjust to turn down the randomness, I would greatly enjoy. I simply understand now that OOTP 24 is not the game for me to create a monster team with all the best players in the game to win 130+ wins and 20 straight world series with ease. I'll play OOTP 21 for that.

Again many thanks for all that have helped me on this journey! I'm sorry I wasn't able to find a solution to share with others.

[Rain King]

There is no randomness setting.

The game is based on ratings, probabilities....and randomness. That is the engine. You can't turn randomness up or down as that would mean it isn't random.

The difference you may be seeing from OOTP 21 to OOTP 24 could be caused by many factors such as the rating scales, creation modifiers, development engine which are all constantly being tweaked and balanced by the development team.

What I assure you has not changed is the amount of randomness.

You are unlikely to get much experienced help in your endeavor as your goals are generally the opposite of what most people are looking to accomplish when adjusting the many settings that are available within the game. Most are looking to create balanced and/or realistic environments.

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by Samueltbaum

My finding up to this point, is that there is a random factor that discredits ratings/statistics that regularly allows terrible/much lesser teams to become monsters when they play the best historic offensive team of all time (if it were in real life). Because of this my win totals on the season are decreased by 10+ compared to previous versions of OOTP I've played

Baseball is a sport where the worst teams have always had a significant chance to beat the best teams. You are not going to find settings that change that.

Your best bet is to go into the editor and max out your guys instead of utilizing the approximations of mere mortal real life players if you are wanting to create some kind of .950 win percentage super-team that has a near-guaranteed chance to win 3 playoff series in a row.

In a realistic MLB environment, which OOTP is trying to replicate, there are not 25 players that are that much better than the rest of the population.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Baseball is a sport where the worst teams have always had a significant chance to beat the best teams. You are not going to find settings that change that.

Your best bet is to go into the editor and max out your guys instead of utilizing the approximations of mere mortal real life players if you are wanting to create some kind of .950 win percentage super-team that has a near-guaranteed chance to win 3 playoff series in a row.

In a realistic MLB environment, which OOTP is trying to replicate, there are not 25 players that are that much better than the rest of the population.

When bought, I had no ??????. But that was when I wanted it more challenging. First quest is always make the worst team the best team as hard as possible while not cheating the game. I did it in year 2 challenge mode with hard trades, and year 1 non challenge mode. Loved every second of it.

After that, It becomes play time. Second quest was to keep the 1st quest team going for a while, maintaining the best team in the league, while having the number 1 farm system, so it is a continuous flow of always being the best at both. Love seeing players develop, such a cool element of the game. Thats when i had my 10 year stretch of being world series champs.

When I lose interest in that, 10-20 years (takes a lot of time, many transactions), my third quest become to create the juggernaut to completely destroy the league.

That is when I had my first ???????, because that's when my teams started to lose to awful teams, while destroying the best. Along with this my non monster stats, were not that much different than my monster team stats, and I'd only get a maybe 5 more wins a seasons. Adjusting settings increased stats a little and turned it into 120-129 win teams, which is still great but not OOTP 21, 18, 17 continuous 130 win teams with little effort.

I think the thing what confuses me most on this game is I could still create a team that dominated yearly in the world series, and still create a monster team, but couldn’t create a monster team that dominated in the world series. My 95-105 (maybe 5-6 all stars) team always won the world series, regardless of who they played against, but my 110-129 (many more all stars/future hall of famers) win teams struggled in the season/playoffs, against mediocre teams. Same level of coaching, little difference in personalities, always at least 1 captain. That juggernaut would always sweep 95+ win teams, regularly get their butt kicked by 85-under teams.

I did have a 2 year sim, where all ratings where I maxed out and my team didn't lose a single game. But even this was different from 21 to 24. Offense was roughly the same, but Pitching eras in 21 was .08 (I think gave up 2 runs that season) .3 and in 24 eras ranged from .5 .7 still ridiculous, but overall twice as many runs given up. In 21 I have 1 pitcher with 8 straight no hitters, 7 being perfect, several with 27 strike outs. In 24 only a few no hitters, not a single 27 strike out game. That is crazy stats, from both games but clear difference between OOTP 21 and 24 even with maxed out players.

That being said. I’ve greatly enjoyed my OOTP 24 experience thus far, even if the last quest has given a lot of metaphorical headaches, and still not solving the puzzle, that may be unsolvable. I’ve simply learned, if I want to create monster teams, that OOTP 24 is not the game to do it with. The randomness may not be any different for 99.9% of the people who play this game, but it very much was when I began the quest to create a juggernaut team.

Thanks again for all the help I’ve gotten so far, and would still love to hear from a developer.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Rain King

There is no randomness setting.

The game is based on ratings, probabilities....and randomness. That is the engine. You can't turn randomness up or down as that would mean it isn't random.

The difference you may be seeing from OOTP 21 to OOTP 24 could be caused by many factors such as the rating scales, creation modifiers, development engine which are all constantly being tweaked and balanced by the development team.

What I assure you has not changed is the amount of randomness.

You are unlikely to get much experienced help in your endeavor as your goals are generally the opposite of what most people are looking to accomplish when adjusting the many settings that are available within the game. Most are looking to create balanced and/or realistic environments.

Thanks for the posts

[OutS|der]

The tests done in 21 and 24 used the sane league totals and auto cal modifiers? Those make a HUGE difference

[Samueltbaum]

Yes... This is what I've tried to explain for a while. I've enjoyed the communities attempt to help me with it. I noticed no difference in the two when I played my normal way of playing.

I only noticed when I attempted to create the monster. It seemed regardless of what I did, something limited my monsters from matching OOTP 21 run total or wins, even with exact modifiers, my team regularly lost more than 10 games, many of which were against terrible teams.

I've just come to the new theory that the random factor plays a larger role in 24 than it did in 21.

Thanks for the post!

[Samueltbaum]

The confusing part was in OOTP 24 my teams would actually hit more home runs than 21, which added to my confusion. But regularly had 200 less runs than my.

[Brad K]

If the subject line of this post didn't get the devs to respond nothing will.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Brad K

If the subject line of this post didn't get the devs to respond nothing will.

My guess is that their interest in 24 comments is greatly decreased because 25 is right around the corner. It's likely crunch time right now.

At same time, I think regardless of what I say, show, present valid points, the answer will likely be that is my findings are wrong. That there is no difference between 21 and 24 where it impacts gameplay of superteams.

The OOTP community seem to mostly be people who enjoy a more realistic game, so the developers likely have adjusted some hidden setting to make it more realistic.

I don't want anything to change, was simply hoping I could adjust some setting to make the 24 gameplay the same as the 21 gameplay. 24 has cool new features I enjoy.

[KRSW]

Does the increased randomness mean that the dispersion of talent is smaller? The difference between superior and inferior players has become smaller, but the league average remains unchanged.

[Syd Thrift]

I don't know what "increased randomness" even means, even when you try to explain it, I'm sorry. I will say that one of the changes in 25, if you are really and truly interested in creating terrific teams who pummel bad teams into the dirt, is a move to a 1-550 ratings scale that would allow you to have a more "realistic" setup of what would happen if like the 1927 Yankees played in the Dutch honkball league or something.

This sounds like a not a lot of fun to me but to each their own I guess.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by KRSW

Does the increased randomness mean that the dispersion of talent is smaller? The difference between superior and inferior players has become smaller, but the league average remains unchanged.

I only use randomness because several people have used the phrase. But randomness in this instance means role of the dice dictates the win. It may not be the best analogy, And for some reason when terrible teams play my monster they tend to roll a high number.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I don't know what "increased randomness" even means, even when you try to explain it, I'm sorry. I will say that one of the changes in 25, if you are really and truly interested in creating terrific teams who pummel bad teams into the dirt, is a move to a 1-550 ratings scale that would allow you to have a more "realistic" setup of what would happen if like the 1927 Yankees played in the Dutch honkball league or something.

This sounds like a not a lot of fun to me but to each their own I guess.

It would not be fun for me if I was doing my first two quests and trying to beat the game hard. The third quest is the super team.

[KRSW]

Originally Posted by Samueltbaum

I only use randomness because several people have used the phrase. But randomness in this instance means role of the dice dictates the win. It may not be the best analogy, And for some reason when terrible teams play my monster they tend to roll a high number.

Only runs scored and runs allowed determine whether a team wins or loses. Nothing else matters. If your team's Pythagorean expectation is not far off from the actual win percentage, then you are losing to a weak team on merit.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by KRSW

Only runs scored and runs allowed determine whether a team wins or loses. Nothing else matters. If your team's Pythagorean expectation is not far off from the actual win percentage, then you are losing to a weak team on merit.

I have learned that nothing I have said thus far has made any help to have me understand or explain to people. Its like throwing a ping pong ball at a wall trying to crack a hole in it. Lots of effort, no results. I've given all I have will to continue, and wish no more to try.

Many have given me advice to assist in the last couple weeks, and I've been very appreciative. That said, I have no interest to play OOTP 24 again for monster teams. I will just create monster teams with any of the other baseball games I have including 3 other OOTP games.

Thanks for the post.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by Samueltbaum

I only use randomness because several people have used the phrase. But randomness in this instance means role of the dice dictates the win. It may not be the best analogy, And for some reason when terrible teams play my monster they tend to roll a high number.

You've made this same claim multiple times now, but it's always been entirely anecdotal. I'd love to see a 1,000 game sample of your monster team versus these terrible teams and see the head-to-head results.

[KRSW]

Originally Posted by Samueltbaum

I have learned that nothing I have said thus far has made any help to have me understand or explain to people. Its like throwing a ping pong ball at a wall trying to crack a hole in it. Lots of effort, no results. I've given all I have will to continue, and wish no more to try.

Many have given me advice to assist in the last couple weeks, and I've been very appreciative. That said, I have no interest to play OOTP 24 again for monster teams. I will just create monster teams with any of the other baseball games I have including 3 other OOTP games.

Thanks for the post.

I am not going to claim that all the phenomena that have happened to you are coincidental. Ratings and statistics are not consistent, so it is possible that the statistics expected at a 65 rating in OOTP 23 and those expected at an 80 rating in OOTP 24 are the same. The team you claim is a "monster" may not be a monster.

By the way, how far off is your team's Pythagorean expectation from its actual winning percentage? If you have a great bullpen, from a closer to mop-ups, I would expect the actual number of wins to be about 3 less than the Pythagorean expectation.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by snepp

You've made this same claim multiple times now, but it's always been entirely anecdotal. I'd love to see a 1,000 game sample of your monster team versus these terrible teams and see the head-to-head results.

There is a simulation module for such 1,000 game runs to match up two teams if interested, OP. It's under the Play drop down. Play the worst team. Clone your team and play against it. There are no injuries and such but if you want mass samples, there is a means of getting it for the starters vs. starters.

[Samueltbaum]

Thanks for the responses everyone. At this point, I have committed to being done moving forward with my monster team... Haven't played the game in days.

If people believe or not it doesn't negatively/positively impact me either way. I made an observation. I have many in game years of sample size, every year was the same. I shared my results in hopes together we could come up with solution. This was not the case. I have no more interest to do this quest, as I've spent way more time on this quest than I have in any other baseball game.

OOTP 24 is great, I enjoy it, they've done great things with it. I wish for nothing to change with the game, except for the improvements they do year to year anyways.

Thanks again everyone! Much appreciated.