+++ Possible OOTP 6 Features +++

[rleibowitz]

A nice feature that would add to the realism, spruce up free agency, and the minor league draft would be the implementation of a compensation system.

Currently in MLB players are ranked in comparsion to the performance of other players who play at the same position. Players who peform at a certain level are assigned a grade A,B,C etc.

As long as a MLB team offers a pending free agent the option of salary arbitration they guarantee their right to get compensation which could include the the team who signed him's 1st round pick, plus a compensation round pick etc.

Additionally a team still has the ability to negoiate with a free agent for a contract or the player could simply accept the offer of arbitration.

In real life it used to be that teams would always offer arbitration and then either the player would leave or I contract would be reached. Now non-tender free agents are becoming more common as teams do not want to run the risk of a player accepting the offer of arbitration.

While all this background/etc seems complicated, the added structure I think would only further enhance the behind the scenes play/strategy of being a general manager of your own club.

[dumrox]

Couple more ideas:

1. On the PbP, it would be more useful to show a batter's stats vs. lefty/righty than home/away. A player's away stats don't give any indication of what he will do in a particluar park.

2. Show more team stats. I'd like to see some screens, similar to the league leaders screen, but with a team orientation vs. individuals. Right now, all we have are the batting, pitching and fielding reports, but they aren't sortable and are limited in the stats they display.

3. Don't remove the OPTION to force warmups, as has been requested earlier in this thread.

[GeoWar]

I am always looking at realism.

At the end of a season you should identify a 40 man roster.

The minor league draft -- I think 600 players are FA this year from the minors ..... check baseballamerica.com

It would be helpful if the fonts were different colors for players who could become free agents. OR a post season report from your Personnel director on players in your system. This could be another new hire to add to the game ....

[Rockpsl76]

I like the warmup option. I always turn it on when I play the game, it adds a little extra strategy during game time.

[Rockpsl76]

I just resigned a 22 year old pitcher who was up for arbitration to a 10 year contract. I paid him really well for a relief pitcher (2 mil). You can get those guys for long contracts, you just have to be willing to put up the big bucks. Not usually worth it unless you brought the guy up too early and your positive the guy is going to develop into a big star.


What I'd like to see is some sort of anger meter, and slightly more flexible negotiations. I can't count the number of times I've tried to sign a guy to a 6 year contract ("I don't want so many years"), 5 year contract ("I don't want so many years"), 4 year contract ("I'm never speaking to you again for the rest of my life"). Now even if I offer the guy twice what he wanted and a one year contract he refuses?? A little extreme if you ask me. It would also be nice if the players cooled down over the season. So if contract negotiations broke down in the begining of the year, you still have a chance to give into his outrageous demands at the end of the year

[Crapshoot]

Originally posted by Skipaway
Well, the Hinske and Wells contracts were not about re-signing. Those were more about avoiding all arbitrations. Players in OOTP should be able to do the same. Right now the game would not recognize the relationship between arbitrations and contract extentions. A player should recognize that he's still tied up with the same team for 3 more years and settle for whatever similar to what he might get in arbitrations, instead of assuming himself as a potential free agent.

exactly. I think the player logic for an Arb eligible is hardly different from that of a free agent to be in the game- fundementally however, the first should recognize his lack of leverage with regard to the second.

[charliemike]

I'm sure this was mentioned before, but I'd like to have a Pinch Runner box right next to where the Pinch Hitter one is on depth charts.

Thanks

[jammincrowe]

my league has to do a few funky things to get around the computer / human combo we have. It's a 16 team league with 8 human owners....

Anyway, a couple suggestions for version 6.0:

- allow "setting" the free agency # of days.. Our league has 6 free agent days (of the 30 the computer has)... Right now, to be "fair" to human owners, I have to sim a day, then turn all computer owned teams to human owned, then sim another 5 days. then I turn the computer teams back, send out the league file update, and prepare for the next true submission of offers. I do this throughout the 30 day period. If i didn't do it, the computer teams would still make offers every sim day, while the human owners would only be able to do so approx every 6 days.

- Have an option to prevent computer teams from being able to pick up released players until human teams have the same chance. If our league sims 5 SIM days every other night, the computer may pick up a released player the 3rd day into the 5 sim days, yet human owners would never get such a chance.

- Have a way of creating zip files from within the game, and doing so with choices such as: all files, only files modified with current date, et cetera..

THANKS FOR LISTENING.

[markm]

Some ideas


1. What I would like to see during auto-play is more details about my team instead of league leaders.

Who's hot and who's not.
maybe last 7 games stats or something.

This will make simming a little more interseting and also provide info on when to stop and maybe bench a cold player.

2. I'd like to historically draft into my league free agents from any year. Maybe start with a fictional league, and draft 1927 players one season, 1969 the next. That type of thing.

3. I'd like to do a fictional league, but with each years free agents being historical prospects, at random. Seems like it will be kind of exciting to see which players show up.

4. I'd like to do historical leagues where prospects show up a couple of years before their real debut, so they develop naturally.

5. Audio would be interesting...maybe just in key situations to add some drama ('going...going....caught' or 'foul ball, Alou is reaching for it....')

Mark

[metsgeek]

This may be stupid

1) I'd like to be able to submit long lists of last names and nicknames so they may be added to the fictional database that comes out with the game.

2) I'd like to be able to have an option to see the total career stats of all the players on a team's roster at once.....sortable, similar to all other stats on the roster screen.

I'm sure I'll think of more when I sober up.....

[TasmanianDevil]

I would like to see a method of spending more money on my training program. If I want to make a team that has a low budget for player salaries, but also has an outstanding training/development program, the only way to do that currently is to hire the best training coaches, which can be gobbled up by the large market teams with deep pockets. There should be a way for me to spend more dollars on the minor league training programs. If I spend 25M per year on my training program, I should be able to produce better players on average than a team that spends 9M assuming all other options are equal.

Maybe a point system like the one used for spring training where a standard number of points is given to each team and more points are added as more money is spent on the training program.

I understand that just dumping more money into the program does not always guarentee success. But, on average, a program that spends more on training will produce a better quality product.

[The Playmaker]

I'm sorry of this has been addressed before, but the demand players make with respect to contract resigning and arbitration awards, particularly with respect to the online league I'm in, do not make sense. For example, one star pitcher resigned with his team for about half what he would have got if he decided to go to free agency. The best pitcher only got a $5.8 million arbitration award, which is a lot less than what a lot of pitchers are getting paid.

Is it possible to have the contract demands/arbitration awards be based on what a) what other players in the league are making and b)what you pay players on your own team. If you sign a decent pitcher for more money than he's worth, well, your star players will be looking for raises too. Likewise, why would a great pitcher accept $6.8 million for 4 years when some pitchers in the league make $13 million?

Any thoughts?

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by The Playmaker
I'm sorry of this has been addressed before, but the demand players make with respect to contract resigning and arbitration awards, particularly with respect to the online league I'm in, do not make sense. For example, one star pitcher resigned with his team for about half what he would have got if he decided to go to free agency. The best pitcher only got a $5.8 million arbitration award, which is a lot less than what a lot of pitchers are getting paid.

Is it possible to have the contract demands/arbitration awards be based on what a) what other players in the league are making and b)what you pay players on your own team. If you sign a decent pitcher for more money than he's worth, well, your star players will be looking for raises too. Likewise, why would a great pitcher accept $6.8 million for 4 years when some pitchers in the league make $13 million?

Any thoughts?

The arbitration works like that in real life too. Arbitration is not just about performances, but also service time.

From the Collective Bargaining Agreement:

" The arbitration panel shall, except for a Player with five or more years of Major League service, give particular attention, for comparative salary purposes, to the contracts of Players with Major League service not exceeding one annual service group above the Player's annual service group."

So for those with less than five years of service, the salary could only be compared with those with similar service time. That's why most 4~5 year players are vastly underpaid comparing to free agent signees.

[kingpin1976]

Ok theres so many posts on here now it was hard to read more then like a hundred of em, I didnt see one post about spring training I personally think it is the biggest sore thumb in the game not very realistic and not very interesting. Make it more real life schedule a months worth of pre-season games and give invites to foreign or independent league players to battle for a roster spot. Please just give me something better then assigning a number to 4 categories and hoping my report says they improved.

[Hank]

hopefully, none of the hitting will be changed. I like the hits, doubles, triples homers, walks k just how they are.

Also- perfect the free agent method. After winning the division, i try to sign people and they claim that they want to sign with a winning team, of which they claim im not, which of course is ludacris.

[Drood]

Coming late to this thread, but oh well..

CM4 was a joke. I've been playing CM since the very first version on the Amiga back in the very early 90's. I've played EVERY VERSION of the game. CM4 was the first version that I dumped to go back to an older version. I'm far from alone as well. An awful lot of people bought CM4, and ran back to CM01/02 because CM4 was such an umitigated clusterfrick.

I have no real suggestions to add, since I only have OOTP 3 and 4, so anything I suggest may already be in the game

I would like to know a roughly estimated release date though

[Steve Kuffrey]

Spring '04

[white wolf]

Steve,
3 bare-bones essential things 99% of the users would agree to (if you want I could poll this):

1. Possibility to export the play-by-play as a text file
2. 'Browse to..' windows for photos/etc., just like in any Windows(tm) application.
3. Possibility to have a pitch-by-pitch mode.

[BringHeat]

I realized I posted this in an older forum as a followup of an older topic of veteran aging/talent drops, but it applies to the next version and wanted to post it where it would be read.

I want to point out that some players have it in the sum of their personal experience (genes, conditioning, use over career, etc.) to continue to excel while older, and some don't. It would seem to be a relatively minor tweak to incorporate the last two into the game for this purpose (and perhaps the 'durability' rating as well), and perhaps have Markus include a random and hidden value for the person's genetic durability? This would allow more players who were managed well during their early years and not burned out via overuse to continue to succeed later in life (extend their 'arc'), while incorporating an otherwise random genetic value to affect the slope one way or the other.

This doesn't impact the programming quirk of sudden drops (which are dealt with by many good posts here and wil hopefully be tweaked in OOTP6), but would allow for players who have been managed well to continue to succeed at higher levels, as well as those who happen to be genetically gifted - and you'll never know which - to last longer without dropping their ratings/talents. That seems like a great system and wouldn't be hard to incorporate.

[Steve Kuffrey]

This already happens to a "small select group". Sim 50-100 seasons and you will find a group of players that falls within this area.