Track manual edits to players

[byzeil]

Make it optional at the time of the league creation. It can't be changed once the league starts. The commish could then advertise, if they so wished, that this feature is on to help assure the owners that things are not edited without the league knowing about it. GMs could use this as part of their criteria on deciding to join a league.

And just to be clear the solution I am in favor of is: Only available in On-Line league mode (or available on any mode is the commish wants to use it to track changes they make), optional at the time of the creation of the league but can't be changed after that point, information available in a report not on individual player pages.

This feature serves two purposes as I see it; 1) Gives an additional level of accountability of the commishes actions, 2) A commish is less likely to be falsely accused of cheating. As a side I could see some solo commishes using it just to track edits they make to players.

[Sabermetric Baseball]

Originally Posted by fhomess

It would STILL need to be optional for online leagues. I can see an online league commish turning it on to help improve trust. However, it would actually break the house rules in some leagues. The PEBA, for example, has the option of improving a player's abilities by sending them to "winter ball". Those changes are not intended to be transparent to the GM. They're manually edited by the commish, but can fall in a range. I've been in other leagues where the commish will go through each ammy draft class and make changes to those players to accommodate their opinion on how players should enter the game.

To begin with, let me say you've contributed some quality feedback to this thread and tremendous add-ons to the game that I use myself, so I definitely want to make it clear no disrespect is intended by my comments/disagreements to follow.....

(1) This would really lose all purpose if it's optional. Then, a commish could disable it to make their changes, and reenable it after. Unless you're proposing that it's a permanent setting at creation time (i.e. user chooses "Online League with Accountability Feature" or "Online League without Accountability Feature"), don't believe optional is going to work.

(2) Whether it's additional records to the scouting report or a new audit report altogether, there'd absolutely need to be a timestamp corresponding to an in-game date when the change was made. If an amateur is modified on a date before they're drafted to a team, that can be easily accounted for. If a prospect is modified during winter league, that can be easily accounted for. Owners already know the change is going to be made, records showing up in the edit log should not bring any surprises. At least from what I've seen, the online leagues sophisticated enough to incorporate manual edits as part of their standard gameplay have gone to great lengths to properly communicate how, when, and why changes are going to be made.

(3) Furthermore, an audit trail could provide valuable utility to leagues using legitimate manual edits. If a league has manual edits, that becomes a significant part of each team's strategy - no different than deciding which attributes to prioritize in players, financial management, etc., etc. In order to plan that strategy, many teams might want to analyze previous data. Most leagues have hundreds, oftentimes thousands, of message posts each season. Unless the changes are manually tracked in a pinned thread, can be cumbersome to go back and find the threads with the edits. A report would be an immediate one stop for all of the changes. If Winter League happens on December 1st and an owner wants to see how last year's players subsequently developed, they just go to December 1st on the report and there's every player edited with direct links to their pages.

For offline players, it'd be a way to (optionally) prove their game is "clean" for stuff they share with the community. Whenever anyone posts one of those "can you believe this superstar" threads, they're just about guaranteed to have someone say no way that player wasn't manually boosted. The OP can add a screenshot of the scouting report page, but that doesn't add a whole lot especially if there was a big jump one season. Now if they were to post a scouting report page and there was some indicator to show the edit tracker was enabled and there's no edits, that'd be very meaningful and I think it'd also give much more significance to when people stumble on players like that.

[The Wolf]

If it's not optional there will be a ton of opposition to it and little support for it.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

If it's not optional there will be a ton of opposition to it and little support for it.

Yup, he lost me. I do wonder if something like this could be made into an online feature only?

I simply like this forum too much for me to ever feel the need to question another forum members honesty when it comes to describing his or her game experiences. If someone has so little going on in their life that beefing up stats in a make believe baseball world keeps them alive another day, I say go for it. Ugh!

[jaxmagicman]

I never edited a player when I was commish, but I do remember that once I clicked on the editor just to see if I could, and it did come up, and I noticed that I could see the players actual ratings, so I vowed never to touch it again.

I agree with two things. If you think your commish is cheating, quit the league and find one you trust. And there is no harm having a seperate 'audit' of what has been done to players, because in my solo leagues, I would like to know if I changed something or not. And if I did, what did I change? I don't want it showing up on the scouting report, but a seperate report that is hidden from plain view would be nice.

[Up here in Canada]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

I never edited a player when I was commish, but I do remember that once I clicked on the editor just to see if I could, and it did come up, and I noticed that I could see the players actual ratings, so I vowed never to touch it again.

I agree with two things. If you think your commish is cheating, quit the league and find one you trust. And there is no harm having a seperate 'audit' of what has been done to players, because in my solo leagues, I would like to know if I changed something or not. And if I did, what did I change? I don't want it showing up on the scouting report, but a seperate report that is hidden from plain view would be nice.

The End!

[fhomess]

Originally Posted by Sabermetric Baseball

To begin with, let me say you've contributed some quality feedback to this thread and tremendous add-ons to the game that I use myself, so I definitely want to make it clear no disrespect is intended by my comments/disagreements to follow.....

No worries, disagreement does not equal disrespect, and I'm not sure you really disagreed with anything I said other than that it should be optional if implemented at all.

Originally Posted by Sabermetric Baseball

(1) This would really lose all purpose if it's optional. Then, a commish could disable it to make their changes, and reenable it after. Unless you're proposing that it's a permanent setting at creation time (i.e. user chooses "Online League with Accountability Feature" or "Online League without Accountability Feature"), don't believe optional is going to work.

I agree it would lose its intended purpose if it's optional and can be changed on a whim. Byziel's proposal to make it a game-creation option would avoid that.

Anyway, I personally see no need for this and can think of a handful of other ways to cheat that it would not solve. Some of those are things that cannot be solved by Markus even if he tracks every click anyone involved in a league makes. I am most definitely not in favor of asking Markus to implement detailed tracking of every place a commish could possibly cheat. Implementing even the basic player editor tracking mechanism will most certainly NOT prove that a league is on the up and up. At risk of straining the thief analogy from earlier, it's like putting a lock on the front door of your house, but leaving the back door wide open. It gives the illusion of security that isn't actually present. I don't anticipate that it will change the frequency with which online leagues deal with accusations of cheating (real or imagined). I do anticipate it will perpetuate a myth that commishes are, on the whole, untrustworthy. I'm not particularly keen on being part of an environment where the defacto mindset is one of distrust.

Yes, the problem is real. I understand the reality that there are people ou there who do these things, but I agree with those that assert it's not a widespread problem. On average, there's about 1 reported case of suspected cheating a year. The links posted earlier in this thread span from 2003 to 2010, and a search of the online league forum for anything more recent didn't exactly paint a picture of major problems. Some of the posted links are confirmed cases of cheating, some are merely accusatory, and some are informational. Given that there are dozens of online leagues out there, I don't think it's a major issue, and would rather Markus spent time working on things to improve the game itself.

At the end of the day, this isn't really the forum to propose this type of change officially. If you really want it, submit it in the OOTP14 suggestions and Markus can decide for himself (if you've already done so, my apologies, I haven't looked). I do think the discussion here will be helpful to him in determining whether or not it's a worthy thing to spend time on.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I simply like this forum too much for me to ever feel the need to question another forum members honesty when it comes to describing his or her game experiences. If someone has so little going on in their life that beefing up stats in a make believe baseball world keeps them alive another day, I say go for it. Ugh!

Customizing your own game? Sure. Cheating other people online? Never okay.

[Cowboys3356]

I prefer zero transparency and secret editing whenever possible.

[D-BacksJosh]

Originally Posted by Cowboys3356

I prefer zero transparency and secret editing whenever possible.

He doesn't always run online leagues, but when he does...

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Sabermetric Baseball

For offline players, it'd be a way to (optionally) prove their game is "clean" for stuff they share with the community. Whenever anyone posts one of those "can you believe this superstar" threads, they're just about guaranteed to have someone say no way that player wasn't manually boosted. The OP can add a screenshot of the scouting report page, but that doesn't add a whole lot especially if there was a big jump one season. Now if they were to post a scouting report page and there was some indicator to show the edit tracker was enabled and there's no edits, that'd be very meaningful and I think it'd also give much more significance to when people stumble on players like that.

I have to chime in on this. The bold is a bad assumption on your part. One doesn't have to edit players at all to have significant variations from perceived realistic stats. If you don't know this then you should learn more about how the game works.

Anyone who posts or makes claims about an edited player without disclosing it needs way more help (ie get a life) than an edit tracker can provide.

I suppose I should disclose that I do edit players. Usually to prevent the AI from playing them at a position that they should not play. Mea Culpa!

[The Wolf]

Rich, you're a very bad man. Edits? I'm shocked.

[Up here in Canada]

Originally Posted by RchW

Anyone who posts or makes claims about an edited player without disclosing it needs way more help (ie get a life) than an edit tracker can provide.

Get a life?

We're a bunch of, for the most part, grown men playing a computer baseball game about imaginary baseball players, or worse, REAL baseball players playing imaginary games in, usually, imaginary leagues as imaginary general managers that aren't, supposedly, in need of help.

[byzeil]

Originally Posted by Up here in Canada

Get a life?

We're a bunch of, for the most part, grown men playing a computer baseball game about imaginary baseball players, or worse, REAL baseball players playing imaginary games in, usually, imaginary leagues as imaginary general managers that aren't, supposedly, in need of help.

This is life........isn't it?

[Up here in Canada]

Originally Posted by byzeil

This is life........isn't it?

I would imagine so.

[RchW]

Yeah I know, I was bored. When it's -5F in Bismarck ND, you get bored.

[rudel.dietrich]

This has probably been mentioned, but I am not about to go read 5 pages to try and find it.


Instead of having it be an option that you only get once chance to turn on or off, and instead of having * all over the place.
Why not have it like the Football Manager editor and have a separate tab on the player screen where you can view a history of edits in chronological order.
I have often wanted this feature and IMO this would be the best way to do it. It would be a tab that if you never needed it you would not have to click on, and it would be avaliable outside of the editor screen that those in online leagues have no access too.

In my single player leagues this would be a very useful feature. Especially for those times when I am running tests on various game features and I do mass editing of players and I want to take them back to their original settings. Or if it is in chronological order I can see ever edit I have made and go back to any of those points in time without having to have a text file or excel file like I do now.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by RchW

Yeah I know, I was bored. When it's -5F in Bismarck ND, you get bored.

When it's 75 in Bismarck you get bored.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

This has probably been mentioned, but I am not about to go read 5 pages to try and find it.


Instead of having it be an option that you only get once chance to turn on or off, and instead of having * all over the place.
Why not have it like the Football Manager editor and have a separate tab on the player screen where you can view a history of edits in chronological order.
I have often wanted this feature and IMO this would be the best way to do it. It would be a tab that if you never needed it you would not have to click on, and it would be avaliable outside of the editor screen that those in online leagues have no access too.

In my single player leagues this would be a very useful feature. Especially for those times when I am running tests on various game features and I do mass editing of players and I want to take them back to their original settings. Or if it is in chronological order I can see ever edit I have made and go back to any of those points in time without having to have a text file or excel file like I do now.

That wouldn't bother me any and might actually be useful under some circumstances.