+++ Possible OOTP 6 Features +++

[medlinke]

Originally posted by TRO
It would also allow them to not have to purchase OOTP to play. While I do want greater statistical reporting, I don't think we'll see something to the effect it allows for lost sales.

I have to disagree here.

I too say that loss of sales would be a bad feature to build into a product.

There would be ways of making this work. For instance:

Selling the XML export version as a commissioners version. Then charge for a 32 player license. It would ensure that regular leagues get their league status AND get the power league management tool. I think there are plenty of commissioners out there that are technically competent enough to work with XML files.

The other option might be that it would be sold as an addon with hosting. So, if a league with plays goes to get hosted at the out of the park leagues servers they can pay an extra 5 - 10 bucks a person and get the advanced league hosting allowing XML reporting etc.

I totally agree that it opens up a pandoras box by allowing every copy to have XML support. I just think it would be a great league option and would open up a new kind of sales model for Marcus that could yield some extra revenue without too much investment in time.

[SanDiegoPadres19]

I just want one small thing. When you go into the trade screen and process a trade, why not jump back to the trade screen. It is very time consuming when you are a commish and you have to process tons of trades, espically near the deadline, and everytime you have to go back and forth from the trade screen to the standings...

Small task but very time consuming in my opinion.

[BleacherBum]

Originally posted by medlinke
Selling the XML export version as a commissioners version. Then charge for a 32 player license. It would ensure that regular leagues get their league status AND get the power league management tool. I think there are plenty of commissioners out there that are technically competent enough to work with XML files.

Who pays for that license? The league players equally? But what if I want to play in more than one league? Do I have to pay a fee to each league now? I'd rather pay for my one OOTP copy and have the freedom to move. Plus, with the flakiness of some leagues, I'd rather not pay a license fee with no walk-away benefit.

[medlinke]

Originally posted by BleacherBum
Who pays for that license? The league players equally? But what if I want to play in more than one league? Do I have to pay a fee to each league now? I'd rather pay for my one OOTP copy and have the freedom to move. Plus, with the flakiness of some leagues, I'd rather not pay a license fee with no walk-away benefit.

That's an excellent point! I definitely do NOT think league owners would support that license. It would be a commish purchase.

At my website I don't make every person help support my hosting costs. I think any monkey with a WYSIWYG can run a league...heck OOTP 5 was great enough to provide a really nice premade site that you didn't even have to do anything to in order to have a nice league site.

This would be that next step for folks that have established leagues or want to bring some extra power to the plate for their leagues and attract new members. I can guarantee you with a URL like www.geo$h1tties.com/~ootpleaguename/ you aren't going to attract new members very quickly.

From reading the boards three things have become apparent:

1) Leagues that look good attract players
2) Leagues with owners and a commish with a good rep attract players (probably most important in my opinion when I choose)
3) Leagues that offer features or have interesting rule twists attract players

Fact is, you sport the default league site with a new commish you aren't going to attract anyone. You want to bring something new and exciting to the world of ootp baseball. This would be a way to offer this.

[rasnell]

OOTP, Baseball Mogul and PureSim all lack one feature that would be wonderful for us stat-heads who love to keep track of our team history, but without having to click and load multiple almanacs and seasons.

How about a post-season, one-page report that is formatted for printing and would include the following basics:

Team record/win percentage/final place (NL West Wildcard, Won LCS, Lost World Series 4-3 to KC).

Runs Scored (Rank) Runs Allowed (Rank) Differential

Top three on team in ERA, BA, HR, RBI, W, SV, K, SB and league rank in each category.

One-line summary of each post-season game, showing the score, winning and losing pitchers, and the player of the game with a one-line summary of that player's game stats.

Awards and individual records on your team that season (if any)

Players on your team lost to Free Agency as season ends.

[GeoWar]

QUOTE __

So, I feel it's the best way to completely recode the game engine (including play-by-play), to incorporate the things that are currently not very realistic and adding a lot more variety, and possibly even pitch-by-pitch.


** The pitch-by-pitch would be great . But you could look at a catchers ability to "handle a Pitcher" also. Some catchers call their own games (even the best have the manager call a pitch once in a while) but other catcher's have almost all pitches (ok-all) called for them. You currently list the the pitchers pitches so.... do it like ... click - Pitch Normal ..... click -- (from list) 1-fastball; 2-curve; 3-change-up; 4-split finger ...


ALSO - have a pitch inside / outside option .... will effect where balls are hit , walks, ground out/DP's, and Hit by Pitch.

Couple of ideas for great game.

[nestajones]

test

[nestajones]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i just spent 15 minutes composing a long list of suggestions and it didn't show up. ****.

i'll do it again later i guess.

[rasnell]

Is it possible to program a true one-pitch mode where what pops up with the hitter's first play-by-play message is something like this...

Joe Blow fouled off the first two pitches and digs in with an 0-2 count...

You would then make your strategy choice, perhaps with more depth such as: 1. Contact or shorten swing and put the ball in play; 2. Power; 3. Hit to opposite field; 4. Hit on ground; or other options that have pluses and minuses.

Starting the at bat with an actual pitch count would add to the need for managerial strategy...If you start out at 2-0, do you work the count for a walk, swing for the fences, call for the hit and run.

This would give us many more options to call for the steal or hit and run.

Diamond Mind Baseball goes into great detail for their play-by-play, from what I understand, actually coding in the incredible variety of rare plays that have occurred in baseball history and programming them to occur that one in 1 million chance...such as:

Buckner (or the name of whatever player is at first when this rare play would occur in OOTP) hobbles to the bag at first...AND THE BALL GOES BETWEEN HIS LEGS...

Moises Alou goes to the left field corner...he has a play...OH NO, A FAN HAS CAUGHT THE BALL...Is there interference...THE UMP IS WAVING...HE CALLS IT A FOUL BALL...NO INTERFERENCE.

A swing and a miss, strike three and the World Series is over....WAIT, THE BALL HAS GOTTEN PAST CATCHER MICKEY OWENS...HE SCRAMBLES, THROWS TO FIRST, NOT IN TIME...

The pitcher would have options to: 1. Waste a pitch (running the risk of the ball getting away but also increasing the chance of the batter striking out on a bad pitch; 2. Keep the ball down to assure a grounder (but run risk of getting away from a bad defensive catcher); 3. Throwing smoke (increase strikeout, increase HR risk).

Rare plays would appear in ALL CAPS.

[charliemike]

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, infielders' arm strength should be incorporated too. Range and arm strength makes a difference at SS and 3B.

[Johnny Slick]

Way back when (I think it's been a year ago now), I came up with a tools-based defensive system. You'd have several different abilities that would each help to determine how much talent a player might have at a certain position, and then on top of that they'd develop a proficiency at it over time. Here's a brief synopsis of what I'd have:

Arm Strength: Useful for catchers, shortstops, third basemen, and outfielders.

Quickness (think: first step): Used by 2B, SS, and 3B.

Speed: Used by OFers, especially CF.

Height: Used by 1B (to keep teams from sticking any old guy at the spot).

Intelligence: Used by everybody, but especially defensive-intensive positions like 2B, SS, C, and CF.

Utilizing this, I think, would go a long way towards dissuading teams from teaching a poor fielder to play short and then living with his bad fielding. In this system, for a guy to play short at ALL, he'd have to have good ratings at quickness, arm, and intelligence. Conversely, it would make positional changes realistic; catchers fill in at and move to third and right field all the time, where they can use their arm, but very rarely to second.

John Craven

[octones]

Here's my suggestion for online leagues:

Have the league report be database driven, preferably PHP/MySQL. What you could do then is when an owner does roster changes and exports, it would automatically update the database and reflect the changes on the site.

Now the only problem with that is it wouldn't allow for much customization in the league itself... so maybe just have a "Latest Export" page for each team and it would show you what you exported.


If that isn't feasible... I'd love to see a "Clear host of export files" button. This would delete the .EXP or .DAT files from roster or free agency exports. Those get cluttered on the server, and it would make importing faster because it would only have to find the files and then check them against the game to make sure they import right.

Also, when you import all the team exports I would love to see a window pop up showing you which team exports were found on the server. For example, when you press the button to import all teams from the server a window would pop up showing you which team files were found. Taking this further, build that into the league report that gets uploaded so then an owner can tell for sure that his previous export was imported correctly. This could be a separate page, like a previous sim import report, or on each teams page listed with all the statistical info at the top of the page.

[Dave Elkin]

Is there a possibility of making replaying of games as a home team manager possible without having to sim all the other games being played those days. APBA BBW 5.5 does have that feature and it is one of the reasons that it is still popular though it is no longer supported by the company.

Another feature that I would like to see is managers selected by the owners that meet their styles. If I am playing the 50's Yankees, I would like a Stengal clone but the 70's Yankees would need a Martin clone. (Again, APBA has that feature thought mostly it was the great game players who created that)

You have done a marvelous job since I came over during the time of OOTP 3. Thanks for everything.

[dannyc]

Whats CM4?

[Ekcut]

What I would like to see in up coming version....

A) More stat tracking from past seasons. Things like Catchers % caught stealing are not viewable from past seasons. If it tracks it for one season, why can't we track it for a career?

B) Ability to hire managers at the major league level. We play the roll of GM, it would be a great online option to have individual manager tendencies rather then setting team strategies yourself. You don't want your team to steal so much? Fire your manager and bring in another guy who is more conservative. Different managers have quick hooks/slow hooks would be nice to hire/fire your managers to suit your teams. Could also impliment the short 'boost' firing your manager can cause a strugling team, or vise versa if your team is playing well and the skipper gets canned.

C) More strategy options. Right now I have a player 5avg, 9hrs vs lefties, and 0avg 3hrs vs righties. NO WAY IN HELL he should get a single AB vs a right handed pitcher, yet he still picks up 50-100AB per season as my platoon catcher. Would be nice to be able to have an "always PH for vs righties" option.

D) Why not have speed a time from home to 1st? Instead of A,B,C,D,E a player is a 3.9, 4.1, 4.5 etc etc. Stealing could be a %. So instead of a Ricky Henderson being an A/A, he would be a 3.9, 76%. There is no debating that it is realistic. This is exactly as precise as the numbers any real life scout/coach will come up with.

E) Pitch by Pitch is good, or perhaps if we still have 1 pitch mode have an option of Stealing if the count goes to 1-2, or pitch out on a 2-1 count.

F)I'd like to be able to set the ratings as precise or vague as I like. The hits rating could be shown as 'Good', or 6, or .297 depending on how the league is set up.

Ummm....I got more idea's but no more time....

[GoldenPelicans]

There are some who think that there is a difference in having the durability to pitch frequently and be effective as impacted by the current relief durability rating and being able to pitch efective into late innings every 4th or 5th day as impacted by the current starter durability rating.

If the current two durability capability were to be maintained, and a league wide setting (to be made when the league was formed)were added to use single pitching durability rating, both those who favor a single rating and those who like the current separate rating would be satisfied.

The logic could still be different if a single rating were to be used then that utilzed under a two rating system.

[Big Train]

Originally posted by BillyBuck
Markus - just a thought...

Please keep in mind when adjusting all pitchers to having ONE duration...just becuz a pitcher can go 7 innings as a starter does not mean he can go 7 innings in relief. Starters pace themselves...relievers generally put more juice behind their pitching, etc. There IS a difference in starter and reliever durations. Just thought I would mention that.

Well if you had a pitching staff set up with closers and setup men and the ability to control manager tendancies I doubt you would ever have a reliever go 7 innings in relief in a modern game. The nice thing is that in earlier eras when starters both started and relieved they often *would* be expected to go seven innings of relief if the starter got hurt or something. Starter and reliever roles were less defined. Having 10 or 11 guys on a pitching with "A" or "B" or "C" in duration would allow you to replicate this better,especially if the game also allowed for multiple spot starters which I hope will be added.

[CRjim]

I can't seem to find anything on this in the boards...

There is one thing that would be VERY nice for those of us running leagues...

A live online draft.

[pgardnerjr]

Don't know if this is possible or it might have been brought up. I know some comments will be at what point can you go to. Anyway here it is.

Can a lock for "simming" be made so that ONLY the commish can do it? Reason I state this I have already seen in one league where a player is offer to the league for trade an e-mail comes to the owner and it says "Hey I simmed ahead to see if this player would help and I really would like him. What do you want?"

I know don't trade with the guy but my point is that "simming ahead" could be stopped with only the commish doing it garbage like that could end right there.

[cibl commish]

In OOTP5 with the password set for online leagues, that should by itself prevent simming ahead providing the person doesn't have the league password.