Oh my - where to start - and with what goals?

[AstaSyneri]

Hi!

After seeing some tutorial videos I just had to buy OOTP13 (I have a weakness for Indie developers).

Now I am sitting in front of the attractive interface and in choices hell:

Where to start? Quick game, take a whole franchise or start as a minor coach in the rookie leagues? Start my own fantasy league that has a somewhat more manageable scope?

Where do I want to go? OOTP 13 looks like an open sandbox - you go in, you try to win the championship. Is that it?

Note to the developers: It would be nice if the game had some Meta structure to ease you into the game (sort of like the Campaign modes in other game types) or readily accessible achievements to motivate newcomers or to even have some type of meta manager where you earn experience as a manager and maybe have choices where to improve his influence (baseball manager RPG hehe).

With the game being great at what it does - what do you recommend where to start and what goals to set early?

Thanks for your help!

[olivertheorem]

My personal recommendation, if you are familiar with MLB, is to pick your favorite team and just kind of dive in. Don't be afraid to make mistakes the first time or five through. Just mess around and learn what things do and how things work.

Then, you can decide if a MLB historical/2012 game is what you want to do, or if you want to set up your own fictional league with customer settings.

[AstaSyneri]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

My personal recommendation, if you are familiar with MLB, is to pick your favorite team and just kind of dive in. Don't be afraid to make mistakes the first time or five through. Just mess around and learn what things do and how things work.

Then, you can decide if a MLB historical/2012 game is what you want to do, or if you want to set up your own fictional league with customer settings.

I don't really have a favorite MLB team - I occasionally let it run in the background (much to the annoyance of my kids who'd rather watch cartoons ;-)). Really depends on ESPN America programming.

Now I have created a fantasy league (EUropean Baseball Association) with 8 teams and an inaugural draft. Doing this was fun by itself - and I learned what idiot I had for a scout, too. So I cheated a little bit and created some decent managers and scouts for my team.

Not that that has helped much yet, 7 games into the season my Warlords are down 1-6, mostly because my replacement pitchers suck big time and give away runs in innings 6-9 by the bucket.

I'd love to give some other players a chance, but I created just the league and there is nothing on the free agent market that could help. Next season I am going to expand the league by 4 more teams or so, and add AAA affiliates to each team.

This kind of feels like bringing Baseball over to Europe and starting a real league system over time.

Any more tips & tricks?

[5cards]

Welcome to the game.

My first rule: DO NOT PANIC if your team is struggling after the first month. A great many of my teams have struggled the first month before hitting their stride.

Next, are you playing the games yourself as manager? Or is the computer simming the games for you? That will help in determining what to do.

[AstaSyneri]

Originally Posted by 5cards

Welcome to the game.

My first rule: DO NOT PANIC if your team is struggling after the first month. A great many of my teams have struggled the first month before hitting their stride.

Next, are you playing the games yourself as manager? Or is the computer simming the games for you? That will help in determining what to do.

The first ones I didn't even know the difference. Now I have completed the first season by simming and ending up 8th of 8. Now I am trying to expand the league - I can't find an option to add a triple A level league to my Major League.

Edit: Ahhh - I found it in the counter-intuitive lower right corner. Unfortunately I didn't use the Wizard for the expansion teams and set the four additional up a different way. And now apparently I can't do the expansion draft properly (or once more I am just not finding the correct option).

[olivertheorem]

I think the expansion option is under the league menu at the top, but I don't have my game available to confirm.

Don't worry too much about making mistakes; I cannot stress that enough. When I started playing OOTP, I made plenty of them. Just go with it for a 2-4 seasons, figure out what you want to do and how to make it work, then start over once you know how to get from the start to where you want to end up.

[AstaSyneri]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

I think the expansion option is under the league menu at the top, but I don't have my game available to confirm.

Don't worry too much about making mistakes; I cannot stress that enough. When I started playing OOTP, I made plenty of them. Just go with it for a 2-4 seasons, figure out what you want to do and how to make it work, then start over once you know how to get from the start to where you want to end up.

As it turns out I apparently drafted myself into a slump (and after generating the league turned up with a team that had the lowest budget - with overestimated players having max contracts of $15M with 3 years running. Uggh.).

By now i understand most of the stats - but by what mechanism do I find the best players to make a team? What are the strategies that experienced players are using?