A Fictional Player Responds

[Déjà Bru]

Elsewhere, Markus asked:

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

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

That is a very good question, and hard to answer. I thought about it and decided the best way to respond would be to go over the announcement newsletters for the past several versions and pick out what motivated me the most, as an OOTP fan in general but as a fictional player specifically, to keep purchasing each version.

So here's what made my heart race in the past. This list may be just as instructional for what I did not include as for what I did:

OOTP 10

• Redesigned Pitching System
• Customizable In-Game Screen
• Enhanced Play-By-Play
• More News Stories
• Team Leaderboards in History

OOTP 11

• Overall Interface Resdesign
• New Draft and Player Development Features
• Team owners with distinct personalities
• Dynamically evolving fictional leagues
• Improved immersion factor, including better modeled player personalities and a brand new "storyline engine"
• Create and print baseball cards

OOTP 12

• Revamped Financial System
• Greater Immersion and Realism
• Added a playoff roster
• Greatly enhanced the world database structure

OOTP 13

• Real-Time Simulation Mode
• Interactive Storylines
• Redesigned Interface

OOTP 14

• Completely Recoded Player Origin System
• Better Player Development Tracking
• Improved Trading, including a screen that keeps track of all the trades in the history of the league and a "Not interested in Player X" function
• Much more storylines
• Improved play-by-play commentary

OOTP 15

• A Revamped Interface
• A customizable manager home screen
• Enhanced player history tracking
• The ability to offer jobs to coaches and scouts while those jobs are still occupied
• Teams may retire uniform numbers
• Improved news stories and in-game play-by-play
• Improved support for independent minor leagues

OOTP 16

• New Team Owner Goals
• Improved Team Finances and Reporting
• Completely Redesigned Manager and Coaches System
• Recoded Team Strategy System
• Better Playoff Coverage
• New play modes (Manager only, GM only, and GM + Manager)
• Player info pop-up
• Find-A-Player feature
• Recoded All-Star Game feature
• Realistic OOTP Hall of Fame selection process
• More player awards (including those nifty customizable award icons - remember the positive feedback over that seemingly minor throw-in?)

If I had to summarize these, I would say that the common themes are enhanced realism, control, and immersion. I hope that helps answer the question.

I want to share a response that I sent to someone who contacted me by PM to discuss my opinions expressed in that other thread:

Yes, I felt bad about being a wet blanket. I enjoy OOTPB very much, always have, but it just felt funny that for the first time, I was saying to myself "Big deal. Not worth the effort of converting and going through the multiple updates." I'll stay tuned in, though, and I hope you will do the same.

I'll go further than that. I am going to pre-order OOTP 17 because I want to contribute to this game and reward all for of the enjoyment it has given me. Period. No other reason.

It remains to be seen whether I will actually install the game and use my license, given what I have seen so far. No sour grapes intended, and this is only one man's opinion. Obviously, from what I have seen here in two days, I am in a small minority. That's good.

[The Wolf]

The 30-60% improved speed would be enough for me all by itself.

[aslanking]

100% agree with the opinion expressed by Deja. I didn't want to come off as Debbie downer either but at this point none of the new features are grabbing me. Methinks that is more of a function of the tremendous gains made in v16 and really what can they do from here but make incremental improvements.

The only thing that would absolutely be a grand slam for me would be the cloud save. That sounds like it may be a few versions down the line.

[Chico Guilbault]

As a fictional player I agree that there isn't too much announced so far that has me really excited. For me it's absolutely due to so much being right to begin with. There are only small things I would change to enhance my enjoyment of this game. I am confident that there will be at least one seemingly small change or addition in this version which will make it all worth it for me. I have pre-ordered solely based on this faith.

[Westheim]

I can't find anything to insta-win my heart in the announcement, either. Nice here, nice there, but no "Whoah, gottahavethat!!".

Then again, I wasn't eager to get 16, either. I was fine with 12.

Maybe it's that I can't be excited about anything. And I know it's going to screw me over once I buy it eventually, perhaps.

It's ... well... I have no joy in my life.

You might probably want to disregard me on this.

[lschaef]

I'm a fictional player who plays out 99% of my teams games and have played every version since OOTP 3.

I didn't get real excited reading the new features. Of the first eight features in the announcement only this one applies to me, "Smarter, more cunning AI GMs and managers, with individualized personal approaches to roster-building, scouting, and finances"

Going through the rest of the list:

* Improved in-game 3D engine - If this is really good and help pull me into the game I'll enjoy this feature. However, playing out every game I won't use it if it slows down the game too much.

* Beautiful, redesigned game interface - Again if this is better I'll benefit from it.

* Automatically generated game headlines and recaps - I'm looking forward to this and hope it will help with immersion into the game.

* Better trading with defined team needs, Even more realistic player career arcs, Multi-core processing for fast sim speed - These will all make the game better and probably that alone is worth getting the new version.

I'm not wow'd, but I do see things that will make the game better for me. It's such a great game and I spend so many hours on it that it's worth buying any new version.

My wish list going forward:

* I'm still frustrated with substituting for an injured player when the injury happens on the last out of an inning. I'd be VERY happy if I heard that fix was in the new version.

* I'd like to see the new GM focus turn into news stories. "Team A is rumored to be looking for bullpen help. Player A has a 6.89 ERA and their closer Player B has blown 10 saves so far this year."

* I think the game recaps could be the start of something that will really help fictional players. I think the game needs to find a way to give players a little personality.

When playing with real players there are players that you like in dislike because you've seen them play and heard stories about them in real life. When playing with fictional players you don't have that.

I'm sure this would be a HUGE project, but It would be great if OOTP could provide a little personality to fictional players. I would love to have (optional of course) hidden personality traits for players which come out in game recaps and news stories.

A "me first" player may talk about himself when quoted in a game recap, while a "team leader" might mention something a team mate did. Every so often there might be a news story about a "charitable" player who visited the local Children's hospital. A "hot head" would be more likely to get thrown out of a game. There could be news stories about a team "prankster" that played a joke on a teammate. During spring training the could be stories of a "lazy" player who came in out of shape or a "dedicated" player who came in in the best shape of his life (and these might actually effect their ratings a little).

Some of these traits could also effect the players local and national popularity.

I'd love if it got to the point where a star is about to become a free agent, but I think a little harder about resigning him because of his attitude or take a moment to pull the trigger on a trade because a player I'm trading is a good guy.

[Orcin]

As a fictional player, I am excited about the following:
- improved threading/processing
- game recaps
- more cunning AI GMs
- 3d animation on the field

I also play historical, so I might buy it for the historical minor leagues alone. However, the 3d animation would have pushed me over the edge as a fictional player.

To be fair, I pre-order every year, so I might buy the game if the only new feature were the OOTP17 logo.

[Hammercraft]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

The 30-60% improved speed would be enough for me all by itself.

This is absolutely true for me. I saw that and flipped out, all the other improvements are gravy.

Like if Civilization V were re-launched right now with 40-60% faster processing, I would buy another copy immediately with no hesitation. As I get older I get less patient waiting for computers to compute

[Izz]

I'm pretty excited about the 3D animation.

And the faster processing speed

[jpeters1734]

How to get Fictional players excited? Address or at least acknowledge the many posts in the suggestions forum. Perhaps that forum should be split into different categories. I feel like a lot of great suggestions get lost

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

How to get Fictional players excited? Address or at least acknowledge the many posts in the suggestions forum. Perhaps that forum should be split into different categories. I feel like a lot of great suggestions get lost

For most of the years I've been here, the fictional players have ruled the roost and pretty much gotten whatever they wanted. With the addition of the MLB and MLPA licenses the dynamics of OOTP have now changed. Logic, audience and market factors are going to drive this game farther and farther into a modern and historical directions.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

For most of the years I've been here, the fictional players have ruled the roost and pretty much gotten whatever they wanted. With the addition of the MLB and MLPA licenses the dynamics of OOTP have now changed. Logic, audience and market factors are going to drive this game farther and farther into a modern and historical directions.

It should be noted that the MLB league included with the game becomes a fictional league after finishing its first season (since it's then in the future, and who knows how those real players will actually perform the actual next season).

I'll also repeat my usual mantra: features added to OOTP that better reflect current and past baseball reality add yet more options that fictional league users could enjoy (provided they are made available to fictional leagues).

[The Game]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

The 30-60% improved speed would be enough for me all by itself.

Doesn't that only really matter if you sim often? I only have one league, which is on hold, that I sim. I sim that a month at a time. Without many minor league it only takes a few minutes, at most, to run a month. the 2 main leagues I play right now I play out 90% of the games.

[The Wolf]

They've been saying that pretty much everything is faster in 17.

[mavericktango]

I will buy 17 as I have done since 6.5 but I'm afraid nothing really excites me about the new issue. I'm fine supporting Marcus by getting 17 but should 18 prove to be as underwhelming ten I have a decision to make .....

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

How to get Fictional players excited? Address or at least acknowledge the many posts in the suggestions forum. Perhaps that forum should be split into different categories. I feel like a lot of great suggestions get lost

They don't get lost. We have a small development team, and we're doing the best we can, which is trying to figure out how to appeal to the biggest possible customer base and at the same time try to please the hardcore user base. It's a thin line to walk.

Spread the word about OOTP, get all your friends to buy it. That will increase the revenue which allows us to invest in more developers, which in turn leads to more & better features.

Frankly, compared to big gaming companies like EA or Take2, the number of new features we hammer out each year is quite amazing, considering those guys have budgets 100 times bigger than ours.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

For most of the years I've been here, the fictional players have ruled the roost and pretty much gotten whatever they wanted. With the addition of the MLB and MLPA licenses the dynamics of OOTP have now changed. Logic, audience and market factors are going to drive this game farther and farther into a modern and historical directions.

By the way, our usage tracker reveals that 65% of of OOTP users play the modern day MLB standard game, 25% fictional, and 10% historical.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

It remains to be seen whether I will actually install the game and use my license, given what I have seen so far. No sour grapes intended, and this is only one man's opinion. Obviously, from what I have seen here in two days, I am in a small minority. That's good.

Please don't forget that we not only work on the new features! Almost every part of the game gets improvements, for example:

- Better in-game AI (pitching changes etc.)
- Better player evaluation AI, impacting the AI throughout the game
- Better roster management AI
- Better draft AI
- Better trade AI
- Recoded scouting algorithm (young & unproven players are overrated more often, veterans scouted more accurately)
- Better player development (league remains more stable long-term in terms of overall player quality & stats output, more variance in development curves, "2 1/2-pitch pitchers" have a better chance to improve their 3rd pitch and become a true SP, etc.)

Also, we'll have plenty of little new features that have not been revealed yet.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

They don't get lost. We have a small development team, and we're doing the best we can, which is trying to figure out how to appeal to the biggest possible customer base and at the same time try to please the hardcore user base. It's a thin line to walk.

Spread the word about OOTP, get all your friends to buy it. That will increase the revenue which allows us to invest in more developers, which in turn leads to more & better features.

Frankly, compared to big gaming companies like EA or Take2, the number of new features we hammer out each year is quite amazing, considering those guys have budgets 100 times bigger than ours.

Oh I completely agree and I wasn't complaining btw. You guys do a great job and I promote the game at every opportunity

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

By the way, our usage tracker reveals that 65% of of OOTP users play the modern day MLB standard game, 25% fictional, and 10% historical.

Is that usage tracker weighted by number of hours played? Or is just league formation stats? I ask because each version before I import my fictional league into the new version I test it out by loading up the MLB universe. Once I am satisfied that it is stable I convert my fictional league and never look at the MLB league again.

If you are only counting the number of times that a fictional league is formed and the number of times MLB id formed you're going to get skewed numbers. The opposite is true as well, I suppose. MLB/Historical guys may create test leagues.

Anyway I was just wondering how you came to those percentages.