OOTP 17 - Interface discussion

[Snoblitz]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Hey folks,

I'd like to start to talk about the OOTP 17 interface. Is there anything here we can do to improve usability? What is bad / confusing about the OOTP 16 interface? What's currently not pretty? What would you like to see changed?

Any feedback and ideas are greatly appreciated

Cheers,
Markus

Voting for all-star games is a little wacky for online leagues. It's difficult to understand how players were selected for the ballot. Also, there is no way to sort the ballot by stat categories. When you're eyeballing it for RP and SP, it can be a bit of an eye chart.

[phillyboy19]

Be able to change a players number like you could in OOTP 8 (That wa the first I tried before I got 16 to see if I liked it)

[diesel230]

The players jersey number philly? You can change that in the player editor.

[drksd4848]

You know the box in the webcast screen that tells you what happens after the last play? i.e. LAST PLAY: 2B

It would be cool if it was added to all the game screens. That way when you sim to runners in scoring position, you'd know how the runner got there...

[jaa36]

I put a few interface suggestions in this thread which I'll reiterate here.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ns-ootp17.html

The ones relevant to interface (depending on how widely you define interface) were:

1. Ability to enter or change award winners retroactively. I hate it when I screw these up and there's no turning back.

3. A few changes to stats. wRC and wRC+ should be in season and career leaderboards. RA9 and RA9-wins (or baseball reference WAR) should be added for pitchers and included in these leaderboards. Also, K%, BB%, K-BB%, shutdowns, meltdowns, and won-lost record while starting (in addition to the traditional definition of won-lost record) should be tracked for pitchers. wRAA and times reached on error should be included for hitters. The number of games a player has played at each position should also be viewable as a stat within a custom view- this really comes in handy for selecting all-stars.

6. Selecting all-stars (or all-pro team) after the season and for leagues with only a single subleague and single division. All-pro awards could be added similar to how Silver Slugger was added this year. Seeing games played per position (as in #3) would really help with this.

7. Awards. Option to only have starting pitchers win the Pitcher of the Year award, and option to only have a player from the winning team with the Series MVP award. Also, allowing the player to select or edit the Player of the Game or Series MVP awards. And finally, more than one Custom award. Though obviously, adding all the other awards has helped with this.

9. Control over what stats are displayed on the Standings, Statistics, and Leaderboards pages. I don't really care what the top OPS or hitting streaks are in the league, but I'd love to see wOBA and runs scored on the standings page instead, for example.

10. Better interface in the League Totals section. I should be able to see from this section very easily what the estimated statistical output will be for the league, including how (very approximately) the leaderboard will look. I'm sure that many people can relate to this, but I often spend hours trying to get the statistical output for a league just right, and the game should let me know what the estimated output will be without having to run the sim.

11. Calculation of projected park factors. The game should determine, based on the league totals modifiers and the parks that are in the game, what the estimated effect of the park will be on average, doubles, triples, home runs, and (most importantly) runs scored. As it stands, it's very hard to tell (except in very obvious cases) whether a park will function as a pitcher's or hitter's park.

13. More flexibility in pitching role management. I should be able to tell the AI that I want to limit the number of batters a pitcher faces- rather than have him on a strict pitch limit. (The rationale for this is the data demonstrating that pitchers get worse each time they go through the batting order.) I'd also like to be able to rank pitchers by how good they are and have the AI manager deploy the best in high-leverage situations and the worst in low-leverage situations. You can sort of do this with the "stopper" designation, but that's only available for "medium" or lower frequency of closer or reliever usage in OOTP 16.

14. An easier way to rotate the DH among players that would otherwise start. A lot of teams do this now rather than have a full-time DH. I guess you can do this with seven-day lineups, but that's a lot of work. Perhaps just having a selection in the DH slot within the lineups page where you can just check "rotate among starters." Or perhaps allowing you on the player page to click a box for "start at DH when tired."

[Statsman1]

I think it would be nice to be able to stipulate what you want BACK in a trade when you shop a player to the entire league.

If I'm looking for a 2B, I'd like to be able to say so, and only get offers from those who offer a 2B back, instead of sorting through 50+ offers of an aging SP.

[Sweed]

On the "batting stats > batting vs pitcher" tab would it be possible to add the ability to sort the table by current team? Maybe even add a column for either BB or OBP? But I'd settle for sort by current team and be very happy

[chickennoodle77]

Originally Posted by drksd4848

You know the box in the webcast screen that tells you what happens after the last play? i.e. LAST PLAY: 2B

It would be cool if it was added to all the game screens. That way when you sim to runners in scoring position, you'd know how the runner got there...

I'd love to see this expanded also. Instead of just the last play, possibly show the last three plays in a half inning to track how you got to where you are at in the inning. When simming at higher speeds (20+) you can sometimes lose plays when watching in webcast view. One option would be to add the inning log below the batter / pitcher matchup. Something like the following...

[Ross333]

Thank you for asking. LOVE the game. Here is one annoying thing while playing on a Mac: when in the lineup screen, when I click on a player at the lower left to look at his details, I then have to scroll the pointer all the way back to the upper top right to the "return to game" toggle. I'd like a "return to game" toggle at the lower left where the pointer is already located for the player selection.

[Charley575]

On the "Transactions" tab, I feel like there is too much white space between columns. On 1080 resolution screens, it's great. I can see my entire organization under "Overview".

At laptop resolution however, I think this screen in particular really suffers. My laptop runs at 1366X768. I can only get four boxes on the screen. Boo.
I have 5 levels of minors so I can't even see all of my minor league teams at once under "Minors". If the blank space was eliminated, a third column of boxes would fit on the screen.

Maybe the "small" font is not small enough, also.

Draft screens also feel too crowded. Not enough players fit on the screen. A lot of space is taken up with the boxes at the bottom of the screen. Those could be reduced, in my opinion. Again, maybe a smaller font option is called for.

[koohead]

This may be tough since this screen is dynamically generated based on screen resolution, but I noticed that with the default MLB setup, the number of minor league teams don't all fit on the screen if you have the 40 man roster and International Complex rosters displaying (default setting I believe). Realize the display is customizable, but would be nice if one could save predefined configurations so you can jump back and forth between views quickly.
For example, for 1 view, you would have nothing but minors, Triple A down to the multiple Rookie leagues and the International Complex. this view would be used to move people around in your organization. Another view would be the ML, Disabled List, 40 man roster, Triple and Double A perhaps, and maybe the Waiver/DFA list. This way you could save 3-4 configurations for the most common roster tasks and not have to manually adjust the lists each time.

[RchW]

Can we improve the transactions view screen and readability in general by going back to v14 and earlier versions. The player names are more readable and contrast is improved vs either skin in v16. These screenshots actually don't show how much better v14 is on a good monitor.

I still don't understand why reducing player count per box from 9 to 8 was considered better. With better readability and contrast it might be possible to get 10 players/box.

Edit; A very strange thing occurred. I fooled around with the settings in fairness to v16 to see if it could be improved. Since then I cannot reproduce the 8 player box seen in the v16 screenshots. Max number of players I can see in a box now is 7.

How did that happen?

[malor]

On Initiate Trade Screen - Be able to list players on shortlists similar to how all of the default options list of players are shown.

I like to keep a list of player to be traded and would like to be able to see that list on the trade screen so I can choose players to possibly help complete a trade without the need to go to the shortlist on another screen and navigate back. I find myself taking a lot of notes on paper for this actions. Having the list be able to be an option would safe that effort.
Thanks.

[Lockdog]

In the trade screen, prospects should be listed by their individual prospect ranking within the organization, instead of just listing them all by position.

[byzeil]

Originally Posted by koohead

This may be tough since this screen is dynamically generated based on screen resolution, but I noticed that with the default MLB setup, the number of minor league teams don't all fit on the screen if you have the 40 man roster and International Complex rosters displaying (default setting I believe). Realize the display is customizable, but would be nice if one could save predefined configurations so you can jump back and forth between views quickly.
For example, for 1 view, you would have nothing but minors, Triple A down to the multiple Rookie leagues and the International Complex. this view would be used to move people around in your organization. Another view would be the ML, Disabled List, 40 man roster, Triple and Double A perhaps, and maybe the Waiver/DFA list. This way you could save 3-4 configurations for the most common roster tasks and not have to manually adjust the lists each time.

That is already there if I understand what you are asking for (well you can't save 3-4 customized views but there are minor league and waiver/dfa views). Under the 'Transaction' screen there is the 'Overview' (which is the view I think you are talking about ) then there is 'Disabled List' and 'Minor Leagues' (Which shows as many minor leagues that will fit on the screen based on your resolution).

[awick]

When I want to sign a coach and I am looking at available personnel, I can sort candidates by various criteria (age, experience, etc.). But when I select a specific coach to look at more closely, I'd like to be able from that screen to scroll backward or forward to see the next candidate according to the sort that I created. (As I can do when looking at players from any number of screens.) As it is, I have to back out of the specific coach's individual screen, return to my sort screen, remember who I just looked at, then select the next guy in line.

It would be much less tedious to hire staff if I could navigate directly from candidate to candidate from the individual coach screen.

[vtotter]

Please look into keeping the cursor out of the pitch count box of the #1 SP when switching teams with the pitching tab open. This can be brutal when you accidentally bump a number key on this screen and don't realize it. Not sure if there are other situations where it happens.

[spacer15415]

In a draft, the ability to ask your scout a recommendation for a certain position..I want the best RF or 2B

[atl_braves]

It would be great to be able to have the option to play out the games of your minor league affiliates. If I remember correctly, prior versions had the option to manage games of any team in your system. In 16, if you're the GM of a major league club, you can manage games for the ML team, but you have to jump through a whole bunch of commissioner mode hoops to manage a game for your minor league teams.

[CT-Sox-Fan]

1. Please!! For online leagues, add an option when importing the utility from the draft, to then pause the draft rather than automatically finish the draft.

The reason for this is that pausing after importing the utility draft (5 rounds in our case) allows the commissioner to upload a new file to the server. Gm's can then download that file and have an up to date draft pool to use to make preferences for the remaining rounds of the draft.

Currently there are only 2 options. 1) finish the draft (which means Gms had to have already had in game lists - difficult with 3-5 rounds of utility draft to account for) or 2) after the utility draft release the rest of the pool to FA. You can't pause.

I think that falls under interface.

2. Draft pool menu choice is buried during the time between draft pool revealed and the draft. Please make it more prominent. It used to be.

3. Add a choice to download the league file to the popup action menu on the manager's home screen. There are options there to export by ftp or to a file, but to download you have to go to the File and it's two deep. Fine to leave it there but nicer to have all the actions available on that top right pop up.

4. This may be me not having experimented enough, but OOTP16 doesn't seem to play nice with the Retina display on my 13" MacBook Pro. I can scale the display, however, OOTP won't scale with it - specifically, no matter what I do I only get 4 windows on the Rosters and Transactions page, even if I set the size to one that should allow 6 or 8 as it used to. If I make OOTP bigger, it just enlarges everything. If anyone knows how to fix this already, please correct me and set me straight.

These are really nits and overall, I absolutely love the game. I've been a long time user, and have enjoyed a number of online leagues.

Dave

PS - the pause the draft thing isn't a nit. I'd REALLY like to have that.