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Old 04-30-2018, 01:30 PM   #1
Qeltar
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First year in the books... and I'm feeling like an unhappy snowflake. :)

First, I want to thank the community for their patience with me. I know I've posted a lot of threads in a short time, which I am going to now wind down. I tend to sort of take on new things all at once and go whole-hog into them and often have a lot of questions when I am new.

So I just wrapped up my first season as a player of OOTP in real life and as a GM of the Miami Marlins.. and I'm ticked off. I came into this position with an organization that was a shambles.. no fan interest, one good player and a couple of good RPs and that's it, and a farm system in ruins. Here's what I accomplished in my first year:

1. Rebuilt the entire personnel from the ground up. Hours of sifting through screens to try to find good matches who will work with youngsters.
2. Rebuilt the farm system with free agent signings and wheeling-dealing to get some very good players.
3. Finished the season 10 games under .500 (76-86). This was almost the same as in 2017 despite not having half or full seasons from the likes of Stanton, Ozuna and Gordon.
4. Actually increased attendance and gate revenues by over 7%.
5. Got rid of a couple of nasty long-term albatross contracts.
6. Finished the year with $5m in cash, $20m unspent and 30th of 30 teams in payroll.
7. Did all this with a spit-and-baling-wire rotation. My best SP for the year was a guy who was outright released by the Dodgers in April as an RP and signed by me and converted to a starter.

For all this, my "Demanding" owner, who claimed to be "Ecstatic" or "Delighted" for pretty much the entire season, sent me an obnoxious private message:

- Complaining about the team's bad record.
- Whining that I didn't acquire a Cy Young winner. (Where was I supposed to get this from, magic fairy dust? A trade locking us into spending 30% of our player budget on one guy while losing one of our few prospects?)
- Telling me he "doesn't feel confident" about me meeting his 5-year goal of getting into the playoffs, even though we actually were in first place for part of this year.
- Giving me a measly $2m increase in budget even though I increased gate revenues substantially while saving him tens of millions in salary.
- And the piece de resistance: giving me a new goal of increasing attendance by 27% by the end of my next three years. Seriously.

Now, this is to some extent a role-playing game. And I have to say that my reaction to this reading it "in character" is to say "screw you, buddy" and go to another team. Well, that's my reaction IRL too, I guess.

But I am not sure if this is a result of the owner being "Demanding" or a meta-issue of OOTP simply not being well-designed to handle a situation where a team is starting from scratch and the results I achieved should be considered pretty good. It may just be that the game lacks context: it sees 10 games below .500 and low attendance figures and no star players and thinks "bad GM."

I could just ignore his whining as the typical pettiness of a rich guy who wants instant results, and continue with my plan. After all, I've put a lot of time and energy into building this organization. But maybe it's because he's just a jerk and I should go somewhere that my talents will be more appreciated. There are a couple of spots open.

I could also just restart 2018 with a different team I guess.

So, OOTP veterans, I'm looking for some "career advice." What do you think? Am I being a special snowflake and expecting praise for a good effort that fell short? Or reasonably being unhappy with an obnoxious owner?

I'll probably stick it out, but any thoughts are welcomed. Thanks for reading this.

PS I know I could turn off owner goals, but I don't want to. I think owners should set goals, and the GM has to decide if they are reasonable and wants to stay in the job with them in place or not. And I'm not going to "lobotomize" him either.

Last edited by Qeltar; 04-30-2018 at 01:39 PM.
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Old 04-30-2018, 01:37 PM   #2
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Hmm, this was meant to be in General. Well, I guess it belongs here too.
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Old 04-30-2018, 01:45 PM   #3
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The only advice I can give is that at the GM level one season is a small sample size.
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Old 04-30-2018, 01:49 PM   #4
Galeg
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From what I have seen the owner system is not really that well fleshed out so I wouldn't get too upset over it.

FYI I found dropping ticket prices during the season by ~$1.50-2.50 can dramatically increase attendance. Not sure if that works all the time, but it's worth a shot.
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Old 04-30-2018, 02:04 PM   #5
Qeltar
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Thanks guys.

I think I've basically decided that for now I'm going to play this as "impatient boss" and see it through. Mostly because I have a lot of effort into rebuilding this morass and I don't want to see it go to waste.

I do hope they improve the owner model in the future. I'm guessing the real life Bruce Sherman would be erecting statues of his GM if he got those results in 2018.

The budget will continue to be a challenge.

I got a season score of 458, for whatever that is worth (I have no context upon which to judge it really, but the game said it was average.)

Not-really-related question: How do I pare down the size of my save folder? It's mushroomed to 2 GB and 40,000 files already. I'm guessing a lot of those are boxscores and game logs, especially since I turned them on for the minors so I could see how my guys were doing. Any recommended "housekeeping"?

ETA: Treesize seems to suggest most of the space is being taken up by news items, which I found kind of surprising. Do these get regularly flushed every year?

Thanks!

Last edited by Qeltar; 04-30-2018 at 02:10 PM.
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Old 04-30-2018, 02:21 PM   #6
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This was your first season in OOTP period? Why not start with something a little easier? I would not recommend that any beginner start with the worst team in MLB and a demanding owner. And no matter how much you know about baseball, your first season in the game still qualifies you as a novice in the game. I am not trying to be critical of you or your choice. I am just saying that you role-played one of the toughest scenarios possible, and of course you didn't rack up a big score. Of course your demanding owner has unreasonable expectations. You should have expected this outcome.

Why should the owner model be "improved"? Some people want a demanding owner. If you don't, you should have chosen a team with a patient hands-off owner. Again, not criticizing you personally. I am just pointing out that there are easier scenarios, and you chose the toughest one - and then you complain when it is tough and want the owner model improved. You really think demanding owners like Steinbrenner don't change their minds on their management team every few minutes? See Billy Martin.

So, in summary, don't listen to people that tell you to cheat by editing the owner. Don't run to greener pastures just because you got yelled at by the tyrant. Put your big girl panties on and fix this mess, private!
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Old 04-30-2018, 02:46 PM   #7
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Yes, my first season period. I started there because it seemed an obvious bottom to start at, and I figured expectations would be more modest. I also thought that in some ways it would be simpler, not having to decide whether to spend big money on stars going FA, etc.

But mostly, I thought expectations would be better based on situation.

How should the owner model be improved? A few immediate thoughts come to mind.

1. The attitude of the owner should take relevant facts in context better. For a team like I had to end 10 games below .500 with great finances and improved attendance and fan interest is amazing. I didn't expect rose petals, but something along the lines of "pretty good under the circumstances" would have been reasonable. Not "I'm disappointed" because frankly there was nothing disappointing about what I did. What was disappointing was him expecting me to play .500 ball in 2018. And I actually got pretty close for a while (as late as early July I was over .500 and in first place, then the injury bug took its toll.)

2. Owner goals need to align better with team situation. Why would the owner of the Marlins care about getting a past Cy Young winner? It's exactly the opposite of what he should be trying to do. He should want his GM to groom his OWN Cy Young winner within 5-10 years, not hire some overpriced FA or give away the farm system in a trade.

3. How was I supposed to know the owner was demanding until I had already started? You aren't given that information when you pick a team. You should be.

4. Why would a "demanding" person buy the Marlins? What did he expect? This is not the Yankees.

I'm fine with a challenge, though to be honest, I'm going to have to rein myself in because it's just way too easy to build through excessive numbers of trades. Mind you, even that doesn't seem like it's going to help my SP woes, which look to continue for a few years. My attempt to convert Chad Green to a starter isn't working because his stamina is too low, even though he was a starter in the past, and there's no way to "stretch" an RP. But we'll get there.

I have no regrets about starting with Miami. But I guess I was hoping for a bit more of an ego stroke.

PS If the season score doesn't take into account where you start from, it doesn't seem to me that it has any value whatsoever.

Last edited by Qeltar; 04-30-2018 at 02:53 PM.
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:09 PM   #8
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Here are some quotes direct from Sherman. Why is he "Demanding" in the game at all? Was he lying in the interview? I dunno. Where does OOTP get their ratings from? Doesn't sound like a guy who expected .500 ball in 2018 to me.

“We are a very sophisticated, well-heeled, financially set organization, not just for this year, but for many, many years to come ... I didn’t get into this personally, nor did the other partners get into this, for one, two or three years. Nobody’s in this to make any short-term profits, whatsoever. This is a long, long haul, and I’m excited that we get to play baseball now and I can be a fan.”

“We’re building for the long haul, here. ... I But I’ve seen a change, that people understand we’re building something for the future here that’s sustainable. Not just for a month. Not just for a week. Not just for a year. I know it’s going to take patience."

That's the guy I thought I was working for. Not the putz who's in the game. Sorry, just being honest.
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:50 PM   #9
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I won't claim to be among the very experienced here but part of what I'm hearing is that the OOTP version of a real-life person does not mirror the evidence you have seen about that person IRL. So here's my question for the more experienced: are OOTP ratings for owners intended to mirror accurately the real person or are they randomly assigned? (To me this is an advantage of playing fictional. No real life to compare to in that way.)

Anyway, while I totally understand the advice not to mess with (edit) the owner and embrace the challenge of dealing with a demanding and stingy owner, my feeling is that if you will enjoy the game better with your owner behaving more like (your impression of, at the very least) his real-life counterpart, by all means do edit a bit anyway to better reflect reality.

I encountered a similar dilemma in my first OOTP project, which was to GM and manage the Colorado Rockies starting with their inaugural season of 1993. What I found after playing a few years was that my budget was not only constrained by having a fiscally conservative owner (which I was fine with) but by the fact that our fan interest was very low and therefore (combined with it taking a few years to turn the team into winners) our attendance was very low. But entering the 1995 season, with Coors Field coming online, and being a Denverite who is very familiar with the crazy great attendance numbers the Rockies drew in their early years, I decided that this was a problem for me in terms of immersion and reality. So I boosted fan interest a bit to better mirror the reality of a new stadium in a town that had fully embraced their not terribly good team. It's the only "cheat" I've ever employed with that particular project. But it made all the difference. And I don't feel one bit bad about it!

Last edited by BirdWatcher; 04-30-2018 at 03:51 PM.
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Old 04-30-2018, 05:07 PM   #10
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And a quick follow up to my last post: with that one little aspect tweaked, I continued to be very fiscally careful but attendance grew, the team started achieving success, and incrementally the owner slowly increased the budget (which I never came close to over-spending) until we were a top 5 budget team. As of the 2005 season we had two championships and a few other World Series appearances as well as a 3-year stretch where we won 116, 125, and 116 games respectively. So that all worked out okay.
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Old 04-30-2018, 05:14 PM   #11
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This does bring up another valid point. When you are on the team selection screen there should really be some basic team information displayed about each time like the owner, budget, farm ranking, etc. I would have thought this a very integral part of any game.
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Old 04-30-2018, 05:42 PM   #12
Qeltar
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The tight budget definitely is forcing me to make some tough choices.

I'd love to crank up my scouting and development budgets from last year (they were $10m and $6m respectively) but I can't use the big numbers I've seen others mention given my overall budget of only $112m.

I think the scouting is under control but I really want to crank up the development because this is a rebuilding team, and why spend time getting youngsters if you can't develop them? But I'm not sure where the diminishing returns are.
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:22 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Galeg View Post
This does bring up another valid point. When you are on the team selection screen there should really be some basic team information displayed about each time like the owner, budget, farm ranking, etc. I would have thought this a very integral part of any game.
Start the game unemployed. Research the teams and pick the situation you want.
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:24 PM   #14
Qeltar
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Start the game unemployed. Research the teams and pick the situation you want.
Which is completely counterintuitive to what 99% of new players would do.

Who wants to start a new GM sim game where you start out unemployed? That's the sort of trick a veteran would think of, not a newbie.

They should let you learn about the owners before asking what you want. IRL it's not like these people would be unknown.

Last edited by Qeltar; 04-30-2018 at 06:32 PM.
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:44 PM   #15
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I personally find it somewhat enjoyable to have some budget constraints to have to work with. Within reason, of course.

With the project I referred to above (Rockies) I really didn't focus all that heavily on my minor league system early on (and it showed, I guess) and certainly stayed mostly out of the Free Agent market, but instead I traded, traded, traded! I was a crazy active trader for the first 4-5 seasons and then eventually got the team I wanted and became a very conservative trader. The thing is, every time I traded I tried to make sure that I not only got decent quality (if only for trade bait later) but also that, whenever possible, my financial bottom line was either unchanged or improved by the trade. It did mean at times trading away popular and moderately successful established players (Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette, Vinny Castilla) for players who might have appeared to be inferior (a young David Segui, a young Matt Stairs, etc.) In other words, my assistant GM was often incredulous about the trades I made. (Eventually he refused to sign an extension and went out into the market looking for a GM job. As I recall he got one. Then fell on his face and was fired within 2 years.)

But it also freed up enough money to fill some gaps with aging FA's who I was able to get for cheap for 1-2 years (Kirk Gibson, a declining Kirby Puckett) who had their careers revitalized by Coors Field and then got huge contracts for other teams and proceeded to fall off a cliff performance-wise.
Anyway, incremental progress was the key for me. And as the team's success grew bit by bit each year, and the budget followed, and my reputation grew to legendary status, I was able to pour more money into development as well as pick up a few key FA pieces (Bernie Williams, who looks like a HOF'er as he approaches the end of his career in my little universe, Roger Clemens to anchor the rotation) as well as eventually work up to trades that brought me Chipper Jones, Miguel Tejada, Paul LoDuca, Billy Wagner). I was also lucky enough (with very late round draft picks) to be able to draft and develop guys like Josh Beckett and Carlos Zambrano for the pitching rotation.

That's just how it worked for me. Everyone has their own approach and I'm convinced there is no real right or wrong way to do things. (Though probably some ways that increase the chances of success and others that lower it. Pretty sure I did them all along the way.) Do it your way. And have fun!
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:53 PM   #16
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Start the game unemployed. Research the teams and pick the situation you want.
Yes that is the solution, but that's not user friendly at all.
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:57 PM   #17
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Yes that is the solution, but that's not user friendly at all.

I don't understand why that's a problem, but ok. Personally, I always start unemployed and I always use advanced mode to set up my league.
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Old 04-30-2018, 07:53 PM   #18
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I suppose I could get wrapped up in the micro-analysis of the commentaries above, but I'll opt not to do so. What I will offer is this. If the game is drawing you in to the extent that it is, making you ask questions, provoking interaction- whether to any end or not -and creating genuine emotions and/or cognitive stresses, isn't that good? Why look for a formula that eases all things and promotes predictability?
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Old 04-30-2018, 08:03 PM   #19
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I don't understand why that's a problem, but ok. Personally, I always start unemployed and I always use advanced mode to set up my league.
And anyone who knows how to play will do the same, but we're speaking about people who are trying to pick up the game for the first time.
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Old 04-30-2018, 08:21 PM   #20
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And anyone who knows how to play will do the same, but we're speaking about people who are trying to pick up the game for the first time.
And they’ll all pick it up different ways. The path is not so narrow.
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