Draft pool bug: Game creates Draft Pool twice

[Killebrew]

Issue: Game creates Draft Pool twice

Game details
- Latest 2.0.2 version of game
- Online league, 2nd season with OOTP 2007
- Rookie draft is set for generating 10 rounds of players for 8 draft rounds.
- Draft set for March 2nd
- Reveal draft pool set for 55 days (Apx. 1st or 2nd week of April)
- Current league date: January 25

Description
The draft pool was revealed in early January and we're drafting via a league forum in advance of the March second draft day. As we sim past February 2nd another rookie draft pool is created, doubling the size (and talent) of the draft.

This is a pretty serious issue but I can't find bug reports of this. That could be because most leagues hold their draft in June and the game testing just focused on the default June draft day (note that the draft pool reveal date logic does not work correctly for pre-season drafts either).

I've tried rerunning the sim with various settings changes but the draft is generated twice no matter what I do. The only fix that allows me to continue this league is to manually delete 300 players from the game, and I'll actually have to do this twice since we have begun drafting outside of the game in our forum.

If anyone has any suggestions on what to do please post here. Also please log this issue for future patches - if you need further details about the league let me know in this thread or by PM. Thanks.

[injury log]

I have seen this bug mid-season if I change the amateur draft date after the draft pool has been revealed. I'd guess the game hits a new draft pool reveal date, and generates a new draft pool accordingly. Even if you didn't change your draft date, it may be a related issue; with a very early draft, the game may be trying to reveal your draft pool twice --- because your chosen reveal date occurs before the Preseason begins, I'd bet the game considers the first pool generated to be a draft pool for the previous season, then generates a new pool on the first day of the Preseason.

[Zeyes]

FWIW, trying this out with a solo fictional league, I do get a reveal date that is shifted to the second day of the pre-season, but there's no prior draft pool created during the off-season, so no duplication.

[Killebrew]

Some related info about this bug:
- We did not change the draft date - it was set to March 1st in the previous season.
- It seems to me this error is related to either the early draft date or some flakiness with the draft reveal date logic - I've noticed in past test leagues that there were several issues with the reveal date game logic.
- The games second creation of rookies is not duplicate rookie players - it's all new rookie players, which actually makes manual 'clean-up' a lot more arduous. In my searches I found some duplicate rookie bug threads but I don't believe this bug is related to that one.


Update: I also found a major time saving bug workaround for users who might have searched this forum for this error. The workaround is a little convoluted so complete these steps cautiously, and you may want to create a test league copy of your master league and try these steps in the test league first. It appears that the game might default to generating the draft pool 1 month before the draft regardless of the user selected 'reveal date' (at least for drafts scheduled in March), so when you're about 33 days away from your March draft date change the draft date to late in the season and the 'reveal date' to the lowest selection (5 days I believe). Sim to the day before your March 1st draft date (February 28 or 29), change your draft date back to March 1st, then sim one day and you get your draft with the correct players. I still have to test a bit to make sure a second batch of rookies does not get generated at any other point in the season, but right now this workaround looks like it might save me dozens of hours (!) of fix-up work.

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

FWIW, trying this out with a solo fictional league, I do get a reveal date that is shifted to the second day of the pre-season, but there's no prior draft pool created during the off-season, so no duplication.

We had this set to reveal in the 1st week of January so we could begin the draft outside of the game, give owners enough time to scout the players, and avoid a long delay on draft day. To replicate this you would need to set a March 1 (that's our date anyway) draft date with the reveal date set to 55 days. Then you will see a draft pool generated in the 1st week of January, and a second draft pool generated at the beginning of February.

Note that if you choose a March 1st draft day and a '75 day' reveal date the game will ignore the selected reveal date (I guess that's just too early) until it's built in default reveal date (I think that is 30 days before scheduled draft day). It would be great if these drop down reveal date options were tested carefully. In cases where the game disregards the user selection that selection should be removed as a drop down option, as that error might prevent proper game testing, never mind the user frustration. EG: The 75 day reveal date option only works for drafts scheduled on certain dates.

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

We had this set to reveal in the 1st week of January so we could begin the draft outside of the game, give owners enough time to scout the players, and avoid a long delay on draft day. To replicate this you would need to set a March 1 (that's our date anyway) draft date with the reveal date set to 55 days. Then you will see a draft pool generated in the 1st week of January, and a second draft pool generated at the beginning of February.

Yes, I used the dates you gave in your first post. There was no draft pool tab on the players/free agents screen in January for me, and when the draft pool was eventually created/revealed in early February (as I said, exactly one day after the pre-season began), the number of players in the pool was exactly what it should have been, not twice as many.

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

Yes, I used the dates you gave in your first post. There was no draft pool tab on the players/free agents screen in January for me, and when the draft pool was eventually created/revealed in early February (as I said, exactly one day after the pre-season began), the number of players in the pool was exactly what it should have been, not twice as many.

Are you suggesting that the 'reveal draft pool' drop down option does not work at all in OOTP 2007? That option did work for our league (the above bug report) as well as in several test leagues I have run in the past. The feature can be flaky as hell (meaning it does not seem to work every time you set it) but it does sometimes work.

Anyway, that particular feature did work in the above bug report, maybe you should create a separate bug thread for your 'draft pool reveal' date issue?

[Zeyes]

Hallelujah, I think I might have figured out what happened...did you have a draft in the first season, or did you set the first date draft to March of Year 2 right at the start?

Edit: Or alternatively another question...is that an imported online league, or one started in v2007?

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

Hallelujah, I think I might have figured out what happened...did you have a draft in the first season, or did you set the first date draft to March of Year 2 right at the start?

Edit: Or alternatively another question...is that an imported online league, or one started in v2007?

Thanks for all the replies, and your last sounds like some good news (fingers crossed). I take it you were able to replicate the issue?


Anyway, your questions:
First, this is an imported online league - it began using OOTP3 way back in the day. We converted to OOTP 2007 from OOTP 6.5 and ran one full season using OOTP 2007, and we are currently in January of that second season using OOTP 2007.

We had a rookie draft in our first season using OOTP 2007. Originally we tried having a March 1st draft but the "draft pool reveal" logic was not working for us (no draft pools were being revealed), and we figured this was due to all the 'one-time' OOTP 6.5 conversion steps. We settled on a safe June draft and it worked.

We changed this draft date to March 1st a short time after that first year June draft, and we set the reveal date to 75 days. The game ignored that reveal instruction so we set it for 60 days. Again, the game ignored that instruction so we set it for 55 days - that is when the game generated it's first full rookie crop for us, and that was the first week of January. Now, because I test sim ahead to avert new errors, I see that the game will generate a whole new rookie crop at the beginning of February, hence this thread .

I'm pretty certain I can do the workaround I described above for this season, but it seems to me that this is going to be a regular year by year issue unless some game tweaks are made.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

We changed this draft date to March 1st a short time after that first year June draft, and we set the reveal date to 75 days. The game ignored that reveal instruction so we set it for 60 days. Again, the game ignored that instruction so we set it for 55 days - that is when the game generated it's first full rookie crop for us, and that was the first week of January. Now, because I test sim ahead to avert new errors, I see that the game will generate a whole new rookie crop at the beginning of February, hence this thread .

Now, going by what Zeyes posted earlier, I can take a good guess at what happened. If you set a reveal date that is too early- that would take you into the previous calendar year- as Zeyes points out the game automatically reschedules the reveal date (without warning, which seems like a bug to me) to the first day of the preseason. So I'd guess when you set your first reveal date (75 days), the game automatically rescheduled the reveal to Feb. 1st. The same would have happened with the second 'invalid' reveal date (60 days), but these two dates would then coincide, so only one pool would be generated on Feb 1. When you then scheduled a valid reveal date (55 days), the game scheduled a second draft pool reveal in January, but kept the Feb reveal as well, doubling the size of your draft pool.

I'd be about 90% sure that if you leave the reveal date alone at 55d, you won't have problems in future. Hope that's the case, anyway!

[Nutlaw]

Nice brainstorming, guys. Can someone confirm injury log's hypothesis in a test league?

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

Nice brainstorming, guys. Can someone confirm injury log's hypothesis in a test league?

No, I think it's slightly different. As far as I can tell, the game makes some sanity checks when you change the draft/reveal dates. In particular, if there's already such an event on the schedule, the old one is removed and the new one inserted. So, re-scheduling the reveal three times probably didn't do it. (BTW, I think injury log is correct that >55 days was rejected because it moved the reveal into the previous year.)

What seems to happen is this:

When you (re-)schedule the draft and the reveal into the next pre-season, the game will happily go along with that. Then, when the next pre-season itself begins, OOTP normally proceeds to schedule a draft and a reveal for that year, but noticing that they're already on the schedule the sanity check kicks in and there's no duplication.

Now, when you do something like Killebrew did (reveal in next off-season, draft in next pre-season), the reveal will take place as scheduled. Then, when the pre-season rolls around a few weeks later, OOTP checks the event schedule, notices that a draft is already included and so it doesn't duplicate that, but it doesn't see an associated reveal/draft pool creation date so that one does get re-scheduled. And as mentioned, that means it puts a reveal on the very next day, i.e. second day of the pre-season.

Seems what OOTP should be doing as part of the sanity check is to see whether there's already an active draft pool at that point in time.

[Nutlaw]

Okay, that sounds TTable.

TT 3708

[Zeyes]

sorta-dola,

Originally Posted by Zeyes

Seems what OOTP should be doing as part of the sanity check is to see whether there's already an active draft pool at that point in time.

BTW, I was referring to the "start of the pre-season" sanity check here, but it equally applies to the regular sanity check when you change the draft dates themselves...I think there have been some reports of duplicated draft pools when people were moving the draft date while they were in between the reveal and the old draft date, and those are likely due to the same issue (i.e. OOTP doesn't see that a reveal has already taken place and wants to associate another one with the draft to be on the safe side).

[Zeyes]

and one more...

Originally Posted by injury log

I'd be about 90% sure that if you leave the reveal date alone at 55d, you won't have problems in future. Hope that's the case, anyway!

Unfortunately, I don't think so. The actual cause of Killebrew's problem is that he manually changed the draft to a date in the next year, so if he does that again, it'll happen the same way. And if you let OOTP handle the draft scheduling, it won't schedule an off-season reveal (because the annual reveal was already "exhausted" on day 2 of the pre-season 11 months earlier). In other words, there won't be duplication, but OOTP will ignore the 55 days setting and just schedule the Pre-season Day 2 reveal.

What's needed here is for OOTP to dis-associate the reveal and the draft so that they can happen in different seasons (where OOTP's definition of "season" = "begins on Day 1 of the pre-season and ends on the last day of the off-season").

In fact, there's still a small problem if you try to do split off-season/pre-season draft settings right from the Create Game setup, because OOTP would need to schedule two reveals for the same season at the beginning (e.g. once for January 2007, once for January 2008), and it doesn't do that right now. The only way to get two such drafts is by changing the draft date manually after the first draft has taken place, i.e. what Killebrew did.

[Killebrew]

First off, thanks Zeyes, injury log, and Nutlaw for the amount of issue analysis time you have spent on this problem, as well as the detailed and patient responses - that's phenomenal support and it is much appreciated.

I have now safely simmed past the 'trouble spot' in our current online league season impacted by the risk of a duplicate draft crop, so I think we're going to be okay for this season. I moved the draft day to July with a 5 day draft pool reveal, then on the last day of February I'll change the draft day back to March 1st. When the you set the reveal date to a date older than the current game date, the game understandably ignores the reveal date instruction.

I'm still not certain how I'll resolve this issue for upcoming seasons, but again I appreciate the great detail in the responses and hope a patch solution might be considered to avert this kind of issue for us and other users.
It seems to me the safest thing for us to do would be to move the draft later in the year (like the default June) to ensure that the 'reveal draft pool' function works as you would expect it to, and we'll certainly consider that option. The reason we scheduled the draft on March 1st was twofold: 1) Many owners requested that the draft should take place before Spring Training [ST] in order to take advantage of the ST game features, and 2) for owners that are still struggling to deal with the brand new game we've tried to keep the game settings as close as possible to older OOTP games where the rookie draft always took place before Spring Training each year.

Note about the various OOTP calendar points you believe might be the part of the cause of this draft pool reveal issue: I suspect there may be some related issues with the games timing for dates and sections of the calendar year. EG: At certain times of the year (like January) the game displays the previous year as current on some screens and the new year as current on others. As a result owners get conflicting information that can cause them frustration, especially on player contract screens that appear to not match each other due to one having incorrect years displayed. I'll post that example in a separate thread if I can find some screens shots.

Thanks guys and good luck.

[Curtis]

Just to see if I'm understanding this, would a possible software solution from Markus be to consider a 'season' as starting the day after awards are given out (near the start of the off season) rather than the first day of the preseason as it is now?

Would doing that allow the use of the full 75 day pool reveal, even with an early draft?

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Just to see if I'm understanding this, would a possible software solution from Markus be to consider a 'season' as starting the day after awards are given out (near the start of the off season) rather than the first day of the preseason as it is now?

Would doing that allow the use of the full 75 day pool reveal, even with an early draft?

That would be great if it worked, and ideally it's a global variable for the league as that might also solve game display abnormalities with off-season/pre-season player contract info which displays different contract length dates for the same player depending on what screen you are on.

If this kind of big change could not be done then some validation for the draft pool reveal date needs to be added to the game eventually, where the game won't allow the user to choose an impossible draft pool reveal date. A more extreme option is to hard code the rookie draft date and the draft pool reveal date ala OOTP99-OOTP4/OOTP5 (I forget when the draft date became a game option).

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Just to see if I'm understanding this, would a possible software solution from Markus be to consider a 'season' as starting the day after awards are given out (near the start of the off season) rather than the first day of the preseason as it is now?

I think that would just move the problem, not eliminate it. Imagine somebody scheduling the amateur draft to happen in conjunction with the Rule 5 draft (i.e. December-ish), with a 60-day reveal window.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

I think that would just move the problem, not eliminate it. Imagine somebody scheduling the amateur draft to happen in conjunction with the Rule 5 draft (i.e. December-ish), with a 60-day reveal window.

True, but I was thinking about JUST changing the date-of-definition for when a season starts, not also increasing the range of dates when an amateur draft is allowable.

Of course, you might be saying that holding the ammy draft in conjunction with the Rule 5 draft is possible NOW, by moving the draft date later rather than earlier. If that's the case, then you're right; my idea wouldn't help anything.