Is there actually any skill involved in this game or is it all random luck?

[chucksabr]

Newsflash: Most of life is luck.

Luck being born into the right circumstances, luck having the sufficient mental capacity to recognize issues and make changes and select the right choices, luck having people who love you who will mentor you, luck not having debilitating mental or physical challenges or diseases, luck having the grace and equanimity to accept the things you can't change. Hardly anybody has all of these; some people have none of these. But even if you do have all of these, you still need luck when you push the right buttons and still not have something totally come out of the blue and screw up your plan. Because that happens, too.

It takes maturity to understand how subject to luck life is, to thank God or the stars or karma or whatever for the good luck you have, and to accept as the purview of luck the things that you plan so carefully for that still go against you.

Some people expect to control everything about their lives, and rage when things don't go as planned. Those people can't be reached. If they're lucky, they'll get touched by an angel or whatever and they'll finally understand. Until then, you can only smile at them and then attend to your own affairs.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

Newsflash: Most of life is luck.

Luck being born into the right circumstances, luck having the sufficient mental capacity to recognize issues and make changes and select the right choices, luck having people who love you who will mentor you, luck not having debilitating mental or physical challenges or diseases, luck having the grace and equanimity to accept the things you can't change. Hardly anybody has all of these; some people have none of these. But even if you do have all of these, you still need luck when you push the right buttons and still not have something totally come out of the blue and screw up your plan. Because that happens, too.

It takes maturity to understand how subject to luck life is, to thank God or the stars or karma or whatever for the good luck you have, and to accept as the purview of luck the things that you plan so carefully for that still go against you.

Some people expect to control everything about their lives, and rage when things don't go as planned. Those people can't be reached. If they're lucky, they'll get touched by an angel or whatever and they'll finally understand. Until then, you can only smile at them and then attend to your own affairs.

If I could give multiple thanks for this post, I would. To sum it up, brilliant post. You absolutely nailed it.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by Accipiter

yeah definitely time to uninstall, gave every single guy on my team perfect ratings at everything, team finished below .500 lmao what kind of idiot thinks there's any kill or strategy involved in this piece of ****?

you are one dumb mother******

[Accipiter]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Yeah, when you don't have the skill to win at the game or even be competitive it must be the game's fault. Couldn't possibly be yours.

when I run an experiment where every single player has perfect ratings, and the result is sub .500? Yes, that truly is just me trolling when I say that this occurrence is horse-manure. And for the guy mentioning contracts, when did I ever mention that as a factor? I'm saying I signed the guy, his rating was astronomical, and then he (and the other guys on the team) **** the bed. I ran the sim several times with everyone at 80s and got above .500 twice out of 10 runs. If the point is to evaluate talent, develop a roster, and a farm system...all with the hopes of putting together the best team, then a team full of 80s would be the ultimate (and unachievable without intervention) expression of that. When I do just that and run it through 10 times and get garbage results..that's not me not knowing what to do, that's the engine clearly being screwed.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Accipiter

when I run an experiment where every single player has perfect ratings, and the result is sub .500? Yes, that truly is just me trolling when I say that this occurrence is horse-manure. And for the guy mentioning contracts, when did I ever mention that as a factor? I'm saying I signed the guy, his rating was astronomical, and then he (and the other guys on the team) **** the bed. I ran the sim several times with everyone at 80s and got above .500 twice out of 10 runs. If the point is to evaluate talent, develop a roster, and a farm system...all with the hopes of putting together the best team, then a team full of 80s would be the ultimate (and unachievable without intervention) expression of that. When I do just that and run it through 10 times and get garbage results..that's not me not knowing what to do, that's the engine clearly being screwed.

I just don't believe that actually happened. It certainly wouldn't/doesn't happen on my copy of OOTP.

Please, re-create your results and upload the league for us to test and re-create it too.

But what you're describing is so far out of line with my experiences with OOTP that unless you provide some proof, I'm forced to assume you're making things up that never actually happened for some unknown reason.

[The Wolf]

He's making it all up.

[Fyrestorm3]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

But what you're describing is so far out of line with my experiences with OOTP that unless you provide some proof, I'm forced to assume you're making things up that never actually happened for some unknown reason.

That unknown reason is known as "trolling". Let's stop feeding it, guys.

[Thundercrack]

First time I've ever been thanked by someone for calling them a dumb mother......
This fellow may be a little confused.

[Rizon]

Originally Posted by Accipiter

I've been running a sim after a league draft 25 seasons ago, and it seems to me that 90% of this game (especially pitching) is luck. For the last few years I've had two pitchers on my team that are around 80 ratings...yet their combined records are under .500 and their ERAs are over 4.50. Meanwhile a guy I have that is rated a 20 is several games over .500 in that same span. It's like the game just 'chooses' which players are going to be good, irrespective of ratings.

I also noticed that potential ratings don't mean a thing. I noticed I had a guy who's ratings were gradually creeping up, as you usually see with young guys, but his overall rating wasn't changing by that much. I tried an experiment; I took all of his actual ratings and set them to what they could be potentially. The result? His overall rating was still far short of his potential rating...even though he had nowhere left to improve! His current/potential ratings for every field were identical.

I guess I just don't get this game. It only works if you're using actual historical players. Otherwise the ratings don't seem to correlate very strongly to performance, especially on the pitching side of things. I have 7 guys in my bullpen with ratings over 73, and not one of them has an ERA under 4.5, and not one has a winning record in the last 5 years. It's baffling 140M payroll, I'm producing almost 5 runs per game on offense...and have 5 straight losing years. Kind of ruins the game, you might as well go spend your time playing bingo, that's all this game amounts to

Originally Posted by Accipiter

yeah definitely time to uninstall, gave every single guy on my team perfect ratings at everything, team finished below .500 lmao what kind of idiot thinks there's any kill or strategy involved in this piece of ****?

Originally Posted by Accipiter

Yeah, it sucks. I sign a couple of these guys to 17 or 18M/year contracts...and they can't keep their ERAs below 5, even with ratings pushing or at 80. Kind of makes the game pointless. I tried something else, I set every rating for all my starts to 250 in the editor, just to see how they would do...honestly...better... but not by much. ERAs around 3.50 or so, one guy near 3. This is with every pitch rating, control, and movement all at 250. I actually tried doing it partway through a season, I was a couple games below .500 at that point overall....I finished 10 below lol

This game is a good scam, suckers us into forking over our money because we actually believe there's skill or strategy when it's basically a text based slot machine.

Billy Beane, is that you?

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm3

That unknown reason is known as "trolling". Let's stop feeding it, guys.

Exactly. And since it's still fresh with the latest response, I'll add my irritation here.

MEMBERS: Please stop responding to this phoney baloney.

MODERATORS: Please at least consider deleting this thead, if not banning the OP himself for repeatedly referring to the game as s**t.

You know what? I don't "give a d**n" about free speech. This is not right, period, and I'm tired of seeing this nonsense thread popping up to the top of the board every time somebody posts in it. It accomplishes OP's real purpose when that happens.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

First time I've ever been thanked by someone for calling them a dumb mother......
This fellow may be a little confused.

It's probably because he's trying to get people to react the way you did, which is the purpose of trolling. Not saying you were wrong to post that, but that's what he's trying to do -- get people all worked up.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Exactly. And since it's still fresh with the latest response, I'll add my irritation here.

MEMBERS: Please stop responding to this phoney baloney.

MODERATORS: Please at least consider deleting this thead, if not banning the OP himself for repeatedly referring to the game as s**t.

You know what? I don't "give a d**n" about free speech. This is not right, period, and I'm tired of seeing this nonsense thread popping up to the top of the board every time somebody posts in it. It accomplishes OP's real purpose when that happens.

While I agree with you 100%, if you're going to ban someone for calling the game a piece of s**t, then you also ban someone for calling them a dumb mother****.

You can't nitpik where you're going apply rules against free speech, either it's all or nothing.

[D-BacksJosh]

I don't mind whoever this person is posting something negative about the game here, even if it is contrived. If he gets his kicks on getting negative responses from people then so be it. If the comment is false then it will be refuted, so I don't see how it will effect the game negatively. IMO people shouldn't get banned, or have their threads closed for speaking their mind either way.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by D-BacksJosh

I don't mind whoever this person is posting something negative about the game here, even if it is contrived. If he gets his kicks on getting negative responses from people then so be it. If the comment is false then it will be refuted, so I don't see how it will effect the game negatively. IMO people shouldn't get banned, or have their threads closed for speaking their mind either way.

Right, because for every troll (whether this OP is a troll or not), there are a lot more "negative" posts that either bring up a legit problem and/or lead to fruitful discussion.

[Fyrestorm3]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

Right, because for every troll (whether this OP is a troll or not), there are a lot more "negative" posts that either bring up a legit problem and/or lead to fruitful discussion.

This, exactly. There's been plenty of "negative" threads that have led to acceptable discussions. I wouldn't say close the thread or ban the user, but just stop freaking out at him and giving him the attention he wants, unless someone else can replicate his "results" (highly unlikely).

[OBSL Commish]

I wanted to tell the OP to go play Statis Pro Baseball if he's sick of OOTP, but then I remembered it takes opposable thumbs to roll dice. . .

[drksd4848]

Originally Posted by Accipiter

yeah definitely time to uninstall, gave every single guy on my team perfect ratings at everything, team finished below .500 lmao what kind of idiot thinks there's any kill or strategy involved in this piece of ****?

Easy there... no need for the ****,

But despite what the fanboys are saying, you're not a troll. (you have to be careful not to criticize anything about OOTP because there are certain group of people that will flame you with blowtorches. Although they might just need a diaper change) You're just frustrated. As am I frequently with this game.

To try to understand the methods behind OOTP is like trying to understand Stonehenge. But for some strange reason, the game does average out; if you look at baseball history you'll see it does. It doesn't seem like it, but it does. There are a lot of times when I watch a game in real life and think if that game was in OOTP I would say it's fixed. If you look at teams like maybe the KC Royals over the last 15 years you'll see it's kind of the same.

Sometimes though, you may start a game and play it over time, some of the files become funky (there is a tremendous amount of code in OOTP). If you start a new game, you'll see the oddity disappears. (although it is annoying when you're 25 season into a league and you have to start over)

I've been frustrated with this game to the point where I'd like to punch a baby, but I always come back.

So despite what you might think, it does mimic real life baseball if you take a closer look...

EXCEPT for the baserunning. Too many runners score from second on a base hit to left field, but that;s a whole other issue.

[drksd4848]

Oh, one more thing.

There was a period where I truly felt the game was fixed. I was about to quit and go back to Stratomatic.

The teams with the crappy records that barely made the playoffs were always winning championships and weird things were always happening with my team...

So I did a little experiment. I would play the game to certain points, save it, then crash it and resume from that point multiple times to see if the results were consistent and the outcome was predetermined.

Guess what? It wasn't. I would find the outcomes would vary every time! I became a believer again.

I did this in 12 and 13, when the base running was more accurate... maybe not in 13, but definitely in 12

[tomwolf2008]

Originally Posted by drksd4848

EXCEPT for the baserunning. Too many runners score from second on a base hit to left field, but that;s a whole other issue.

You have started a thread regarding this topic awhile ago but the reply is still the same, Please provide proof!! and no, "I feel" or "I think" are not proofs.

[drksd4848]

Originally Posted by tomwolf2008

You have started a thread regarding this topic awhile ago but the reply is still the same, Please provide proof!! and no, "I feel" or "I think" are not proofs.

David Ortiz rarely can score from 2nd base on a base hit to left field - expecially at Fenway. He does it ALL the time in OOTP.

Outside of that, drop the blankie, change your diaper and prove I'm wrong.