MLB license

[Wolfpelt]

I think we all agree that OOTP has the best baseball sim engine around. So how is it that we still get strange results when playing with (downloaded) real rosters ? "Its because OOTP does not recognize names", how many times have we heard this explaination?!?

Well, let me send this message to Markus: invest some money in buying the official licenses and charge us more! I for one would definately pay 50$ for this game (hell, I already do for much crappier ones) if it had real players with correct statistcs. That is how much correct stats (and results) are important to me.

I think quite a bit of you would agree, especially now that the editing has been made more difficult than before (hmm, which makes me think if it was done on purpose).

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
I think we all agree that OOTP has the best baseball sim engine around. So how is it that we still get strange results when playing with (downloaded) real rosters ? "Its because OOTP does not recognize names", how many times have we heard this explaination?!?

Well, let me send this message to Markus: invest some money in buying the official licenses and charge us more! I for one would definately pay 50$ for this game (hell, I already do for much crappier ones) if it had real players with correct statistcs. That is how much correct stats (and results) are important to me.

I think quite a bit of you would agree, especially now that the editing has been made more difficult than before (hmm, which makes me think if it was done on purpose).

Why do you assume that an MLB license would improve this? In fact, you might be getting more realistic results in a sense because the MLB and players union isn't looking over the shoulders of the programmer.

The fact is, even in games with MLB licensing, the players in those games are truly fictional, with ratings and other coding to give results. That ain't Sammy Sosa, Mark Prior, or Pedro Martinez in those games, those are bytes and bits spinning off the hard drive.

[darrylr]

The "real" rosters are never going to be perfect even if there was a MLBPA license. I don't think it is as simple as saying add $10 to the price of each copy of the game but maybe I am wrong. I would think the license cost is huge and I don't think OOTP is a big seller even though it is a great game.

I am much happier playing with a fictional league where you don't expect certain things of any players. It is much more fun.

-Darryl

[draven085]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
I think we all agree that OOTP has the best baseball sim engine around. So how is it that we still get strange results when playing with (downloaded) real rosters ? "Its because OOTP does not recognize names", how many times have we heard this explaination?!?

Well, let me send this message to Markus: invest some money in buying the official licenses and charge us more! I for one would definately pay 50$ for this game (hell, I already do for much crappier ones) if it had real players with correct statistcs. That is how much correct stats (and results) are important to me.

I think quite a bit of you would agree, especially now that the editing has been made more difficult than before (hmm, which makes me think if it was done on purpose).

A lot of problems are caused by the way roster sets are created. To do it right is a ton of work. Since roster creators do this for free, it can be a daunting task to make sure everything is as accurate as possible. Even if you put in a tremendous amount of work how do you know for sure if Andruw Jones has a range of 85 or 91? I've yet to see an MLPBA licensed game that produced any more realistic results than OOTP does. In most cases the roster sets in those games are further from reality than those people can use with OOTP.

[Henry]

An MLB license will...

1. not increase accuracy
2. raise the price of the game
3. restrict Markus on a number of issues, including
4. removing dollar salaries in favor of points.

Henry

[andjbock]

How would a MLBPA license actually make the roster sets better? The people who make them evaluate all the players and create their own ratings for them. Are you assuming that if the game was licensed then somebody better would make the ratings for each player? Or that OOTP would be able to finally recognize names, not ratings?

[Wolfpelt]

First of all, we must all agree on the following assumption: a person that is paid, thus incentivized, will do a better (more accurate, thorough) job than one that is not paid. More simply put, a person that is paid has the possibility to dedicate more time to a certain task as he/she would not have the necessity to make a living doing something else.

If you believe the above as being true, then no one as much as the OOTP dev team, could do the best job on recreating the perfect MLB roster set. They think baseball 24/7 (well 23/7 at least, would not be natural if they did not think about women and/or beer) and being the creators of the game, they know how everything works (ratings for example) in the most detail. There is no denying this.

So, all I am saying is that to me it would be worth paying an extra 15$ for the game to have such statistical accuracy.

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
First of all, we must all agree on the following assumption: a person that is paid, thus incentivized, will do a better (more accurate, thorough) job than one that is not paid. More simply put, a person that is paid has the possibility to dedicate more time to a certain task as he/she would not have the necessity to make a living doing something else.

If you believe the above as being true, then no one as much as the OOTP dev team, could do the best job on recreating the perfect MLB roster set. They think baseball 24/7 (well 23/7 at least, would not be natural if they did not think about women and/or beer) and being the creators of the game, they know how everything works (ratings for example) in the most detail. There is no denying this.

So, all I am saying is that to me it would be worth paying an extra 15$ for the game to have such statistical accuracy.

That assumption is faulty. If the people being paid are more interested in how the players look, statistical accuracy may well be sacrificed. Consider the Elias Bureau, hired to keep stats by MLB--along with keeping stats their interest is in proving that things like clutch ability exist. Really deep and meaningful statistical analysis of baseball didn't occur until Bill James did it while receiving no money whatsoever from the major leagues.

But again, the important point is this: in every sense of the word fictional, any time, any place, any game where "real people" are turned into a bunch of ratings, those aren't the players. MVP baseball may say Sosa will hit 45 homers this year on one computer, on another he may hit 50.

Who know what the real Sammy Sosa will hit this year? Only the real statistical engine of real life.

[BasicGuy]

Is this a yearly thing around year?(Threads like this)

I for one would stop purchaseing the game the day Markus added a MLB License as I know for a fact Markus would have to give up to much for such a small gain(And that gain being what I don't know ).

Luckly Markus & Steve made It clear they have no plans on ever doing this...

[CMH]

Wolfpelt, this has been brought up before and it may be a shock to you, but an overwhelming number of people, including myself, will disagree with you.

An MLB License will not improve the game, plain and simple.

You mentioned the whole, "It's because OOTP doesn't recognize names."

MVP, ESPN, ASB, MLB, etc. don't recognize names either. In fact, gamers complain (maybe more so than those that use OOTP) that AI teams are always trading away stars for stars...trades that would never happen in real life.

I just don't understand why you would think that having an MLB License would improve the game when the license has clearly demonstrated that it does nothing but include real names and ratings (designed to satisfy the union, keep in mind) to your game.

[Wolfpelt]

Gastric,
obviously OOTP is fictional, but there is bad fictional and good fictional. I am trying to get an accurate fictional. :-)

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
Gastric,
obviously OOTP is fictional, but there is bad fictional and good fictional. I am trying to get an accurate fictional. :-)

Okay, but your assumption that MLB licensing would somehow improve accuracy is faulty. In fact, it could get worse with guys from MLB and the players union hovering over--their interest is likely to be anything but statistical accuracy, nor do I believe they would be working 24/7 on the statistical accuracy. More likely they would say, "Hey Markus, let us check the results. Markus, we can't sell a game where Sosa doesn't hit more than 20 homers, people would complain about Sammy not getting his dingers. Could you please code it so Sammy hits 30? Thanks much, don't release it until you get the Sammy Sosa code right that way, okay?"

[Cuss16]

I would not pay more pay more money for a license.

[Wolfpelt]

Gastric,
maybe your Sosa example is not the best one. In fact, I typically never have problems with the stats of the more famous palyers (in any game, even the most arcade ones). It is the lesser known ones that are quite problematic. For example, I recently simmed the 2004 season utilizing one of the better known MLB rosters.
Result: Matt Thornton (SP Seattle), five star rating (?), 21-3, 1.94 era, IP 232.1, whip 1.06, selected to the all-star game (obviously)
WHO THE HELL IS HE ?????

[Gastric ReFlux]

Dontrelle Willis, who was he last year?

[Wolfpelt]

dude, the guy is 28 years old, has a 24-24, 3.57era record in the minors - hardly a star in the making

[Henry]

Suggestion, go back and read the threads that explain what OOTP is and what it is designed to do. The accuracy your looking for is in DMB, not OOTP.

Henry

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
dude, the guy is 28 years old, has a 24-24, 3.57era record in the minors - hardly a star in the making

True, but you still haven't really proved your assumption that MLB licensing would improve the statistical accuracy. I believe a stronger case could be made that it would more likely result in the engine being tweaked in ways that would divert it from accuracy.

[John C]

Originally posted by Wolfpelt
dude, the guy is 28 years old, has a 24-24, 3.57era record in the minors - hardly a star in the making

OOTP has never claimed to be an accurate representation of what the current major leaguers should do. That's one of the reasons why there's no license.

If you came into OOTP thinking that...you thought wrong. Sorry. Just the way it is, and, given the fan base here, I think a lot of people are just fine with that.

-John
www.thepostgamereport.net - fictional is better

[gom]

Would a license increase statistical accuracy?

I do not believe so. I believe that it would create a monetary increase in the sim engine with no increase in statistical accuracy.

However, I would like to see more cohesiveness in ratings. I do not know how the ratings work, exactly, but have the ratings be more built on statistical data. Example: Steal rating [which I admit, I have a lot of difficulty understanding] can be arbitrarily changed. I can change a player's steal rating from A to E, which makes little sense.

It would be better, I believe as a culmination of stats. In OOTP5, there is no way to edit Avoiding Runs ratings. However, by editing BAA, 2B, HR, etc., it affects the avoiding runs ratings. Is it possible to have such parameters set for other factors, such as defense and baserunning?

If this can be created, then statistical accuracy will be increased inherently by the roster creators.