No longer able to use a certain year as base year in Random Debut.

David Watts · 01-21-2018, 04:22 PM

One of my favorite things to do with OOTP is setup a random debut league and select a certain year in history to use as a base year. For example, I start my league in 1984 and even if I play till 2088, every season will be played with the historical modifiers from 1984. I do this by unchecking the box for "automatically adjust league totals modifiers for accuracy" each season. Then each season, a day or two before the season starts, I check the box and select 1984. The game will run the calculations to bring things back to 1984. I then uncheck the box again. Rinse and repeat season after season.

You no longer can do this with OOTP 18. Well, you can do it, but not without turning your game into what only can be described as a video game. Stats are no longer tied to any form of reality. For example, Jean Segura will hit .350 over the first 10 years of his career. Ron Santo will have 6 years in a row with an OPS of 1+ . HE will hit .378 in his second season (age 23) with 50 home runs, 188 RBI. He will then hit 300+ for the next 7 seasons. Norm Cash over 10 years will have a career average of .320. He will hit above .300 7 out of those 10 years. At age 33 he hits .333 with 57 home runs, 182 RBI. Over 10 seasons, Cash has an OPS of 1.003. How about an Asdrubal Cabrera that hits .306, .312, 317, 294, .328 and finishes it off with a .363 season.

It's not all hitting either.

Hal Newhouser with a WHIP under 1 for 4 straight seasons. A year in which he whiffs 400 batter in just 287 seasons.

Now, if I play random and let the modifiers go year to year according to history, I don't get these inflated numbers. Something happened to wreck this method of play. Not sure what it is, but something clearly occurred.

David Watts · 01-21-2018, 06:55 PM

wrong screenshot

David Watts · 01-21-2018, 06:57 PM

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David Watts · 01-21-2018, 07:01 PM

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David Watts · 01-21-2018, 07:03 PM

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David Watts · 01-21-2018, 07:08 PM

Leagues only been in existence for 10 years. Look how many .400 hitters. Name: porkchop_1993-10-03_18-06-04.jpg
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David Watts · 01-21-2018, 07:10 PM

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actionjackson · 01-21-2018, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Watts

Leagues only been in existence for 10 years. Look how many .400 hitters.Attachment 533510

Now...For comparison's sake, here's a screen capture of my OOTP16 league's single season batting average leaders. Keep in mind that this league has now run for 61 seasons (1901-1961), and I use the same technique of tieing the offensive output to 1984, and have been doing so since this thing started. David Watts has at least 33 player seasons in which a player has hit .364 or better in just 10 seasons. I have 13 such seasons in 61 total seasons, almost half of them by the incomparable Shoeless Joe Jackson.

I'm finding (and I'm quite sure David Watts is too) that there are too many extreme individual seasons happening in OOTP18, and I think they were happening in OOTP17 as well. Something has changed since OOTP16, and it has resulted in incredible individual performances almost becoming the norm. I don't know why this is, but you can bet your boots that until it is remedied, I will be sticking with OOTP16 for dynasties that I invest a lot of time in. Like I have said for a while now, it's not the league-wide numbers that are off, so much as the statistical distribution of those numbers. The league-wide numbers look very reasonable to me, but something about extreme individual performances within those league-wide numbers is troubling, at least to me.

David Watts · 01-22-2018, 09:16 AM

Just got to looking at something. If you look at the very first screenshot I posted. The one I said was the wrong one. That random league is set in 1947. It's not one in which I was using a base year. If you look at the leader boards, you can see that things are very normal. Over the weekend, I ran a test random league from 1947-2015, allowing the league to follow the import the historical modifiers for accuracy. I did find that the league average and league ERA was higher than real life, but the stats were not anywhere like what I'm seeing when I attempt to use a specific year as a base.

Something has been tweaked or twizzled and it's made using one year as a base undoable unless you enjoy playing with superheroes.

David Watts · 01-22-2018, 07:17 PM

10 years of OPS
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David Watts · 01-22-2018, 07:21 PM

Obp

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actionjackson · 01-22-2018, 07:51 PM

Here's 61 years worth of the best single season OPS seasons from my longrunning OOTP16 dynasty:

As you can see from these pictures, David Watts' 10 year OOTP18 league has produced 12 player seasons of 1.100 OPS or better, while my 61 year OOTP16 league has produced just nine. It seems to me that there are more realistic numbers in OOTP16 as far as individual seasons go. At least, there are far fewer outliers, as there should be. It should be very, very hard to put up an 1.100 OPS season.

actionjackson · 01-22-2018, 08:03 PM

Here's 61 seasons worth of the best single season OBP seasons from my OOTP16 dynasty:

If we count George Altman's .4496 season as a .450 OBP season, David Watts' 10 season dynasty in OOTP18 has seen a whopping 26 seasons where players posted an OBP of .450 or higher. My 61 year OOTP16 dynasty has seen 14 such seasons. He also has six players who have posted seasons better than the best all-time single season OBP of my 61 year dynasty. Again, league-wide stats are not all that far off, but the distribution of those league-wide stats is troubling.

Matt Arnold · 01-23-2018, 11:15 AM

What do the league totals look like? The first thing to figure out is whether it's some weird distribution of players that's causing a few guys to spike up, or is this a league thing where teams are running insane totals all over the place.

The next thing to check is what the league modifiers are set at. The in-game engine is mostly controlled by the modifiers, so if something got screwed up when they got set, that obviously will cause issues.

David Watts · 01-23-2018, 11:48 AM

I'm at work right now, but will take a look at league totals when I get home.

actionjackson · 01-23-2018, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

What do the league totals look like? The first thing to figure out is whether it's some weird distribution of players that's causing a few guys to spike up, or is this a league thing where teams are running insane totals all over the place.

The next thing to check is what the league modifiers are set at. The in-game engine is mostly controlled by the modifiers, so if something got screwed up when they got set, that obviously will cause issues.

As I've been saying throughout this, what I'm seeing is that league totals are relatively fine. Great in fact. Using 1984 as a base year for every season, I should be seeing something close to .260/.323/.385/.708 with 4.26 R/G. I believe in the five year test sim I ran, it was something like a .262/.325/.383/.708 slash line with 4.32 R/G, which is absolutely within an acceptable range.

What I find unacceptable, and what I am objecting to is the number of "superhero" seasons (as David Watts calls them) that I'm seeing relative to what I was seeing in OOTP16. A lot has changed between OOTP16 and OOTP18 in historical games. One of the main things that has changed is the addition of the full minor league database. I'm wondering what the connection could be between that and having a surge in super-duper seasons. Is it affecting the ratings of the better players in the MLB database, and spiking them, causing too many superseasons?

The thing is, with random debut, there are no players from the minor league database to influence this. I don't pretend to know the answers to this stuff, or to be smart enough to figure out how to fix it. All I can say is, I don't like what I'm seeing in 18, and I'm pretty sure it was in 17 as well. If I had to point a finger at anything, it's going to be the introduction of the minor league database. That was a major overhaul that could potentially create a disruption in the distribution of the league-wide stats, which, as explained above, appear perfectly normal.

David Watts · 01-23-2018, 06:56 PM

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actionjackson · 01-23-2018, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Watts

Attachment 533593

Looks like your offense went a little high. You've got approximately a .264 MLB AVG and approximately a 4.03 MLB ERA. The RL league-wide numbers for 1984 were .260 and 3.81 respectively.

pstrickert · 01-23-2018, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by actionjackson

As I've been saying throughout this, what I'm seeing is that league totals are relatively fine. Great in fact. Using 1984 as a base year for every season, I should be seeing something close to .260/.323/.385/.708 with 4.26 R/G. I believe in the five year test sim I ran, it was something like a .262/.325/.383/.708 slash line with 4.32 R/G, which is absolutely within an acceptable range.

What I find unacceptable, and what I am objecting to is the number of "superhero" seasons (as David Watts calls them) that I'm seeing relative to what I was seeing in OOTP16. A lot has changed between OOTP16 and OOTP18 in historical games. One of the main things that has changed is the addition of the full minor league database. I'm wondering what the connection could be between that and having a surge in super-duper seasons. Is it affecting the ratings of the better players in the MLB database, and spiking them, causing too many superseasons?

The thing is, with random debut, there are no players from the minor league database to influence this. I don't pretend to know the answers to this stuff, or to be smart enough to figure out how to fix it. All I can say is, I don't like what I'm seeing in 18, and I'm pretty sure it was in 17 as well. If I had to point a finger at anything, it's going to be the introduction of the minor league database. That was a major overhaul that could potentially create a disruption in the distribution of the league-wide stats, which, as explained above, appear perfectly normal.

I’ve also seen questionable results in historicals in OOTP18. On the beta forum, I went round and round with Markus and Matt about defensive ratings, after I noticed some significant differences compared to previous versions. Since I could document the differences, they finally agreed that something had changed — what it was, they weren’t sure. But they contended, IIRC, that the changes must’ve made the results more, not less, accurate. I still beg to differ. But whatev.

pstrickert · 01-23-2018, 07:54 PM

I’ll add, sadly, that I trust historical results less than I used to. (It pains me to say it.)

01-21-2018, 04:22 PM	#1
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	No longer able to use a certain year as base year in Random Debut. One of my favorite things to do with OOTP is setup a random debut league and select a certain year in history to use as a base year. For example, I start my league in 1984 and even if I play till 2088, every season will be played with the historical modifiers from 1984. I do this by unchecking the box for "automatically adjust league totals modifiers for accuracy" each season. Then each season, a day or two before the season starts, I check the box and select 1984. The game will run the calculations to bring things back to 1984. I then uncheck the box again. Rinse and repeat season after season. You no longer can do this with OOTP 18. Well, you can do it, but not without turning your game into what only can be described as a video game. Stats are no longer tied to any form of reality. For example, Jean Segura will hit .350 over the first 10 years of his career. Ron Santo will have 6 years in a row with an OPS of 1+ . HE will hit .378 in his second season (age 23) with 50 home runs, 188 RBI. He will then hit 300+ for the next 7 seasons. Norm Cash over 10 years will have a career average of .320. He will hit above .300 7 out of those 10 years. At age 33 he hits .333 with 57 home runs, 182 RBI. Over 10 seasons, Cash has an OPS of 1.003. How about an Asdrubal Cabrera that hits .306, .312, 317, 294, .328 and finishes it off with a .363 season. It's not all hitting either. Hal Newhouser with a WHIP under 1 for 4 straight seasons. A year in which he whiffs 400 batter in just 287 seasons. Now, if I play random and let the modifiers go year to year according to history, I don't get these inflated numbers. Something happened to wreck this method of play. Not sure what it is, but something clearly occurred. Last edited by David Watts; 01-21-2018 at 04:28 PM.

01-21-2018, 06:55 PM	#2
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	wrong screenshot Attached Images

01-22-2018, 07:51 PM	#12
actionjackson Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Toronto, ON Posts: 6,123	Here's 61 years worth of the best single season OPS seasons from my longrunning OOTP16 dynasty: As you can see from these pictures, David Watts' 10 year OOTP18 league has produced 12 player seasons of 1.100 OPS or better, while my 61 year OOTP16 league has produced just nine. It seems to me that there are more realistic numbers in OOTP16 as far as individual seasons go. At least, there are far fewer outliers, as there should be. It should be very, very hard to put up an 1.100 OPS season. Attached Images Last edited by actionjackson; 01-22-2018 at 07:56 PM.

01-22-2018, 08:03 PM	#13
actionjackson Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Toronto, ON Posts: 6,123	Here's 61 seasons worth of the best single season OBP seasons from my OOTP16 dynasty: If we count George Altman's .4496 season as a .450 OBP season, David Watts' 10 season dynasty in OOTP18 has seen a whopping 26 seasons where players posted an OBP of .450 or higher. My 61 year OOTP16 dynasty has seen 14 such seasons. He also has six players who have posted seasons better than the best all-time single season OBP of my 61 year dynasty. Again, league-wide stats are not all that far off, but the distribution of those league-wide stats is troubling. Attached Images

01-21-2018, 06:57 PM	#3
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882

01-21-2018, 07:01 PM	#4
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882

01-21-2018, 07:03 PM	#5
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882

01-21-2018, 07:08 PM	#6
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	Leagues only been in existence for 10 years. Look how many .400 hitters.

01-21-2018, 07:10 PM	#7
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882

01-22-2018, 09:16 AM	#9
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	Just got to looking at something. If you look at the very first screenshot I posted. The one I said was the wrong one. That random league is set in 1947. It's not one in which I was using a base year. If you look at the leader boards, you can see that things are very normal. Over the weekend, I ran a test random league from 1947-2015, allowing the league to follow the import the historical modifiers for accuracy. I did find that the league average and league ERA was higher than real life, but the stats were not anywhere like what I'm seeing when I attempt to use a specific year as a base. Something has been tweaked or twizzled and it's made using one year as a base undoable unless you enjoy playing with superheroes.

01-22-2018, 07:17 PM	#10
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	10 years of OPS

01-22-2018, 07:21 PM	#11
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	Obp

01-23-2018, 11:15 AM	#14
Matt Arnold OOTP Developer Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Here and there Posts: 14,156	What do the league totals look like? The first thing to figure out is whether it's some weird distribution of players that's causing a few guys to spike up, or is this a league thing where teams are running insane totals all over the place. The next thing to check is what the league modifiers are set at. The in-game engine is mostly controlled by the modifiers, so if something got screwed up when they got set, that obviously will cause issues.

01-23-2018, 11:48 AM	#15
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882	I'm at work right now, but will take a look at league totals when I get home.

01-23-2018, 06:56 PM	#17
David Watts Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Looking for a place called Leehofooks Posts: 8,882

01-23-2018, 07:54 PM	#20
pstrickert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 15,749	I’ll add, sadly, that I trust historical results less than I used to. (It pains me to say it.)