OOTP 14 announcement discussion!

[OutfieldGrass]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yes, but no preordering for it yet.

Thank you very much.

[drksd4848]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

No worries, this is a) not the final list and b) we cannot have new features for every part of OOTP every year.

This is just fine! An ounce of improving existing features and fixing annoyances and bugs is worth a pound of cool new stuff.

[tomwolf2008]

About my only disappointment is still no national team tournament. Oh well, the other changes probably will make up for this slight disappointment.

[deanemj]

Originally Posted by tomwolf2008

About my only disappointment is still no national team tournament. Oh well, the other changes probably will make up for this slight disappointment.

Nope. I'm very disappointed about this as well. International baseball, I thought, was a feature that I thought for sure would be included.

Maybe they are holding off on announcing it?

[The Wolf]

Markus, thank you for bringing back PH selection.

[Pronkytonk]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

having very little use to historical players .

Well, to me this: Improved league strategy settings; i.e., define the number of starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and position players carried by the AI teams,is real huge for everybody trying to replay the 19th century. Being able to limit the number of pitchers should enable me to replay the very early years in the right way. Have been waiting for this for a while ...

[HH20xx convert]

Let me be the first to ask an obvious question (a specialty of mine). Conversion of leagues from OOTP 13 is expected to be very smooth, as in recent years?

[chimanbj]

I'm really excited to see that scouts will be able to draft from Independent leagues! This will make the early 20th century much more realistic. If I can get my independent leagues last more than a few years, I will be even more excited! (they seem to run out of players...)

[legofarley]

I'm a big fan of the development tracking and the "stop offering this guy in a trade" button. I'm also very interested to see how the fielding skills development plays out.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

Let me be the first to ask an obvious question (a specialty of mine). Conversion of leagues from OOTP 13 is expected to be very smooth, as in recent years?

Of course!

[AESP_pres]

No real 19th century against this year

I mean the real structure, team, leagues and transactions... I know we can do it manually since this is what I do, but having the game doing it automatically would be so better.

Anyway I will pre-order next week as usual, even without this I know the game will be an update.

[mgom27]

College World Series?
Scheduling Games Overseas like say the Mets/Dodgers will start season Overseas?
Little League World Series?

Multi Team trades?

Saying like Barry Bonds has joined Root Pittsburgh as a Studio Host for Pirates Games or like Steve Stone has passed away and Frank Thomas is joining Hawk in the Booth? Seeing the Manager Argue with the Umpire live?

Umps/Front Office People Retire? Unretirements?

[rpriske]

This looks great. I really like the sounds of the development/scouting changes.



Any chance the injury replacement timing problem has been corrected?

[Caporegime]

I'm pumped about the new & improved Player Origin System. It was an area of the game that assuredly needed to be reworked.

• The First-Year Player Draft: By default, players in the draft pool are now from the USA, Canada or Puerto Rico. However, the nationality can be tweaked in great detail and can also include a set percentage of random nationalities. That also applies to the following optional player entry methods.

This is a nice addition for those of us who like to micromanage the ethnic makeup of our leagues. I usually have to create feeder leagues in nations like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela to try accurately reflect their representation in MLB. Unfortunately, however, feeder leagues seem to be a big drain on my system's resources & consequently slow my league down with the passage of time. This new system will, hopefully, be a much more efficient way to achieve this.

• International Amateur Top Prospects (optional): These players are typically 16-to-17-years-old who have a reputation of being top talents. They appear as free agents in a new special international section of the league transaction screen and most likely will demand contracts with high signing bonuses (another new feature). You can customize the number of these players who will be created each year.

Nice! I'm probably in a minority here, but I always enjoy going over to Baseball America ever summer to see which mid-adolescent Latin American kids I've never heard of (or am likely to hear of again) just received a $2-3 million dollar signing bonus based on that all-mysterious quality known as "potential". As a Yankee fan, the names Jackson Melian & Wily Mo Pena immediately spring to mind. Now, we can participate in this madness as well. Cool!

• Established International Free Agents (optional): These players are typically from Japan, South Korea, Cuba, Taiwan and Mexico and are between 22 and 32 years old. They typically have slightly below average major league talent, but there will be the occasional star player, like Yu Darvish, Ichiro, or Aroldis Chapman.

Isn't this option already in the game? I usually insert the *** in my game in hopes that the occasional Ichiro or Hideki Matsui would be tempted to jump ship to my league. The only problem with this approach is, I can never get it to work the way I want it to. The best players always seem to opt to remain in Japan anyway, and I end up having a league in my universe that I'm neither interested in following or is producing FAs for the leagues that I do follow. Hopefully, this feature will accomplish for me what I can't seem to do on my own.

International Scouting Discoveries (optional): Your team's scouts constantly evaluate the international leagues as they seek young, raw, and unknown talent. The success of your head scout is determined by the scouting budget, the quality of your scout, and his assigned regions. When your head scout discovers a player who he feels may have a shot at becoming a pro, that player is automatically assigned to your team's new international complex. Players in the international complex may remain there until their 20th birthdays, after which they will have to be assigned to a minor league team or released.

Question: Do these international leagues need to be created first in order to be scouted, or are they simply implied?

• Players from Independent Leagues (optional): You may also have your head scout look for talent in hidden independent leagues. These players are typically from the league home nation, but once in a while an international talent may be discovered here too. Independent league players are typically in their early-to-mid-20s and usually only have an outside shot at becoming borderline major league players. However, there may be the occasional feel-good success story.

Same question as above.

Again, I like that this area of the game received attention. If it works the way I hope it will, it will really add immersion to the game & be less resource-intensive (at lest for me) than before.

[gentlemanofleisure]

little disapointed stadiums werent touched this year but seeing this made me excited.

OOTP now properly tracks the development of your players and offers several ways to analyze the data. You receive monthly player development updates from your head scout (or the OSA, if scouts are disabled), who highlights the most important changes, such as when a pitcher in the lower minor leagues learns a new pitch and improves his prospect status.

Been waiting for that for a long time.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by Pronkytonk

Well, to me this: Improved league strategy settings; i.e., define the number of starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and position players carried by the AI teams,is real huge for everybody trying to replay the 19th century. Being able to limit the number of pitchers should enable me to replay the very early years in the right way. Have been waiting for this for a while ...

I was talking specifically about announcement number one, as I said.

[gentlemanofleisure]

As for historical play, Markus, I wondered if you guys ever tried to put in a league waiver system for historical leagues that were pre-1960.

Back in those days if you wanted to trade a guy out of your league, like say Honus Wagner from the Pirates to the Browns, he had to clear National League waivers first. Meaning, the 7 other NL teams had to not pick him up in order for the trade to an American league can occur.

That's why players back in those days rarely switched leagues. No free agency , and trades between leagues were rare.

[Cryomaniac]

I'll pre-order in a couple of weeks, after my birthday. Feature list looks cool, but how will the new player creation stuff work with non-US leagues? There were issues before with the percentages of created players being hardcoded for the US, and I'm wondering if these features, especially the draft thing ("By default, players in the draft pool are now from the USA, Canada or Puerto Rico.") Can ths be customised to say England, Scotland, Wales, N.Ireland, Ireland for an English league?

Does the "hidden independent leagues" thing mean that little or no work has been done on actual independent leagues that might be created?

"Improved league strategy settings; i.e., define the number of starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and position players carried by the AI teams, split by DH and non-DH sub-leagues.". This sounds pretty useful, and will hopefully prevent teams having 12 pitchers and 38 hitters if I want a 50 man roster lol.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I'll pre-order in a couple of weeks, after my birthday. Feature list looks cool, but how will the new player creation stuff work with non-US leagues? There were issues before with the percentages of created players being hardcoded for the US, and I'm wondering if these features, especially the draft thing ("By default, players in the draft pool are now from the USA, Canada or Puerto Rico.") Can ths be customised to say England, Scotland, Wales, N.Ireland, Ireland for an English league?

Does the "hidden independent leagues" thing mean that little or no work has been done on actual independent leagues that might be created?

"Improved league strategy settings; i.e., define the number of starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and position players carried by the AI teams, split by DH and non-DH sub-leagues.". This sounds pretty useful, and will hopefully prevent teams having 12 pitchers and 38 hitters if I want a 50 man roster lol.

Yes, the exact origin of every player type can be edited. So in a UK league, you can specifically say how many Welsh players you want etc.

Regarding actual independent leagues, I am not aware of any pressing issues here. If you disagree, please PM me and let mw know what doesn't work with them currently.

[jmount78]

"Improved Trading
We improve the trading AI each year, and OOTP 14 is no different. On top of that, we added a screen that keeps track of all the trades in the history of the league, with a detailed look at the involved players' salaries, overall ratings, prospect rankings, and so forth. OOTP 14 also adds a "Not interested in Player X" function that prevents the AI from repeatedly offering a certain player to you."

It just got real people! This feature alone is worth buying the game for me. Markus, I will also private message you my shipping address for the iPad. Thanks.