Scouts seem utterly worthless?

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 12:39 PM

I've played several seasons and I'm extremely frustrated with the scouting.

Scouts seem completely clueless on prospects of any kind, regardless of their ratings.

For example:

My lead scout has an 18 scouting hitting and a 19 scouting hitting potential.

I have another scout who has 19/19.

Understand I'm not quite sure how the 1-250 scale of the editor measures against the 1-20 scale in my game. I'm basically dividing the 250 scale by 10 to determine the 1-20 rating (with the assumption that the extra 50 is the chance of players exceeding max ratings. Also it seems to line up that way approximately by looking at established major league players.

One of my better hitting prospects rates as 14/15/12 by the first and 15/15/12 by the second. Ok, good, my two top scouts agree that this guy is going to be really good. Their potential relative to MLB lists him as
69/80 and 68/80.

Great, so then I fire up the editor and take a look at him.

His potential ratings (out of 250), are 58/105/35.

By my best guess this puts him somewhere around 6/11/4

Take another player: 17/9/15 and 18/9/15, both scounts agree at 67/80 potential. Actual ratings 123/44/97 or about 12/5/10

Another: 14/15/12 and 12/15/12 67/80 and 67/80. Actuals? 87/101/78 or 9/10/8.

EVERY single prospect on my roster is like this. If my scouts rate them highly, they actually suck. SISA rated players are of course no more accurate.

Now, scouts seem to be pretty good at major leaguers, their evaluations are typically pretty close to reality.

I have no problem with scouts being frequently wrong, it's not a science. But by my estimate, they are ALWAYS VERY WRONG, even the very highest rated scouts. Understand these results were given with a full scout of the draft pool (not a quick scout).

Am I doing something wrong here? It seems like any effort made to scout prospects is worthless.

KCRoyalsFan · 03-25-2007, 12:41 PM

I will check this out in my fictional league and let you know if I have similar results with my star prospects.

Queensryche · 03-25-2007, 12:48 PM

Scouting in OOTP 2006-2007 sucks horribly. Just turn it off until they actually make it playable.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Queensryche

Scouting in OOTP 2006-2007 sucks horribly. Just turn it off until they actually make it playable.

I don't want to really play without scouting, as the the inherent uncertainty attached to scouting is a key part of the game experience for me. But if they are %100 unreliable that's going a bit too far in the other direction. I would think this would be a serious problem and others would have made a big deal about it now, so I'm suprised there hasn't been more about this posted so far unless again as I am saying I'm doing something wrong (but I'm not sure what that could be).

RonCo · 03-25-2007, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erithtotl

I don't want to really play without scouting, as the the inherent uncertainty attached to scouting is a key part of the game experience for me. But if they are %100 unreliable that's going a bit too far in the other direction. I would think this would be a serious problem and others would have made a big deal about it now, so I'm suprised there hasn't been more about this posted so far unless again as I am saying I'm doing something wrong (but I'm not sure what that could be).

Since talent development is random, there is no such thing as a 100% relaible scout, even if you turn them off.

Elendil · 03-25-2007, 01:09 PM

Ratings over 100 on the 250-point scale correspond to ratings over 20 on the 20-point scale. So a guy with 58/105/35 ratings on the 250-point scale actually has roughly 12/21/7 ratings on the 20-point scale. 123/44/97 corresponds to 25/9/19. So your scouts aren't far off at all. However, scouts will be more off with prospects than veterans, as you would expect.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elendil

Ratings over 100 on the 250-point scale correspond to ratings over 20 on the 20-point scale. So a guy with 58/105/35 ratings on the 250-point scale actually has roughly 12/21/7 ratings on the 20-point scale. 123/44/97 corresponds to 25/9/19. So your scouts aren't far off at all. However, scouts will be more off with prospects than veterans, as you would expect.

That'd be great news, except it doesn't seem to measure up with my major league players.

For example, my star 1st baseman on my major league (a guy who routinely puts up a .330/.385/.650 batting line), has concensus 20 point scale ratings of 14/16/7

His 250 point scale ratings are 126/151/64, which by your logic would mean he's actually 25/30/12 on a 20 point scale.

My starting shortstop who hits about .305/.370/.450 each year, has 20 point ratings of 14/5/11 (he hits a lot of doubles to pad his slg). His 250 point scale ratings are 130/39/110 which again, according to what you are saying his 20 point ratings should be 26/8/22.

2nd baseman: .300/.380/.520, 20 pt scale: 13/14/14, 250 pt scale: 120/130/120, projected 20 point scale by your system: 24/26/24.

I'm not calling you a liar, but my observations don't seem to match what you are saying so I'd be curious as to how you came to your conclusion and how it doesn't seem to match my results.

KCRoyalsFan · 03-25-2007, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elendil

Ratings over 100 on the 250-point scale correspond to ratings over 20 on the 20-point scale. So a guy with 58/105/35 ratings on the 250-point scale actually has roughly 12/21/7 ratings on the 20-point scale. 123/44/97 corresponds to 25/9/19. So your scouts aren't far off at all. However, scouts will be more off with prospects than veterans, as you would expect.

I'm not so sure I understand the scaling then.

Wouldn't a rating of 1 on the 20 scale be equivalent to a 12.5 on the 250 scale?

So if you have a guy with 175/187.5/150 potentials that would translate to about a 14/15/12 on a 20 point scale?

1998 Yankees · 03-25-2007, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erithtotl

EVERY single prospect on my roster is like this. If my scouts rate them highly, they actually suck. SISA rated players are of course no more accurate.

Now, scouts seem to be pretty good at major leaguers, their evaluations are typically pretty close to reality.

I have no problem with scouts being frequently wrong, it's not a science. But by my estimate, they are ALWAYS VERY WRONG, even the very highest rated scouts. Understand these results were given with a full scout of the draft pool (not a quick scout).

When you say "every single prospect," how many is that? Might it be realistic that you are just currently unlucky not to have any prospects that will be superstars (now that you "peeked" at them)? Think of how many young prospects there are IRL as opposed to how many actually become legends of the game. Some of the experts here stress "sample size" when making judgments of this nature based on small amounts of data. Just

.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

When you say "every single prospect," how many is that? Might it be realistic that you are just currently unlucky not to have any prospects that will be superstars (now that you "peeked" at them)? Think of how many young prospects there are IRL as opposed to how many actually become legends of the game. Some of the experts here stress "sample size" when making judgments of this nature based on small amounts of data. Just

.

No, EVERY SINGLE PROSPECT. I probably have 15 hitters in my minor league system that show up by these top two scouts as having a talent over 40/80, every single one of them I checked their ratings both from the scouts and in the editor, and every time they were *apparently* way, way off. But considering the other posts in this thread maybe I'm not translating properly between a 250 scale and a 20 point scale, though it's not clear what the actual translation should be.

KCRoyalsFan · 03-25-2007, 01:57 PM

i wish someone would clear up how the scales work.

Elendil · 03-25-2007, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erithtotl

That'd be great news, except it doesn't seem to measure up with my major league players.

For example, my star 1st baseman on my major league (a guy who routinely puts up a .330/.385/.650 batting line), has concensus 20 point scale ratings of 14/16/7

His 250 point scale ratings are 126/151/64, which by your logic would mean he's actually 25/30/12 on a 20 point scale.

My starting shortstop who hits about .305/.370/.450 each year, has 20 point ratings of 14/5/11 (he hits a lot of doubles to pad his slg). His 250 point scale ratings are 130/39/110 which again, according to what you are saying his 20 point ratings should be 26/8/22.

2nd baseman: .300/.380/.520, 20 pt scale: 13/14/14, 250 pt scale: 120/130/120, projected 20 point scale by your system: 24/26/24.

I'm not calling you a liar, but my observations don't seem to match what you are saying so I'd be curious as to how you came to your conclusion and how it doesn't seem to match my results.

My bad. This was the way it worked in 6.5, but I guess it's changed. This was relatively easy to test by disabling scouting, which allows you to view the true ratings, then comparing the ratings on the 20-point scale to the ratings in the editor. It turns out that ratings over 200 on the 250-point scale correspond to ratings over 20 on the 20-point scale. So your star 1B has actual ratings of 13/16/7, so your scouts are very close there. On the prospects, they are quite a way off, in precisely the ways that you note. I'm not sure why the game scouts overrate prospects so much.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 02:14 PM

Unfortunately that means we are back where I started. Can others confirm that they are seeing the same issues with their scouts?

Sven Draconian · 03-25-2007, 02:18 PM

Are you positive you are looking at "Potential" ratings when you turn the editor on and not the current ratings. They may be in a different place when you turn the editor on or a screen may change. I'll test this out myself as well.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sven Draconian

Are you positive you are looking at "Potential" ratings when you turn the editor on and not the current ratings. They may be in a different place when you turn the editor on or a screen may change. I'll test this out myself as well.

Editor is a seperate tab when you turn on commish mode. There, it lists player ratings as

Overall vLHP vRHP Potential

I've been reading from the far right column, which is the potential column.

KCRoyalsFan · 03-25-2007, 02:37 PM

Perhaps I have figured out the rating scale. I could be wrong but this is what I have come up with.

on a scale from 1 to 20 a 1 is equal to 0 out of 250 and a 20 would be equal to a 200 out of 250.

So here is what I've came up with
(1-20 scale=1-250 scale)
1=0
2=10.5
3=21
4=31.5
5=42
6=52.5
7=63
8=73.5
9=84
10=94.5
11=105
12=115.5
13=126
14=136.5
15=147
16=157.5
17=168
18=178.5
19=189
20=199.5

There is a slight rounding error.

I did some testing to help confirm this idea. A player with real ratings of 7/11/8 ended up having real ratings of 65/101/75.

However, then I turned scouting on. I had a top notch head scout with 20 in scouting pitching and pitching potential. I even looked in the editor and his ratings were maxed at 200 out of 200 for both. For some reason scouts don't use the 250 scale. I looked at one of my 5 star prospects. He was scouted at 19/15/19 potentials. That should give me approx 189/147/189 right? His real potentials were 146/102/149.

Moral of the story: No matter how good your scouts are, even if they are the best in the business, they are not always correct.

Sven Draconian · 03-25-2007, 02:38 PM

Turn the ratings on 1-100, it makes the math easier.

I just did a quick look of my 3 top 'specs in a dummy league, and at first I thought I saw the same problem. However, when I realized I was accidentally looking at actual ratings instead of potential ratings (which for some reason move when you go into the editor screen) I realized the error.

Either that or you scouts suck.

Elendil · 03-25-2007, 02:40 PM

OOTP rounds up, so 10/250 and 19/250 would both be 2/20, 20-29/250 would all be 3/20, etc.

Erithtotl · 03-25-2007, 02:41 PM

So to follow up, I went through my two rookie league times and compared the potential of my top hitting prospects as judged by my two top scouts named above, with their actual potentials (after turning scouting off):

The first two ratings are the 20-80 potential ratings given by my scouts, the final is their actual with scouting off. Note these are only hitters, where I'm using two scouts each with 19 in scouting hitting potential:

Billings (R)

L. Lammers 57 47 21
L. Pierce 52 57 20
P. Moreno 44 21 21

Sarasota (R)
B. Tracy 75 74 21
A. Rivera 69 69 21
R. Burton 80 73 64
K. Matsuo 49 51 21
D. Everett 75 70 21
C. Garza 74 68 21
D. Martin 68 68 21
J. Pratt 65 64 21
J. Rivera 65 55 21

So of the 12 players in my two rookie league teams, while my top two scouts agree on nearly all of these players, only one has any potential at all.

The interesting thing is the fact that the two scouts agree so closely. It seems to imply that this is more than scouts just being inaccurate, and actually a bug, because clearly if scouts were just always wrong, it's unlikely they'd be wrong the same way, about the same players.

KCRoyalsFan · 03-25-2007, 02:41 PM

I think that scouts can only be rated from 1-200 for a reason. There will always be a 50 point discrepancy. A 50 point discrepancy on the rating scale that I figured out would mean that a top rated scout could potential screw up a guys potential ratings by as much as 5 points. So if you get a guy who your scout says is 19/15/19 he could actually be 14/10/14.

Of course this is all my theory.

03-25-2007, 12:39 PM	#1
Erithtotl Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 330	Scouts seem utterly worthless? I've played several seasons and I'm extremely frustrated with the scouting. Scouts seem completely clueless on prospects of any kind, regardless of their ratings. For example: My lead scout has an 18 scouting hitting and a 19 scouting hitting potential. I have another scout who has 19/19. Understand I'm not quite sure how the 1-250 scale of the editor measures against the 1-20 scale in my game. I'm basically dividing the 250 scale by 10 to determine the 1-20 rating (with the assumption that the extra 50 is the chance of players exceeding max ratings. Also it seems to line up that way approximately by looking at established major league players. One of my better hitting prospects rates as 14/15/12 by the first and 15/15/12 by the second. Ok, good, my two top scouts agree that this guy is going to be really good. Their potential relative to MLB lists him as 69/80 and 68/80. Great, so then I fire up the editor and take a look at him. His potential ratings (out of 250), are 58/105/35. By my best guess this puts him somewhere around 6/11/4 Take another player: 17/9/15 and 18/9/15, both scounts agree at 67/80 potential. Actual ratings 123/44/97 or about 12/5/10 Another: 14/15/12 and 12/15/12 67/80 and 67/80. Actuals? 87/101/78 or 9/10/8. EVERY single prospect on my roster is like this. If my scouts rate them highly, they actually suck. SISA rated players are of course no more accurate. Now, scouts seem to be pretty good at major leaguers, their evaluations are typically pretty close to reality. I have no problem with scouts being frequently wrong, it's not a science. But by my estimate, they are ALWAYS VERY WRONG, even the very highest rated scouts. Understand these results were given with a full scout of the draft pool (not a quick scout). Am I doing something wrong here? It seems like any effort made to scout prospects is worthless.

03-25-2007, 01:09 PM	#6
Elendil Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: the dynasty forum Posts: 2,318	Ratings over 100 on the 250-point scale correspond to ratings over 20 on the 20-point scale. So a guy with 58/105/35 ratings on the 250-point scale actually has roughly 12/21/7 ratings on the 20-point scale. 123/44/97 corresponds to 25/9/19. So your scouts aren't far off at all. However, scouts will be more off with prospects than veterans, as you would expect. __________________ Heaven is kicking back with a double Talisker and a churchwarden stuffed with latakia.

03-25-2007, 02:37 PM	#16
KCRoyalsFan All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 599	Perhaps I have figured out the rating scale. I could be wrong but this is what I have come up with. on a scale from 1 to 20 a 1 is equal to 0 out of 250 and a 20 would be equal to a 200 out of 250. So here is what I've came up with (1-20 scale=1-250 scale) 1=0 2=10.5 3=21 4=31.5 5=42 6=52.5 7=63 8=73.5 9=84 10=94.5 11=105 12=115.5 13=126 14=136.5 15=147 16=157.5 17=168 18=178.5 19=189 20=199.5 There is a slight rounding error. I did some testing to help confirm this idea. A player with real ratings of 7/11/8 ended up having real ratings of 65/101/75. However, then I turned scouting on. I had a top notch head scout with 20 in scouting pitching and pitching potential. I even looked in the editor and his ratings were maxed at 200 out of 200 for both. For some reason scouts don't use the 250 scale. I looked at one of my 5 star prospects. He was scouted at 19/15/19 potentials. That should give me approx 189/147/189 right? His real potentials were 146/102/149. Moral of the story: No matter how good your scouts are, even if they are the best in the business, they are not always correct. Last edited by KCRoyalsFan; 03-25-2007 at 02:38 PM.

03-25-2007, 02:40 PM	#18
Elendil Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: the dynasty forum Posts: 2,318	OOTP rounds up, so 10/250 and 19/250 would both be 2/20, 20-29/250 would all be 3/20, etc. __________________ Heaven is kicking back with a double Talisker and a churchwarden stuffed with latakia.

03-25-2007, 12:41 PM	#2
KCRoyalsFan All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 599	I will check this out in my fictional league and let you know if I have similar results with my star prospects.

03-25-2007, 12:48 PM	#3
Queensryche Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 453	Scouting in OOTP 2006-2007 sucks horribly. Just turn it off until they actually make it playable.

03-25-2007, 01:57 PM	#11
KCRoyalsFan All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 599	i wish someone would clear up how the scales work.

03-25-2007, 02:14 PM	#13
Erithtotl Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 330	Unfortunately that means we are back where I started. Can others confirm that they are seeing the same issues with their scouts?

03-25-2007, 02:18 PM	#14
Sven Draconian Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 432	Are you positive you are looking at "Potential" ratings when you turn the editor on and not the current ratings. They may be in a different place when you turn the editor on or a screen may change. I'll test this out myself as well.

03-25-2007, 02:38 PM	#17
Sven Draconian Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 432	Turn the ratings on 1-100, it makes the math easier. I just did a quick look of my 3 top 'specs in a dummy league, and at first I thought I saw the same problem. However, when I realized I was accidentally looking at actual ratings instead of potential ratings (which for some reason move when you go into the editor screen) I realized the error. Either that or you scouts suck.

03-25-2007, 02:41 PM	#19
Erithtotl Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 330	So to follow up, I went through my two rookie league times and compared the potential of my top hitting prospects as judged by my two top scouts named above, with their actual potentials (after turning scouting off): The first two ratings are the 20-80 potential ratings given by my scouts, the final is their actual with scouting off. Note these are only hitters, where I'm using two scouts each with 19 in scouting hitting potential: Billings (R) L. Lammers 57 47 21 L. Pierce 52 57 20 P. Moreno 44 21 21 Sarasota (R) B. Tracy 75 74 21 A. Rivera 69 69 21 R. Burton 80 73 64 K. Matsuo 49 51 21 D. Everett 75 70 21 C. Garza 74 68 21 D. Martin 68 68 21 J. Pratt 65 64 21 J. Rivera 65 55 21 So of the 12 players in my two rookie league teams, while my top two scouts agree on nearly all of these players, only one has any potential at all. The interesting thing is the fact that the two scouts agree so closely. It seems to imply that this is more than scouts just being inaccurate, and actually a bug, because clearly if scouts were just always wrong, it's unlikely they'd be wrong the same way, about the same players.