Turn Storylines off???

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

We agree on the first five. On the last point, repetitive story lines are boring and, as others have pointed out, take away from immersion rather than add to it. How about a toggle switch in league setup for "All storylines are unique"? That would let the user choose what he preferred.

The one way I can think of is to simply write more variations of common stories for players missing time etc. so you don't get the same story loads of times. If there are I don't know, 25, different ways a guy can miss a few games for personal reasons it's better than if there are 5.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Got any ideas for improvements that I didn't cover?

I mentioned earlier I would like a tag to allow a story to occur more than once, but not to the same player (to cover things like parents dying). I can't think of anything else right now though.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

You can speak in hyperbole all you want, but until you actually post examples of these 'disasters', no one's going to listen to your drivel. The issue with the fan interest has been resolved. The thing with certain players quitting to play football has been acknowledged, but can be fixed to be restricted with the current set-up, and just needs to be done with the default file.

You admit there are still flaws and deny that I could have seen any in the same post?

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

The one way I can think of is to simply write more variations of common stories for players missing time etc. so you don't get the same story loads of times. If there are I don't know, 25, different ways a guy can miss a few games for personal reasons it's better than if there are 5.



I mentioned earlier I would like a tag to allow a story to occur more than once, but not to the same player (to cover things like parents dying). I can't think of anything else right now though.

Thank you for, unlike almost everyone else posting here, offering constructive suggestions. Pretty much everyone else except me would rather fight.

Night all. Please post constructive suggestions instead of attacks and nonsense.

[damientheomen3]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You admit there are still flaws and deny that I could have seen any in the same post?

I'm not saying that there aren't flaws, I'm saying they're fixable. I'm also saying that all of your concerns either don't exist anymore or happen extremely infrequently. If everyone turns the feature off as you suggest they do, there are less eyes on it, and then the feature improves less quickly.

[Cryomaniac]

The other thing I can think of is more "branching" storylines. It was mentioned that the "injured chopping wood" storyline has 6 outcomes, there should be more like that. Most, if not all, multi-part storylines should have at least 2 outcomes, and preferably more.

[GiantYankee]

I like story lines for the most part. Hate how it effects market size (wish we could lock it) so I usually play with them off. When I play OOTP or any other text sim, I don't really want to read about the owner or a child dying. That's just me.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Thank you for, unlike almost everyone else posting here, offering constructive suggestions. Pretty much everyone else except me would rather fight.

Night all. Please post constructive suggestions instead of attacks and nonsense.

No, of course you don't want to fight, which was obvious when you straight called me a liar.....

[hefalumps]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Just for one example, is there even an off-season only tag?

Yes - here's an excerpt from the very first storyline in the default_storylines.xml file that comes with OOTP 14:

<STORYLINE id="Aging Hurler Turns to Tai Chi to Revitalize Career" random_frequency="2000" only_in_offseason="1">

And there's also a tag for age limits:

<REQUIRED_DATA>
<DATA_OBJECT type="PLAYER" main_actor="1" person_age_min="34" player_position="11" player_quality_max="5" player_quality_min="4"/>
</REQUIRED_DATA>

I don't know what most of that means, but "person_age_min" looks like a good limiter, and there's a "person_age_max" tag too.

Here are some tags that should prevent a particular story from occurring in a year that it shouldn't:

<STORYLINE id="Business - Commercial" random_frequency="1000" is_minor_league="0" league_year_min="1970" min_usage_interval_days="1500">

As you'll see, there are also tags for the "random_frequency" (not sure what the value means) as well as "min_usage_interval_days" for how long before the story could potentially show up again.

And if you page through the file, you'll see a number of stories that have positive "modifiers" with regards to talent, fan interest, fan loyalty, etc. Unfortunately, none of those positive modifiers have quite the same positive impact as the negative impact felt by a player retiring - that's why I gave my joking Cal Ripken cloning example - I'm not sure how you create a "positive event of equal probability and value" for someone donating a kidney and retiring; the only way I can equally compensate for subtracting a player is by adding a player, and I'm not clever enough to figure out a realistic storyline that would do that.

Oh, and I do feel like extreme outcomes have been toned down since storylines were introduced. Maybe you had bad luck when you tried them again in OOTP14, but I've been playing out a full season and haven't had anything I would deem to be "extreme" yet.

So the facilities are there to address many of your complaints, but as others have pointed out, there aren't a lot of people well versed in developing storylines that can work on making those improvements. Any of us who wanted to "mod" would have to pour through this file, decipher the syntax and all the valid tags, and then come up with clever story ideas and put it all together. And hope we didn't make a typo that will cause the game to crash or our universe to blow up. Maybe in future OOTP versions they'll make it easier for us to contribute storylines - perhaps even a graphical tool to edit/generate a storylines.xml file. But the rub there is that if they open that door, then they expose themselves to a number of new support issues for people trying to create their storylines that inevitably mess them up and break their leagues. Because of that, we may not see that anytime soon.

In the meantime, I would recommend the developers create a sticky thread - something like "suggestions for storylines." This could be anything from suggesting modifications to some of those tags that control when a storyline occurs, what it affects, etc., or it could be an idea for a brand new storyline. And then for those people with the technical savvy that want to take a stab at editing their storylines.xml file to fix any issues they find (or remove unwanted storylines), they can have at it - at their own risk.

Phew. That is all. Good night everyone.

[kingcharlesxii]

I was going to post but hefalumps basically said what I was going to say - most of The Wolf's list is fixable with the tools we have right now for storylines. Most of the problems with the storylines are a result of not enough people having time to work on it (ie it's a manpower issue). OOTP could help by making them more user-friendly to edit (either through a tool or better documentation). The community could help by volunteering to help think of and write new ones. I think a stickied thread with ideas would be great.

We have a fantastic modding community, as evidenced by all the great stuff that comes out of the modding forums. I think both OOTP and modders, if they stepped up, could make storylines the really great feature that I've seen tons of promise in for several versions now. I doubt that there will ever be a single default file that everyone is happy with because, as evidenced by this thread, people want very different experiences from this feature.

[Mancandy]

Before I get too far, I want to make sure I'm thinking of the same "The Wolf" that is referenced in the OP. I believe it is the same "The Wolf" who in this thread: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ootp-14-a.html quoted this post:

Originally Posted by Bobbuttons

I happen to disagree. That doesn't mean I'm losing any sleep over this. Only that I feel that a 50% discount is drastic compared to the pre-order discount. My opinion. Nothing more, nothing less.

And then posted this:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

So nobody should ever be able to buy the game for less than what you paid for it? Right.

And then when I posted this in response:

Originally Posted by Mancandy

It's a bit...well, curious, to say the least...that you took "50% is a bit drastic" and somehow turned that into "nobody should ever pay less than me." I'd be lying if I said I fully, or even partly, understand the logic there. Especially in light of the fact that, in an earlier post, Bobbuttons indicated no problem with last year's 25% All-Star discount.

He responded with this:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You got it wrong. That was a response to his "So loyalty gets us an 8% discount when otherwise you could get a 50% discount. It doesn't sit well with me, and I can't imagine that I'm the only one." statement.

Despite the fact that not only did he quote a different post than the one he now claims it was a response to, but neither the post that he quoted nor the post he claimed he was responded to said anything remotely close to "nobody should ever pay less than me" and, in fact, the person he was responding to was quoting as saying they didn't mind discounts to an extent, so their known feelings were completely contrary to the words that The Wolf was putting in their mouth. Is that the same "The Wolf" being referenced in the OP?

Because if it is, I believe it's also the same "The Wolf" that was in this thread: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ng-amazon.html continually ignoring all rational arguments, repeatedly stating that anybody who doesn't purchase from OOTP directly isn't fully supporting the company because all of their money isn't going directly to the company, and rather than having an intellectual conversation simply directed people to somebody who agreed with him as proof that he was somehow right and everybody else was somehow wrong(how opinions can be so unequivocally right or how, I'll never know), then going a step further and declaring himself the victor in the argument, despite never actually attempting to argue anything...only to then expose himself as a complete, inarguable, and embarrassingly extreme hypocrite when he tried to claim that people who buy OOTP from OOTP directly at a discounted price are still fully supporting the company. Huh? We're supposed to believe that somebody who buys the game for, say, $39.95 on Amazon with $39.95 of that going to OOTP isn't fully supportive...but somebody who buys the game for $29.95 from OOTP is? HA! HAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!!! I think it's pretty obvious he realized that under his idiotic definition of fully supportive(giving OOTP as much money as possible), he wasn't fully supportive given the times he pre-ordered for a discount price. That had to hurt.

Then again, you can't really be surprised considering in this very thread he posted this:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Thank you for, unlike almost everyone else posting here, offering constructive suggestions. Pretty much everyone else except me would rather fight.

Night all. Please post constructive suggestions instead of attacks and nonsense.

Despite, in the same thread, posting gems such as:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You admit there are still flaws and deny that I could have seen any in the same post?

Obviously they said no such thing; again, putting words in somebody's mouth.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Wrong.

This one's really special, because take a look at what he quoted as being wrong in his post:

Originally Posted by Questdog

EVERYTHING on your list is already included in the programming of the stroylines

Now take a look at the actual post he took that quote from:

Originally Posted by Questdog

EVERYTHING on your list is already included in the programming of the stroylines, the only thing that needs to be done is to find volunteers to write them

There is currently ONE person doing just that, so you should have patience with him

So, in addition to putting words in others' mouths, he's also editting posts to the extent that the real point of the post is now gone and it has an entirely different meaning. When you look at the full post in context, it's obvious that Questdog is talking about the deeper programming of the game itself, the things that only Markus works on - and, by the way, something that The Wolf would know absolutely nothing about - so how he knows that that is wrong, I have no idea. Which is probably how he had to reduce the post to something that he could say was wrong, because if he didn't do that, he'd actually have to respond with substance and intellect instead of...well, nonsense.

But let's move on, shall we? There was also this nugget:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Getting tired of lying yet?

Right, calling somebody a liar - and that being the entire extent of a post - is so constructive, and not picking a fight at all.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

LOL, I'm trying to be constructive and all you are doing is posing, misrepresenting and throwing slurs. Too funny

More lies and hypocrisy. How is insulting somebody constructive and not fight picking, exactly?

Originally Posted by The Wolf

QuestDog:

I don't like the way you argue either. I especially dislike how you consistently misrepresent my viewpoints, arguments and methods.

I tire of you telling me how I must answer this or that, or do X your way. No way that is ever happening.

You demand a response? Hah. Where is my response to my four questions from OOTP? They felt that they were not obligated to discuss this matter on my terms. Surprise, I will never discuss anything with you on yours, only on mine.

Again, how is this constructive and not picking a fight? You have so many complaints about how other people act towards you, but you act the exact same way towards them...only worse.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You missed the mark entirely, and I suspect on purpose.

What mark was missed, exactly? The world may never know. All we'll ever know is that The Wolf thinks he did it on purpose, which can only be described as an inflammatory remark designed to...oh my, what's that? Pick a fight!

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Wrong again. You should go back and look and see who stops discussing the issue first and makes the first attack.

What's wrong? Again, beats me. All I know is that this is even more blatant hypocrisy, given that this guy invariably makes the first attack.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

In a large enough random group, half of the people will be of below average intelligence as well.

The implication here speaks for itself. If this is constructive and not picking a fight, I'd hate to see you trying to pick a fight.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Should you be forced to post in real sentences? Should Mgom be asked to post in readily comprehensible ones? I don't think so.

Picking a fight with two people in one post.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

FYI, I have always found your use of ellipses instead of periods and sentences to be really annoying, but that's just who you are, so I have never mentioned it to you.

At least this is somewhat constructive. We learned that he thinks that something that has no effect on the actual meaning of the sentence(how many periods are used) is the same as the actual words being used. LOL. At least he's being constructive while he's picking a fight...progress? (By the way, bonus points if you noted that he managed to find a way to reply to the post without addressing one single point in that post, which if you've been paying attention, is something he loves to complain about others doing.)

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Trolling is "submit a deliberately provocative posting to an online message board with the aim of inciting an angry response."

I post what I know and what I believe without such intent. My views are not mainstream and people strongly object to those views and post angry and insulting responses and off we go. I don't like it when they do so and I don't like getting angry myself. That's not trolling. That's being in an oppressed minority.

I'll end it here because, I mean, this speaks for itself. He defines a troll, which obviously fits him perfectly to the letter, and then goes on a delusional rant that has no basis in reality in a vein attempt to prove he's not a troll. Oppressed minority? Please. If your intent wasn't to incite an angry response, you wouldn't start your posts with "fail." (I didn't quote that post here, but it's there.) You wouldn't consistently ignore every important part of a person's post and pick out one thing, no matter how insignificant, that you can argue for the sole purpose of making yourself feel superior. You wouldn't continually state your opinion time after time when people disagree with you without even attempting to address the reasons they listed as to why they disagree with you. You wouldn't constantly attack other people and accuse them of being or doing things that you are always guilty of yourself. You do all of these things because you know they will make people angry. You do all of these things to incite a response out of people. You do all of these things because you are either unwilling to have, or are incapable of having, a calm, rational, mature, intelligent conversation.

Yes, it appears it is indeed the same "The Wolf" we're talking about here.

As far as storylines go, I don't have a problem with them. It's been well established that, if they're coded properly, they work just fine. I like that they add a level of uniqueness to every game. And, personally, I think OOTP has many other things that should be worked on well before anything is done to storylines. Especially because you can turn them off if you don't like them, which is fine. People play games for many different reasons, and some of those reasons are best served with storylines turned off. Heck, I turn them off in at least half the games I play...I don't think they really fit in historical games(unless they were programmed to match history and included players throwing a World Series or leaving for war or whatever), for example. But in modern games, like I said before, I think there's a level of randomness and uniqueness that they provide in a game where many things play out the same in each game. And I really enjoy that.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

The one way I can think of is to simply write more variations of common stories for players missing time etc. so you don't get the same story loads of times. If there are I don't know, 25, different ways a guy can miss a few games for personal reasons it's better than if there are 5.

Now this is the most constructive post of all.

What events are we short on?



Give me a list of what is needed. I have the whole weekend off and can easily knock out a bunch. Why a guy missed 5 days. A couple of paragraphs? I could give you 10 of those quickly.

No problem.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

Yes - here's an excerpt from the very first storyline in the default_storylines.xml file that comes with OOTP 14:




And if you page through the file, you'll see a number of stories that have positive "modifiers" with regards to talent, fan interest, fan loyalty, etc. Unfortunately, none of those positive modifiers have quite the same positive impact as the negative impact felt by a player retiring - that's why I gave my joking Cal Ripken cloning example - I'm not sure how you create a "positive event of equal probability and value" for someone donating a kidney and retiring; the only way I can equally compensate for subtracting a player is by adding a player, and I'm not clever enough to figure out a realistic storyline that would do that.

Anybody remember when the Mets in ?83? had some pitcher that they claimed could throw like 110 mph. They kept him behind a tarp and hidden from the media. It turned out to be a hoax. This isn't the same thing as what you are talking about but what it got me to thinking about is "scout finds".

Instead of getting the same default message a list of 10-20 different messages for these would help in that area. I know this is not a storyline feature per se but it's in the same vein.



As far as storylines and immersion. They definitely add to immersion. One of the premier hitters in my league cahsed down the robber and got injured. He was a skinny guy but a very good hitter.

Luis "Deathwish" Aguilar.

That event totally breathed life into the game. Aguilar has a story. To me, that is more important than losing him for a couple of games. The negative impact is more than offset by the fun memories.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

In the meantime, I would recommend the developers create a sticky thread - something like "suggestions for storylines." This could be anything from suggesting modifications to some of those tags that control when a storyline occurs, what it affects, etc., or it could be an idea for a brand new storyline.

winner winner

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

Now this is the most constructive post of all.

What events are we short on?



Give me a list of what is needed. I have the whole weekend off and can easily knock out a bunch. Why a guy missed 5 days. A couple of paragraphs? I could give you 10 of those quickly.

No problem.

Use lots-a-dots.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Troll biscuits?


...

[VanillaGorilla]

...Dropping . . . the needle ... .. . on some. .. . .. Van Morrison... ... . . . . now.......

[Honorable_Pawn]

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

So the facilities are there to address many of your complaints, but as others have pointed out, there aren't a lot of people well versed in developing storylines that can work on making those improvements. Any of us who wanted to "mod" would have to pour through this file, decipher the syntax and all the valid tags, and then come up with clever story ideas and put it all together. And hope we didn't make a typo that will cause the game to crash or our universe to blow up. Maybe in future OOTP versions they'll make it easier for us to contribute storylines - perhaps even a graphical tool to edit/generate a storylines.xml file.

Damn. That makes the situation even worse than I thought. All of the fix-it tools exist, and yet the problems remain?

Originally Posted by hefalumps

In the meantime, I would recommend the developers create a sticky thread - something like "suggestions for storylines."

Good idea. Why hasn't this been done before?

Again - storylines, a good concept for some, but IMO they are STILL IN EARLY BETA. They need to be fixed.

I note that the ONLY people making constructive suggestions are me, Cryomaniac, Hefalumps, Honorable Pawn, and Kingcharlesxii. Most everyone else just wants to either pose, attack or both.

What's interesting is that I was attacked and accused of complaining but not offering constructive criticism. When I did offer constructive criticism, all that most of you wanted to do was to keep attacking me, while not offering ANY constructive criticism of your own (thank you, Cryomaniac, Hefalumps, Honorable Pawn, and Kingcharlesxii, you three actually did the right thing).
Most of the rest of you proved MY point - that it doesn't matter here what you do, just who you are.

And I'm out of this thread. And see if you can guess what my setting for storylines will be.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Thanks for the edit


Though I did take a jab with the Troll Biscuits thing I was comfortable that you could handle it.



2nd edit: Although I completely agree that the discussion initiated by the OP was a much needed discussion parts of it were much better suited for a PM.

Regardless of what one's opinion of another are starting what amounts to an "official" flame-war against a single customer is never a good idea. The only time a poster should be singled-out is when a permanent ban has been enacted. Even warnings are done in PM.

Jus sayin...

[jbergey22]

This thread has kind of taken a turn for the worse.

Sounds like the storylines are being looked at which is fine. I think they are nice to have around. Its a work in progress so lets not give up on the idea quickly.