Suggestions: Game/League Setup Options

[battists]

This suggestion thread is designed to collect suggestions for the next version of OOTP, on the following topic:

Game/League Setup Options

Includes
- Suggestions related game and league setup and editing after creation, including new game-level features, etc.

Excludes
- Can't think of anything that isn't obvious!

Instructions
We will use this thread to collect suggestions on the above topic. Later on, we hope to present this information back to the community in a way that would allow you to vote and prioritize certain features.

If you would like to participate, here are the rules!

1. Only 1 suggestion per post.
2. Suggestions must be on-topic for the thread.
3. Constructive, non-inflammatory suggestions only.
4. No comments on others' suggestions are necessary. That means, we don't need 15 posts in the thread saying "Great idea!" or "I agree!"
5. Please don't link to other forum threads as your way of making suggestions. ("My suggestion can be found HERE.") If it's important enough to you that you want it in this thread, then it should be important enough to put it in the format I've asked for here!
6. You can certainly post suggestions that conflict with or build upon earlier suggestions.
7. Mockups are welcomed, they really help Markus see what you're interested in accomplishing.

Format for Suggestions

Suggestion
What is your suggestion? Be as specific as possible; include the screen you're talking about, if applicable.

Reason
Why do you think this is important? If this is to correct what you perceive as a problem in OOTP 2007, what is that problem? Be as specific as possible.

Priority
In your opinion, how important is this suggestion?
High (MUST have), Medium (should have), Low (nice to have))


Handy Cut-and-Paste Suggestion Form:

Suggestion


Reason


Priority


Thanks for participating!

Steve

[injury log]

Suggestion

The possibility to change the 'Create and Maintain Hidden Players' option after a League has been created.

Reason

At the moment, this setting can only be changed when a league is initially set up, and can never be changed thereafter. There are many situations where I can imagine wanting to change this (and several new players have mentioned in General that they disabled it, thinking it had to do with ghost players, and then wanted to turn it back on but could not). In particular, when simming with real players from e.g. Lahman, I might want to turn on hidden players after passing the present day, to avoid having fictional international signs during historical times.

Priority

High.

[JerryArr]

Suggestion
More playoff systems. NHL-style, NBA-style, NFL-style, etc etc.

Reason
Handy if you want more teams to make the playoffs for an online league or something, or if you want to have more teams in if you have, say, 3 divisions a league and 100 teams or something, where the max there would be 4 teams per league, you could set 8, 16, or 32 teams to make the playoffs. Maybe implement Le Grande Orange's proposal.

Priority
High

[1998 Yankees]

Suggestion
The ability to import set up data from csv files.

Reason
Would dramatically decrease set up time, eliminating much of the repetitive editing that needs to be done. Imagine being able to rearrange the data in Gambo's Stadium Chart into the exact format and order required to set up every stadium in your league just by simply importing it. The same data could be used to set up multiple games this way, without duplication of data entry.

Priority
Low. I'm doing the work, so it's not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice to have.

[1998 Yankees]

Suggestion
Make setup data entry easier. Have the game hold screen positions when doing certain setup jobs. For example: league setup, names & affiliations. Change an affiliation, screen goes back up to top. Need to scroll down for each team, over and over again. Another example: rules and options, click a different league, screen goes back up to top, cannot easily compare entries on the lower parts of the screen this way. Eliminate the need to press enter after entries and hold cursor position after entry. For example: ballpark factors, pictures & coordinates. Need to hit enter, cursor disappears and has to be advanced from the top again, entry by entry, over and over.

Reason
Some people like to fuss over details and are willing to put a lot of time into setup. I am one of them, but I sometimes feel that too much time is required and I wonder how those who are a bit less detail-oriented but still looking for realistic play cope with all of this work.

Priority
Medium, because this should be improved if my previous suggestion cannot be implemented.

[injury log]

[edit: I'm not really in the right thread, but this ties in very closely to '98Yankees post above]

Suggestion

Just to add to '98Yankees suggestion above, screen positions aren't always held in the player editor window either (e.g. change injury diagnosis, screen pops back to the top). So, if this issue can be solved in the league setup screens, it would be useful if it could be changed in the editor screens as well, and if screen position could be held when scrolling to the next player (helpful if all your edits are of the same type, e.g. to injuries).

Reason

Would make a lot of player edits easier, and likely would be helpful to roster creators.

Priority

Same as above.

[JerryArr]

Suggestion
The ability to turn off JUST Career Ending Injuries.

Reason
CEIs annoy a lot of people, and it would be handy if you're doing a journal or whatever.

Priority
Medium

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by JerryArr

Suggestion
More playoff systems. NHL-style, NBA-style, NFL-style, etc etc.

Reason
Handy if you want more teams to make the playoffs for an online league or something, or if you want to have more teams in if you have, say, 3 divisions a league and 100 teams or something, where the max there would be 4 teams per league, you could set 8, 16, or 32 teams to make the playoffs. Maybe implement Le Grande Orange's proposal.

Priority
High

To build upon the above, I'm working up a very detailed customizable playoffs proposal, complete with plenty of example situations and screenshot mockups. It'll take awhile to finish though. I'll either post an abbreviated form of it (which will still be fairly long) and/or I'll put together a downloadable PDF of the full proposal (which will be really long). I thought long and hard about an easy-to-use yet very flexible customizable playoff system, and I think I've achieved it (and hopefully it won't be too hard to code).

But in the interim, let me make this suggestion:

Suggestion

Allow the playoffs in each subleague to be set up differently.

Reason

OOTP does allow subleagues to have differing numbers of divisions in each, but the playoffs won't work right in one of the subleagues. By allowing playoffs to be configured for each subleague individually, it means greater flexibility for the user. Now a player could have one subleague with three divisions and the other with four in the other if they wanted.

Priority

Medium/High.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by JerryArr

Suggestion
The ability to turn off JUST Career Ending Injuries.

This is actually quite easy to do now; open injuries.txt, change all the Career Ending booleans to 0, restart your game, and you'll never see a career ender again (always back up your injuries.txt file before making modifications). Building on this suggestion, I would find the following useful:

Suggestion

Give the user independent control over the frequency of career ending injuries, severe injuries and of mild injuries.

Reason

At present, one can only adjust the frequency of injuries in general. Some players have complained that severe injuries occur too frequently for their tastes, relative to mild ones. Others have devised game scenarios which require a high frequency of severe injuries, and low frequency of mild ones. While it is possible to (sort of) influence this by modifying injuries.txt, it requires some elaborate workarounds.

Priority

Medium. I'll post other ideas about injury implementation in the Customization thread.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion

Allow us to make womens or mixed leagues in-game.

Reason

People already make womens leagues now, and it should be easier. High school leagues in most sports are generally mixed, and you occasionally get female players in mens teams at college level (I've only heard of kickers in American football, but I'm sure there's others).

Priority

Medium.

[Kivlehan]

Suggestion

Promotion/Relegation league style options

Reason

To better simulate European leagues and additionally to add a new twist on running the same old historical fiction sims.

Priority

High to me and a handful of others who have been clamoring for it. Probably low to everyone else.

[Le Grande Orange]

Suggestion

Allow separate leagues to be associated together under a higher-level grouping.

Reason

Better historical accuracy and more freedom for the player.

Priority

Extremely high (I feel this addition is a crucial one).


This "league assocation" idea was first proposed by cephasjames, so credit goes to him for the initial concept, but what follows is my fleshing out of the idea.


The Proposal In Detail

It's time for the use of subleagues to represent what were really separate leagues to end. Subleagues are still useful for recreating conference-like structures such as those found in the NBA or NFL, but for recreating baseball history and for user flexibility, they are lacking.

The real AL and NL, for example, often used different rules such as roster limits, and certainly had different league totals and statistics each year. But this league individuality cannot be recreated in OOTP at the moment since subleagues don't allow this level of uniqueness.

To get around this, league associations are the answer. This is how I envision it working, using MLB as an example.

First, you'd create your NL, and then you create the AL as a totally separate league. Both are completely individual entities, each with their own rules and option settings, and with their own league totals and financial settings. So, if you wanted the NL to have a 23 man active roster and the AL 25, you could do that. But as these leagues are separate entities, by default they cannot trade players between them, they cannot hold a common amateur draft, nor can they play any interleague games or post-season championship. These individual leagues do not respect the contracts of other leagues, and thus will try to lure players away from other leagues by offering them more money to jump leagues.

You decide you want these two leagues to be able to interact. What you do then is create an association and then place the two leagues in it. So, you'd create an association called MLB and put your AL and NL as members of this association. By putting them together in the MLB association, this allows the leagues to now interact in the following ways: 1) the leagues can now trade players between them; 2) the leagues can now hold a common amateur draft; 3) the leagues can now play interleague spring training and regular season games against each other; 4) the leagues can now hold a post-season championship series between them, and 5) the leagues now respect each other's player contracts and will not try to get players to contract jump.

This kind of associating together of leagues mimics quite well the real way in which the AL and NL operated.

I would allow two kinds of associations: a major league association and a major-minor association.

The major league association allows only those leagues classified as major leagues to form an association, and allows the kind of interacting mentioned previously.

The major-minor association is intended to reflect the real-world NAPBL, or National Association as it's also known. You would pick the major leagues and minor leagues you want to put into this association. When together in this association, it would allow the following: 1) a Rule 5 draft can now be held involving all the member leagues; 2) players can now be optioned from major league clubs to minor league ones; 3) major league clubs can form affiliations with minor league member clubs; 4) minor leagues can now trade players between them; 5) minor leagues can now play interleague games between them, both in the regular season and spring training; and 5) minor leagues can now play post-season series against each other.

The use of league associations also allows an interesting game play possibility: outlaw* leagues. Historically, leagues which were not signatories to the National Association were not bound by the rules of the Association, which meant the clubs did not have to respect the contracts or territories of other leagues. If a well-financed outlaw league decided it wanted to lure players away from other leagues, it was free to try and do so, just like the Mexican League did in 1946-48. The catch for the players was if they jumped their contracts to go and play for an outlaw league, they were no longer allowed to play for National Association member clubs (though they could apply for reinstatement).

An OOTP player could mimic this real-world history by setting up their own outlaw leagues inside their baseball universe. The league assocation concept certainly adds some interesting possibilities, along with being more historically authentic.

*Today, outlaw leagues are known as independent leagues, and do not try to directly compete with the major leagues. Instead, they aim to co-exist with the majors and fill a different niche in the sports marketplace.

[ctorg]

I hope this is the right category for this. It seems like the best to me.

Suggestion
Allow Lahman-style imports for leagues not abbreviated as "AL" or "NL".

Reason
The primary reason is that this would create an awesome new ability to plan out fictional leagues in advance. For instance, one could create a Lahman-like layout of the teams.csv file with different teams and league structures.

There would be some limitations, of course. This could not be expected to account for teams that moved from other leagues, league beginnings and endings, or league designations moving from minor to major or anything like that (although perhaps the game could use a second csv for other league attributes, like rule changes.

This would be a huge boost for those like me who like to sim out histories but want some nuance and team movement in the histories without having to stop constantly and reset it.

A secondary thing this would help with is inclusion of leagues like the Federal League or some pre-1900 major leagues.

Priority
Medium.

[SandMan]

Suggestion

Allow exhibition games (barnstorming) between teams from any league. Allow for option to include stats in seasonal records, or to have the stats split from actual league stats.


Reason

Would allow for world playoffs, barnstorming and simple exhibition games such as the Major League club playing its AAA affiliate in an annual match....


Priority

Medium (should have)

[Mattymo]

Originally Posted by SandMan

Suggestion

Allow exhibition games (barnstorming) between teams from any league. Allow for option to include stats in seasonal records, or to have the stats split from actual league stats.


Reason

Would allow for world playoffs, barnstorming and simple exhibition games such as the Major League club playing its AAA affiliate in an annual match....


Priority

Medium (should have)

unless I'm misinterpreting what you are saying, you can already do this. Just go to your game setup, then go to "edit schedule" and you can choose any two teams within your universe to play one another. Stats can't be kept though.

[Tony M]

Suggestion

Allow rule changes for example the number of balls for a walk, number of strikes for an out, whether foul balls count as strikes after 2, infield fly rule, etc.

Reason

Historical accuracy and general customisation - would be interesting to see the effect of having 2 strikes to an out or 4 to see the effect on play.

Priority

Medium

[Le Grande Orange]

Suggestion

Allow one or both games of a doubleheader to be only 7 inning games rather than the normal 9 innings (all single games are 9 innings long).

Reason

This is quite common in the minor leagues, and has been for a great many years. At first, a doubleheader typically consisted of a regular 9 inning game followed by a 7 inning game. Later, some leagues decided to change the rules so that both games of a doubleheader were 7 inning games.

The user would have the choice of the following when setting up the rules of their league:

Scheduled doubleheaders
[ ] Both games are 9 innings
[ ] The first game is 9 innings and the second game is 7 innings
[ ] Both games are 7 innings


Priority

Medium.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by SandMan

Suggestion

Allow exhibition games (barnstorming) between teams from any league. Allow for option to include stats in seasonal records, or to have the stats split from actual league stats.

Reason

Would allow for world playoffs, barnstorming and simple exhibition games such as the Major League club playing its AAA affiliate in an annual match....

Priority

Medium (should have)

Let me expand upon this idea, as I've been thinking along similar lines.

Suggestion

Allow intraleague and interleague exhibition games to be scheduled in the schedule editor and/or added manually to the schedule file, and those games considered as real games which are part of a team's season (though, of course, not counting in the league standings).

Reason

Exhibition contests between major league clubs, and between major and minor league clubs, were once very common during a season.

In 1975, for example, there were at least 15 exhibition games played during the season. The New York Mets played 3: one against Army, one against the Yankees, and one against Tidewater of the IL. In 1955, there were at least 19 exhibition games played. The New York Giants played 3: one against the Yankees, one against the Red Sox, and one against Minneapolis of the AA. The Cleveland Indians played 4: one against the Cardinals, one against the Reds, one against Reading of the EL, and one against Indianapolis of the AA.

The difference in how OOTP would treat exhibition games under this proposal rather than how they are done is as follows:

First, these exhibition contests would be considered part of the club's playing season. This means the exhibition games would appear on the league and team schedules (but would be marked as exhibition contests). Also, player participating in these exhibiton games would accumulate fatigue and could also be injured (but the AI should understand that these are exhibition games and thus would primarily use its backups and bench players rather than its regular lineup). The results and stats from such exhibition games of course do not count in the standings, but would be kept track of in their own category.

These exhibition games could be added via the schedule editor, or added manually into the schedule file. For the latter, add a column to the file format which designates whether a game is a regular season or exhibition contest. A 0 would indicate a regular season game and a 1 an exhibition game (the ability to add such exhibition games into the schedule files directly would make it much easier for me to update the MLB historical schedules to include at least the exhibiton games which took place between major league clubs).

The preceding was aimed at exhibition games between teams in the same league. If exhibition games between different leagues could be done in a similar manner, that would allow for even more interesting possibilities.

Allowing set in-season exhibition games between separate leagues would allow the player to recreate scenarios like that of the Negro Leagues. The Negro Leagues usually played league games on the weekend, and then exhibition contests the rest of the week against teams from different leagues (indeed, there were more exhibition games played than regular season ones). An OOTP player could emulate that by setting up a league which plays a small number of league games but a large number of exhibition games.

Since player fatigue and injuries from those exhibition games count, that means being a GM is a balancing act between keeping your players ready for the league games but also not overusing them in the exhibition season (though if there's a low roster limit there won't be much choice).

One last item would be for such exhibition games to perhaps generate finances and income for the host team like a regular season game would, though at a lower level.

Priority

Medium.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion

The option to automatically generate geographically sensible minor league teams. For example in an English league a Nottingham teams AAA team would probably be in Southwell or Mansfield. There should be an option when you set up a minor league that says something along the lines of "Generate geographic affiliations".

Reason

It would be easier to make minor league teams that seem more associated with the Major League team.

Priority

Medium.

[SandMan]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Let me expand upon this idea, as I've been thinking along similar lines.

Suggestion

Allow intraleague and interleague exhibition games to be scheduled in the schedule editor and/or added manually to the schedule file, and those games considered as real games which are part of a team's season (though, of course, not counting in the league standings).

Reason

Exhibition contests between major league clubs, and between major and minor league clubs, were once very common during a season.

In 1975, for example, there were at least 15 exhibition games played during the season. The New York Mets played 3: one against Army, one against the Yankees, and one against Tidewater of the IL. In 1955, there were at least 19 exhibition games played. The New York Giants played 3: one against the Yankees, one against the Red Sox, and one against Minneapolis of the AA. The Cleveland Indians played 4: one against the Cardinals, one against the Reds, one against Reading of the EL, and one against Indianapolis of the AA.

The difference in how OOTP would treat exhibition games under this proposal rather than how they are done is as follows:

First, these exhibition contests would be considered part of the club's playing season. This means the exhibition games would appear on the league and team schedules (but would be marked as exhibition contests). Also, player participating in these exhibiton games would accumulate fatigue and could also be injured (but the AI should understand that these are exhibition games and thus would primarily use its backups and bench players rather than its regular lineup). The results and stats from such exhibition games of course do not count in the standings, but would be kept track of in their own category.

These exhibition games could be added via the schedule editor, or added manually into the schedule file. For the latter, add a column to the file format which designates whether a game is a regular season or exhibition contest. A 0 would indicate a regular season game and a 1 an exhibition game (the ability to add such exhibition games into the schedule files directly would make it much easier for me to upate the MLB historical schedules to include at least the exhibiton games which took place between major league clubs).

The preceding was aimed at exhibition games between teams in the same league. If exhibition games between different leagues could be done in a similar manner, that would allow for even more interesting possibilities.

Allowing set in-season exhibition games between separate leagues would allow the player to recreate scenarios like that of the Negro Leagues. The Negro Leagues usually played league games on the weekend, and then exhibition contests the rest of the week against teams from different leagues (indeed, there were more exhibition games played than regular season ones). An OOTP player could emulate that by setting up a league which plays a small number of league games but a large number of exhibition games.

Since player fatigue and injuries from those exhibition games count, that means being a GM is a balancing act between keeping your players ready for the league games but also not overusing them in the exhibition season (though if there's a low roster limit there won't be much choice).

One last item would be for such exhibition games to perhaps generate finances and income for the host team like a regular season game would, though at a lower level.

Priority

Medium.

Well Said....

That is close to what I had in mind.... but just did not know how to fully state it as well as you have in this post.....