OOTP 15 - Please share your first impressions here!

[Mike's Rangers]

Doesn't work for me. Saved file but no update. Need help. Windows 7. Never had a problem before.

[Mike's Rangers]

Never mind. The browser was the cause. I recently switched to FIREFOX from Explorer. It treats the download and subsequent steps differently. Does anyone know when Explorer is safe to use again?

[DFyvie]

Played '13 for a few years and finally made the leap (and I am very impressed. I play out all my games so I do miss the great Webcast screen that came with ootp 13, but I the UI for ootp 15 is very well thought out. Have yet to try out the text to speech or the 3d option as of yet. The facegen fix is also good as I play on a mac and before the 15.2.8 patch, the faces looked really, really bad.

Overall, I love the game!

Thank-you

[JeffWard]

Once again, I truly appreciate the vast amount of effort OOTP puts into this simulation and it does keep getting better. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming football simulation as well. That said, there are certain flaws that keep it from being a virtually perfect game.

Before continuing I will stipulate that most of these irregularities could be mitigated by playing in an online league, but I'd be willing to bet the majority of OOTP owners cannot set aside that kind of time. So here goes:

1. Let the AI GMs kill each other and then simply pick up the spoils - Unless there are a couple of decent low priced free agents, I let the AI GMs get in outrageous free agent bidding wars and then, in early March, I swoop in and pick up a bunch of 3 to 4 star free agents at rock bottom prices. Huston Street at $1.2 mil for three years with a team option on the last year, for example. Same thing with Sean Burnett, Jason Motte, and Chris Perez at $1.1 million. The end result is my 2015 Cubs have the best record in baseball with the lowest payroll. Either the AI needs to be smarter or those final free agents have to be a little bit more picky.

2. The AI will not touch injured free agents - This is where you can really clean up especially with pitchers. Keep an eye on disabled listed free agents, wait till the first day of the season and sign them at rock bottom prices because the AI has ignored them. My Cubs got Ryan Sadowski at $1 mill a year from three years and Justin Masterson for three years at $3.5 mil, both with team options in the final year. Without those guys, the Cubs wouldn't be doing nearly as well.

3. You can't bet on a prospect's future - As in Starlin Castro, Jorge Soler and Anthony Rizzo. I'm generally not a big fan of Theo Epstein, but signing each of those guys to long-term low cost contracts was brilliant - especially with Soler. Sure! They could still bomb, but locking them up early at lower salaries is well worthwhile. But you can't do it in OOTP. The prospect will never go for it.

4. The greed ratings are too high - The best example is Jeff Samardzija who signed for $5.35 million in real life this year, but even after a bad OOTP year, he wouldn't settle for anything near that and won $9 mil in arbitration. Given my swooping in free agent strategy this leads to an abnormal level of team turnover. The bottom line is, in real life, some free agents will take less money to stay with their team, but it doesn't happen in OOTP.

5. Talent never improves, but it will tank - Again, in the early versions of OOTP, you could look forward to the possibility of an R. A. Dickey, Jose Bautista, Joe Nathan, or Jamie Moyer suddenly figuring it out and moving from a 2 to a 4 or even 5 star player. Despite the fact that the year-to-year roster sets mirror this phenomenon (Samardzija was once a 2 star prospect), in the latest OOTP versions ratings only go down and, in the current version, they go down very quickly.

6. Please let us offer an extension before a trade is complete - This one is a killer. It's great that the AI is smart enough to try to get whatever they can for an upcoming free agent whom they can't sign. But it's unrealistic not to give me a crack at those extension negotiations before pulling the final trade trigger.

7. Drafted players won't negotiate - It doesn't matter if they're tagged easy, hard or impossible, drafted players will settle for nothing less than their original demand. It seems to be especially bad in the latest version.

8. International free agents have steel gloves - Defense wins ball games! And when you have a winning team, another great strategy is to target those June 30th free agents. The problem is they are unequivocally abysmal fielders and the starting pitchers always have lousy endurance numbers with no rating hope of improvement.

9. Some free agents take forever to sign - This has always been a problem in OOTP. I understand a player waiting for the best offer in the thick of the winter meetings. But when your catcher goes down in July and the potential free agent backup who's been sitting there for over a year takes two weeks to make up his fricken' mind, it's really aggravating.

And that's my $0.02 for now.

[JMDurron]

Regarding #8, I've seen a number of my international amateur free agents have significant fielding rating improvements over time. I have one guy who was only a 2B when I signed him at age 16, and after 3 years in my international complex and 1 year in the low minors, he's looking like an above-average SS as a 20-year-old in AA. I only track the potential studs particularly closely, but there is definitely improvement in the ratings (not just experience, because his ratings improved with zero playing time down at the complex) in at least some cases, as indicated by this single example.

His true editor ratings for Range/Error/Arm have gone from 141-84-66 to 197-145-83.

[Ile]

I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't study, I can't work. I just want to play.

[olivertheorem]

Originally Posted by JeffWard

5. Talent never improves, but it will tank - Again, in the early versions of OOTP, you could look forward to the possibility of an R. A. Dickey, Jose Bautista, Joe Nathan, or Jamie Moyer suddenly figuring it out and moving from a 2 to a 4 or even 5 star player. Despite the fact that the year-to-year roster sets mirror this phenomenon (Samardzija was once a 2 star prospect), in the latest OOTP versions ratings only go down and, in the current version, they go down very quickly.

Not true. In a test sim I did just last night, I saw a guy drafted in the 27th round (of 30) make the bigs in something like 5 years. On a smaller scale, in day-by-day sim games I've done in which I track development monthly, I guarantee you talent improves as well as declines.

[byzeil]

Really enjoying OOTP15 and the many options for different leagues; Major, International, Feeders, Independent, etc.

One thing that I find that would be nice is in the player's history where it mentions signing with a certain team or traded to/from teams and it lists the team names. It would be nice if it also listed the league name (or abbreviation) and maybe even the league type.

I had a player go from College to Minors, to Majors, to Minors, to Independent, back to Minors and finally Majors......very cool but only have the team names in the history it isn't as clear where all he went without looking at his Batting history.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by byzeil

One thing that I find that would be nice is in the player's history where it mentions signing with a certain team or traded to/from teams and it lists the team names. It would be nice if it also listed the league name (or abbreviation) and maybe even the league type.

I never thought to suggest this, but it sounds so obvious now. That would be a great addition to the history.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by byzeil

Really enjoying OOTP15 and the many options for different leagues; Major, International, Feeders, Independent, etc.

One thing that I find that would be nice is in the player's history where it mentions signing with a certain team or traded to/from teams and it lists the team names. It would be nice if it also listed the league name (or abbreviation) and maybe even the league type.

I had a player go from College to Minors, to Majors, to Minors, to Independent, back to Minors and finally Majors......very cool but only have the team names in the history it isn't as clear where all he went without looking at his Batting history.

Agreed, that would be a pretty cool feature.

[JMDurron]

Agreed with the agreeing people above, that would be a nice addition.

[gbwitheyes]

I keep having this dream where I'm at a meeting surrounded by guys with laptops, Red Bull, pages of printouts, and strange jerseys for teams I did not know.

Suddenly I find myself standing up to say, "Hi. My name is Ground Ball with Eyes and I'm an OOTP addict."

[ChiefWahoo]

Teams are releasing superstars once their time on the DL ends. A two-time MVP shouldn't get cut eight games into the season.

[randallmagic]

Just bought the game and am working my way through it. I come from Baseball Mogul and have much fun with that game, so some of my comments will be a comparison.

The depth of this game is amazing. Much deeper than Baseball Mogul (BM) Lots of choices but sometimes having so many choices causes much confusion just to get it going. I have been for days wading through these choices to setup a league. I have succeeded with a league where I am playing historical teams against historical teams from 1905 to 2013.

I like the depth very much as I tend to like to analyze. But I also like to play the game with these teams. To me, this is where the game falls short. Baseball Mogul has the best (and it isn't that great) animations for hitting and pitching for a simulation like these types. I don't want an arcade game but a simulation. If OOTP had some decent animations like BM has then this would be complete.

Other things I find difficult are setting up custom leagues. It is advertised that you can do this but very hard to do. I cannot find a simple delete key to delete my players cause I seem to always get fictional players. I just like playing with real players that existed, so till I figure this out, it is quite frustrating to do a simple set up a league and draft in a bunch of historical players from this different eras. Maybe there is a way, but I can't find it after a week of playing around. I know it is there, but it isn't easy to access. Again, too much depth tends to make things too complicated to do the simple things.

I do love that you can do just about anything you can think of. If I can figure out all what I want then I think I will have a 90% perfect game. Add in some better animations to simulate playing a real game and you will have hit a home run. I should note, I have not played it much cause I spend most my time trying to setup the leagues the way I want, but hopefully the accuracy of the player's stats reflect in how they play in the game.

Randallmagic

[pstrickert]

Do you want a league consisting of teams from different eras? Or just players from different eras (i.e., random debut)? I don't think you can combine both.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by JeffWard

Once again, I truly appreciate the vast amount of effort OOTP puts into this simulation and it does keep getting better. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming football simulation as well. That said, there are certain flaws that keep it from being a virtually perfect game.

Before continuing I will stipulate that most of these irregularities could be mitigated by playing in an online league, but I'd be willing to bet the majority of OOTP owners cannot set aside that kind of time. So here goes:

[9. Some free agents take forever to sign - This has always been a problem in OOTP. I understand a player waiting for the best offer in the thick of the winter meetings. But when your catcher goes down in July and the potential free agent backup who's been sitting there for over a year takes two weeks to make up his fricken' mind, it's really aggravating.

Stephen Drew, signed May 21 first game June 2. OOTP may be unwittingly working like real life by delaying FA signings. Seems to me the feature request should be for instant signings but a mandatory 2 week rehab assignment. Anything else would be unrealistic to me.

[VARoadstter]

• Tried this version with financials on with a historical league so I could replay the 1962 Mets. Within 2 seasons 95% of teams are so cash poor that trading grinds to a halt except for prospects. Turned off financials again.
  
• Thank you for the "not interested in this player" button. Teams repeatedly offering me old bad players for my up and coming prospects. If I simply decline they ask again with a different throw away player in the trade. I don't want to mark my best prospects as "untouchable" because you never know - there might really be an offer I could consider. That leaves me fighting off the bad offers for my player with a large stick. At least labeling players as "not interested" keeps me from having to decline new trades every day.
  
• I also had a problem with financials in getting players to sign. I drafted Don Sutton and Nolan Ryan and even offering to meet their demands resulted in them saying they wouldn't play for New York. Fine, I got compensatory draft picks. I use one to draft Tom Seaver the next season. Guess. what. happened. next. I haven't finished my first season with financials off so I don't know if this will get rid of the problem or not. I hope it does or I will be rage quitting more in the future.
  
• I was excited by the prospect of 3D stadiums and seeing the ball flight. After viewing it for about 2 games I've switched back to 2D. I don't know what I was hoping to see but that wasn't it. I am hopeful it will incrementally improve.
  
• Is the Lahman database getting the ethnicity of all African-american players wrong or is it the game? Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Hank Arron. All of them listed as "Caucasian"? At least I can fix them as I see the ones that are wrong. Even so, I am just amazed at how good facegen is. Facegen combined with the mods to put actual team uniforms on players just makes me so happy.
  
• Oh and I drafted Tommy John and got a half season out of him before he had a career-ending shoulder injury. I tell you, that guy is cursed!

Keep at it. I did notice that in my comments above that none of them were gameplay related. That is pretty fantastic.