A developer's guide to the new Scouting System

[Matt Arnold]

Understanding the New Scouting Changes

One of the changes we aimed to handle this year was to give a little more balance to scouting, and have some deeper decisions when choosing a scout and what they report back. In this, we'll open the doors a little bit about how scouting within OOTP works. Don't worry if you like mystery, we won't give the full story away.

The Core Scouting Model

At a core level, all scouts works in roughly the same way. They take the actual raw ratings from players, and depending on their scouting rating, the team's scouting budget, and the accuracy of the report, will report back their "view" of a player's ratings. In all of the below, the combination of report accuracy, scouting budget, scouting rating, etc... will generally simply be referred to as "accuracy". Not every "Very High" accuracy report is the same, there is some extra variation always at play.

Depending on those factors, plus some other pieces - younger players and international players have more scouting error, some players will randomly have some skew up or down, the overall league accuracy setting, etc... scouts will create a new baseline rating for each player. Then, they will take that baseline, and apply some functions in projecting their potential talent rating.

Balance

The overall aim is to make sure that one "type" of scout is not so wholly better than another type of scout. The next sections will go into further detail, but at a high level the aim of the update to the scouting model is to give a real decision in which scout type to hire.
A scout who favors ability will tend to better rate players who, with a normal development path, will grow and develop. A scout who favors tools may not be as precise at projecting most players, but are more likely to find a potential breakout star that a scout who favors ability would never consider, and also be able to potentially identify some players who might experience talent declines and never get close to their potential.

As a general rule of thumb, the "Ability" view of a player might be more accurate for more players, but they will miss on a bunch of players that a scout who favors tools will be able to better understand. This may not always be the case - as mentioned, other factors are always at play. But at a high level, that's the primary goal of the update.

Tools vs Ability

Projecting a player's potential rating is where the Tools vs Ability differentiation comes into play the most. All scouts will factor in both methods of evaluation, however scouts who "prefer" one or the other more will weight them more in final consideration. We will define the 2 methods below, and a scout's preference indicates which of the 2 ways to view a player they will derive more of their projection from.

Ability, in this context, focuses on players following a more traditional development path. Evaluating their "ability potential", scouts will project players along a normal, average development curve (ie. knowing that players will gain a few points of a rating each year until a certain age). The big change in OOTP 26 is that along with projecting players along this "average" development curve, the higher the accuracy of the report, they will also incorporate a factor based on a player's underlying development ratings. All players generally have multiple parameters for how they will develop, and the higher a scouting accuracy, the more a scout will be able to predict which development path a player might be on.

So an excellent scout with a very high accuracy report will have a better chance of seeing that a certain player seems likely to be on an accelerated development path, or alternately see that the player may have high potential ratings but is on an especially slow path and thus is unlikely to make that potential. Development has lots of randomness to it and can vary, so they certainly will not be able to predict this with certainty. But the scout aims to project their most likely development path assuming no major hiccups or changes along the way.

Tools projection takes a slightly different approach to projecting a player's future. They still will project players along a normal development path, but instead of seeing directly how fast or slow of a development the player is likely to get, they incorporate more the chance of the player potentially deviating with that projection. They will be able to get a better understanding whether a player could experience talent fluctuations, or other fluctuations in their development path, and use that to base their final rating. They may see a player who is likely to experience negative talent changes and project them lower. The aim is for them to be better at noting players who maybe have good minor league success, but may peak as a "Quad-A" player, someone who maybe doesn't quite get there to stick in the majors. Or to identify someone who is not a star prospect coming up, but experiences a big leap in talent to become a breakout star.

This is not only focused on talent change randomness, especially for leagues where TCR is adjusted from the default. There are several other parts to player development whether a player is potentially an outlier in development that tools-focused scouting will be able to better predict. Generally speaking, a more heavy focus on tools is geared towards projecting players who might break out, and trying to catch them before they truly break out, vs focusing on "safe" options who might develop normally.

In both cases, the more accuracy, the more the scout will use that information. Both viewpoints focus on taking their current ratings and projecting them forward. In the end, all scouts do use both to evaluate players, so there is never 100% focused on one vs the other. However, scouts will also always factor in a player's actual potential ratings in their evaluations - they do not only project out from current ratings, but will always take a mix.

Due to the nature of these evaluations, the ability view of players will tend to favor players who are more developed for their age, and are on a positive development track. The Tools scout might tend to prefer younger players, as the younger a player is, the more chance they might hit those talent changes and development jumps, so being better at projecting those pieces will give them an edge in those cases.

Evaluating True Talent

As well as the above, in some cases, higher accuracy might also lead a scout to actually see "under the hood" even further into a player's underlying true talent. All players have some hidden variables which control even further what their potential is, and in some cases, a higher accuracy report will be able to see those values and incorporate them into their scouting evaluation. This will only impact a small portion of players, and is mixed in with the above so that the higher a scouting accuracy, the better chance of viewing these hidden values, if they do differ from the regular potential ratings.

Stats in Reports

If selected, stats can be merged into a scouting report. This is done by converting a player's statistical output to a ratings set, and then, based on the scout's ability and relation to the player, incorporating those into a player's current rating. This is mostly a setting to add some extra fog of war to the reports, and to make sure a player who is truly struggling at a level doesn't counter-intuitively get ratings which increase too much. This is done separate from the AI evaluation setting, however it will pull in from the last few years of stats, and adjust based on sample sizes.

Regression

To avoid reports moving too much in short order, scouting reports will also change more gradually over time. So even if the scouting accuracy improves, it may still take some time for scouts to fully update their view of a player. This is mostly important so that the moment a player starts regressing you don't get too much of a sign that their ratings have crashed until they continue playing. Or similarly, to avoid seeing underlying ratings changes happen too much before they may show up in practice/game action.


Which should I pick?

This will depend a little on what you are more looking at from your scout. A tools-focused scout will generally find more under-valued players, will perhaps discount over-valued players, and is more likely to give note to players who are on the verge of a breakout. But they might discount a set a players who simply grow into a solid contributor. An ability focused scout is more likely to understand those players better, but is unlikely to find the breakout candidate. In both cases, a higher rated scout, or increased scouting budget, is generally still a more important factor to evaluation. A highly rated scout is still unlikely to take a player and see a 1 in one million chance of them developing into the next Mike Trout and using that as their ratings, no matter which focus they use.

Generally speaking, it's likely still better to have a better scout, even if they do not match your ideal projection model. However, there may be times that you might be better served with a worse scout who prefers the projection model you identify more with. We aim to give you a choice and a decision when selecting which scout to employ, so that one scouting preference is not simply "better" than the other.

[jpeters1734]

Bravo! Thanks for the detailed explanation!

[Leo_The_Lip]

This sounds great, and I hope it rekindles my fire for OOTP!

[Brad K]

How much of this applies to a historic league using the old presets of recalc on, dev on, TCR 100?

[twins_34]

Originally Posted by Brad K

How much of this applies to a historic league using the old presets of recalc on, dev on, TCR 100?

Why would you run scouting with recalc on? Even if development is on? Cause every time your players recalc, it is going to skew everything that your scout did. Seems a bit counter productive?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by twins_34

Why would you run scouting with recalc on? Even if development is on? Cause every time your players recalc, it is going to skew everything that your scout did. Seems a bit counter productive?

Wondering here what the meaning is of skewing what the scout did. If changes in ratings due to recalc does something bad, then so must changes in ratings from TCR and development.

The purpose of scouting is to create some doubt concerning the accuracy of the players displayed rating. I don't see how using recalc changes that goal.

Concerning me using scouting with recalc and development, OOTP taught me to do that. Below are screen shots of the defaults: Scouting on with normal accuracy, development on, and recalc set to three years not weighted.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by twins_34

Why would you run scouting with recalc on? Even if development is on? Cause every time your players recalc, it is going to skew everything that your scout did. Seems a bit counter productive?

You didn't answer my question. Instead you told me I shouldn't have the question. That's not an appropriate way to treat the customer.

[Matt Arnold]

Scouting does not look at anything related to recalc. They will simply project based on what they see. After each recalc is done, the scout would need to scout a player again to completely adjust their projections.

[Rain King]

The Scouting guide above applies to any time you have Scouts on, hope that helps!

Of course, if the settings to "Recalc player ratings based on real stats after each year" and "Recalculate potential ratings after each year" are enabled, I've applied some logic to deduce that the raw Current and Potential ratings will be affected by the Recalculation Process and that the Scouts baseline will then be affected by those new raw ratings when they next Scout a player.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Scouting does not look at anything related to recalc. They will simply project based on what they see. After each recalc is done, the scout would need to scout a player again to completely adjust their projections.

So the scout doesn't care where the real ratings came from. That's what I figured. Thank you.

I've noticed what appears to be a dislike of scouting by several regular posters to the board. OOTP has worked hard to create the fog of war scouting system. I think it shouldn't be turned off by default in any of the preset scenarios.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Rain King

The Scouting guide above applies to any time you have Scouts on, hope that helps!

Of course, if the settings to "Recalc player ratings based on real stats after each year" and "Recalculate potential ratings after each year" are enabled, I've applied some logic to deduce that the raw Current and Potential ratings will be affected by the Recalculation Process and that the Scouts baseline will then be affected by those new raw ratings when they next Scout a player.

Like.