HP's Pre-Review

[lightgrenade07]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I'm curious, what would have appealed to you (or the other fictional guys in this thread)?

Keep in mind, we have not announced everything yet, there are a lot more seemingly little improvements which impact every type of league.

As a fictional player, I like features that:

*Add depth to the characters (personality ratings, strategy preferences etc)
*Enable deeper immersion (international leagues, feeder leagues)
*Allow me to customize my league (eg playoff settings)

The one feature in OOTP 17 that appealed to me was the added depth to the GMs. That's going to be fun to play around with. Everything else is just sort of "meh."

My "Holy Grail" wish list items - items I don't expect to see any time soon, but of which any single feature would persuade me to buy a new version, are:

Promotion/relegation (of course!)

Game play options for commissioner mode (eg it would be really cool to negotiate CBA/financial settings with team owners and the players' union)

Team owner mode, ideal for the player who just likes to sim without playing the individual games: hire your GM, hire your manager, decide who's in charge of player movement, then give your GM some season goals.

Items I'd really like to have - stuff that might not be as hard to code:

The ability to calibrate a mix of players and "ghost" players in my feeder leagues, so that I can make sure I have enough prospects for MLB's draft without jeopardizing league quality AND without having a thousand 19-year-old NCAA players slowing down the sim speed

The option to include player development points so that I can guide the direction of how my players develop

And, bring back the ability to sort coaching staff based on their skill levels (or make it an option at least?).

Nice additions:

More awards options (eg I grew up watching basketball, and I like the NBA-style All-NBA 1st Team, 2nd Team 3rd Team and All-Defensive 1st/2nd Team format)

Ability for custom awards to show up on a player's profile

Ability to automate custom awards using a filter

More All-Star events (home run derby! minor league showcase, with the best players from all the minors thrown together! a rookie game! a fielding skills challenge!)

Ability to pick cut-off date for determining draft order (ie is it based on W-L record at time of the draft if held mid-season? is it based on previous season's record? For the first round at least, how about an NBA-style draft lottery!)

And, finally, gimme spitballs!

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Perhaps an even more customizable playoffs system? (I've got a system for that. )

Oh I hate coding that part of the game. It's the worst nightmare. You touch one thing and break another. The same for financials, by the way, that's the reason we have not touched the core of that for years, it is pretty stable right now and recoding it would be a monumental task (even when there is a good design... in reality good designs show their flaws only when you implement & test them).

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

As a fictional player, I really appreciate the automated recaps. The next step for me is to have these news stories be more context sensitive. For example, a recent season I played, on opening day, I faced a former pitcher of mine who just left that offseason. He had played for me the previous 15 seasons! It would have been nice for that to be mentioned in the news story.

Also, in the end of season awards stories, it would be nice to list how many times the player has won the award and what the all time record for winning the award is. If he breaks the record, that should be mentioned as well.

player extensions should be more difficult. Players who are high or very high on greed should simply not negotiate and should want to test the open market.

i have had an owner who keeps begging my team to hit more hrs. 5 years in a row. I build my team to be a smallball team so that will never happen. He should move in the fences on his own. Owners should change ballpark dimensions on their own if they want more hrs.

There should be more stories about players in the last year of their contract. Some players should press and play worse, and have news stories recognize that. Some players should play better, and have news stories recognize that and of course most players should play the same.

And of course , my ultimate dream, doing away with the email system, and having all news be delivered via a dynamic in game website hub

Anything related to text (news stories, storylines etc.) is very time consuming to both code and then to make it non-repetitive. When I was working with SI back in 2004, they had three full-time guys just doing text-related coding and writing. That's essentially the size of our complete OOTP development team So, if you want us to improve in this area, tell all your friends about OOTP, force them to buy it. That way we can invest the extra revenue in more development team members...

Trust me, I'd love to produce the perfect baseball game, with tons of options, great news, recaps, 3D animation yada yada yada. But our resources are still very limited, for example when compared to SI's Football Manager (which IMO is the premiere sports management game on the planet), they have a staff which is more than 10 times bigger than ours, and more than 20 times the revenue. But many people don't realize this

[mgom27]

DH and Pitcher in same Lineup?

3B,1B,Bullpen Coach,Team President and so on Staff/Coaches? Seening the Pitching Coach/Manager go to the Mound

hiring other Teams people for a Job? Interim people?

GM Meetings? More Teams up for sale and been sold and moved including Minor League Teams. Celebrity All-Star Game? A deal with a Network to use their people in Game?

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Oh I hate coding that part of the game. It's the worst nightmare. You touch one thing and break another. The same for financials, by the way, that's the reason we have not touched the core of that for years, it is pretty stable right now and recoding it would be a monumental task (even when there is a good design... in reality good designs show their flaws only when you implement & test them).

It's not broke...don't fix it!

Seriously, we have enough customization for playoffs, and a working financial system with plenty of options.

My two cents: focus on trading (multiplayer and deadline trades!), roster management (if a team doesn't have any shortstops in its minors anywhere, why doesn't it try to trade for minor league shortstops?), and in-game AI.

Those items would benefit all three modes of OOTP play.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Anything related to text (news stories, storylines etc.) is very time consuming to both code and then to make it non-repetitive. When I was working with SI back in 2004, they had three full-time guys just doing text-related coding and writing. That's essentially the size of our complete OOTP development team So, if you want us to improve in this area, tell all your friends about OOTP, force them to buy it. That way we can invest the extra revenue in more development team members...

Trust me, I'd love to produce the perfect baseball game, with tons of options, great news, recaps, 3D animation yada yada yada. But our resources are still very limited, for example when compared to SI's Football Manager (which IMO is the premiere sports management game on the planet), they have a staff which is more than 10 times bigger than ours, and more than 20 times the revenue. But many people don't realize this

Three guys can only do so much. We realize that. But we can dream.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Oh I hate coding that part of the game. It's the worst nightmare. You touch one thing and break another.

What I'm thinking of is using a system that would leverage external, specially created files detailing the particulars of the playoff format for a league. These would be similar to the schedule files used to lay out the schedule of games a league plays, but these playoff files would have additional tags and tokens to handle various scenarios. (Trust me when I say I went into a great deal of in-depth thinking about what tags and tokens would be necessary, and how they would work together, so as to prevent any potential conflicts or hiccups.)

OOTP need only be able to read these files, then understand and implement the playoff layout structure that is described in them.

However, it would require a new generic in-game playoffs screen. The current one, with its bracketed layout, won't fit plenty of customized playoff formats. A generic screen, like what the MILB.com site has used for showing the minor league playoffs (here's the screen for the California League's 2013 playoffs), would fit, as its layout is organized around series matchups and rounds, and thus easily able to incorporate a myriad of playoff scenarios.

(From my extensive thinking about customizable playoffs, the only way to reach true flexibility is to go to an external schedule file-like system. Trying to do it via in-game menus quickly becomes overwhelming when one considers the variety of playoff formats that have existed in baseball alone, to say nothing of the formats used in other sports leagues.)

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

The same for financials, by the way, that's the reason we have not touched the core of that for years, it is pretty stable right now and recoding it would be a monumental task (even when there is a good design... in reality good designs show their flaws only when you implement & test them).

I understand, but at some point that bullet needs to be bitten. There are too many limitations within the current model that don't allow for a fairly high fidelity recreation of present and past baseball finances, nor is the current system nearly as flexible and easy-to-customize for leagues (fictional or otherwise) as it could be.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

None of this appeals to you?

• For the first time ever, fully licensed by both the MLBPA and MLB.com!
• All the real Major League teams, players, and logos, including projected 2016 Opening Day rosters
• Over 150 authentic Minor League clubs with real logos and leagues, along with 8 international and several independent leagues, all with real rosters
• All major league player ratings - plus those of more than 1,000 minor leaguers - based on ZiPS, the projection system created by well-known baseball writer and SABR member Dan Szymborski
• Smarter, more cunning AI GMs and managers, with individualized personal approaches to roster-building, scouting, and finances

These are the greatest selling points to me also.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

A little harsh on the AI.

I agree that it sometimes makes bad line-up choices and sometimes waives players that never should have been on the 40 man roster to begin. Especially high draft picks that the AI controls for 6 years before they become arby 5 eligible. No way some of these guys should be on the 40-man roster. The AI wastes 3 options then has to waive the player. This is the AI's biggest weakness if you ask me.

But overall the AI has gotten better year over year. But OOTP developments can't just say, "Only one new feature this year...Improved AI."

They have to add features that sell more units so the game grows. That growth allows them to hire more developers which in turn leads to a better game. I'm very happy with the features even though I won't use them very much because I know the end-result of more sales equals better AI.

Lastly, I'm putting aside my selfishness. It is definitely about time historical guys got some love.

Exactly...the free market at work.

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Anything related to text (news stories, storylines etc.) is very time consuming to both code and then to make it non-repetitive. When I was working with SI back in 2004, they had three full-time guys just doing text-related coding and writing. That's essentially the size of our complete OOTP development team So, if you want us to improve in this area, tell all your friends about OOTP, force them to buy it. That way we can invest the extra revenue in more development team members...

Some of this, though, would seem to be the kind of thing you could crowdsource. I get that cranking out the hundreds of lines of text is a pain ... so don't do it. I suspect that you could find a couple dozen people willing to write just for the thrill of having a few lines show up in the game.

[lightgrenade07]

I'd also like to be able to do multi-team trades...three-team?