Noticing issues with hometown player goal

[BMD]

Has anyone seen any owner demands yet that limit transactions? I could see a penny-pincher giving a demand not to resign a certain high priced player or giving the guideline not to offer any contract the pays more than $X in any year or contracts with total guaranteed money in excess of $Y. I have not seen anything like this myself yet, so I am curious.

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by BMD

Has anyone seen any owner demands yet that limit transactions? I could see a penny-pincher giving a demand not to resign a certain high priced player or giving the guideline not to offer any contract the pays more than $X in any year or contracts with total guaranteed money in excess of $Y. I have not seen anything like this myself yet, so I am curious.

I think they kind of combine those with the yearly budget goal. if you actually look at the budget goal and try to make it you'll find it really hinders your signing ability. So that's kind of what you're talking about but based on a different specific area.

[Anyone]

Owner goals should make sense for the owner's profit vs. winning relative preference.

The hometown player one (even though its implementation clearly has a bug) reasonably makes sense from a profit perspective. The owner would figure (and this should actually happen) that the hometown player will drive up interest in the team, making more money. A heavily winning-focused owner should never make that a goal.

Extending a given player should generally only be made a goal with highly popular players (again, for team interest). That may already be part of the calculation.

Dumping a distracting player I've seen, and unless it's a dump for salary rather than for "clubhouse distraction" reasons, that would be more a Winning owner type goal.

Improving a position really should always be a particularly weak position from a Winning-oriented owner. It shouldn't be given that often, while improving a given stat makes more sense, and should always be a deficient stat-- although I can imagine an owner who loves power or speed or pitching or whatever ordering a stat related to that to be improved; but then it should be consistent from year to year that the owner focuses on power hitters/speedy guys/hitters for average/OBP guys who work walks/pitching and defense/etc..

If I owned a low-walk team in real life I might order the GM to bring in more selective hitters, for example. But then I'd be consistent and not a couple of years later complain that batters weren't putting balls in play or something.

[TLB1975]

I'm wondering how generic these goals are. Since I am only playing with one team and one owner I can only speak about the goals coming my way. It sounds like others are seeing similar goals even though the owners are quite different.

I think a future version of this should be tailored specifically to each owner and their style. There could be some owners who have little to zero interest in specific on-field stuff (improving a position, stat improvement, etc.) and only care about the bottom line (winning or financial) Then there could be a type of owner who meddles and wants a lotsof input on how the team plays and the style (speed, power, defense etc..) To me that would make more sense.

[Matt Arnold]

We have limited space, so there's only ~10 different "types" of goals out there now. Would have loved to add more, the ones there now were hard enough.

The goals the owner assigns to you are related to their profit/winning scale. So an owner who high favours money over winning will more likely give the "trim payroll" goals. And we do have checks to make sure the goals are reasonable, to a degree. So if you're a bottom feeder making money, the owner shouldn't ask you to trim payroll. Now, the "resign X player" goals, I don't check if those are reasonable are not. I blame that on owners being a bit cray-cray at times.

The hometown goal, the import parts to note:
-The player must be acquired. So if the owner asks for a hometown player, it will only look for players new to the team or organization.
-We do check all players. We don't stop searching through acquired players until we find one who fully satisfies the goal.
-Distances are calculated based on the data that we have in the world. If you do truly believe that you have acquired a player who should satisfy the criteria and does not, please post in the bug reports forum with a league file, and I can very the actual calculations done. I have a feeling that the most likely cause of problems is that either something in our distance calculation is not working perfectly, or that cities aren't listed with correct coordinates.

And finally, for now, if you do have any suggestions for "new" owner goals, or other ways you feel the goal system can be modified to provide more realism, please post in the suggestions forum. As mentioned, this was v1 of the new mechanism, so it will take a few versions to refine. I'm definitely open to new ideas - we're obviously limited to certain restrictions, but I'm open to any and all new ideas, and I hope that every version the system improves.

[Assos]

So, something like I do not like X player, trade him or get rid of him, or hire a PA to spy on him?


Baseball's Greatest Scandals, #10: Steinbrenner vs. Winfield - AZ Snake Pit

[olivertheorem]

Thanks for the info, Matt. It's much appreciated.

[ra7c7er]

Matt, If a city doesn't have coordinates will that goal still pop up? I have a few teams in another league that are based in State Parks and I don't list a city for them. If I take over one of those teams will I get that goal?

[Tom the Fish]

I'm playing as the Padres in the real roster set. I was told to acquire a hometown player, so I traded for Strasburg, who is from San Diego. The goal was green and complete, but for some reason now it's gone back to no progress...

[HoustonGM]

Originally Posted by Anyone

Improving a position really should always be a particularly weak position from a Winning-oriented owner. It shouldn't be given that often, while improving a given stat makes more sense, and should always be a deficient stat-- although I can imagine an owner who loves power or speed or pitching or whatever ordering a stat related to that to be improved; but then it should be consistent from year to year that the owner focuses on power hitters/speedy guys/hitters for average/OBP guys who work walks/pitching and defense/etc..

Regarding the improving a position goal, I think there needs to be more flexibility added when assessing it. For example, I was tasked with improving center field this past season. I signed Mike Trout to a huge contract, and he played 130 games, 115 or so of them in center field, before getting injured in early September and missing the rest of the season (yet winning the MVP anyway). He returned during the playoffs and I put him in left field, while I had one of my top prospects that had been recalled as an injury replacement during the playoffs playing CF.

After the season (in which I won the World Series), the owner said that I had failed to upgrade at center field, noting that one of my part time outfielders (not the previously mentioned top prospect) wasn't a sufficient upgrade - I had used that player at CF periodically, particularly during the last month and beginning of the playoffs while Trout was out, and he MAY have been slotted in as the center fielder in one of my lineups at the time the goal was assessed but I didn't double check that. Nevertheless, I think this illustrates a failure in the AI's goal evaluation for positional upgrades.

EDIT: Just double checked - the player that it assessed the goal by was the highest rated player on the active roster with his position set to CF. Trout's was set to LF, despite playing 116 games at CF, because I had forced him into left field at the time.

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by HoustonGM

EDIT: Just double checked - the player that it assessed the goal by was the highest rated player on the active roster with his position set to CF. Trout's was set to LF, despite playing 116 games at CF, because I had forced him into left field at the time.

So it worked like it was supposed to.

[HoustonGM]

Originally Posted by megamanmatt

So it worked like it was supposed to.

I don't think it SHOULD work that way though. I would think that, ideally, it should look at the actual production you got at that position over the course of the year. I did complete the goal, in the literally best possible way. It just so happened that at the end of the season, circumstances called for playing my center fielder at another position and I didn't switch his official position to CF prior to completing the season.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by HoustonGM

I don't think it SHOULD work that way though. I would think that, ideally, it should look at the actual production you got at that position over the course of the year. I did complete the goal, in the literally best possible way. It just so happened that at the end of the season, circumstances called for playing my center fielder at another position and I didn't switch his official position to CF prior to completing the season.

I think I would like to switch to do it more like that, but I think I might be missing some stats to do that properly, so that's why I stuck with the OSA rankings for it. I could think of looking at something like "team rank of primary players at each position", but I figured that might be even more confusing.

[olivertheorem]

Could you do a check for most innings at position X among players on the roster at the end of the season? I'd think that would be doable.

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

I think I would like to switch to do it more like that, but I think I might be missing some stats to do that properly, so that's why I stuck with the OSA rankings for it. I could think of looking at something like "team rank of primary players at each position", but I figured that might be even more confusing.

I think another thing you guys could look into is a better way to facilitate 'communication' between a human GM and an AI manager. That's my main problem. I can't communicate my own plan for building the team to the manager. As it is now a human GM and an AI manager are basically putting two different plans into effect which can be frustrating to say the least.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

I think I would like to switch to do it more like that, but I think I might be missing some stats to do that properly, so that's why I stuck with the OSA rankings for it. I could think of looking at something like "team rank of primary players at each position", but I figured that might be even more confusing.

Why not just use something like "aggregate WAR" at the position?

[HoustonGM]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

Could you do a check for most innings at position X among players on the roster at the end of the season? I'd think that would be doable.

Yeah this seems like an acceptable method.