OOTP10 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

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

This works only before you have created the league. During league creation, you can set the player creation modifiers for the league...

Once the league is created and already poipulated with players, there's no way to fix this easily.

Ah, but the point is if you have a league of different nations they all get the same PCMs at startup, so if you want Luxembourg to be weaker than Germany you can't in a one league structure.

That's why I've done it with feeder leagues and then 'altered' the talent levels of the feeder leagues.

I just ran a quick two country test - Afghanistan and Albania as it saved mousework and fiddled the Afghani feeder potentials to 0.1 - for 22 years they shared championships and then the bottom fell out of the Afghani team and they went 50 years never going better than 40-122

So as a pretty please fix for OOTP10 can Feeder Leagues (and only feeder leagues) have talent potential modifiers - I know there's no way round the fact you have to sim 30 years to get the game on an even keel.

[Cryomaniac]

Pretty self explanatory, and I'm sure LGO will be including this in his suggestions as well, but allowing byes in playoffs would lets us do just about any type of playoffs we like.
I'm not sure how hard this would be to code, but it would be a cool feature and stop us needing to have a power of 2 as the number of playoff teams, which limits our options quite substantially.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion
Allow us to edit tie-breaking options, both end of game and end of season.

Let us choose how the game decides what happens when teams are tied at the end of the season. At the very least, the game should do what happens in real life. I know there is an issue with 3 way ties at the moment, that should be fixed first.

The end of game thing is less likely to happen, but it would be a nice feature. Let us have it like in Japan, or let us have games be tied after nine innings (eg, have a drop down that says "play to a finish; play 15 innings; play 12 innings; play 9 innings, even include the Olympic rules if possible). Of course, this would also need an option to decide what to do about tied games in standings (Half a win / half a loss each, or they don't count).

Reason
Tie-breaking is important, and OOTP should do it right.

Priority
End of season: High, end of game: medium.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion
Have an option to automatically define the player creation modifiers based on a nations baseball ability, or whatever that is called.


Reason
If you create a league in Afghanistan or Rwanda or some place like that, the players are going to be appaling, at least to start with, so the player creation modifiers should be like 0.150 or something. It would be a lot easier if there was an option to automatically do this.

Priority
Medium. It would be useful, but I can't justify it being high.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion
Make the interactions between Feeder leagues and the majors as realistic as possible. How it should work is that a high school player should do one of 3 things: Go to college, Turn pro, retire from baseball.

For college leagues, instead of just a min / max age there should be a "years of eligibility" option, from 3 to say 7.

Let us choose if high school players can turn pro or not, or if they have to go to college. Or let us have a "three years out of highschool" rule.

Reason
Feeder leagues are a great idea, but as things stand they don't work much like they do in real life.

Priority
High.

[Cryomaniac]

Suggestion
Allow us to edit the frequency and average lengths of suspensions in the league setup.

We should be able to have really strict rules or pretty lenient disipline rules, but harsh drug suspensions. I suppose to go with this, more player personality, with certain players more likely to argue balls & strikes / fight / use drugs.

Reason
There have been a number of complaints from people about the frequency of suspensions, and about the lengths, so the obvious thing is to let us choose how we want to do it. It also means we could make it more realistic historical (i.e turn of drug suspensions only until whenever).

Priority
Medium.

[falkonisback]

Suggestion
Have an option to select a waiting period to be eligible for the HOF after a player retires (3 yrs, 5 yrs, 0 yrs, etc). Also have some type of list or report generated that shows you who is eligible to be inducted that year based on the waiting period criteria provided.

Reason
I hate seeing players being automatically inducted into the HOF the second they retire (or right after the season is over the year they retire).

<b>Priority</b>
Medium-High. I'm all about making the game as realistic as well as customizable as possible. You have at least the choice to do this.

[falkonisback]

Suggestion
The ablility to select what team's uniform that you want players enshrined into the HOF in.

Reason
It would be cool to be able to take the best years that the player had while playing for X team and put him in the uniform of that team. It just looks weird when you're checking out your hall of fame players and you see them in a uniform for the last team they played for at the very end of their career and they only played 10 games for that team before they retired. Or even worse, seeing them in that nasty old blue and white free agency uniform. YUK.

Priority
Medium

[southsidefan]

Suggestion
Have "only minor league free-agents" to leave for foreign leagues i.e Nippon

Reason
I don't like seeing my star players leave my league, but would have no problems with career minor leaguers to try their "hand" at another league.And then maybe come back.

Priority
Medium

[jmknpk2]

Suggestion
Ability to set the default game/league creation options. I.e. a button to "save settings as default" (and maybe one to "restore initial settings").

Reason
I find myself changing the same settings over and over every time I create a league. I never want a DH, I never want revenue sharing,...it would be nice if all of my games/leagues could default to my favorite settings.

Priority
low - would be nice

[Afino]

Suggestion

- Make "average good/fair/poor etc player salary" more realistic prior to actual free agency.

Reason

- The top players through the dawn of free agency (Ruth, Williams, Musial, etc) made MAYBE $100,000-$150,000. I don't want to import 1954 (as an example) stats/financials and have a superstar salary be $580,000. It's annoying to have to manually change everything and try and hope I did it right in terms of league financials.

Priority

- Medium-High

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
Stadiums.csv

Reason
Allow for the creation of a text file that has all the needed parameters for creation of a stadium. This would allow for the mod community to go wild and research, create, and share factual data on thousands of stadiums across baseball history.

Priority
High

[koohead]

Suggestion

Add the ability to set limits for minor leagues as well as reserve rosters, or at least have those leagues follow the rules of the "major" league.


Reason

This is needed to prevent foreign players from being stock-piled and stuck on minors/reserve rosters.


Priority

Moderate. essential if you are trying to setup a multi-national universe with foreign player limits (mimicking the universe in real life) but not really useful for people who don't care about this.

[koohead]

Suggestion
Add the ability to define when the FA period beings, or in other words when players from 1 league are declared free agents and thus available as FA's for another league.


Reason

I believe this date is determined based on the leagues schedule/postseason. What happens is players from an independent or foreign league become FA's while the MLB is still in its current season, albeit possibly after the playoffs. A team would go out, sign a big name FA to a 1 year contract, only to lose him in a matter of weeks because that 1 year is now over in the MLB. If the date the offseason begins was able to be manually set and coordinated between leagues, this would make the FA signing period more realistic.


Priority

moderate. Only applicable if you play multiple leagues with varying schedule lengths.

[koohead]

Suggestion
Be able to setup developmental leagues and be able to send players to these leagues during the offseason

Reason
Gives young players a chance to get more playing time.


Priority
Moderate...have seen many people ask about this over the past couple of years.

[fhomess]

Suggestion
Provide a "league prestige" setting.

Reason
I'd like to be able to setup a world with MLB and the Japanese league, but if both leagues offer the same contract to a player, I want the player to pick MLB because that's where he can make a name for himself. You could expand this idea to a baseball version of the FIFA leagues around the world.

Priority
Medium

[RMc]

Suggestion
Limit number of games to be played in a week when creating schedules.

Reason
Not every league plays games every day; let's say it's a 19th-century league that only played once or twice a week. Or a WW2-era "twilight league" that played doubleheaders on Saturdays and Sundays, and not at all on weekdays. Or a high school league that plays three games a week.

The idea is that you would be able to tell the scheduler how many games you want played on a particular day and in a week. There would be three settings:

0: Do not schedule any games on this day.
1: Schedule one game on this day.
2: Schedule a doubleheader on this day.

You could further tweak it with

7: Zero or one game
8: Zero or two games
9: Random: none, one or two games.

Let's say you wanted an 80-game schedule over a 20-week period, with DHs on Sundays and one game on Saturday, but no games on Fridays.

SUN=2, MON=9, TUE=9, WED=9, THU=9, FRI=0, SAT=1
TOTAL GAMES PER WEEK=4

Yes, this can all be done by hand, but it's a pain.

Priority
Medium.

[fhomess]

Suggestion
New league setting: Declare game tied after X innings.

Reason
Ties were an accepted part of major league baseball in the 1800's and are also accepted in Japan.

Priority
Medium

[fhomess]

Suggestion
When adding a team in the league setup options, there should be an option to resurrect a disbanded team.

Reason
It's a fair amount of work to correctly recreate a previously existing team that's been disbanded. The game should have all the information needed, so it would be fairly easy to have the game do that work for the end user. It'd also avoid frustration on the part of those who haven't gotten it right.

Priority
High