Injury *frequency* seems fine. Injury *intensity* seems way overboard

[Qeltar]

The number of serious, season-ending and career-altering injuries in this game seems overdone. Sure, it happens occasionally IRL (Seager) but when it does, it's a noteworthy instance. In OOTP it seems one regular or another is done for the year every few days. And often young guys in prime condition.

So far in spring training, in the span of a week, 4 major leaguers in my game are toast for the season (or at least half of it). One was 30 and the others in their early and mid 20s.

This seems excessive. And all during the regular season it's the same, a constant parade of torn rotator cuffs and TJ surgeries and obliques that never heal, including a lot of serious injuries to position players. Many with no previous injury history. Some with the "Durable" tag, as occurred to me.

Maybe separate settings for general injury frequency and frequency of severe injuries would help. I like the realism that injuries add, but every day I advance the calendar I wonder if one of my guys is about to go down for the count. I already lost a pitcher (28) and a position player (23) for entire years in my first season.

[stealofhome]

I'd like to study this or see someone who has. What is the amount of forecasted production lost to injury in the major leagues and how does that compare to the settings in ootp?

[BBGiovanni]

Every year we go through this, and every year someone proves MLB injury rates are worse than in the game (which is why "OOTP Classic" is a lower level than "MLB Standard" or whatever it is. You should be able to search for the old threads; these usually devolve into arguments.

I usually turn injuries all the way down, but this year I tried one notch up from that. When my 4th player in the first month went out I turned it back down. This year I turned position player fatigue up some so starters can't play constantly.

[bigd51]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Every year we go through this, and every year someone proves MLB injury rates are worse than in the game (which is why "OOTP Classic" is a lower level than "MLB Standard" or whatever it is. You should be able to search for the old threads; these usually devolve into arguments.

I usually turn injuries all the way down, but this year I tried one notch up from that. When my 4th player in the first month went out I turned it back down. This year I turned position player fatigue up some so starters can't play constantly.

To be fair, he's not talking about the rate/frequency of injuries occurring. He's referring to the length/severity of said injuries and how long the player's miss time because of that.

[discodude5]

I edited the injury text file to have no career enders and also reduced most of the long injuries to 3 months or less.
Also edited the frequency of the severe injuries to 1 or 2 and the shorter injuries to 4 or 5.
Haven't played too long with the new frequencies but I feel this should work well.
I understand it's not realistic for the injury type but so far it feels more enjoyable than losing 3 starting pitchers for the year in May and feeling like you might as well just sim through the season rather than waste your time.
Not just for my team but seeing the cpu teams have all those season ending injuries means many stars of the league were out of the picture as well just making it less fun.

Then again my league is in 2050 so maybe this is very realistic

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Every year we go through this, and every year someone proves MLB injury rates are worse than in the game (which is why "OOTP Classic" is a lower level than "MLB Standard" or whatever it is. You should be able to search for the old threads; these usually devolve into arguments.

This pretty much sums it up. Myself I use the "high realistic" setting and, while it can be frustrating, enjoy it In 31 seasons I've had one career ending injury (position player not pitcher) and my share of Tommy Johns and other arm issues that, from my observation of baseball, aren't out of line. But I don't rely on my feeling that things are right and to be fair I don't research anything at all. I'm here to play a game and have fun Confirmation to me comes in these threads when nobody yet has come up with statistics that say OOTP has it wrong. Maybe someone eventually will but, so far OOTP, has always been able to backup what the game does.

Originally Posted by bigd51

To be fair, he's not talking about the rate/frequency of injuries occurring. He's referring to the length/severity of said injuries and how long the player's miss time because of that.

But even in this I don't recall anybody showing OOTP has it wrong, just that it feels like too much. That's not saying everything is as good as it can ever get as OOTP has made tweaks to the injuries over time but in the big picture they have pretty much been spot on.

I think the one concession I've seen over all of the versions, post total rewrite of the code with OOTP 7 (I think that is what the called it following v6.5), is career ending injuries used to be instant. Guy got hurt and was done "right now". That has changed to a more delayed model where we find out later that concussion, arm injury, etc. ends up being something the player cant come back from.

I can't say for sure that there are never any instant career ending injuries in OOTP but, if not totally gone then it "seems" they are much rarer. And I'll qualify that statement with "seems" since I've done no research to back it up, nor will I

In the end I figure OOTP has done a ton of research along with an untold number of tests to get their results. Until someone shows statistically that they are wrong I trust their numbers. And to be fair to Markus and co. one of the strengths of OOTP is they are very good at responding and making changes to the game when things are proven using data.

[Qeltar]

Definitive proof of the sort you are asking for is virtually impossible. It would require large amounts of data that isn't really available to the average person PLUS complex statistical analysis PLUS access to the code.

All we can do is give our impressions from gameplay and how it feels relative to observing the real baseball world. And to me, it feels like it's overdone. This isn't a "here we go again" type of deal like when a player has a slump and someone says the game is coded against them or something. It's simply an observation that there are a TON of season-ending and season-destroying injuries in this game, often to young players in good shape, and it feels off.

If a lot of people bring this up, maybe there's a reason.

I don't want to turn down the injury frequency, because injuries should be frequent. In fact, I wanted to turn it up to "High." But they should nearly all be of the minor variety. There are just too many multi-month and end-of-season injuries right now to risk it.

FWIW, my main concern is with all the injuries to young position players. Bumps and bruises and strains, yes, but these season-destroying injuries are simply not that common to young players in real baseball.

Also, in the end, this is a game. It should be fun. Injuries are part of the challenge of running a team, but players dropping like flies is not fun.

[Orcin]

It would be impossible for the developers to correctly match every person’s concept of “normal” injury frequency and severity. They have done extensive testing and made comparisons to the real life data available, and this was their design decision.

There are several options available to you if you don’t like the current system. You can use the editor to change any injury that you want, or even make it go away. You can also edit the injuries.txt file to reduce the severity and/or frequency to suit yourself. You could also just turn injuries off completely.

[Qeltar]

I'm providing feedback as a player. If they want to ignore it, that's obviously their choice.

Some of the responses in this thread are starting to border on hostile, so I'm dropping it. But making injuries "go away" does not address the point I am making. I'm not going to make TJ surgery magically take only 3 months or whatever. The issue is that severe injuries should be present but less frequent. If I'm alone in thinking this, fine.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Qeltar

I'm providing feedback as a player. If they want to ignore it, that's obviously their choice.

Some of the responses in this thread are starting to border on hostile, so I'm dropping it. But making injuries "go away" does not address the point I am making. I'm not going to make TJ surgery magically take only 3 months or whatever. The issue is that severe injuries should be present but less frequent. If I'm alone in thinking this, fine.

As I said, you can make them less frequent, if you think that would be better. Why don't you try that? Do a search for editing the injuries.txt file, and make the game work exactly as you want.

No one is being hostile here. Some people have said that current system is realistic to them, some have said that this is an issue that has been discussed before, and some have offered solutions. None of that is hostile.

[Qeltar]

When you try to provide feedback about how the game feels as a player, and are sufficiently clear that you are NOT trying to "prove anything" as to use "seems" twice in the title, and you are in a forum as generally cerebral as this one, you really hope not to get the standard "the developers know better" response that seems to be so prevalent on gaming forums.

I already know I can hack the game. I'm giving my impressions about how the game feels to me "out of the box." As I said, they can take it into account or ignore it, it's their game. I don't need to be dogpiled by people basically trying to make me sound like I'm a whiner or accusing the developers of something when I am just trying to express how the game makes me feel in this area.

I looked at the injuries file. The most noteworthy thing I found was no columns to differentiate injury frequency between pitchers and position players. I see the three "influence" columns, and maybe that's how they decide how often a particular injury happens to a pitcher as opposed to a position player. But position players also have to throw.

And yes, some of the frequency numbers are a bit eyebrow-raising, especially the long duration injuries. A torn PCL that knocks a player out for 6-12 months is a 3? Really? How often does that really happen in MLB?

Three major elbow injuries are all 5s with several more 2 through 4?

A concussion is a 1 but a ripped up shoulder is a 4?

I'd love to see the data that was used to come up with this stuff. Maybe I'm all wet and that's how it really is. I know the devs are smart guys. But it just doesn't seem to line up with what I see watching game transactions IRL.

[Calvert98]

Qeltar, I think the Company wants that type of feedback. And I like getting a read on what folks think about things in the game and it allows for others in the community to share their knowledge.

Folks may not agree, but it can often provide an avenue for one of the OOTP developers to chime-in and state "We researched A,B & C and found that X, Y & Z, and therefore did 1, 2 & 3 in the game". As injuries have come-up a number of times, it's likely he had that in-mind.

Back to the topic, for me, the severity "number" seems in-line with real-life. I don't know the exact numbers off-hand, but it's also related to sample size; a team may have a bad run of longer-term injuries one year and that can be a bear. My first year of my current team, I had severe injuries that basically ended the season early for a few of my guys and that hurt, but the past two seasons, aside from one 37 year-old pitcher who has been off-and-on the DL, it has been fine overall in terms of long-term injuries; per that SP, I thought my pitching depth was better than what it was, so that required more adjustments than I had options. As an aside, who would have guessed that Zach Briton in-real-life would hurt his achilles sprinting during the off-season; he has been out for something like 4 months. If that had happened in April, that basically would have been his season.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Qeltar

I'm providing feedback as a player. If they want to ignore it, that's obviously their choice.

Some of the responses in this thread are starting to border on hostile, so I'm dropping it. But making injuries "go away" does not address the point I am making. I'm not going to make TJ surgery magically take only 3 months or whatever. The issue is that severe injuries should be present but less frequent. If I'm alone in thinking this, fine.

Not sure where you are coming up with "border on hostile". Looks like guys giving their insights and opinions on the issue you brought up.

I've been in these forums since 2002 and what I found very early, and it hasn't changed, is OOTP is based on years of statistical study and hard data. It is a rare new player that comes to OOTP and posts "I can't believe how realistic the injury level is in OOTP!" because frankly most fans of the game have no idea how many players are injured every year. And it's not just injuries that bring out the "it seems" or "that would never happen" threads. Almost any subject has had these types issues brought on followed by good discussion.

You're not getting a blind "the developer's always right" response. You're getting "the developer (with injurylog leading the way IIRC) of this game has researched extensively and uses that hard data to make design decisions" response. This injury file is based on a lot of hard data and not a "feeling" Markus had on how it should be. And as noted if anyone wants to post data to show OOTP has it wrong this team is more than happy to look at it and make changes IF the new data warrants it.

I'm not sure how you post on a "forum as generally cerebral as this one" and not expect to get replies on issues of realism vs. seems? You offer the opinion that things "seem" off followed by a suggestion that "maybe" having separate settings for number and severity would help. Without data what would you base "help" on? Opinion? Who's opinion?

You say "I'm providing feedback as a player. If they want to ignore it, that's obviously their choice."
Without data, what is the developer to do with feedback based on how a user thinks injuries occur based on length and severity ? They're not ignoring anything, they're just not given anything of substance to look at. Look at it this way... you think the frequency is ok but intensity is overboard. What about the next guy that thinks frequency is overboard? Without data it all becomes "never ending" debate based on nothing but how each individual perceives what "should" be.

There really is nothing hostile in these responses. Typed words online don't convey the mood in which they are intended and may seem harsh when they are not. It is all just discussion

[Qeltar]

Fair enough. I can't argue with most of that.

But I'll stop short of agreeing with your criticism of my idea about having more granularity in the injury controls. I can't see how they would harm anything -- people can always leave them on the defaults -- and it would allow players who dislike the frequency of severe injuries to tone them down without having to resort to file hacking.

And for the record, qualitative data is still data. It may not hold the same weight as quantitative data, but that doesn't mean it has no merit. There are many ways that games are tuned to produce the results that the development team want that don't always exactly correspond to "reality" and much of this is based on subjective, qualitative feedback.

Before I posted this thread I did some searching and I am far from the only person to express this concern. If better controls can create a more enjoyable experience without imposing undue development load, I can't see why data should be required to make that an option.

[5-4-3]

If you want to get an idea about how prevalent MLB injuries actually are, visit https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/injuries/

[BusterKing]

Sometimes new players to this game should research the OOTP forums that have been around for years instead of immediately posting about what they discovered and think they have the solution to everything. I'll say no more and use the IL instead.

[Qeltar]

Originally Posted by BusterKing

Sometimes new players to this game should research the OOTP forums that have been around for years instead of immediately posting about what they discovered and think they have the solution to everything. I'll say no more and use the IL instead.

Not only did I in fact do this, I specifically said I did just 2 posts above yours.

("Use the IL"?)

Believe it or not, good ideas can come from new players to a game also. I've got 40 years of experience in video games and a software background.

Sweed: That's where. But it's pretty par for the course with game forums, and it's much better here than most. Ain't going to get me to stop expressing my views, though, unless I'm breaking some rule I am not aware of.

[Orcin]

Buster’s post was not hostile.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I've been in these forums since 2002 and what I found very early, and it hasn't changed, is OOTP is based on years of statistical study and hard data.

Re: the bolded. It is true for some things in the game. For others, not so much—with those other things being based on speculation and guesswork.

[Qeltar]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Buster’s post was not hostile.

You're entitled to your opinion.

I'm not posting further on this thread. If a moderator wants to lock it, I certainly have no objections.