My Suggestions for 17

[nutt]

I will try to put these in order of what I believe is a higher priority to lower priority in my book....

• Additional Coaches/Scouts/Personnel: Although one new position has been added for user-only games (Assistant GM), would love to see a few of the following be added, in no particular order...

1. First/Third Base Coaches. Most of them are baserunning infield/outfield coaches. Although the Bench Coach seems to be the default fielding coach, this fills out a staff, along with....
2. Bullpen Coach: Most of them sometimes are former backstops who end up as a bullpen catcher (now they have team-specific bullpen backstops but that's not needed here), but also can help with relievers and coaching.
3. Assistant GM for all teams: I like the feature for user-controlled teams, but an AGM for all would be a great feature to have. Maybe two, as you can have them do other things within the organization.
4. Directer of Player Personnel/Farm Development: Another great option, as an executive who could report to you what players are developing, sliding, and who could be valuable assets to the franchise.
5. Three additional scouts for each team: This is an idea I just came up with so if it doesn't sound good, bare with me. Scouts could be "international amateur" scouts, Major League scouts (whose primary agenda is a mid-season advanced scouting), Minor League scouts, and amateur scouts. Yes, your Scouting Director has all four ratings, but every coach has the "teach pitching/fielding/hitting" and "handle rookies/amateurs/veterans" and seems to be what decides who is a Manager or Coach.

• Association Playoffs should be separate from League Playoffs: As it stands now, if you have Association Playoffs enabled and your team travels to play a team from another league on the road, he will accumulate post-season stats for that league. Say, you have the semi-fictional "Confederation of European Baseball", or CEB, or the Asia Series (***, KBO, CPBL and for this case, China.). For this example, let's say you manage the Samsung Lions and you play on the road against the Yomiuri Giants. "John Doe" will have "2015, ***" playoff stats for Samsung, along with KBO League playoff stats and Asia Series playoff stats. A separate ledger for the usage of the Association Playoffs, "CEB" or "AS" would be great .
• League/Association Playoffs option for Round Robin. As witnessed in some of the Caribbean Leagues, teams play Round Robin to determine the Top 2 for the League Title. The ability to form a Round Robin (especially for Association Playoffs) would be a great feature. How many groups, how many from each group advance to the tournament layout, etc.
• Winning An Association Championship should be given a gold star/notice in the awards section. When opening a player profile, you see is AS appearances, defensive/hitting/pitching/MVP/ROY awards, and if he's won a Playoff Championship/MVP. This should also show for an Association Championship.
• More updated features for Associations. Yes, I know you say this is hardly used. However, I think this because it is a bare bones option. What if a few more things could be thrown into developing Associations that would make it better? Below are what I believe would be a great feature for this.

1. Options for All League Champions plus additional teams from select leagues. Example: CEB could have all 35 (I have 35 official European Leagues) League Champions, plus add X amount of teams from the IBL, ELB, and HH to the Association Championship.
2. History Index, showing team appearances and complete playoff histories, and career numbers.
3. League Champions representing their leagues in Bold to show as that league's champion.
4. Give the option to make the league setup options default to league-based options with the ability to make it Association wide. (i.e. not all leagues have same roster size, foreigner limit, DL/contract length.

• Multiple Minor League contract options: Still only have option for first 30 days of season. Would like to see the minor/major contract be available throughout the season with the option of a 30 or 60 day clauses.
• Players have an opt-out clause in contract: As Greinke, James Shields and Giancarlo Stanton currently have (and A.J. Burnett had with the Blue Jays), a player can opt-out of his contract and Year X.
• More options for vesting option years on contracts: A player's option could vest with any stat over the course of the final two seasons of a multi-year contract: GP, GS, GF, PA, AB. Instead of the final guaranteed year, the option could be for the final two years of the deal (see Marlon Byrd). Another option could be if the player spends less than X days on the 15/60-Day Disabled List.
• Create An Executive Of the Year Award: This award would go to the GM, since I do see some user-controlled GM's win Manager of the Year.
• Create A Minor League Player of the Year Award available for players on parent teams. This could be awarded as the best hitter and/or pitcher at any level of MiLB, including AAA, AA, A, S-A, and R.
• More All-Star Game Options: Thank you for adding the expanded roster options to 16 (Roster size, each team having a representative), but the ability to associate affiliated minor leagues to play cross-league minor-league ASG (see PCL-IL and Carolina-California). Leagues with no divisions could also have All-Stars, but selecting the ASG format would be good, such as League Nation vs. The League (see ABL, Australia vs. The World-ABL All-Stars), Geographical Region vs. Continent/Region (North America vs. Europe, Mexico vs. Cuba, etc.)
• Arbitration should be held in Pre-Season, not at the end of the season/post-season: As long as I've played OOTP, once the World Series ends, players file for free agency and so do players for arbitration while numbers are exchanged. Players who have become arb-eligible should have the date (which I may be wrong but round number) 30 days from the beginning of Free Agency. Meaning, you can offer them that, and they have 30 days to accept/decline before going to a hearing, or continue negotiating. Instead of treating them like regular FA's, when its time for FA to begin, the players who are arb-eligible should still be available.
• Add a Restricted/Disqualified List: This could be for players who get suspended for PED/Steroid usage, as they currently count towards the Active/40-Man Roster count. Players on this list do not earn their financial worth and will not count towards the Active/40-Man Roster, but their bid for the suspension is counted when the team he was assigned to, their games are played. It could also be used for a player who gets in trouble with the law (Milton Bradley, K-Rod).
• Some sort of organized association for affiliated minor leagues with PDCs. Which could also lead to...
• Timeframe of team affiliations for minor league teams. This would feature whereas the "Nashville Sounds" were a Brewers affiliate from 2005-2014, and currently the A's AAA affiliate.
• Standings for both 1st and 2nd Half of seasons for split-season leagues. We still get the full season standings with the first-half and second-half champion/leader.
• Disable "reset ML service time for players newly joining the league. When a player leaves MLB for ***, his service time is reset and now tied to said franchise for nine years (or longer). Not sure how difficult it would be to code this function, but players transferring leagues should be "grandfathered" with service time.
• Players to be selected for a WBC-style tournament, with qualifiers and tournament. Not sure if the FHM dev-team has found a way to implement this into FHM2, but if they have I would love to see this implemented for OOTP17! The Reputation of the tournament could be something akin to League Reputation: 10 meaning the best players from each country are chosen (Trout and Harper-USA, Votto-Canada, Felix-Venezuela), to it being a 5 (minor league players at lower levels and third-tier leagues like Taiwan and Australia send players), or as low as a 1, which would take free agents and players from low-repped leagues to represent their country.
• If my last option is added, the ability to add WBC/OLY stats via stats importer.

I love what the dev team does, and looking back at my 15 suggestions for OOTP15, Markus and the gang added three of my 15 suggestions: More Awards (Silver Slugger, Reliever, LCS and WS MVPs; Spring Training Rosters; posting system)

[The Game]

Love every idea and after 16 how could 17 top it? With even half of these features added, they could.

[Mgomz]

Owner,President and other Front Office people?
Minor League Camp and say like Yankees have bolted Tampa Bay for Arizona-Cactus League?
Custom Start Date?
Different Site for All-Star Game because in EHMEA the site of Draft is different each year. Offer to all gives you whole offer like in EHMEA. Split Squad Games because in EHMEA you can have a Red,Blue,Green and another Color Team.
Minor League Team Contract Options with MLB team?

[The Game]

Originally Posted by Mgomz

Owner,President and other Front Office people?
Minor League Camp and say like Yankees have bolted Tampa Bay for Arizona-Cactus League?
Custom Start Date?
Different Site for All-Star Game because in EHMEA the site of Draft is different each year. Offer to all gives you whole offer like in EHMEA. Split Squad Games because in EHMEA you can have a Red,Blue,Green and another Color Team.
Minor League Team Contract Options with MLB team?

What is EHMEA? Right now the ASG is always in a different spot each season. Baseball doesn't have colored split squad games, while yes in ST they do have split squad games and while i am not against that idea i would never use it.
Except for the MLB quickstart you can have your league start whatever day you want.
We already have owners and team president doesn't matter.

[SirMichaelJordan]

I think he's talking about Eastside Hockey Manager Early Access.

[asheft]

Liking a lot of these suggestions. Certainly hope that they get implemented for OOTP 17. The personnel and roster/transactions options, I think, specifically, are really good suggestions.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by nutt

Association Playoffs should be separate from League Playoffs ...

League/Association Playoffs option for Round Robin ...

More updated features for Associations...

Last time I was involved behind the scenes there was, regrettably, little interest in doing anything more with the association feature. It wasn't for lack of advocacy, as I and a few others were in there pitching for it. The majority of other testers, and consequently the devs, just weren't interested. Perhaps you'll have better luck.

Originally Posted by nutt

More All-Star Game Options ...

I developed a schedule file-based system that could open up a variety of All-Star Game options. (Your comment is timely, as I am currently doing research on minor league All-Star Games.) Alas, similar to what I stated above, there was little interest. Perhaps that will change in the future.

Originally Posted by nutt

Add a Restricted/Disqualified List ...

I have for a few years now pitched the idea of a catch-all 'inactive list' to handle those types of situations, as well as some others that happen in the real world, i.e. bereavement or paternity leave. The limitations of a player on this inactive list would be based on the reason why they're inactive, e.g. a player there due to a PED suspension would be different from a player there due to another reason.

The subject has come up several times, so there is some hope for improvement in this area.

Originally Posted by nutt

Timeframe of team affiliations for minor league teams ...

I've advocated for this in the past as well. However, there were reasonable objections raised: having one's affiliates change every few years might confuse or irritate some users who don't realize such changes have taken place. They'd lose the consistency of knowing that club X is always their affiliate in Class AAA. There's also the question of any affiliation changes have a reason to happen. If it's only random reshuffling, then really, what's the point? It's just change for the sake of change. Ideally, there ought to be something making it happen to make it meaningful.

I do like the realism flavour that the occasional affiliation change brings, but there are legitimate issues revolving around how such a feature would/should operate.

Originally Posted by nutt

Standings for both 1st and 2nd Half of seasons for split-season leagues.

I have literally been requesting this ever since the split-season format was introduced into the game, which is about eight versions ago now. I think I even went so far as to do up some screenshot mockups at one point. But this simple thing has never been addressed. There are other matters associated with split-season as well, such as how the rescheduling of postponed games is handled, tie-breaking procedures, and expanded playoff formats.

Sadly, I must tell you I don't think you'll ever see any improvements with the split-season format. I was about the only one involved in beta testing who ever brought it up, and nobody else cared. There is simply no interest behind the scenes in these sort of details.

Maybe that will change someday, but I reckon it won't be for a long, long time.

[Mgomz]

Yes but in the News it doesn't say like Miami has been awarded the All-Star Game for 2019 or 2024 Draft will be held at Lighting Palace and have Trades in it.
A President,Vice President,Director of Personal and so on can't Retire or be fired becuase Red Sox have somebody this year who's contract isn't been renewed.
Also Draft Lottery like how NBA Does it.
RFA,Unsigned Prospects that are still in College,Overseas or playing for Minor League Team.

[HerbertMcHoover]

At this point, the biggest thing missing from OOTP is an expanded coaching staff. Along with everything you said, I say in a few years (doesn't have to be in this update), there should at least be an option for additional hitting coaches and pitching coaches (cause I'm sure that'll be happening by 2020).

Also a huge fan of opt-out clauses, vesting option years, Executive of the Year Awards, Minor League Player of the Year awards (for both leagues and individual teams) and WBC selections.

Great list of ideas. If they do any of this next year, they have my money (though they already will have it regardless).

[HopefulCubsFan9]

Originally Posted by nutt

• Players to be selected for a WBC-style tournament, with qualifiers and tournament. Not sure if the FHM dev-team has found a way to implement this into FHM2, but if they have I would love to see this implemented for OOTP17! The Reputation of the tournament could be something akin to League Reputation: 10 meaning the best players from each country are chosen (Trout and Harper-USA, Votto-Canada, Felix-Venezuela), to it being a 5 (minor league players at lower levels and third-tier leagues like Taiwan and Australia send players), or as low as a 1, which would take free agents and players from low-repped leagues to represent their country.
• If my last option is added, the ability to add WBC/OLY stats via stats importer.

This would be great. I've manually done this in my fictional league before. A lot of work but a lot of fun.

[gregsdad1]

Like the list. The only thing I do miss is the old view of coaching ratings, the new method is a little too abstract. You may think you have a good coach, but if you look at it in commish mode the coach may be terrible.

[Mgomz]

Edit Team Budget or set League Budget so ever Team has chance to sign who ever they want so then Royals can resign Cueto easy without changing Salaries to O because Iv'e seen Molina sign with Nats becuase I had change Contacts to Fictional and with Salaries at 0 Cardinals didn't resign Molina but I did win the World Series but in Offseason the Computer Traded 3 of my Untouchable people Gordon,Hosmer,Mike M.

Coaches/Staff Hall of Fame?
Ned Yost just Retired in Game and the Royals replaced him with Bench Coach and should interviewed people for the Job.
Torey Lorevallo is Managing the Red Sox for rest of season so in Game that option to if a Manage has to be out.
Also in News about other Staff/Personal Firings/Hirings?

[Caporegime]

Excellent list if suggestions. You can sign me up for all of them, especially the addition of the WBC. Whenever asked about this in the past, Markus has always responded by saying "maybe next year". Well, IMO, next year should literally be next year. It's high time this feature be added to help keep the game from growing stale.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Caporegime

Excellent list if suggestions. You can sign me up for all of them, especially the addition of the WBC. Whenever asked about this in the past, Markus has always responded by saying "maybe next year". Well, IMO, next year should literally be next year. It's high time this feature be added to help keep the game from growing stale.

The WBC/International play has literally been the last major feature cut in each of the last 3+ years. It's going to happen at some point soon, without a doubt.

[Caporegime]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

The WBC/International play has literally been the last major feature cut in each of the last 3+ years. It's going to happen at some point soon, without a doubt.

Wow! 3+ years? I had no idea it was even that close to being added. The WBC is starting to look like an aging soap opera star that gets nominated for an Emmy every year for 20+ years but doesn't actually win one until they announce their retirement. I really hope it makes the cut this year.

[cavebutter]

The expanded coaching staff bit at the top of the list saves me from having to write my annual plea for this.

Many times when this is brought up, especially in regards to base coaches, we fall down the rabbit hole of having to justify the addition by trying to quantify the effect that their inclusion will have on the game model.

I don't care anymore. I think the immersion value that their inclusion would bring is so high that they can just be eye candy.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

The expanded coaching staff bit at the top of the list saves me from having to write my annual plea for this.

Many times when this is brought up, especially in regards to base coaches, we fall down the rabbit hole of having to justify the addition by trying to quantify the effect that their inclusion will have on the game model.

I don't care anymore. I think the immersion value that their inclusion would bring is so high that they can just be eye candy.

I understand your pov but feel just as strongly that to add them without quantifying the effect they may have is damaging to my sense of immersion.

If we are to have base coaches then some outs, pickoffs, baserunning blunders, failure to advance must be attributed to them. What proportion that is remains a complete unknown.

Similarly the actual contribution of a specific coach to the running game (despite breathless home team articles about it IRL) is often hidden in the overall strategy of a team, team record, player development, player injury and natural variation in performance. My annual plea is that coaching influence must be all of negative, neutral and positive to the results in-game, otherwise it is an artificial construct that reduces realism and may damage statistical accuracy.

I know my opinion is in the minority and I don't mind as long as I can turn these things off. My position is: show me data not anecdotes which identify the contribution of a specific coach and how this is influenced by external factors as shown above and I'll be first in line to sign up.

[nutt]

Originally Posted by RchW

I understand your pov but feel just as strongly that to add them without quantifying the effect they may have is damaging to my sense of immersion.

If we are to have base coaches then some outs, pickoffs, baserunning blunders, failure to advance must be attributed to them. What proportion that is remains a complete unknown.

Similarly the actual contribution of a specific coach to the running game (despite breathless home team articles about it IRL) is often hidden in the overall strategy of a team, team record, player development, player injury and natural variation in performance. My annual plea is that coaching influence must be all of negative, neutral and positive to the results in-game, otherwise it is an artificial construct that reduces realism and may damage statistical accuracy.

I know my opinion is in the minority and I don't mind as long as I can turn these things off. My position is: show me data not anecdotes which identify the contribution of a specific coach and how this is influenced by external factors as shown above and I'll be first in line to sign up.

I think where I mentioned what the 1B/3B coaches usually end up doing is in my breakdown of coaches.

[bwburke94]

In response to the OP:

I will try to put these in order of what I believe is a higher priority to lower priority in my book....


First/Third Base Coaches: This is a longtime request, it will get in eventually. The problem is in figuring out what to do in imported OOTP16 games.
Bullpen Coach: Good idea. Probably should limit this to the major league level.
Assistant GM for all teams: Absolutely.
Director of Player Personnel/Farm Development: I think that's a bit too much to ask for.
Three additional scouts for each team: I've wanted more scouts for a long time.

Association Playoffs should be separate from League Playoffs: This is a major statistical issue that needs to be fixed.
League/Association Playoffs option for Round Robin: Makes sense, but I doubt further edits to playoff settings are coming in 17.
Winning An Association Championship should be given a gold star/notice in the awards section: An oversight in 16, should be fixed in 17.
More updated features for Associations: Resurrecting a nearly-dead feature makes a lot of sense.

Multiple Minor League contract options: Makes sense, to replicate real life more.
Players have an opt-out clause in contract: As I said last year, Giancarlo Stanton forced our hand here.
More options for vesting option years on contracts: As long as it's based on playing time, of course.
Create An Executive Of the Year Award: An omission, but not a major one.
Create A Minor League Player of the Year Award available for players on parent teams: Good idea, but comparing stats across leagues might be hard to code!
More All-Star Game Options: Of course. The lack of an ASG for three-division leagues is a bit annoying.
Arbitration should be held in Pre-Season, not at the end of the season/post-season: In order to match MLB better, this makes sense.
Add a Restricted/Disqualified List: This would make sense if MLB allowed it into the game, but the MLB license might block this.
Some sort of organized association for affiliated minor leagues with PDCs: Might be too hard to code, but it's a good concept.
Standings for both 1st and 2nd Half of seasons for split-season leagues: How is this not already in the game?
Disable "reset ML service time" for players newly joining the league: It can be disabled in league options, but it would make sense for the OOTP17 save format to list service time for multiple leagues.
Players to be selected for a WBC-style tournament, with qualifiers and tournament: This is the last OOTP before the 2017 World Baseball Classic, so it makes sense for such a long-standing request to be added now.

[Caporegime]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

The WBC/International play has literally been the last major feature cut in each of the last 3+ years. It's going to happen at some point soon, without a doubt.

I hope the WBC/International play finally made it this year. This is starting to become the Vincent Gambini of OOTP features, failing the BAR exam year after year. Hopefully, like Vinny, this feature will eventually pass muster for the sake of us "yutes" who want it..The sooner the better.