Always Find Myself Simming the Whole Season

[stl jason]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

One thing that I have discovered is that I do not have to play out games in order to be immersed. I used to play out games, not anymore. What I miss in individual gameplay, I gain in being able to amass history, watch player career arcs, witness the rise and fall of dynasties, all in a reasonable amount of game playing time. Days and weeks rather than months and years.

Put it this way: The league I am in now is 23 years old. It has taken me over a month to play this much by not playing out my games. In the old days, maybe I'd be in Season 2 or 3 by now.

My immersion has gone up by being able to see my GM moves pan out, or fizzle, whereas before I might be getting a bit bored by now with only a couple of seasons under my belt.

I've done the mirror image of your style.... usually setup a league, click the 'sim to date' selection and set it out 50 years or so and let it fly while I'm doing other things. I check back in periodically to see where things are and look over the history / batting-pitching records / etc. Always fun to see which records/streaks stand the longest, and which teams are able to build dynasties.

Last week I setup a new league, took the first GM/manager job offered to me and played out every day. For the games, I still let the pc sim them out, but I watched them in 3D mode (as if I was just in the GM box watching my boys go at it). Just finished the first season yesterday. If I would have just fast simmed the whole year, I would have looked at the history and saw my team had won the championship (yay!); but would have missed a lot of the drama:

-my staff ace went down with a season-ending injury on July 5, and I had to muddle through the second half of the year with a couple of not-so-ready-for-prime-time "starters" filling the void. (My ace had 14 wins by that point. At seasons end, he was still second in wins on the team, behind one other pitcher who ended with 15).

-my team didn't clinch the division until the second to last game of the year, so plenty of tension down the stretch. Lots of wasted opportunities to put it away playing (and losing to) the bottom feeders in the last month.

-in one league, 4 teams were fighting for both wildcard spots on the last day of the season, so made for some fun viewing for those three games (2 of the teams in the mix faced each other the last game).

-in the playoffs, my team (89-73) faced off in the division series against one of the 105-57 juggernaut teams in our league. We lost the first two on the road and I started to resign myself to the fact that our season was quickly nearing the end, but we came back and won three straight to take the series. In the LCS, we faced the other 105-57 team in our league. In a 'road-warrior' series, we won the first two on the road and were flying high heading home; but then lost three straight; then back on the road where we won games 6 and 7. The WS almost felt anti-climactic as we took it easily 4 games to 1.

Looking forward to season 2 now and trying to defend my title.

[bradbtr16]

This is the first OOTP game I have ever bought. I have re-played season before with APBA's board game and Broadcast Blast. I had a very hard time figuring out what to do with OOTP as there are so many options. I have settled on managing my 2016 Orioles game by game. It is very time consuming, but it is something I have enjoyed a lot. Once 2016 is over, I may quit coaching and become the GM to see where this thing will go.