Player popularity

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

This is reworked, and you cannot see a popularity rating no more... it's now more of a hidden thing that changes dynamically. I prefer it that way now, having coded it in OOTP 6.5 in a different way.

I must admit I find this news extremely disappointing. In fact, I think it's the most disturbing thing I've read so far about the new release. I know most OOTP'ers probably don't understand why this is such a major concern for me, so let me explain.

The addition of player popularity was the single reason I purchased V6.5. For years, I've been lobbying to include more personality in the game. So naturally, I assumed OOTP was heading in that direction with this feature.

I was hoping the newest version would increase the significance of player personalities. I anticipated the game finally allowing us to manually edit the popularity rating, and even expand it into a full "personality rating" that would affect various elements of the game. But now I'm worried this will disappear altogether. I'm not sure how a "hidden" rating would even be implemented. My guess is that it would depend solely on how good the player is statistically. If instead, it's completely random, how indeed would we know whether a player is "popular" or not until it is too late, i.e. he has been signed or traded away. (And will things like ASG selection still be affected by this covert popularity rating?)

What's particularly distressing about this development is that it's yet another part of the game that's being removed (or at least my ability to view it is.) Several weeks ago, I started a thread in which I asked what features would be getting axed in the new release. At the time, there were only a few, relatively small things, like promotion days and arguing a call. And now, we can add a "public" popularity rating to this list. So once again, I'm left wondering if any other features will be getting removed or re-tooled for OOTP '06.

I was under the impression that OOTP was becoming a more customizable/editable game. This revelation would make me think otherwise. There are some aspects of the game that I see a benefit in keeping secret. But this isn't one of them...

Which leads me to the bigger picture...

Popularity ratings shouldn't be hidden, because there is no way to determine anything about a player's personality within the context of the game. And to me, that's the biggest thing OOTP is lacking at this point -- personality.

When I play OOTP, I often feel like I'm watching the results of robots playing baseball. That might be fine for hardcore statheads (which I admit I am not) but there's a reason baseball has been my favorite sport since childhood. It's not just the statistical depth of the game, it's the history, the tradition, the colorful characters. It's about reading the newspaper to see how contract negotiations are going with your favorite player and what kind of trouble that jerk player from the arch-rival team has gotten into. It's about checking out the latest trade rumors, which team is moving where, and who tested positive for what. (Okay, I may be getting carried away a bit. But you get the idea.) I understand that this stuff isn't for everyone. Some of us just want to sim a nice "clean" game of baseball. But all you purists out there, keep in mind that while things like ugly contract negotiations and drug/steroid suspensions are admittedly products of baseball's modern era, even players back in the day had lives off the field. They'd get injured in barroom fights and car accidents, get called off to fight in the war, and have to miss a game because of a death in the family or the birth of a child.

Way back when I first bought OOTP, which was V3 nearly five years ago, I was intrigued to see the coding in the injury file that gave a number for "off the field" injuries. I proceeded to type in a lengthy list of off-field events that could potentially befall a player. Never mind that I couldn't control the frequency of the event, meaning a player would be just as vulnerable to death by bee sting or lawnmower mishap as he was the common cold or a family emergency. Alas, none of these events EVER showed up during game play. I even went so far at one point as to convert the "hit by a line drive" injury to "off-field event", just so I could read the occasional "Diagnosis: Drug Suspension" in the league injury report. (On the rare instance I was playing out a game, it was simultaneously amusing and frustratring to see a player get hit by a line drive and leave the game due to the birth of a child. )

Sadly, this lack of off-field presence was never rectified, save for the disappointingly underutilized email notices informing you that one of your own players had been injured in a car accident or a bar fight. Of course, these incidents were never reported anywhere else in the game, nor did you ever hear of similar incidents occuring to players on other teams.

So you can imagine my jubilation upon hearing that 6.5 would show popularity. The way I figured, this was the first step in giving players a life off the baseball diamond. Realistically, I knew the first incarnation would be very basic and likely need some serious tweaking, but I was at least convinced we were on the right track. I already had visions of OOTP7 including editable personality ratings, which would affect the occurance of specific off-field events. I had dreams of seeing certain players demanding trades and serving suspensions, because they were egomaniacal pricks. Perhaps, I imagined, we would eventually even see players signing with certain teams because their old manager or former teammates were there.

Now it looks like this dream will have to at least get put on hold for a while. I'm still hoping, come release day, I will be pleasantly surprised. But as this date draws nigh, it's looking less and less likely that personality will be a major part of OOTP2006.

I know many board members have taken exception with the opinions of Malleus Dei over the years, but he made a valid, if somewhat unpopular, point a few weeks ago. As Mal sees it, too much time and energy has been devoted to the inclusion of a worldwide baseball universe in V7. While I'm all for the internationalization of the game, I do wonder if this has taken priority over other aspects of the game that would be of more interest to the average OOTP player. Granted, it will be cool to have actual leagues being simmed out in different countries, but I realistically doubt I'll spend much time checking out boxscores from the Bhutan Baseball League or playing out the Equatorial Guinea Championship Series.

Again, I'm not criticizing the inclusion of this aspect of the game. In fact, I'm generally on board with pretty much any new feature that gets added to OOTP, whether I plan on using it or not, as long as it's an option. I just feel that time would have been better spent on connecting OOTP with the outside world. And by "world", I don't necessarily mean different nations and continents, but the outside world beyond the playing field.

I recognize that while the new OOTP isn't using any of the same coding as the other SI games, it does appear to be following a similar model to SI, that is to say a representation of the entire international community. And those of us here in America need to remember that Markus is German and the SI guys are based out of the UK. If I, as an American, were creating a cricket sim or an Australian Rules Football sim, I'm sure I would want to be able to base leagues here in the US. Therefore, I imagine this is a natural addition for the developers.

Nonetheless, the reality of baseball in the world is that, unlike soccer - which is essentially SI's bread and butter - it just isn't that significant outside of North and Latin America and East Asia. I can guarantee you that baseball teams in Slovenia or Luxembourg are roughly the equivelant of most low-level semi-pro or even beer league softball teams here in the States. This is not an ethnocentric statement, it's just the truth. I seriously doubt most of us will have any interest in leagues outside of the US, Canada, Mexico, the DR, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and maybe the Central American nations and certain Carribean nations. Yes, there is the occasional player that hails from somewhere in Europe or Africa or lower South America, but we're talking roughly one out of probably a thousand players (including the minor leagues) that will originate from outside the countries I mentioned. Personally, I would prefer to just have these players pop up out of nowhere as free agents or show up in the amateur draft pool than for the game to eat up my hard drive space on literally thousands of players whose names I will never even see. (By the way, is this even possible? I assume I can simply create a nation named "all others", but I'm thinking it'll generate some freaky player names! LOL)

I know, this topic has been discussed ad nauseum on these boards ever since the details of the new version were revealed. Please don't think I'm becoming a whiny malcontent or anything. Fact is, I've already purchased OOTP 2006, just like I've purchased every version since OOTP3. And I will continue to support OOTP, come hell or high water, based on the fact that it's the single best sports simulation game ever developed. Period!

And don't get me wrong, I'm extremely pleased with the list of new features that are being implemented, many of which I've been clamoring for for years (real managers, hometowns affecting free agency, no trade clauses, etc.) As a matter of fact, I fully expect this to be the single biggest step forward this franchise has taken since I discovered it.

Consider this constructive criticism, or at least an annoyingly squeaky wheel.

However, I'm begging you... don't take away popularity ratings. Make it an option to hide them, if you must. Just please, PLEASE don't take away the one hint at personality OOTP gives us.

And while I'm already down on my knees, as a loyal customer, could you pretty please with sugar on top answer a few of my biggest questions?

1. Will there be editable limited/partial no trade clauses?
2. Will customizable off-field events show up in the game?
3. What about suspensions for on-field incidents?

And of course, any feedback you can give addressing my concerns from above would be greatly appreciated.

Once again, I hope nobody thinks I'm being overly critical with this post. I simply wanted to voice my concern.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your comments.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by Dark Horse

Could you be convinced to put an option in where we could see the pop ratings somehow?

i like to write articles about that, too. It helps me immerse myself into the league. See the third and fourth posts in our league preview.

I second this. Would be pretty neat to know this

[beorn]

I see your point, Muzamba. A well developed player personality would be fantastic. Brainstorming a bit, this might include
general fan appeal - likeability beyond his stats
impact on other players - the other guys listen to him, so his other traits spread
leadership - he makes other player, especially younger players, better
team player - improved willingness to
organization man - wants to remain with the team, regardless of his role
intelligence - makes sense in his contract demands, his reaction to playing time
attitude - whether he does as he is told, stays out of trouble, stays in shape
ambitious - has his eye on coaching or broadcasting and is unlikely to play into his late 30s
greedy
willingness to play through pain

This kind of thing sounds really neat. However, two things:
1. It is better to have none of this than to have it poorly implemented. IMHO, that is what happened with player popularity in version 6. It felt all wrong and was more an obstacle to the game than anything else.
2. The whole thing is a bit difficult to conceptualize. How do you do it? Have visible ratings? That would work in a "stats" and strategy sense, but it would not add personality to the game. Have it be implied in email messages? Theoretically, this could be fun, but it might require coding a game in and of itself, to make it work in an interesting way. You would not want a simple canned email alerting you to the simple fact that, for this player, the team player flag=yes... At that rate, it might as well just be visible ratings.

[battists]

Muzamba, I think that the "US-centric" view exaggerates one thing, that might be relevant from a software development perspective.

Often this viewpoint mentions Bhutan or some other minor nation. It's true, I don't know if there will be a single OOTP player out there making a Bhutan league, unless just for the novelty of it. But, I don't think that Markus spends his time coding the details of the Bhutan league. Markus spends his time (or "spent" his time, I hope ) coding a framework that allows the addition of Bhutan as easily as it does Mexico, the DR, or Japan.

My point is, not many people would argue against the addition of the baseball powers that you mentioned - Cuba, Japan, etc. It's my belief that once Markus created the framework that allowed ANY other country, it didn't matter whether he added one or one hundred. I don't think Bhutan, Nepal, or Haiti have taken one minute of development time that Markus should be spending on making a superior baseball sim. Once that framework was built, it was merely a matter of adding the country and city names for those countries into the database, an effort which I'm guessing Markus didn't even do himself.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to threadjack, I just think that this approach to the US-centric vs World-centric view isn't productive. Of course, I could be wrong.

As for the rest of it, I generally agree with anything that gives the players more personality, although I do agree that it was pretty well broken in OOTP 6.5. Would definitely like to hear more from Markus on this!

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by battists

It's my belief that once Markus created the framework that allowed ANY other country...

Point taken.

And I would agree that Markus probably wasn't specifically concerned about the inclusion of certain individual nations.

I suppose instead of belittling Bhutan and the like, a better way to illustrate my concern would have been to say this: All things being equal, I would have personally preferred to see international players show up as free agents and/or draftable amateurs, instead of Markus focusing his attention on actually developing the baseball world.

In 6.5, we had Cuban and Japanese players popping up in the free agent pool. I would've loved to have seen a proliferation of players from other baseball powers (and yes, even the anomalous Bhutani every 500 years or so ) I simply question the importance of implementing such a framework at the expense of other more requested features.

Now, having said all of this, it's also occurred to me that the baseball universe idea may not have stemmed from Markus and SI's desire to make the game more international, but from an attempt to further develop the minor league system. Truly, many of us have hounded Markus for years about having fully-developed minor leagues.

If this is the case, I suppose my criticism is misguided. Perhaps it's just a matter of SI touting this new feature so much that it only seems to have taken up more of Markus' time than was warranted.

Anyway, baseball universes notwithstanding...

I'm still very concerned about the decreased role of personality/popularity in the upcoming version.

[andymac]

Just because he has made the pop. ratings hidden does not mean they will be less utilized in the new version. Also, with the re-vamped news system, I would bet that there are going to be news stories with hints as to what players are more popular than others as well. I realize that you guys are concerned, but I think we need to get more information before you go into panic mode about this.

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by beorn

I see your point, Muzamba. A well developed player personality would be fantastic. Brainstorming a bit, this might include
general fan appeal - likeability beyond his stats
impact on other players - the other guys listen to him, so his other traits spread
leadership - he makes other player, especially younger players, better
team player - improved willingness to
organization man - wants to remain with the team, regardless of his role
intelligence - makes sense in his contract demands, his reaction to playing time
attitude - whether he does as he is told, stays out of trouble, stays in shape
ambitious - has his eye on coaching or broadcasting and is unlikely to play into his late 30s
greedy
willingness to play through pain

All of these things should definitely be taken into account.

1. It is better to have none of this than to have it poorly implemented. IMHO, that is what happened with player popularity in version 6. It felt all wrong and was more an obstacle to the game than anything else.

I agree to a point. True, if it's flawed so much as to interfere with the game, it's better to not include it. However, I would rather have a very basic version of popularity than none at all or to have to wait for a fully-developed one.

2. The whole thing is a bit difficult to conceptualize. How do you do it? Have visible ratings? That would work in a "stats" and strategy sense, but it would not add personality to the game. Have it be implied in email messages? Theoretically, this could be fun, but it might require coding a game in and of itself, to make it work in an interesting way. You would not want a simple canned email alerting you to the simple fact that, for this player, the team player flag=yes... At that rate, it might as well just be visible ratings.

Great point. Here's what I've suggested...

For this version, implement a simple 5-point scale (or even a 3-point scale) to determine a player's overall personality, not just his popularity with the fans. Basically, here's how it would break down:

5 - Model Citizen. Rarely gets ejected, is easy to negotiate with, NEVER gets in any off-field trouble, brings out the best in his teammates. A real class act.
4 - Not quite a model citizen, but displays all of the above qualities, just to a slightly lesser extent.
3 - Neutral personality. In other words, he's just your average ballplayer.
2 - (See below, but not quite that bad)
1 - Troublemaker. Is always getting ejected/suspended, demands to be traded if things aren't going his way, is extremely difficult to negotiate with, is prone to off-field infractions like fights and drug use, and is generally regarded as a cancer in the clubhouse.

There would have to be 2 new files included, or at least 2 new categories added to the injury database: regular off-field incidents and personality-related off-field incidents. Regular incidents would include random occurances that could happen to anyone, like family emergencies, car accidents, birth of children, etc. Personality-related incidents would include things like bar fights, criminal activity, testing positive for drugs or steroids, etc. (Naturally, having suspensions and fines for these offenses, as well as on-field infractions, would make this all the better.)

All players would have an equal vulnerability to the regular incidents. And players with a personality rating of 3 would be randomly susceptible to personality-related incidents. However, a player with a personality rating of 1 would be the most likely to miss time due to one of the personality-related incidents. On the other end of the spectrum, a player with a 5 rating would almost never experience a personality-related incident.

Here's another way to look at it, in terms of the likelihood a player will experience a personality-related off-field incident...

5 = 50% less likely
4 = 25% less likely
3 = average
2 = 25% more likely
1 = 50% more likely

At the beginning of each new day, both during the season and offseason, the sim engine will determine if any players are "victims" that day, based on the probability of the incident (much like Pierre's Event Generator does.)

Come time for contract negotiations, the same general percentages from above are used to determine how easy/difficult the player is to negotiate with. For instance, the 5 player may be a lot more likely to say "Ok, let's make a deal", even at a low-ball offer, while the 1 player will likely respond to the same offer with "I don't like your organization" or "Your offers make me sick, etc." And if you're negotiating during the season or your team is playing poorly, the 1 player might demand to be traded.

Ok, I know what you're thinking...

"Just because a guy plays with passion on the field and gets into some scuffs once in a while or happens to have a cut-throat agent doesn't mean he's a bad guy."

Absolutely true. Which is why I'd like to see the various aspects of his personality categorized in future versions. For now, though, I could tolerate having all of these traits lumped together for simplicity's sake.

And then there's the popularity factor. There would no longer be a need for a specific popularity rating, because it would be determined by the player's personality, along with his stats/ability and how long he's been around. So even if a 5 player is underachieving, the fans will cut him some slack. Conversely, a 1 player can hit tons of homeruns, but still draw the ire of the fans (especially in rival markets.)

So what does popularity affect? Just like before, it would affect things like attendance, fan interest, and merchandise revenue. But it also would be used to determine All-Star selection, if you choose that as an option, of course. A popular player might get an ASG start over a less popular guy with better stats. (And to reiterate, the entire personality/popularity thing should be an option.)

And how will these things "show up" in the game? Simple. They will occur as entries on the Injury Report, emails in your inbox (if it involves your own players), and news stories. And if we have suspendable in-game offenses, they'll be described in the play-by-play.

At least this would be my idea of how to implement it.

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by andymac

...I think we need to get more information...

Exactly!

Hence, the squeaky wheel



Grease us, Markus!

[PSUColonel]

Let them handle personalities their way...if it's anything similar to what's been done in the Championship/Football Manager series(or at least headed that way) it will be nothing short of exceptional. I don't know how many here have any experience with FM, but those of us who do, are much less worried than those of you who don't. Reason: you don't know what to expect, and we do. Bottom line is, I know they are not going to be exactly the same, but there are so many good elements that make FM immersive, it would bea mistake not to implement them in a similar fashion in OOTP. I think Markus and the team at SI also realize this. So folks, I say this honestly.....don't worry so much. OOTP is in very good hands.


Just to give you anexample, players in FM have dozens of attributes, many of which are hidden...reason? because in FM players react to a whole host of events such as the media, coaches praisingor criticizing players, other players in the lockeroom or other teams..etc..

What fun would the game be if you knew how players might react n any gven situation because you knew the rating? Players who are more poplar might be more stubborn in contract negotiations and might do other unforeseen things.

My point is let the guys at SI handle this part...the are masters at creating immersion.

[battists]

I see the point of the fear, though. In a lot of ways, OOTP has been like a reliable car, like a Honda Civic. It may not have all of the bells and whistles, but overall it was great to own for the majority of owners.

Each year, Honda revises and tweaks the Civic, but by and large they aren't changing too much. This year's OOTPB 2006 would be akin to a car manufacturer doing a complete model redesign, with changes to the engine and everything. It's still a Honda Civic, and it will still get your benefit of the doubt, but when a remodel happens, everything is up in the air. Many of us have confidence in Markus, or in SI, or in both, but lots of great companies have combined to flop in the past as well...

Remember folks, this is basically an entirely new piece of software. Probably the only things that have carried over are some of the game engine formulae and Markus' design concepts.