Well what do the 100 lucky buggers think!!?

[Sweed]

Here's a copy paste of my post in the preview forum..

Loaded up the game yesterday and took some time with it before giving my first impressions.

For the record I only play solo and have a continuous league running since v4. Started with Rolen17's real player roster and have advanced one game at a time and am currently ready to start my 2014 season.

I've been playing using my solo dynasty imported from v2006 (yes I have a backup and yes I am one that enjoyed v2006). The import went smoothly and included my player photos and stadiums file (but not the photos, had to do those myself). I actually liked the 2006 UI and 2007 makes it even better.

Many new reports to look at. One I really like is the "player salaries" that gives you a 10 year picture of the contracts for the players on your club. It makes it so easy to see that Joe Blow is making 350k this year and will get aribtation for the next 3. Or that your young third starter only has one arbitration year left after the current season. Well done and very helpful.

First thing I did was to sim up to opening day. No problems with the schedule
in v2007 (all-star game in the right place etc). Played out my first two games to see how the in-game has been improved.

pros:
screens are very sharp looking

pregame screens are better organized and easier to read

pbp much improved

pbp box has a better contrast to it IMHO and is easier to follow

only the scoreboard has the "lighted numbers" while the lineups are solid yellow

I know I'm forgetting other things but overall I'm very impressed.

cons: of course there has to be some

I was disappointed that the game intros haven't returned (Welcome to Wrigley field where the Cubs 10-8 face the Cardinals 7-11 etc)

I'd like to see last years stats in the batter and pitcher boxes on the broadcast screen like 6.5 and before, not just ratings and season stats.

Still no photos of the batter\pitcher on the webcast view

Weather not viewable on the broadcast screen

I know some of these are obviously a little nitpicky and open to personal opinion but thought the team would want to know.


Moved on and simulated the entire season. The import did bring in my v2k6 modifiers so used those first. Keep in mind some of those were pretty extreme to get the stats right in 2k6. In 2k6 my hbp was 2.456 and BB 1.744.
These setting in 2k7 resulted in 3126 hbp and 28,393 bb in a standard MLB league. Went back and did a sim with all mods at 1.00 and the results came back pretty close. Ended up adjusting only 4 modifiers, hits (1.024), 2b (1.251) hbp (1.334), and k's (.950). Ran two seasons and came away with great looking numbers. Glad to see minor leagues also coming in with realistic stats, no longer pitching dominated.


Only played out two games and did see what could be an AI issue with a intentional walk. Nobody out runner on second AI team leads by 2. RHB facing LHP and gets the IBB to bring up the potential winning run. It was the bottom of the order with two LHB coming up so some could argue it was an ok strategy but it also brought the lead run to the plate with nobody out. Arguable? Yes.
Small sample and maybe isolated incident? Could very well be, certainly haven't played enough to say it is a problem.

Game looks great and seems very stable.

Yeah, I'm adding to my first impressions I just went in and added HS and College feeder leagues. Facegened a 16 year old and there was a yound kid staring back at me, a simply awesome addition to the game. Easy to do and is going to add so much depth to my baseball world.

[Dagrims]

Sweed, I wish every preview copy holder posted something in the same manner that you just did. Thanks!

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by SkySpy

That is an odd statement. I love the new interface. I've had no trouble adjusting to navigating through it.

The game is incredible so far. I am a little flustered though. This five days thing is playing mental games on me. It's like sending an 8 year old into Toys R Us and telling him he has five minutes to play with all the toys and then he's done.

This amused me to no end. I have had a very, very bad day, and I am glad that someone, somewhere, is having a blast.

Cheers!

[silvam14]

Like Sweed, I have imported my league from 2006 and everything seems to convert flawlessly.

I am currently spending a lot of time getting familiar with the layout of jerseys and hats with facegen, but other than that here are a few thoughts

> The new features seem endless, it the more I play it, the more I keep finding new stuff.

> The sortable tables in the HTML reports are great!

> The editable news stories and game re-caps seem like a great new feature even for solo leagues (my preferred playing mode) It makes viewing box scores that much more interesting when you have a headline of the re-cap right there.

> After all of the hard work over the years manually expanding leagues(excel spreadsheets, notebooks..etc) In game expansion is finally a reality! Let me tell you that it is so easy to expand my fictional league, I don't know what I would have done with all of the hours I spent manually expanding in previous versions had this been in there!

> The Almanac option is great and will automatically save HTML and database outputs (CSV,SQL) on a yearly/monthly basis. What it saves is also customizable. By this I mean that you can go through a list of every database table, html report, and text report and turn on/off any you might want to keep or not keep. I really see this as another time saver!

> One more thing is stability. This game hasn't crashed on me yet. It seems as stable as the final version of 2006 (for me, no crashes ever) This is a great thing!

Well, that's it for now, I will probably post more thoughts once my 5 day period is up (I think tomorrow...boohoo)

[Gastric ReFlux]

In some ways I don't envy the preview winners any because it'd suck to get the hands on the game for 5 days, find it really really really good, and then have to wait another couple of weeks for the release.

[jlredsox]

Originally Posted by Gastric ReFlux

In some ways I don't envy the preview winners any because it'd suck to get the hands on the game for 5 days, find it really really really good, and then have to wait another couple of weeks for the release.

I agree I don't know if I could of handled having such a great game them not be able to play it fo 2 weeks. It probally would have killed me

[HolyCow98]

Originally Posted by battists

Well, part of it is going to be personal preference, flat out. I think another piece of it was that the 6.5 interface was easier because, well, it was a much simpler game. There's just no way to add the level of complexity that Markus did without making the interface clumsier.

I think 2007 has taken some nice "fine tuning" steps, but the game has not gotten fundamentally less complex. Therefore, there will still be a learning curve issue, and some people may just never learn to like the new interface.

Steve

I definately fall into the group that at times miss the simplicity of the 6.5 (and older) interface. With that said....I really appreciate the effort that was put into the interface this version. I too had that "feeling" that I just didn't like about the 2006 version which was mainly due to the interface. I'm not saying its completely gone but its much less. Because of that....it has been much easier to get around the game, get things set up, and not feel like I'm "working" ....which of course is going to make it much easier to enjoy the game and just have fun.

I was geared up to get and play OOTP 2006....but that feeling went away after just a short time (which hadn't happened to me since I joined the series with OOTP 3). OOTP 2007 though is doing something right....I'm constantly wanting to find more time (fairly unsuccessfully) to spend with the game.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by HolyCow98

I'm constantly wanting to find more time (fairly unsuccessfully) to spend with the game.

When was the last time you mopped the kitchen? I get away with murder Sunday nights if I mop the kitchen after supper.

[Killebrew]

First some good...
I'm not prone to exaggeration, but the Facegen feature is the greatest thing since "The Bible II: Quest For Jesus' Gold". I did not think I'd be that impressed by this but it surprised me. There are a lot more options than I expected, and if the ootp community can provide some solid graphics add-ons this will IMO be a tremendous addition to the game.

Then some bad...
Regarding the UI complaints: I find it frustrating that some here explain away the OOTP2006 UI issues away just by stating that any game with so much depth will have such a steep learning curve or that there is no other way to make so many options available to the user without designing a maze-like UI. I agree a complex game like this is going to have a steep learning curve, but that learning curve would be greatly reduced if more focus was put on optimizing the user interface. It's fine to say "I don't understand why people have problems with the UI" but the reality is that many OOTP2006 customers in this forum did have serious problems with it, and I would guess it was the number 1 reason so many gave up on the game completely. There are a few workarounds for users in v2007 that help a lot, but they still are work arounds. The most positive thing I have to say about the UI is that although it can still be painful and frustrating to find vital info & functions, the results do seem to be worth the time spent.

And end on good....
So far online league stuff in the new game looks very good. I think that this will be a major challenge for commishes, but ultimately the commish/online league features should make running a league much easier (though maybe with a bit more web space and UL/DL limits). For users who just expect to play as owners in online leagues the good news is that they can ignore 90% of the game screens/options and therefore it shouldn't overwhelm them at all. So far the keys to avoiding UI headaches for myself have been to go to the Manager --> Home screen constantly since you have access to every common action from that one screen. Also make constant use of the BACKSPACE hot key to get back to where you were, or else risk getting lost & frustrated.

Overall summary:
Besides many of the same UI issues of OOTP2006 I like this game so far, and right now I would expect to play this game a lot, both in online leagues as commish & owner, and solo play. It seems to me that the historical stuff is vastly improved from OOTP2006, and though I have not tried that style of play much in the past, if that understanding is accurate I may try that in the near future.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Dagrims

Sweed, I wish every preview copy holder posted something in the same manner that you just did. Thanks!

No problem. I didn't even mention 7 day lineups are back with expected pitchers featured. Or that scouting reports also mention expected pitching matchups.
And speaking of scouting, being able to schedule your scouts quickly, cycle their duties, or have something lined up for them when they are idle is great. I like playing with scouts and this feature is going to save me a ton of time and micromanagement. I would imagine once a guy is used to all the options available on the scout screen he could schedule all his scouting for the year in a half hour (?) or thereabouts.

[BigCity]

To be honest, I'm maximizing my 5 days to get as much as I can before it runs out. Once the 5 days are up, I'll post my thoughts and open up question and comments

[Jason]

Great thoughts, guys. Thanks.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Then some bad...
Regarding the UI complaints: I find it frustrating that some here explain away the OOTP2006 UI issues away just by stating that any game with so much depth will have such a steep learning curve or that there is no other way to make so many options available to the user without designing a maze-like UI. I agree a complex game like this is going to have a steep learning curve, but that learning curve would be greatly reduced if more focus was put on optimizing the user interface. It's fine to say "I don't understand why people have problems with the UI" but the reality is that many OOTP2006 customers in this forum did have serious problems with it, and I would guess it was the number 1 reason so many gave up on the game completely. There are a few workarounds for users in v2007 that help a lot, but they still are work arounds. The most positive thing I have to say about the UI is that although it can still be painful and frustrating to find vital info & functions, the results do seem to be worth the time spent.

I guess my question is, what are the remaining problems with the UI and how do they fix it? I see a lot of generic statements around the forums about the UI but nobody seems to be able to pinpoint what they don't like about it. What are the "workarounds" that you mentioned?