OOTP12 Wishlist: More Detailed Managerial/Personnel Records

[Muzamba]

I've been advocating the addition of 1B and 3B coaches, as well as BP coaches, for a little while now. Personally, I'd be okay with these positions being purely cosmetic for the time being, as long as the AI recognizes that a field manager > 1B/3B/hitting/bench coach and PC > BP coach. However, if there's time to code it, there should ultimately be unique skill sets that are used to determine who are the best candidates for these jobs. (For instance, one's ability to coach baserunning.)

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by snepp

A similar idea...

I would love to see discovered players listed in a scout's profile.

an excellent suggestion...but I think for this to have any use, scouting needs to be revamped first(which it should be IMO)

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

I've been advocating the addition of 1B and 3B coaches, as well as BP coaches, for a little while now. Personally, I'd be okay with these positions being purely cosmetic for the time being, as long as the AI recognizes that a field manager > 1B/3B/hitting/bench coach and PC > BP coach. However, if there's time to code it, there should ultimately be unique skill sets that are used to determine who are the best candidates for these jobs. (For instance, one's ability to coach baserunning.)

I don't mind this idea at all. I'm always looking for more things to spend the owner's money on (international training academies, spring training facilities, exploding scoreboard — I'm easy). The only caution I have for you is that it sounds like you're heading in the direction of the previous scouting system — micromanagement.

I loved the Version 2006/2007/8 scouting system. I got off on determining which of my scouts were the most reliable when it came to pitching, which for batting. I liked assigning this one to scout minors, that one to my next opponent and the other to Puerto Rico or Canada.

Unfortunately, many other posters didn't. There was a whole bunch of 'this should be decided below my pay grade' and 'I paid to play baseball, not scoutball'. It got ugly.

Then Markus simplified the whole scouting system by rolling it all into a Director of Scouting. Peace was restored, though not without some sad reminiscences. Pursuing your idea might end in the unexpected (and unwanted) consequence of Markus deciding to simplify again by reducing the minutia to just four hires:

*****

Hiring the Manager gets you a team of personnel, including Pitching, Bullpen, Hitting, Infield, Outfield, Baserunning, First Base, Third Base and Bench coaches.

Hiring the Trainer gets you a team of specialist doctors, plus Physical Conditioning coach and locker room attendants.

Hiring a Director of Operations gets you the stadium staff, including legal team, Media Relations, Advertising and janitorial services.

Hiring a Minor League Co-ordinator would get you a team of variable size (and cost) depending upon the number of your minor affiliates. It would include a Manager team for each affiliate, plus a set of roving/spring training/extended spring training instructors for the system as a whole.

Those, plus the current Scouting Director, would be all the personnel you'd need to hire. The others could be set up in the same way as the current Scouting Budget, with a league average expense and the option for you to go, say from half of that up to five times as much. I'm not seeing the need for a second slider that tells how the funding is split, since each director would seem to have a pretty narrow focus.

Maybe the Trainer could split his budget between physical conditioning (improving the players' strength, speed, stamina), prevention (to reduce the likelihood of injury) diagnosis (to properly treat an injury) and rehabilitation (to improve the chances of full recovery).

I could see ways to divide the Operations budget, but that would be strictly cosmetic, since nearly all ways in which that money is spent has the hoped-for result of increasing revenue. Maybe you could split it between public relations (increasing revenue), maintenance (indirect revenue support, and to prevent having to spend on new plant and equipment) and new plant and equipment (new or upgrades to stadium, and debt service). More likely Markus would just decide that the financial system isn't robust enough to support having a Director of Operations with the attendant new expenses and revenues that would entail, so he'd scrap the position. And then there were four.

Theoretically you could split Minor League Co-ordinator in two parts, with one dealing with personnel/players and the other performing the Operations functions for the affiliates, but if there's not going to be a Director of operations for the parent club, I can't see there being one for the affiliates… and that's a position with less grounding in the real world, anyway. I would absolutely put spring training expenses in the MLC's budget.

I can't see any way or reason to divide the Manager's budget.

*****

That would make things much simpler, allowing OotPB players to concentrate on the more pure management functions, but it sure would take a lot of the flavor out of the game.

[bleachercreature]

Coach's signing period from (6.5?) needs to be returned... where you could actually sign personell before the season without having to go through the hassle of releasing all personell one by one, then resigning them.


A roster set that actually uses the games features. Roster sets without the correct team personell are USELESS.

A game with which you can actually play custom leagues. It is clear and has been clear for years that Markus only cares about one type of customer. The guy who wants to recreate seasons. Teh guy who wants to draft teams and play custom leagues has never mattered in this series. NOw that we have reached version 12, it is becoming clear, sadly, that customer will never matter.

[MimesisBTG]

Originally Posted by bleachercreature

It is clear and has been clear for years that Markus only cares about one type of customer. The guy who wants to recreate seasons. Teh guy who wants to draft teams and play custom leagues has never mattered in this series. NOw that we have reached version 12, it is becoming clear, sadly, that customer will never matter.

I respectfully disagree with your argument that customers don't matter to Markus, especially since Markus already took time to respond in this thread to the idea in my original post.

In fact, it seems to me that Markus & Co. are very responsive to customer suggestions, especially given their limited resources. This is not to say that we all shouldn't advocate for the features that matter most to us, but surely just because they can't/won't incorporate every suggestion doesn't mean that they don't care. Just my

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by bleachercreature

Coach's signing period from (6.5?) needs to be returned... where you could actually sign personell before the season without having to go through the hassle of releasing all personell one by one, then resigning them.

Teh guy who wants to draft teams and play custom leagues has never mattered in this series. NOw that we have reached version 12, it is becoming clear, sadly, that customer will never matter.

I don't understand your first comment. I don't have to release my personnel to re-sign them, and I never have (going back to version 2006). I just offer extensions, and they accept or reject (nearly always accept).

As for your second comment…

Originally Posted by MimesisBTG

I respectfully disagree with your argument that customers don't matter to Markus, especially since Markus already took time to respond in this thread to the idea in my original post.

In fact, it seems to me that Markus & Co. are very responsive to customer suggestions, especially given their limited resources. This is not to say that we all shouldn't advocate for the features that matter most to us, but surely just because they can't/won't incorporate every suggestion doesn't mean that they don't care. Just my

That pretty well sums it up for me, but of course I can't just let it lie there.

With Markus you never know what you're going to get. Some ideas he jumps on the first time he reads them, some he dismisses out of hand, and some receive the cold shoulder, but eventually he allows himself to be worn down ('mass select', anyone?).

Since repeated polls over the years (three I know of, one of them current) have shown that around 55% of his customer base plays primarily fictional and the smallest proportion (less than 20%) historical, I find it VERY difficult to believe that Markus favors the season recreation group over the vast majority of his customers. And certainly the historical players feel they get no (or very little) respect when it comes to new features or fixing existing ones that don't work optimally.

I don't think that opinion will hold much water.

[Layton is my Homeboy]

Originally Posted by bleachercreature

A game with which you can actually play custom leagues. It is clear and has been clear for years that Markus only cares about one type of customer. The guy who wants to recreate seasons. Teh guy who wants to draft teams and play custom leagues has never mattered in this series. NOw that we have reached version 12, it is becoming clear, sadly, that customer will never matter.

I would not agree with your assessment. To me, OOTP has long been the best game on the market for fictional/custom gameplay. I recently posted a poll on these boards to see what type of game most OOTPers play - historical, modern or fictions. While it is far from scientific, that poll suggests that a majority of OOTP players play fictional games, while an overwhelming majority play either fiction or real-life modern MLB. Only a small handful play predominantly historical games.

To me, this reflects the excellent work Markus and his development team have done to create a feature-rich, immersive, and enjoyable fictional game experience.

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by Curtis

I don't mind this idea at all. I'm always looking for more things to spend the owner's money on (international training academies, spring training facilities, exploding scoreboard — I'm easy). The only caution I have for you is that it sounds like you're heading in the direction of the previous scouting system — micromanagement.

I'm not so much interested in what these extra coaches will actually DO in the game. The idea of having them affect baserunning or bullpen preparedness or whatever is more of a justification for including them in the game than anything else. My primary interest is to have the coaching staff more closely reflect real life.

Case in point: When playng with real MLB players and personnel, there's no place for 1B or 3B coaches on a team. Obviously, there are plenty of 1B/3B coaches that are promoted to field manager or other positions on a team's staff IRL. However, without these jobs appearing in OOTP, the only place to put them is in the personnel free agent pool. Of course, this isn't accurate, since they are under contract with other teams IRL. As for BP coaches, I'm not sure how often they are promoted to PC, but having the BP coach position in OOTP would provide a whole new pool of PC candidates beyond the free agent pool.

So really, all I'm asking is that Markus add these 3 slots to each team's coaching staff. Essentially, these would be just another thing to - as you said - spend the owner's money on. More importantly, though, it creates another step on the coaching ladder (provided, of course, that the AI recognizes that these positions are lower than field manager or even HC, PC, or BC) and opens up spots for real-life personnel.

But yes, I agree that I'd rather not see Markus resort to an oversimplification of the coaching system. If he can figure out a way for these new positions to be meaningful to game play, I'm all for it. But if doing so leads to a 'streamlining' of the current system, I'd prefer they be merely cosmetic additions.