OOTP 7 Development update

[DAL 9000]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The other thing I'd really like to try is running a league where the only income is from attendance. No broadcasting money, no merchandizing, just attendance revenue and nothing else. In other words, just like baseball's earlier days.

Actually, LGO-- I'm just quibbling now; your post was chock-full of good points and other kinds of goodness-- you'd be amazed at how early on there was some sort of "broadcasting revenue"-- in quotation marks because the earliest form of broadcast revenue was a license fee paid to allow game results to be carried on the telegraph wire, in the 1880s.

But of course that fee made up only a small percentage of a team's total revenue. The vast majority was, as you say, from attendance, which reminds me: isn't the visiting team's cut of gate revenue traditionally 15%, not 20?

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by NCBeachBum

You just hit the nail on the head for me, BaseballMan.... I would continue to hit the cancel button for ST on all my historical leagues, but I wouldn't mind having the option of playing it out for a fictional league at all.

Well I think ST was more for online leagues...and it does work quite well in that aspect

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by DAL 9000

The vast majority was, as you say, from attendance, which reminds me: isn't the visiting team's cut of gate revenue traditionally 15%, not 20?

You may be right. I'd heard that the figure was approximately 20%, but it may very well be lower.

In terms of a team's income, some time back I posted the financial data for the 1950 Cleveland Indians, which I had found in an old issue of TSN. You can find it here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...hlight=Indians

According to that report, attendance revenue accounted for 74.6% of Cleveland's total revenue, while radio and television rights accounted for just 6.4%. The cut from road game attendance accounted for 8.7% of the team's revenue.

Just the other day I came across the 1957 Chicago White Sox financial data in a TSN issue; I'll have to post that up at some point.

[DAL 9000]

Markus, since it seems to be safe to assume your game will be very different under the hood than SI's other products-- the other SI games, for those who haven't played them, aren't designed to be simmed, because the focus is on day-to-day and game-to-game management-- have any of your coworkers shown interest in how you're making the game easy to sim ahead in? Like, saaay... the FM team, for example?

Hey, a guy can hope. Spending 40 minutes getting through 2 weeks without a game is /not/ a highlight of the Football Manager experience.

[DAL 9000]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Some time back I posted the financial data for the 1950 Cleveland Indians, which I had found in an old issue of TSN. You can find it here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...hlight=Indians

According to that report, attendance revenue accounted for 74.6% of Cleveland's total revenue, while radio and television rights accounted for just 6.4%. The cut from road game attendance accounted for 8.7% of the team's revenue.

Just the other day I came across the 1957 Chicago White Sox financial data in a TSN issue; I'll have to post that up at some point.

Ooh. I'd be very interested to see what the difference is, there-- I know there was fierce debate in the '50s over whether baseball owners should let their games be broadcast on TV, thereby "giving their product away for free." I wonder whether, by 1957, owners had decided to react by demanding enormous licensing fees for TV broadcast rights.

[Jermanfu]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

The beauty about the new database of OOTP is that you can have any number of leagues in your game. So you may for example have a game with the 1923 MLB league, the 1977 MLB league (with fictional minor leagues applied) and a fictional league in every country of this world. The only limit is the memory of your PC.

I really love the idea of having any number of leagues going simulataneously in my baseball world. The one question I have is this: If I have 6 leagues going at once, will I have the option of sending the 6 league champions to a tournament at the end of the year to determine a World Champion or National Champion? I know the post season format within a specific league will be customizable, I just hope that we can tie all our leagues together as well.

[dougaiton]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

No, there will be no ghost players... if you do not want that many minor leagues, you could only select the AAA and AA leagues for exmaple...

Markus, obviously that sounds fine, but I'm just running possibilities here.

Namely, minor leagues are important in the development of players, right? Therefore, if I didn't have the memory to run Single A, Low A etc, then wouldn't player development be wrong?

Also, if I only run AAA, will all draftees be placed in AAA? If so, won't they develop wrong?

Will it be impossible to run MLB properly without running every level of the minors? If so, considering my two year old machine can only run 4 divisions on FM (and that very slowly), what chance me running 6 or 7 divisions in OOTP7?

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by DAL 9000

Markus, since it seems to be safe to assume your game will be very different under the hood than SI's other products-- the other SI games, for those who haven't played them, aren't designed to be simmed, because the focus is on day-to-day and game-to-game management-- have any of your coworkers shown interest in how you're making the game easy to sim ahead in? Like, saaay... the FM team, for example?

Hey, a guy can hope. Spending 40 minutes getting through 2 weeks without a game is /not/ a highlight of the Football Manager experience.

If they are not at the moment, I'm pretty sure they will be. Markus is locked in an office alone, he gets meals delivered by the canteen staff and he is given a cigarette allocation each morning but apart from that the only contact he has is with Aurelio

[DAL 9000]

Originally Posted by dougaiton

Markus, obviously that sounds fine, but I'm just running possibilities here.

Namely, minor leagues are important in the development of players, right? Therefore, if I didn't have the memory to run Single A, Low A etc, then wouldn't player development be wrong?

Also, if I only run AAA, will all draftees be placed in AAA? If so, won't they develop wrong?

Will it be impossible to run MLB properly without running every level of the minors? If so, considering my two year old machine can only run 4 divisions on FM (and that very slowly), what chance me running 6 or 7 divisions in OOTP7?

^^^^^ gets it.

A followup question: if you do have the full minor-league structure, from rookie ball up to AAA, does that mean you'll need to have a draft approximately as long as the real MLB draft (50 rounds, though teams can just say "pass" in the last rounds if there's no one they'd like to draft) to fill the minors out? Will the game let you proceed with fewer than 9 players at one of your minor-league affiliates?

I know I'm asking 98 quadrillion questons, but I nag because I care, Markus.

[PSUColonel]

For the sakeof realism..I think every level should have a 25 man roster that MUST be filled(or at least enough players to field every position)

[rem]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

For the sakeof realism..I think every level should have a 25 man roster that MUST be filled(or at least enough players to field every position)

For the sake of sim speed/file size, that may not be the best idea.

[DAL 9000]

What Remangii said. Also, a requirement that your minor-league affiliates have full rosters would create a lot of micromanaging where the minors are concerned, which might not be the best option in a game that is (I assume) supposed to be accessible to a broad audience. You'd have to release about 20 guys to make room for new draftees every single year.

Watching prospects develop is among the most enjoyable aspects of OOTP for me, but I'm not at all enthusiastic about the idea of getting about 35 or 40 one- or 1.5-star prospects every single year in a huge, 50ish-round draft, taking a long time to assign them all to my minor-league teams and distribute playing time among them, and then having to go through my minor-league rosters one year /later/ and cut everyone who's not performing... so I can make room for more one- or 1.5-star prospects. More to the point, I bet game reviewers REALLY wouldn't like to have to do that; after all, I'm somewhat used to combing through the minors 'cause I already play OOTP, but can you imagine the reaction of a reviewer (or anyone, really) coming to the series for the first time?

And now to undermine my entire argument: you don't need a draft that big if you just use three levels of the minors, like OOTP does now. But I'm still a big, big fan of using ghost players (or greyed-out players, to take the more traditional SI approach), because it would help to keep minor-league roster management from taking an inordinate amount of the player's time.

[PSUColonel]

Obviously you have never played Cm/FM. The game has leagues that are in the "backround"- meaning they have a less complicated sim engine, yet they have full rosters of players. It works well. I'm assuming SI will be using the same technology/programming in OOTP7

[PSUColonel]

Now that I read further maybe you have played CM since you understand the grey players...but the backround league format makes it easier to sim. Remember in Cm you can't call up grey players. So I think you can just choose which leagues you would rather run in the "foreground" and that will take care of the problem.

[DAL 9000]

The difference is that in CM/FM, you aren't managing the rosters of any teams in the background leagues. My concern is less with sim time than with making micromanagement optional rather than mandatory. If you have greyed-out players or ghost players or what-have-you, you don't have to spend a ton of time making sure your minor-league teams have at least one player at every position, cutting unproductive guys to make room for new draftees, etc. etc.

I'd rather spend time thinking, "How can I improve my big-league team?" than thinking, "Gee, I need a backup catcher for my AA squad. And my rookie league club could use a few relievers."

[dougaiton]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

Now that I read further maybe you have played CM since you understand the grey players...but the backround league format makes it easier to sim. Remember in Cm you can't call up grey players. So I think you can just choose which leagues you would rather run in the "foreground" and that will take care of the problem.

Indeed. I've been playing CM since '92, back when the only ghosts were subby goalkeepers.

The reason for my post was that Markus had said there would be no ghost players, be they ghost or grey. That means you'll need to play with every level fully filled.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by DAL 9000

What Remangii said. Also, a requirement that your minor-league affiliates have full rosters would create a lot of micromanaging where the minors are concerned, which might not be the best option in a game that is (I assume) supposed to be accessible to a broad audience. You'd have to release about 20 guys to make room for new draftees every single year.

Watching prospects develop is among the most enjoyable aspects of OOTP for me, but I'm not at all enthusiastic about the idea of getting about 35 or 40 one- or 1.5-star prospects every single year in a huge, 50ish-round draft, taking a long time to assign them all to my minor-league teams and distribute playing time among them, and then having to go through my minor-league rosters one year /later/ and cut everyone who's not performing... so I can make room for more one- or 1.5-star prospects.

High Heat Baseball, which is where I got into baseball games with great stat potential, makes you do just that. At the end of every season you needed to get your prospects out of A ball that you wanted to keep and and demote the scrubs you wanted to get rid by putting them into A ball because at the end of the season the whole A ball team was let go only to be replaced by a new team the next year. (wow, I needed more more commas or periods in that).
I loved HHB (I didn't know about OOTP) but I HATED the end of the year scrub swap. Micro managing that aspect of the game totally took away from the enjoyment of the rest of the game. I'm sure Markus has thought about this but we'll see. I'm sure it's a tough balance between as-close-to-real-as-can-be and what-may-be-the-only-feasble-solution.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by DAL 9000

The difference is that in CM/FM, you aren't managing the rosters of any teams in the background leagues. My concern is less with sim time than with making micromanagement optional rather than mandatory. If you have greyed-out players or ghost players or what-have-you, you don't have to spend a ton of time making sure your minor-league teams have at least one player at every position, cutting unproductive guys to make room for new draftees, etc. etc.

I'd rather spend time thinking, "How can I improve my big-league team?" than thinking, "Gee, I need a backup catcher for my AA squad. And my rookie league club could use a few relievers."

I'm not sure how you, or anyone for that matter, feels about OOTP6's option to have the computer manage the minors. I haven't really checked to see how well/accurately it actually works but I use it all the time. I only want focus on my Major League team so I just let the computer shift around the underlings accordingly. So far I haven't really been all that dissappointed.

[Kemp]

I'm with everyone who is going to miss the "ghost" players. In fact, since Markus mentioned that they would be gone, I've started thinking of workarounds. Because I HATE the thought of having to deal with full minor leagues.

[PSUColonel]

Part of being a GM is micromanagement...but I'm sure you'll be able to delegate some of the responsibility..just like in CM/FM