AI Trade "LOGIC"

[Karl Pagel Blues]

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

Follow Up Yanks place Chapman on trading block. Take over 50% of his contract for a scrub. I shop him around and the Yanks are offering prospects for him.

Sorry but trading has serious problems regardless of settings.

Sure when you have to test things out you want normal conditions but you also want to test to see what happens when a user tries to break the system. And trading is a honestly a big fail.

Not to mention Chapman is top Closer in league and Yankees are 2 GB of 1st and in a playoff hunt. Why would they dump a contract? They should be buyers not sellers.

I took a year off from OOTP in 22 and this year I skipped FM cause I was pretty busy. I was craving baseball so bought OOTP I kind of regret it now.

I have no idea how players play dynasties or decades in OOTP there are just so many loose ends and bugs and things that dont make sense.

Think I only am only enjoying OOTP because I like the busy work it gives me. I like the busy work FM gives me but I also actually the game play. OOTP its like i have to force myself to turn a blind eye to the game play and just focus on numbers, stats, names.

I agree 100%. I stopped playing this year's version sooner than any other version before it - and I've purchased each year since OOTP 12. The AI just isn't getting any smarter. As has been said here, with 23 we again have nonsensical AI to AI trades and DFAs that take the fun out of the game for me.

As someone who wants a realistic and true to life experience, I was constantly shaking my head at looking at AI roster management and trading.

I really had high hopes for this version. It's high time to upgrade the AI. I won't be purchasing again until I hear positive feedback about this aspect of the game.

[oomm]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

well, I realize a lot of people don't like hearing this (I am not very popular in the AI Evaluation Settings Thread) but I am not in love with your settings at all.

I know people are going to say it shouldn't matter THIS much, but I think you need to do ALL you can do to help the AI before judging. After that, have at it. I seriously would recommend the following:

AI Evaluation with at least 55 weight on ratings. The default is 65, but I think you need at least 55 to give the AI a reasonable chance. Others disagree with me on this, but that is likely because they are the type who don't mind "self-policing". I am not that type of person, and want a challenge. Therefore I recommend using 55/20/15/10.

Secondly, I recommend having the trade AI difficulty at maximum, while leaving the prospects/vets preferences at the default neutral position.

As with many threads (tho not all) I take those like this one with a grain of salt. This one I do because of the ratings question. The OP states he is feeding the AI very little ratings information. How big a factor is that? The sliders and ranges must be adjustable for some good reason.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by oomm

As with many threads (tho not all) I take those like this one with a grain of salt. This one I do because of the ratings question. The OP states he is feeding the AI very little ratings information. How big a factor is that? The sliders and ranges must be adjustable for some good reason.

The AI is just abnormally dumb no matter what the sliders are set as. They will release the 17th ranked prospect while filling their high minors with aging 30 year olds. They will give up valuable pieces on a good team to trade for a 1st baseman to sit on the bench. It is hard to overlook these things when you are looking for an accurate simulation of baseball. They dont have to be great but they could at least make logical decisions an 8 year old would make.

And yes, I have gone more of the historical route with real life transactions. Its not the way I really want to play but when I tried to play current day and Id have to put 25 percent of top 100 prospects back on their original team because the AI released them it was too much.

[oomm]

I just had Yogi Berra at the end of a HoF career, at 39, batting subpar but still on pace to 25 HRs, released outright by OOTP AI. Obviously at very minimum he was bench strength with plenty of starts remaining behind the plate and in LF. But, apparently not. And the vacant utility catcher position had to be filled by a 1B. Now, my ratings were 25/25/25/25, neutral. Have since changed to 65/20/10/5. Will see if anything else jumps out at me.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

what is the point of that? would you play with pitching turned off?

sorry but weird house rules to overcome game problems doesnt work for me.

The AI shouldnt trade players then ask for them back. Playoff teams dont dump they buy. Money teams dont sign free agents to long term deals then try and move them either. These rules should be built in.

Just fix the game

Have you ever written an AI for a game? Especially a game where the playerbase has an in-depth knowledge of how all of the game mechanics work?

You might as well ask for the moon.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by uruguru

Have you ever written an AI for a game? Especially a game where the playerbase has an in-depth knowledge of how all of the game mechanics work?

You might as well ask for the moon.

This is sort of true. I agree I don't like house rules or self-policing either...but much of this IMO is because over the years OOTP has attempted to try to be all things to all people, and didn't just focus one good way to do things that would had made things work in a much better way.

For instance, the original re-write of OOTP back in 2006 was originally not going to feature overall or potential stars. It also wan't going to have the shop player functionality in trades. I realize they just spent a mountain of development on the shop player feature, but I think it makes things too easy for the human player. If they had just stuck to a good working and functioning trade block (the way FM uses the transfer list) I think it would had worked much better and not allowed for so many exploits...same with the "make this work now" button in trades. FM handles trading in the MLS the way OOTP probably should have. There you can get an initial reaction from the opposing GM, but after that, you have to submit the offer and wait to hear back. In OOTP you are constantly getting real-time feedback allowing you to cheese the system.

In other words, a lot of these so called "quality of life" features in my mind sort of opened up the Pandora's box for much of the complaints you see today. It was the developer's decision to make it easier (and therefore in some cases more exploitable) for people, rather than to keep some of the mystery in tact.

On other words some of the aspects of OOTP are gamey because the developers felt "well, it's a game".

It seems to me (and I could be wrong of course) that most of the development today is spent on aspects of OOTP that will benefit both the core game, and PT. Sort of a "kill two birds with one stone" mentality...which mean much of the front office/GM aspect of OOTP may go without attention. I think the core of development may be going into the simulation engine, as well as baseball AI..not so much the kind of AI that tells the computer GM that he has a player who's contract is expiring, and he needs to get rid of him, but get quality in return at the same time.


This was a great discussion pertaining a bit to this.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=334038

[BusterKing]

nm

[jimmysthebestcop]

Originally Posted by uruguru

Have you ever written an AI for a game? Especially a game where the playerbase has an in-depth knowledge of how all of the game mechanics work?

You might as well ask for the moon.

No but I play a heavy dose of Sim/manage games both sports and un sports related. And OOTP doesnt hold up well to any of them.

The biggest thing OOTP has going for it is its baseball. That is the selling factor. If you are craving baseball management its the only game in town.

If you are just craving sim or management games then OOTP wouldnt even be in the general list.

[oomm]

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

No but I play a heavy dose of Sim/manage games both sports and un sports related. And OOTP doesnt hold up well to any of them.

The biggest thing OOTP has going for it is its baseball. That is the selling factor. If you are craving baseball management its the only game in town.

If you are just craving sim or management games then OOTP wouldnt even be in the general list.

I'd be into FM from the looks of it, but it aint baseball.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by oomm

I'd be into FM from the looks of it, but it aint baseball.

well yea...I think that's just it for a lot of people. Football Manager is obviously not a primarily American sport, and a lot of people don't even understand the nuances or tactics within it.

Is it a better front office/GM type simulation? yes.
Is it more immersive than OOTP in that you actually feel your decisions affect people? (players/staff/media) Yes.
Is it a very good simulation of the game of Association Football statistically and a credible representation of the game? Yes

Is it baseball? No.

I think a lot of people just wish OOTP had the same capabilities/immersion as FM, but because its a distant second in the genre, OOTP gets a bad rap sometimes. The truth is....OOTP is a great game, probably jut not as great as FM is in it's respective sport.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

well yea...I think that's just it for a lot of people. Football Manager is obviously not a primarily American sport, and a lot of people don't even understand the nuances or tactics within it.

Is it a better front office/GM type simulation? yes.
Is it more immersive than OOTP in that you actually feel your decisions affect people? (players/staff/media) Yes.
Is it a very good simulation of the game of Association Football statistically and a credible representation of the game? Yes

Is it baseball? No.

I think a lot of people just wish OOTP had the same capabilities/immersion as FM, but because its a distant second in the genre, OOTP gets a bad rap sometimes. The truth is....OOTP is a great game, probably jut not as great as FM is in it's respective sport.

I think it may be easier to tell when OOTP fails than FM manager as well. Baseball is such a stats driven game where every single detail is under a microscope. Even when the SB percentage is a few percentage points off it causes an uproar from people(like me). I think for all of the people it tries to please it does a wonderful job. The more hardcore people(like us) are probably wanting a higher standard than it can ever give us because of all of these customizable options.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

No but I play a heavy dose of Sim/manage games both sports and un sports related. And OOTP doesnt hold up well to any of them.

The biggest thing OOTP has going for it is its baseball. That is the selling factor. If you are craving baseball management its the only game in town.

If you are just craving sim or management games then OOTP wouldnt even be in the general list.

It's an understatement to say that AI development is really hard. Making a functional AI that can just use all of the features is a major benchmark for a dev team. A competent AI that can beat inexperienced players is already better than 95% of strategy games. A good AI that can beat experienced players is pretty much impossible for really complex games like OOTP (which creates challenge through complexity, not strategic depth).

And ultimately there's no business incentive to create an AI at this level. In fact, it's really a negative incentive. It's time-consuming and developer time is expensive, and it results in marginal additional sales, at best. Plus it all has to be reworked as new features are added. It's just a nightmare, to be honest.

I mean, it sucks because I notice AI deficiencies as well because I am a long-time baseball enthusiast. It's hard to not notice the shortcomings. So, like others, I inevitably just house-rule trading because otherwise it's too easy to inevitably build a 120-win team which ultimately is far more unrealistic than the house rules I impose on myself

[Dr Naysay]

I saw a really interesting post somewhere else where the author of the post basically said that he will edit the settings of every GM in the MLB to make the game more realistic and challenging.

Just looking at some of the GM attributes and it does look like so many teams are on the back foot because their GM literally has zero interest in developing prospects but will happily throw vast amounts at drafting because their attributes are set up like that. Frequently teams that will toss prospects away in trades will have GMs that are maxed out on favoring veterans despite the fact their team is in a rebuilding phase.

You have GMs in game who put zero emphasis on stats from 2 years ago or who value current year stats above ratings or the previous years stats. You have rebuilding teams sitting on a ton of money spending only half the baseline development budget, 7 mil for the draft and 1 mil for international free agents because that's what the GMs preferences are.

I haven't tried this guys setting with GMs but I am tempted to until there is a workable solution implemented in future iterations.

[AlpineSK]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

well yea...I think that's just it for a lot of people. Football Manager is obviously not a primarily American sport, and a lot of people don't even understand the nuances or tactics within it.

Is it a better front office/GM type simulation? yes.
Is it more immersive than OOTP in that you actually feel your decisions affect people? (players/staff/media) Yes.
Is it a very good simulation of the game of Association Football statistically and a credible representation of the game? Yes

Is it baseball? No.

I think a lot of people just wish OOTP had the same capabilities/immersion as FM, but because its a distant second in the genre, OOTP gets a bad rap sometimes. The truth is....OOTP is a great game, probably jut not as great as FM is in it's respective sport.

Yeah FM simulates a universe. You read tweets from fans, do interviews with people who like and dislike you, make promises to players regarding their playing time and role with the team and have discussions with players that allow you to use stick or carrot techniques to motivate them depending on the kind of player that they are.

And the stats available in the game are DEEP.

A LOT of people play FM and I'm sure there's a good possibility that even though they had a falling out with SI some of the guys and gals that work for OOTP play it as well. I'd be taking notes on what really makes that game work and trying to replicate it in OOTP.

I've always wanted to have a closed door meeting with a struggling hitter and tell them that if they don't start picking it up they're going to be dropped in the lineup or worse from the lineup.

I want to call up my rookie pitcher and assign them a "mentor" in my veteran starter to help them get along.

I want to play in manager mode and tell my GM that this guy at second base isn't working out and I'd like to make a case for trading for someone who does.

OOTP is at the point where its an incredibly deep baseball game with a personality system that, again, work independently of each other, and frankly, as the player I want to impact that personality system more, and I want more influence over it. But as I look at this free agency AI/Trade AI issue we're discussing here I cant help but feel like other systems within the game are operating in silos as well, doing their own thing, and not interacting across the processes.

[BarneyRubble]

The idiotic trades was one of the reasons I quit watching MLB. In fact, the Erik Bedard trade was the last straw for me.

OOTP is a game that tries to please everyone. Well, it's not going to happen.

If you choose to use the beloved 'shop around' feature, you'll find lopsided trades. This is no mystery! It's also something the AI can't do. No one gets an e-mail saying GM XYZ is shopping player ABC, please respond NOW or SKIP?

Lopsided trades, which need to remain in the game, can be magnified by game settings. One example is setting 'ratings' as the overwhelming factor in player evaluation and then decreasing scout accuracy. Congratulations, you've just created incompetent AI GMs and managers. How about setting the veteran/prospect slider all the way one way or the other? That won't effect trades? Yep, I can't poach another teams prospects, but I can easily poach the other players. It also makes useless prospects so valuable they can be used as a trade piece in an already unfair trade. Even setting the trade difficulty can cause issues. I had a very good 3B (60) I wasn't going to need the next year and found a team that was playoff bound and in need of a 3B (and some offense). We never did get a deal because I refused to do it. They suffered, not me, so I'm not sure who the difficulty affects the most, me or him? I've since gone to defaults. Good trades should benefit both teams and it goes deeper than 10 is bigger than 9. Bad trades do happen, Frank Robinson says so.

People try to compare trades and don't show salaries, option years, service years, personality, trade/evaluation settings, GM tendencies, team finances, etc... It's what they think is right or wrong. Well, OOTP doesn't know names and the settings have everything to do with how the AI behaves. Personally, I use default trade settings, but I don't shop players either.

I'm not saying OOTP 23 doesn't need adjusted (I haven't played it enough yet to know), but if you want to 'evaluate' a trade, you better take EVERYTHING into account. Bad trades happen. GMs get fired. It's baseball.

Because OOTP has so many features/tools, house rules are a must. It's the beauty of OOTP and there is no right or wrong (assuming you know how the settings affect the AI). I have house rules. I don't look at personality and rely on scouting. I only use 'shop a player' during winter meetings and only once a day. I don't use 'relative to' (it's MLB and it stays there). LTMs are global.

I traded a pitcher that was out of options and he won a Cy Young award. I thought I ripped them off.

If team A rips off team B, please explain to me the issue if the AI is trading against itself. It's either the game settings or the GM tendencies. If a GM is horrible (tendencies), so be it. He'll get fired. It's baseball. The settings, however, you can control. The settings can create some of the dumbest GMs/managers in the history of the sport. Specifically, the trade settings, AI evaluation settings, the incorporate stats and scout accuracy settings.

The bottom line is lopsided trades exist in OOTP, just like they do in the MLB. The issue is 'shop a player'. That unrealistic feature, which the AI can't use, is the quickest way to find a lopsided trade. Throw in questionable settings and you can make it even worse. The GMs have tendencies, scouts have ratings, let them be by using the default settings. The only setting I change is AI evaluation. I try to keep it as balanced as possible (as close to 25/25/25/25 as possible). I'm trying 34/33/22/11 right now because I haven't monkeyed with it in a long time and am curious. If I don't like it, I'll go back to 25/25/25/25 because I really had no issues with it. When you change it, you must apply it to GM tendencies.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by BarneyRubble

The idiotic trades was one of the reasons I quit watching MLB. In fact, the Erik Bedard trade was the last straw for me.

OOTP is a game that tries to please everyone. Well, it's not going to happen.

If you choose to use the beloved 'shop around' feature, you'll find lopsided trades. This is no mystery! It's also something the AI can't do. No one gets an e-mail saying GM XYZ is shopping player ABC, please respond NOW or SKIP?

Lopsided trades, which need to remain in the game, can be magnified by game settings. One example is setting 'ratings' as the overwhelming factor in player evaluation and then decreasing scout accuracy. Congratulations, you've just created incompetent AI GMs and managers. How about setting the veteran/prospect slider all the way one way or the other? That won't effect trades? Yep, I can't poach another teams prospects, but I can easily poach the other players. It also makes useless prospects so valuable they can be used as a trade piece in an already unfair trade. Even setting the trade difficulty can cause issues. I had a very good 3B (60) I wasn't going to need the next year and found a team that was playoff bound and in need of a 3B (and some offense). We never did get a deal because I refused to do it. They suffered, not me, so I'm not sure who the difficulty affects the most, me or him? I've since gone to defaults. Good trades should benefit both teams and it goes deeper than 10 is bigger than 9. Bad trades do happen, Frank Robinson says so.

People try to compare trades and don't show salaries, option years, service years, personality, trade/evaluation settings, GM tendencies, team finances, etc... It's what they think is right or wrong. Well, OOTP doesn't know names and the settings have everything to do with how the AI behaves. Personally, I use default trade settings, but I don't shop players either.

I'm not saying OOTP 23 doesn't need adjusted (I haven't played it enough yet to know), but if you want to 'evaluate' a trade, you better take EVERYTHING into account. Bad trades happen. GMs get fired. It's baseball.

Because OOTP has so many features/tools, house rules are a must. It's the beauty of OOTP and there is no right or wrong (assuming you know how the settings affect the AI). I have house rules. I don't look at personality and rely on scouting. I only use 'shop a player' during winter meetings and only once a day. I don't use 'relative to' (it's MLB and it stays there). LTMs are global.

I traded a pitcher that was out of options and he won a Cy Young award. I thought I ripped them off.

If team A rips off team B, please explain to me the issue if the AI is trading against itself. It's either the game settings or the GM tendencies. If a GM is horrible (tendencies), so be it. He'll get fired. It's baseball. The settings, however, you can control. The settings can create some of the dumbest GMs/managers in the history of the sport. Specifically, the trade settings, AI evaluation settings, the incorporate stats and scout accuracy settings.

The bottom line is lopsided trades exist in OOTP, just like they do in the MLB. The issue is 'shop a player'. That unrealistic feature, which the AI can't use, is the quickest way to find a lopsided trade. Throw in questionable settings and you can make it even worse. The GMs have tendencies, scouts have ratings, let them be by using the default settings. The only setting I change is AI evaluation. I try to keep it as balanced as possible (as close to 25/25/25/25 as possible). I'm trying 34/33/22/11 right now because I haven't monkeyed with it in a long time and am curious. If I don't like it, I'll go back to 25/25/25/25 because I really had no issues with it. When you change it, you must apply it to GM tendencies.

I could nitpick things I do differently than you but.... as you said,

It's the beauty of OOTP and there is no right or wrong (assuming you know how the settings affect the AI).

So, overall I agree with your post.

I play out my games and I look at the full transaction report every day. Any trades I go to the trade recap screen and click on every player involved in the trade. I may not agree with what the AI teams did but, I can normally see each getting some value. Like you, I'm not saying it can't be improved but I also don't see the disaster that is being portrayed in this thread. I'll add here that on the occasion I see something that looks dumb I think "that's baseball, those things happen". And sometimes when one goes back to take a look a year later, they find, the team that got screwed ends up being the team that actually won.

With regard to FM, I've said it many times. Go to their boards and read the complaints. There are plenty and folks that grew up watching the "beautiful game" are not shy about telling you where FM gets it wrong. Also like OOTP, there are FM users that are "happy" with where FM is.

I'd love to see some of the depth that FM has in regards to communicating with players and media. Other OOTP players have posted they'll quit playing OOTP if it goes down that road. We're all different.

I think though it is important to note FM probably has more coders doing just their player interaction module than OOTP has doing their whole game. You can probably expand that to include any module, FM vs OOTP.

[Syd Thrift]

The biggest thing I see is that people play the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours a year. You're going to find loopholes and see weirdness. That doesn't mean stuff shouldn't be closed, of course, but you're just plain not going to be able to create an AI that is robust enough to stand up to people cheesing it in various ways, and if you play long enough you will probably have to create a bunch of self-imposed rules to keep you from doing so.

In that respect it is an awful lot like other games that people play for thousands of hours. Not just FM but Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. You play those for an extended length of time, you'll find yourself self imposing rules like "okay, no alliances with France or the Ottomans" or "no playing Germany and no cheesing lend-lease with powers who have no reason to just give me their equipment". That doesn't make those games "bad", it just makes them things that can't stand up to extended scrutiny.

All of which is to say, for sure 23 has some issues. The devs rebuilt the sim engine and that's had some issues (particularly with steals, it appears) and they may have made some tweaks to trading / roster management AI that's getting issues (I'm definitely seeing the "hey, let's sign up a bunch of 35 year olds to play in AAA and block prospects" thing, although I guess TBF I have aging set to like .8 so that's got to be at least partially on me). But 10 year old titles with literally hundreds of dollars of extra DLC available still have major AI issues (in the sense that "major" means "if you've played the game for a couple thousand hours you are terminally aware of major exploits") and I feel like getting on OOTP for somehow not being better, especially when all these listings of issues have no actual proposed remedies, is more than a little silly.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Dr Naysay

I saw a really interesting post somewhere else where the author of the post basically said that he will edit the settings of every GM in the MLB to make the game more realistic and challenging.

Just looking at some of the GM attributes and it does look like so many teams are on the back foot because their GM literally has zero interest in developing prospects but will happily throw vast amounts at drafting because their attributes are set up like that. Frequently teams that will toss prospects away in trades will have GMs that are maxed out on favoring veterans despite the fact their team is in a rebuilding phase.

You have GMs in game who put zero emphasis on stats from 2 years ago or who value current year stats above ratings or the previous years stats. You have rebuilding teams sitting on a ton of money spending only half the baseline development budget, 7 mil for the draft and 1 mil for international free agents because that's what the GMs preferences are.

I haven't tried this guys setting with GMs but I am tempted to until there is a workable solution implemented in future iterations.

This is something the developers should maybe aware of ....creating staff profiles that jive a bit more, and one's who don't have contradictory attributes. This is something I am glad you mentioned.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I think though it is important to note FM probably has more coders doing just their player interaction module than OOTP has doing their whole game. You can probably expand that to include any module, FM vs OOTP.

I think this is true...however...if this is the case, then OOTPD needs to pick and choose which modules they are going to take on and then truly get it right as they do it. I don't like the idea of throwing a bunch of Half-done things at the user, and then saying "see we did this". When it's obviously not nearly as deep as anything FM has.

I was also under the impression, OOTPD was going to hire a team of coders after PT and the Com2Us acquisition because of all the money that was going to roll in. This does not appear to be happening either, so from that perspective, some of the criticism may be legitimate.

Obviously, we all love OOTP, and want it to be the best it can possibly be. But if you ask me, too many options and too many moving parts (the the user can fool around with) has NOT helped. I always believe you need to figure out the best way you think something works, and then stick with it. Over the years (especially post 2006 and for about 5 year) Markus listened to every little criticism people had, and created way too many options, and gave in on way too many design decisions....and now, it's near impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

That means we have what we have. I don't see OOTPD getting rid of "shop player" or "make this work now". I don't see them getting rid of stars, or trade difficulty, or AI evaluation. Yet these are things where a good working model should have likely been found a long time ago, and then just tweaked under the hood if need be.

I know some will say that's what challenge mode is, but it really isn't as you can't expand or do things like that either. Others will say that's the beauty of OOOTP, but I say in some ways it's created more harm than good.

One thing a user above pointed out is the inconsistencies in many staff profiles. As he said things like heavily favoring veterans over prospects, but still liking to build from the draft or other similar clashing attributes..this is something I think may be worth a good look at.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I think this is true...however...if this is the case, then OOTPD needs to pick and choose which modules they are going to take on and then truly get it right as they do it. I don't like the idea of throwing a bunch of Half-done things at the user, and then saying "see we did this". When it's obviously not nearly as deep as anything FM has.

I was also under the impression, OOTPD was going to hire a team of coders after PT and the Com2Us acquisition because of all the money that was going to roll in. This does not appear to be happening either, so from that perspective, some of the criticism may be legitimate.

Obviously, we all love OOTP, and want it to be the best it can possibly be. But if you ask me, too many options and too many moving parts (the the user can fool around with) has NOT helped. I always believe you need to figure out the best way you think something works, and then stick with it. Over the years (especially post 2006 and for about 5 year) Markus listened to every little criticism people had, and created way too many options, and gave in on way too many design decisions....and now, it's near impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

That means we have what we have. I don't see OOTPD getting rid of "shop player" or "make this work now". I don't see them getting rid of stars, or trade difficulty, or AI evaluation. Yet these are things where a good working model should have likely been found a long time ago, and then just tweaked under the hood if need be.

I know some will say that's what challenge mode is, but it really isn't as you can't expand or do things like that either. Others will say that's the beauty of OOOTP, but I say in some ways it's created more harm than good.

One thing a user above pointed out is the inconsistencies in many staff profiles. As he said things like heavily favoring veterans over prospects, but still liking to build from the draft or other similar clashing attributes..this is something I think may be worth a good look at.

I don't work for OOTP so can't comment on their hiring practices. In the end they have the crew they have.

They just rewrote the engine and got blasted for no new features. "I can't see anything new, OOTP is still the same old game with roster update".

Now we want them to add a player communication module to mimic FM? Not a small task and would have to be the marquee feature, I would think. To do it "not half way" would require max effort\coding time and, being new it would still not be right. They will get destroyed in the complaint forum here, at Steam, and everywhere else. I don't like it but that is the way it is.

The point is so many hold up FM as the be-all end-all, and look at how well it all works. When in fact if you go their boards so many long time players simply do not believe it at all. In fact there are many complaints about said player communication on the SI boards. Many will comment they delegate it to their staff because of x,y, or z. Like OOTP they tolerate and work with what the game gives them, talk about what they hope the future holds, and of course comment on how they'll never play the game again until feature x is added or fixed It's really not much different than OOTP other than being on a larger scale.