Bring Back Manual

[ZepTepi]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Totally agree, it's a simulation of baseball, the game, the players, front office, etc. etc.
It's not a math problem to be solved. A math book, with the answers in full view, or written upside down on the bottom of the page, should not be provided.




Yes. All day every day.

It's a head scratcher to me why you and others are using "math book" in a conversation/debate about manuals. Those are 2 completely different things. I haven't seen any posts in this thread where anyone is stating they want the devs to provide mathematical calculations for anything. That would be the kind of thing appropriate to post here in the forum, which I just did a couple of days ago.


For the vast majority of products a manual is simply an overview of how to operate a product and do basic troubleshooting. I liked the idea someone offered about a wiki type of user created manual that users could add too as necessary. A new one could be started with each new version is released. I would think this would be less time consuming for the devs in that they would just need to periodically review it to correct/remove any incorrect info. I could be wrong about that not having ever managed anything like that myself but that's how it seems it would work best.


At the end of the day, this thread is a friendly conversation/debate about the inclusion or exclusion of an OOTP25 manual and I appreciate that most of us have not let themselves get too spun-up about it.

[phenom]

Originally Posted by Brad K

They're doing it to their fullest. Accept it.

That mission statement is about as binding as a politician's oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. Are you perhaps contemplating a suit based on alleged breach of the mission statement? LOL.

One might argue that *THE* fullest and *THEIR* fullest are two different things.

[md40022]

Originally Posted by ZepTepi

It's a head scratcher to me why you and others are using "math book" in a conversation/debate about manuals. Those are 2 completely different things. I haven't seen any posts in this thread where anyone is stating they want the devs to provide mathematical calculations for anything. That would be the kind of thing appropriate to post here in the forum, which I just did a couple of days ago.

Originally Posted by jcard

Every option should be included with examples that demonstrate the impact of enabling / disabling or changing the value of the option (like a math textbook). No more parsing meaning and trying to interpret the usage of context-dependent terms (such as “ratings”).

.

[ZepTepi]

Originally Posted by md40022

.

I stand corrected.


Thank you for pointing that out md40023.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by ZepTepi

It's a head scratcher to me why you and others are using "math book" in a conversation/debate about manuals. Those are 2 completely different things. I haven't seen any posts in this thread where anyone is stating they want the devs to provide mathematical calculations for anything. That would be the kind of thing appropriate to post here in the forum, which I just did a couple of days ago.


For the vast majority of products a manual is simply an overview of how to operate a product and do basic troubleshooting. I liked the idea someone offered about a wiki type of user created manual that users could add too as necessary. A new one could be started with each new version is released. I would think this would be less time consuming for the devs in that they would just need to periodically review it to correct/remove any incorrect info. I could be wrong about that not having ever managed anything like that myself but that's how it seems it would work best.


At the end of the day, this thread is a friendly conversation/debate about the inclusion or exclusion of an OOTP25 manual and I appreciate that most of us have not let themselves get too spun-up about it.

Totally agree it has been a civil discussion.

I'd like if they had a fully up to date manual even though most years I don't even open it. If a customer buys a game a manual (how detailed there will be disagreements on) should be included.

[Brad K]

Are people willing to accept a data only update for 26 in exchange for having a decent manual?

[md40022]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Are people willing to accept a data only update for 26 in exchange for having a decent manual?

If it's one or the other that would be terrifying that they're that understaffed (and maybe they are, but my god).

Me personally, as someone who has played OOTP for long enough where I don't need a manual, I would be extremely disappointed if it was literally one or the other considering I could probably slap together a manual in my free time over the course of one month. I'm not at all volunteering for that, but the point being it doesn't need to be a million page guide to rocket science. I have trouble believing a full blown team of people smarter than myself would need an entire season dedicated to this.

Buttttttt, to answer your question - I do think a product as complex as OOTP absolutely should have a manual so if they had to shut the factory down for a year for the sake of creating one than so be it

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by md40022

If it's one or the other that would be terrifying that they're that understaffed (and maybe they are, but my god).

Fixing the manual is a huge undertaking. Before they can document how the game features work they first have to figure out how the game features work.

If they had the staff to keep the manual current they would have.

[Baby Ruth]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Fixing the manual is a huge undertaking. Before they can document how the game features work they first have to figure out how the game features work.

If they really don't know how their own software works, then that's a big problem. No one should be near the code that doesn't know what it does.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Baby Ruth

If they really don't know how their own software works, then that's a big problem. No one should be near the code that doesn't know what it does.

Would explain why apparently unrelated things break when they make changes. How did splits and fielding get broken by this year's changes?

Look at the phrasing when they answer questions. Things like "I think what we did there" and "If I remember correctly." And this year's comment that they didn't know how the "make bad" settings worked previously. And the questions that aren't answered.

For decades the priority has been to get the product out and worry about the documentation later - including internal documentation - but later never came. And overall people were satisfied with that, although they complained occasionally about the state of the manual, until this year when there was no manual.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

My first instinct is to read the manual rather then asking questions that it easily answers. This also helps stop repeated basic questions on forums.

Having a manual is a must IMHO.

I agree. I have not read this entire thread, but if the impetus now on the part of OOTPD is to no longer have a manual, relying on this forum (which isn't too bad) and Discord (which strikes me as a useless jumble) for folks to learn this game, all the more reason for me to finally get off this bandwagon at version 25.

In the game, here is what I see when I press F1 for Help:



No mention of a manual, as you can see.

(By the way, the skimpy screen tutorials are what is useless, not the manual, as was discussed earlier. It's like a small bone that they carelessly threw, as evidenced by, in the classic skin, the screen tutorials come with dark font against a dark background.)

Here is what I see when I click the Help Index:



And, of course, the link to Online Manual is not functioning.

I don't know what they are thinking, but if they are looking to save time and effort by doing away with the online manual, with no in-game help except for links to here and Discord, well . . . I don't know what they are thinking.

I know what I am thinking, however. I have two bookmarks; one to the OOTPB 24 Manual and one to the "Developer's Guide to the New Development Features" thread. That will tide me over for now, but I will look to go through the laborious process of downloading the OOTPB 24 manual in PDF form. Just in case.

As I said, it's time to get off this bandwagon. This is just another reason to finally pull the plug.

[Brad K]

Who would have thought something like skipping issuance of a new manual would prompt such discontent. Interestingly, just adding a few paragraphs to the 24 manual hitting the high points of the new feature notes would have been enough to satisfy the masses. A huge error.

Perhaps there's another error, and that is the assumption that after release of 25 there would be time for a substantial rework of the manual and it would be available in a couple of months. That assumption was a huge error also because having that time available required the initial 25 release to be flawless. And expecting that is fantasy.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by md40022

I'm not sure that I agree with some of you guys on this. Why should it include this? The manual should explain how to play the game, and get you pointed in the right direction... not how to "beat the game" so to speak.

I know I'm completely simplifying this, but the manual for Mike Tyson's Punchout on the old Nintendo didn't tell you the tricks to beating each fighter or how to learn the timing of when Tyson was about to punch you. All that stuff was for the user to find out as they played. But the manual did tell you what button throws a punch and what button dodges.

How to interpret ratings, how to analyze a left handed hitter's rating vs. left handed pitching and comparing that to a left handed pitcher's rating vs. a left handed batter and coming up with a ratio of how those ratings coincide and how that plate appearance might play out (that's an active topic on another thread right now)...... that kind of stuff absolutely and unequivocally should not be in the manual. That would take a lifetime to write, it would be a million pages long and our heads would be ready to explode by the time we got 2 pages into it.

A brief description of game modes, a brief explanation of settings, and a tutorial of new features for a specific year.

I dont want to know a lot of the behind the curtains stuff. That's what makes the game fun and makes our own strategies worth testing out.

I apparently failed to convey my suggestion clearly. I was NOT requesting that the actual formulae be revealed. Rather, the general effect of the settings choices should be clear. I think that textbook-style case studies can do this most effectively; if this can be achieved with no numbers, all the better (perhaps the fact that I mentioned a “math” textbook created the impression that I was emphasizing the actual equations over the general concepts). I would also say that completely hypothetical numbers and fictional calculations could be used to show the cardinal basic characteristics of the setting choice.

To put it simply, there are far too many examples on this forum demonstrating no real, definite, consensus understanding exists of even important settings and options possibilities. Moreover, several of these appear on an annual basis, with a great deal of participation and an equal paucity of resolution.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

I will look to go through the laborious process of downloading the OOTPB 24 manual in PDF form. Just in case.

By the way, if anybody else decides to do this, I can recommend a browser plug-in called "Print Friendly & PDF." (It's available for Firefox; I don't know about other browsers but you could look for it and perhaps get lucky.)

Below are two screen prints; the first is the one produced by the standard "Save to PDF" function. The second is the one made by "Print Friendly & PDF." This plug-in knows to include just the information section and exclude the redundant menu, maximizing white space and minimizing required pages. And yes, it captures the entire web page, not just what is seen on screen.

[Déjà Bru]

And there is a pre-save edit function, in case I want to get nutty about removing superfluous text:

[OutS|der]

Perfect Team is the focus, that's why it has a working manual and the base game doesn't.

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

And there is a pre-save edit function, in case I want to get nutty about removing superfluous text:

Or create lightweight easily accessible wiki site using notion.ai

I just through together a simple template using OOTP24 Manual as baseline.
OOTP Community Resource - WiKi

This would allow more than one person tp provide content and on top of that a proper BLOG platform to anyone who wants to share visually consistent content

[Baby Ruth]

Originally Posted by biggerme

Or create lightweight easily accessible wiki site using notion.ai

I just through together a simple template using OOTP24 Manual as baseline.

Pretty cool. Something like this would also allow in-depth examples, including math, for anyone that might wish to understand some things better. Of course, that's predicated that someone actually knows how things actually work.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Baby Ruth

Pretty cool. Something like this would also allow in-depth examples, including math, for anyone that might wish to understand some things better. Of course, that's predicated that someone actually knows how things actually work.

Well, your last sentence pretty much kills the idea.

[twins_34]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

Perfect Team is the focus, that's why it has a working manual and the base game doesn't.

Wrong, this is the furthest from the truth! Look at all the fixes and patches! 90% of all fixes have been for BASE GAME not PT.