Player Rating Fluctuation

[SullivanNJD]

Alright guys, I just recently bought OOTP 13. Last summer i was hooked on Mogul 12, but decided to make the transition here. Anyway, I started my dynasty with the Blue Jays, but changed team name/colors/logo to the Toronto Sting and am currently trying to get a championship for Canada.

My scout has very good ratings. Legendary for Major League players and Outstanding for Amateurs. However, it continues to baffle me how much my younger player ratings fluctuate. In the off-season my pitcher Sonny Gray was 79/80 (on the scale of 20-80) and now on opening day he went down to 50/52. My draftees that were ranked (including Bubba Starling) 80 at potential last season now went down significantly and a few of my top picks now are 20 OVR with 20 POT!!! What is going on, my scout is "outstanding" so should i trust that these prospects are busts? But then I am confused about why he had me draft them in the first place.

Any advice on this would be awesome.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by SullivanNJD

Alright guys, I just recently bought OOTP 13. Last summer i was hooked on Mogul 12, but decided to make the transition here. Anyway, I started my dynasty with the Blue Jays, but changed team name/colors/logo to the Toronto Sting and am currently trying to get a championship for Canada.

My scout has very good ratings. Legendary for Major League players and Outstanding for Amateurs. However, it continues to baffle me how much my younger player ratings fluctuate. In the off-season my pitcher Sonny Gray was 79/80 (on the scale of 20-80) and now on opening day he went down to 50/52. My draftees that were ranked (including Bubba Starling) 80 at potential last season now went down significantly and a few of my top picks now are 20 OVR with 20 POT!!! What is going on, my scout is "outstanding" so should i trust that these prospects are busts? But then I am confused about why he had me draft them in the first place.

Any advice on this would be awesome.

I play with Talent Randomness set to 1 vs default of 100. With 1 you have less radical changes no matter how good your scout is. I also use scouting 100% accurate but I am recreating a fictional historical league.
Let's also see what others say.

[SullivanNJD]

OK- I defintely want some sort of a challenge with prospects and development, but it is a bit ridiculous who a player drops 20-30 points from off-season to opening day. I will look at the talent randomness. Like I said, I am new to this game so I do not know all the options and sliders available.

[Mecza]

The longer your scout knows a player, the better he can asses his talents. A severe drop doesn't necessarily mean that the player lost ratings, it just means that your scout more accurately assessed his talents.

[SullivanNJD]

OK thanks

I Just didn't think that would happen so often with an Outstanding rated Amateur scout

[olivertheorem]

Even the best scouts miss.

It could be that the player still has, behind the scenes, those high potentials, but for some reason the scout now doesn't think he has them. All you can do is play him and see what happens.

[Mecza]

Originally Posted by SullivanNJD

OK thanks

I Just didn't think that would happen so often with an Outstanding rated Amateur scout

I love to play with scouts and I have them set at normal accuracy. A lot of people, especially in online leagues, like to turn scouting off because they don't like the "fog of war" so to speak. Sure, it sucks when a first rounder becomes a bust but there are numerous occasions where the 21st rounder ends up having a good career out of nowhere.

[koohead]

There's 2 possible factors though. You've got the talent change randomness parameter paired with scouting accuracy. If both are in play, its really hard to pin point the root cause. Maybe the scout just missed on his report. Maybe due to a radical talent change the player's skills took a dive. I think to have both possibilities muddies the waters a bit too much for me in the past. I've chosen to go with the 100% accuracy setting that was added with 13 and let the talent changes play it's course. I figure that would be cloudy enough because I never know if a top prospect is going to take a huge step back next year or maybe that 30th round pick will take a huge leap forward and turn into an everyday MLB starter.

[RchW]

Keep in mind that talent change randomness is transitory in nature. I prefer it on the low side 20-30 but I may increase it soon. I think that people place way too much importance on TCR's effect on player performance.

The development engine provides ratings bumps both plus and minus throughout each players career. The player development report IMO is a far more important piece of information as you can see a clearer picture of where each player is headed.

Just my

[SullivanNJD]

Originally Posted by RchW

Keep in mind that talent change randomness is transitory in nature. I prefer it on the low side 20-30 but I may increase it soon. I think that people place way too much importance on TCR's effect on player performance.

The development engine provides ratings bumps both plus and minus throughout each players career. The player development report IMO is a far more important piece of information as you can see a clearer picture of where each player is headed.

Just my

2 things

-Where do you view the "player Development report"

-Where do i go to change the talent randomness, I could not find it in league setup

[SullivanNJD]

EDIT: NVM i figured out the talent randomness. I have it at 100 now, Should I move it down to 50 maybe with scout accuracy setting at "high"

[RchW]

Originally Posted by SullivanNJD

EDIT: NVM i figured out the talent randomness. I have it at 100 now, Should I move it down to 50 maybe with scout accuracy setting at "high"

Front office/Player Development/Open PD report (lower right bottom).

Your guess is as good as mine on the setting.

[I_Got_Wood_34]

I love the randomness. 99% of the draft is a crapshoot. That's how it's in 'real life'. Players who seemingly have amazing potential fizzle out at rookie/low A all the time. In the matter of an offseason a pitcher changes his motion and can't recapture that 90+ MPH fastball. A player tweaks his back and his swing is gone forever. Some guys just can't hang at the higher levels period.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by I_Got_Wood_34

I love the randomness. 99% of the draft is a crapshoot. That's how it's in 'real life'. Players who seemingly have amazing potential fizzle out at rookie/low A all the time. In the matter of an offseason a pitcher changes his motion and can't recapture that 90+ MPH fastball. A player tweaks his back and his swing is gone forever. Some guys just can't hang at the higher levels period.

But TCR will change even edited players from a 98 MPH fastball down to a 84 MPH in 1 offseason. I would not have minded a slow change but 12 mph in 1 offseason when the player is only 31 was a bit odd. In an online league I signed a SP with STA of 9, come Jan 2nd it was now 3. He went from winning 22 games with someone else, me spending 17 million on him per sn for 3 yrs to him wallowing in back end of middle relief for 3 sns. In my leagues as I have said I kept TCR at 1. I still see plenty of players especially self created players go from 45 HR 1 yr down to 12 the next.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by The Game

But TCR will change even edited players from a 98 MPH fastball down to a 84 MPH in 1 offseason. I would not have minded a slow change but 12 mph in 1 offseason when the player is only 31 was a bit odd. In an online league I signed a SP with STA of 9, come Jan 2nd it was now 3. He went from winning 22 games with someone else, me spending 17 million on him per sn for 3 yrs to him wallowing in back end of middle relief for 3 sns. In my leagues as I have said I kept TCR at 1. I still see plenty of players especially self created players go from 45 HR 1 yr down to 12 the next.

No, that's not TCR that's a ratings hit, which is a normal if not convenient part of player development and aging. Your aging mods may be a little high. Also note that self created players are likely to see hits because they are typically created to be good. When they are too good the game may hit them harder to balance out the ratings distribution (note this is just my analysis).

Talent change randomness affects talent, which in turn will affect potential ratings. Take a young hitter who may have 6/10 contact ratings and 10/10 potential. TCR will temporarily reduce his contact potential to 7/10 which will suppress or put the brakes on his improvement. This is temporary and can be seen in OVR ratings like 48/75 then 46/62 then 53/78 all within a season. He could still get a talent/ratings boost or hit from the development engine but that is a separate event.

From the manual.

Player Options

The Player Options section is nearly identical to the Player Options described on the Game Options screen. There is one main difference. The Talent Change Randomness option is a numeric value from 1 to 200 that controls how random player talent changes are. For example, a 200 here would mean that talent changes are highly random, making it more likely that players would experience significant changes in talent over the course of their career. Tweak this if necessary if you feel that player talent changes are either too drastic or too conservative. 100 is the default.

Don't place so much importance on TCR. If you want consistency set it lower than 50.

[RchW]

This is not the best graph but it sort of shows what TCR is in my opinion.

The error bars are what can happen to player talent even as he is improving. You can see from the manual description that high TCR would increase the number of talent changes (number of bars). The manual also suggests that the changes may be bigger (the bar height is greater).

Keep in mind that the development engine and injuries can derail this rise in talent or boost it independently of TCR. So when the red dots go flat it is nothing to do with TCR.

[milkman41]

Every year, I get players with significantly higher potentials in the offseason than in season (ie going from, in some cases a 5-star pot to a 1.5-star at the start of the season), as was mentioned at one point in this thread. It can be verrrry frustrating.

[olivertheorem]

This is why ratings aren't the end-all, be-all of player evaluation. If a player is hitting .320/.400/.600 year after year, but his ratings are 50 across the board (on 20-80 scale), who cares about the ratings. Ratings matter, but so do stats.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by RchW

No, that's not TCR that's a ratings hit, which is a normal if not convenient part of player development and aging. Your aging mods may be a little high. Also note that self created players are likely to see hits because they are typically created to be good. When they are too good the game may hit them harder to balance out the ratings distribution (note this is just my analysis).

OK Thanx, did not know that. My aging mods are set at .997.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by The Game

OK Thanx, did not know that. My aging mods are set at .997.

Nothing wrong with that setting unless you see a league wide shortage of low 30's players.

As for ratings hits, Tim Lincecum IRL has declined each season since his last Cy Young award. On a 10 point scale he could have been 11-11-8 (S-M-C) or better back then. This year he looks like 8-9-6. Still good but not as dominant.