Are there any improvements to the feeder system?

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Try playing FM with extra league mods and all leagues loaded

OH GOD dont remind me and I did that for FM 2007, the computer i used doesn't work anymore crashed while playing FM.

I have made all my feeders at creation of the league so 30 teams or 12 teams depending on the major league. I have found that if you have more then one Major League and players can switch leagues having your Main league with the best draft and the 2nd league with maybe less feeder teams then actual league teams and smaller draft so they can pick up the releases and non drafted players and also saving you another feeder league.
The biggest thing I have found in my league is to make sure the Stats Detail is set to low or normal because that will save stats for players you may never see and it will make your game really slow but that is just a personal option and situation that happened to me.

I only have played BIG solo leagues since V7 so I dont know what work for Just MLB AAA-A or most others.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I've seen lots of players using the tutorial as a feeder base post up about inflated players over time. The usual thing people tell them is to adjust the modifiers. Pretty much anyone who's done long term tests sees star player inflation. I'd venture to guess most people don't care so long as it's spread out and not just all on one team.

Thanks. I don't use feeders but I have been using 25 draft rounds for leagues with full minors (AAA, AA, A, SA, R) without really thinking about it. After doing some searching, I do see some threads where people are suggesting using 3 or 4 rounds per level. And it appears that the default setting for a fictional league is 20 rounds. Interesting.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

30 seconds isn't an annoying delay?

Definitely not, imo. As I allude to above, FM give far longer delays than that, especially if you load a ton of leagues, and it's the most popular game in this genre by a factor of X.

As with all the other leagues we've added the last couple versions, if feeders were ever added, it'd be important to make them selectable and optional, but I can't see why we wouldn't want to make having a good, more polished and buffed feeder system an option for folks.

[Kobeck]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I like the feeders. Makes the world more fleshed out.

In huge "worlds" feeders can slow things down but even on 4 year old computer my world of 10 leagues and 120 teams runs just fine. Yeah it's a little slower when simming but it's worthing it for the player histories.

Also I've found setting the leagues to not all run at the same times helps


Another thing I've found is that you don't need nearly as many feeders as feeder tutorials posted here say you do. I've found that the tutorials set up the game to after a few years (5-7) give every team nearly all 4-5 star players, including bench players) and hundreds of players in FA that will never see a playing field. What I think people have looked past is the amount of retiring players to incoming players. I don't even use half of what the tutorial says and my world runs just fine. In my world the top league (only on that drafts) has 4-6 4+ star players each and then player levels trickle down to the other leagues. My feeders are 16 team HS and 12 teams college. No league creates players they all take from my feeders.

I find it sad that a Dev doesn't like the feeders because it slows the game down. a 20 team feeder doesn't slow the game down anymore then adding another 20 team league. Just because a few people don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't add a lot realism for other people. I'd love to see feeders get worked on and be able to associate them and all sorts of stuff. One thing I think NEEDS to be implemented is different league drafts coming from the same draft pool. Like the NFL and CFL do now. Set your top league to draft first to get the "best" potential players and then trickle down your leagues draft the leftover players.

There should be an ultra low stat keeping for HS and a just barely more than that stat keeping for college. Not that stat keeping crashes the game but that HS/most colleges do not keep the sort of stats that OOTP produces. Would perfer, for the feeders, simpler stats and a one time picture


just my opinion

[Doc_Brown]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Definitely not, imo. As I allude to above, FM give far longer delays than that, especially if you load a ton of leagues, and it's the most popular game in this genre by a factor of X.

As with all the other leagues we've added the last couple versions, if feeders were ever added, it'd be important to make them selectable and optional, but I can't see why we wouldn't want to make having a good, more polished and buffed feeder system an option for folks.

An option for feeder leagues for all international leagues too, using real Schools and Colleges with the correct staff for each school and college.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Definitely not, imo. As I allude to above, FM give far longer delays than that, especially if you load a ton of leagues, and it's the most popular game in this genre by a factor of X.

As with all the other leagues we've added the last couple versions, if feeders were ever added, it'd be important to make them selectable and optional, but I can't see why we wouldn't want to make having a good, more polished and buffed feeder system an option for folks.

I do not think it's wise to use FM as a reference point for the sim time of ootp. Completely differents games. Baseball is very stat oriented. Soccer is not. I can't think of any reason why one would want to do a long sim in FM.

OOTP is different because a lot of people can and want to go through a season in a few hours. You can quickly sim several seasons to get some stat history. I do not think I could play ootp if it took longer than FM to get through a season.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

I do not think it's wise to use FM as a reference point for the sim time of ootp. Completely differents games. Baseball is very stat oriented. Soccer is not. I can't think of any reason why one would want to do a long sim in FM.

OOTP is different because a lot of people can and want to go through a season in a few hours. You can quickly sim several seasons to get some stat history. I do not think I could play ootp if it took longer than FM to get through a season.

I disagree, but that doesn't make me right, of course. I love doing long sims in FM.

It's not just FM though. FHM has billions of leagues, including the NCAA etc. as inactive background feeder leagues and hockey isn't as stat oriented as baseball either.

I guess that just means there are different ways of looking at this. But overall, as in FM, if any more leagues are added to OOTP it'll be up to the player whether to use them and deal with with the accompanying slower speeds, or not to use them. So you'd be able to do whatever makes you happy.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Doc_Brown

An option for feeder leagues for all international leagues too, using real Schools and Colleges with the correct staff for each school and college.

Guess what your next assignment is

[garion333]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

-If the above is not realistic, I’d settle for just 4 years of stats being generated at creation.

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm3

This. This would be very nice.

I know the discussion has moved on to feeder leagues, but as a stats-only player the draft can be quite a bore, really, because of the lack of statistical info on many players.

Would it be overly time intensive to add in a 3 or 4 year history for all draftees? That seems to be the middle ground on this topic.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by garion333

I know the discussion has moved on to feeder leagues, but as a stats-only player the draft can be quite a bore, really, because of the lack of statistical info on many players.

Would it be overly time intensive to add in a 3 or 4 year history for all draftees? That seems to be the middle ground on this topic.

It would be fairly time intensive to do this for the real guys. We actually have the stats, but linking them is another issue. We'll hopefully have quite a few guys done by release.

The other thing is, stats just don't tell you much, especially for HS guys. A guy who hits .600 in Minnesota HS ball is not demonstrably better, and is likely worse than one who hits .275 in Orange County or Miami-Dade HS ball.

[mpejkrm]

I'm not a user of feeders myself but I would like to see the game-generated players change. First of all for the first three or so years of the MLB quickstart with real players I would like to be able to see their actual schools.

And then with the game generated players, first of all let's get some more realistic variety. You don't see first rounders (or any draft picks) from Wisconsin School for the Deaf or from a public high school of 100 students in Eastern Montana. More respected college and HS programs get more (and higher) draft picks and we see more HSers from California, Texas, FL, etc. instead of ones from states that never produce draft picks (or very very rarely).

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by mpejkrm

I'm not a user of feeders myself but I would like to see the game-generated players change. First of all for the first three or so years of the MLB quickstart with real players I would like to be able to see their actual schools.

And then with the game generated players, first of all let's get some more realistic variety. You don't see first rounders (or any draft picks) from Wisconsin School for the Deaf or from a public high school of 100 students in Eastern Montana. More respected college and HS programs get more (and higher) draft picks and we see more HSers from California, Texas, FL, etc. instead of ones from states that never produce draft picks (or very very rarely).

It's perhaps realistic to see maybe 1 draft pick in 100 years from those sort of schools, so I'd be against removing them altogether. You can edit the frequency of draft picks from each school in the schools.txt file anyway. Of course there are 16k+ schools in that list, so doing it for all of them would be a hassle, but if you know which schools you want to have more players from you could find them and increase the number (it works like the names.txt file in terms of how the frequency works).

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Sorry, I haven't had a chance to look at our game-generated players, so I'm not positive how much detail we actually give them, and if there's anything else that we can show you that would help. At some point in the future we'll want to do some changes to the draft to make it more fun to do, so likely at that point we can look to improving the game-generated players.

1) It might be an easy help for the stats-only guys if there was a third way to play, which is "ratings for amateurs only." That is, if guys want to play the game as stats-only in general, but still want to have an interesting draft experience, have a game mode such that the one time they can see a scouting report is before the draft.

2) Just a repeat from the suggestions forum: it would add a lot of have a "projected round" for each potential draftee, reflecting the scouting/media consensus.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

It would be fairly time intensive to do this for the real guys. We actually have the stats, but linking them is another issue. We'll hopefully have quite a few guys done by release.

The other thing is, stats just don't tell you much, especially for HS guys. A guy who hits .600 in Minnesota HS ball is not demonstrably better, and is likely worse than one who hits .275 in Orange County or Miami-Dade HS ball.

The database prospects are not the issue here, at least for me. I completely understand why they wouldn't have histories. Game generated amateurs are what needs to be improved. I think most people would rather have the generated amateurs to have a more fleshed out history rather than to deal with feeders.

Originally Posted by frangipard

1) It might be an easy help for the stats-only guys if there was a third way to play, which is "ratings for amateurs only." That is, if guys want to play the game as stats-only in general, but still want to have an interesting draft experience, have a game mode such that the one time they can see a scouting report is before the draft.

2) Just a repeat from the suggestions forum: it would add a lot of have a "projected round" for each potential draftee, reflecting the scouting/media consensus.

I like both of these!

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

The database prospects are not the issue here, at least for me. I completely understand why they wouldn't have histories. Game generated amateurs are what needs to be improved. I think most people would rather have the generated amateurs to have a more fleshed out history rather than to deal with feeders.

Don't the game generated guys already have stats and all?

What would you like to see added to their histories?

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Don't the game generated guys already have stats and all?

What would you like to see added to their histories?

see below

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

boo lol I would settle for some improvements to the generated draft picks.

The only reason I use feeders is to have some history behind the players that I draft. I don't particularly care for feeders, it’s just for history. What I would like to see is:

-For game generated amateurs, is there a better way to show what school the player went to? It just shows up as COL or HS in the player stats. Is it possible to show the school?

-In the amateur draft. Can you add a line for where the player went to school? I’m talking about the box that shows the previous pick in the bottom right. Currently it shows the school if he comes from a feeder, but it show the ML team that picks him if it’s a game generated amateur. I’d suggest having 3 lines there. The top is the team drafting him. The second line is his school. The third line would be the player.

-Instead of a draft list being created right before the draft with only draft eligible players, there could be a list of all amateurs. The idea is that players can be added to the amateur list at 15 or 18 and will develop and gain stats each year. Similar to the way players develop in the Int Complex, but they would get stats each year. I also don’t know how stats are generated but I assume it’s based off their ratings, rather than a sim.

-If the above is not realistic, I’d settle for just 4 years of stats being generated at creation.

-Any other history added would be a big plus. Awards, championships, even injuries.

Improvements to the generated amateurs would eliminate the need for feeders all together and create a more realistic experience for us all. I appreciate the time you took to read this. It’s very encouraging to me as a consumer to know that our questions, comments, and suggestions are heard and acknowledged from the developer himself. It’s a big reason why I recommend OOTP to everyone I know looking for a baseball game and why I will continue to buy for years.

also, I asked later, but it wasn't answered, how the stats were generated. Are they random or based of ratings and modified by competition level?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mpejkrm

I'm not a user of feeders myself but I would like to see the game-generated players change. First of all for the first three or so years of the MLB quickstart with real players I would like to be able to see their actual schools.

And then with the game generated players, first of all let's get some more realistic variety. You don't see first rounders (or any draft picks) from Wisconsin School for the Deaf or from a public high school of 100 students in Eastern Montana. More respected college and HS programs get more (and higher) draft picks and we see more HSers from California, Texas, FL, etc. instead of ones from states that never produce draft picks (or very very rarely).

Good suggestions.

The first will happen, it's something I discuss regularly with Markus and Andreas. Andreas just needs to find the time to link the schools db to the roster editor. He's going to do it, he just has other stuff that's taking priority.

The second is also something we can do something about, to some extent. We can review the frequency field of the schools db to make sure it matches rl data.

Might be a project for you, if you want, at some point.

I don't necessarily agree about the first rounders not coming from small schools in non-baseball state though.

How about Brandon Nimmo from Wyoming, whose HS didn't even have a baseball team? He's not the only guy like that either, by a long shot.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

see below



also, I asked later, but it wasn't answered, how the stats were generated. Are they random or based of ratings and modified by competition level?

The stats are modified by competition level and linked to ratings. There's also a certain amount of randomness, though I don't know the exact formula.

They aren't exact though, in that the best guys don't always have the best stats, even adjusted for level. This matches real life.

Some of the stuff you're describing are issues with the real guys, not the game generated guys.

The game generated guys do have schools listed, while they're in the draft pool. The schools are also listed in their histories once they're drafted.

They also do have stats generated, though not usually four years. I wouldn't make sense to generate four years typically since most college guys are drafted and signed as juniors, or draft eligible sophs or juco players, not seniors.

Most HS guys also don't have four years of history irl, as they often don't play, or play super sparingly as freshmen

I doubt Markus is going to want to put the school names in their stats records. You can't use full names, since they'll be too long and abbreviations won't help since there are at least a billion schools and tons of the abbreviations would be the same.

Overall I like your suggestions and we've provided quite a few more in beta and talks with Markus.

Sprucing up the draft is something that's been discussed behind the scenes for a while now, and at some point here it's very likely to get an overhaul.

[mpejkrm]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Good suggestions.

The first will happen, it's something I discuss regularly with Markus and Andreas. Andreas just needs to find the time to link the schools db to the roster editor. He's going to do it, he just has other stuff that's taking priority.

The second is also something we can do something about, to some extent. We can review the frequency field of the schools db to make sure it matches rl data.

Might be a project for you, if you want, at some point.

I don't necessarily agree about the first rounders not coming from small schools in non-baseball state though.

How about Brandon Nimmo from Wyoming, whose HS didn't even have a baseball team? He's not the only guy like that either, by a long shot.

I didn't mean never, I just mean very rarely. There have been only three draft picks since Wyoming since the turn of the century, and all of them came from rather large high schools. If you're finding kids from high schools in the most remote parts of Wyoming of 150 students, then I'd find it a bit odd.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mpejkrm

I didn't mean never, I just mean very rarely. There have been only three draft picks since Wyoming since the turn of the century, and all of them came from rather large high schools. If you're finding kids from high schools in the most remote parts of Wyoming of 150 students, then I'd find it a bit odd.

Yep, fair enough.