Always Find Myself Simming the Whole Season

aborelli24 · 08-05-2016, 03:57 PM

Whenever i do a Standard OOTP 17 game i always find myself doing the same thing, simming the entire season to see how my team pans out. Ive tried to do a day by day career but i always get bored and end up simming the entire season. I want to be able to become more "into" the game and use all the data i have out in front of me. Anyone have any tips?

p.s. its not that i dont like the game, i love it. i just want to be able to do more and become more into it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bluenoser · 08-05-2016, 04:49 PM

I love this question - it always comes up - how do I get into my league?

Do you follow real baseball? Do you have a favourite team? Do you follow them?

Do the same in OOTP - get to know your team, get to know your players, and get to know the league. Simming 1 year at a time I guess you get to know who wins the Cy and MVP every year, but not much else

You have to immerse yourself in it, make it your own little world.

Déjà Bru · 08-05-2016, 08:43 PM

One thing that I have discovered is that I do not have to play out games in order to be immersed. I used to play out games, not anymore. What I miss in individual gameplay, I gain in being able to amass history, watch player career arcs, witness the rise and fall of dynasties, all in a reasonable amount of game playing time. Days and weeks rather than months and years.

Put it this way: The league I am in now is 23 years old. It has taken me over a month to play this much by not playing out my games. In the old days, maybe I'd be in Season 2 or 3 by now.

My immersion has gone up by being able to see my GM moves pan out, or fizzle, whereas before I might be getting a bit bored by now with only a couple of seasons under my belt.

jpeters1734 · 08-05-2016, 08:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

One thing that I have discovered is that I do not have to play out games in order to be immersed. I used to play out games, not anymore. What I miss in individual gameplay, I gain in being able to amass history, watch player career arcs, witness the rise and fall of dynasties, all in a reasonable amount of game playing time. Days and weeks rather than months and years.

Put it this way: The league I am in now is 23 years old. It has taken me over a month to play this much by not playing out my games. In the old days, maybe I'd be in Season 2 or 3 by now.

My immersion has gone up by being able to see my GM moves pan out, or fizzle, whereas before I might be getting a bit bored by now with only a couple of seasons under my belt.

agree completely, i'm much more of a history guy, then a day to day guy. thankfully, both ways are fantastic to play

ootpFox07 · 08-05-2016, 08:54 PM

I agree with quick simming. I generally take a loooooong time to work the off-season then quick sim the regular season and then play out most (if not all) the post-season games. I am a total sucker for the post-season and I still make up detailed playoff recaps.

My league is 105 years in. I hyper simmed the first 90 years (1910-2000) then took one moth to play out each other season until I caught up to the current year which was 2010. Now I play out the current year season annually for about 6-8 weeks.

My issue now is I can no longer play on my work machine during lunch nor can I even reach the OOTP forums during the day. My work productivity has certainly increased but my OOTP immersion is way, way down.

BBGiovanni · 08-05-2016, 08:58 PM

I'm surprised you don't control any roster moves at all? Even if all you did was put guys on and off the DL when necessary I think it would help you follow along during the season.

Alternately, why not make yourself a GM/Manager that can't be fired but set so that the computer does everything you don't want to do. Then, manage (or unmanage, as you like) up through your team's minor league system one level at a time. Start at rookie, go the next year to A, then AA, then AAA (etc), and in 4 years you will know the players throughout your system quite well.

Finally, have you tried simming a month at a time instead? Or two months, etc? Simming two weeks at a time would be great, but try month by month and see how that goes. At the end of whatever period you try, review the stats, transactions, etc. Consider keeping a journal for a player or as manager (sort of like what you see in the Dynasty forum here but just for you and as informally as you want).

I've been working for a few weeks on a fictional history and have simmed out 1870-1948 (with no crashes.. no jinx!) and only one restoration from backup so far. I've always managed game by game (until a season is lost anyway) and this experience has been really interesting.

dave1927p · 08-05-2016, 09:30 PM

Some people are simply season simmers....not that theres anything wrong with that.

I actually started that way. It took me at least 3 versions before I started getting more into the day to day or week to week.

MrBojangles · 08-06-2016, 01:08 AM

I am somewhere in the middle. I like seeing the arc of time but I love the day to day decisions that build that arc. So, I slow down and get into detail, and then I sometimes sim for a while.

Westheim · 08-06-2016, 02:31 AM

Playing out games is a considerable time investment, but it's so worth it on so many levels. Simming seasons at a fingers' click de-humanizes the players and reduces them to a set of more or less pretty numbers, regardless of the league, be it real MLB or fictional or whatever.

Everything becomes the same, nothing stands out. Oh that guy Stanton Martin won the MVP again. Okay. (sims next season, too) Nah.

Playing my fictional league day by day, which I have done for the last 4+ years (37 seasons now), I get an actual, living league rather than glorified spreadsheet animation (it's also the only league I play these days). That Stanton Martin guy, brutal rightfielder on the Crusaders, but always hurt, constantly hurt.

When my Raccoons go into a series with the Crusaders - six times a year - the first thing to check is whether Stanton Martin keeled over since being Player of the Week a fortnight ago, swatting .480 with five dingers, which is what he does for a living. Nestled in the cleanup slot between Martin Ortíz and B.J. Manfull, each of them a cleanup hitter in his own right (and this also gives the Crusaders a left-right-left middle of the order that is insanely hard to get through with mediocre pitching), he professionally kills pitching for a living. He didn't even get good until he was 26, just at the right time for the Crusaders to break out of a decades-long slumber. Oh, the times; around 2000, when both these teams were so bad and total dorks on either team spun no-hitters against the hapless opposition. Bob Joly, more of a nuisance than a pitcher, threw the one for the Raccoons. Bob Joly! Almost 15 years later, and I still can't fathom it. I guess there was a conjunction of six planets that day.

I can't even imagine what I'd do right now when simming. None of these would have mattered to me, simming it in late (actual) 2012. By now I'd be in the 2077 season of my 32nd league. Nothing matters. Bad result there? Oh well, sim another season. Sim until it gets good. But then, not even the good stuff matters.

Playing day by day, everything lives forever. I'm still revelling in picking Daniel Hall over Andres Ramirez with the #2 pick in the first ever amateur draft in my league. True, Ramirez is the all-time saves leader and went to the Hall of Fame, while Hall spent about as much time on a stretcher as on the field, but he was still Dan The Man, and while retired for 20 years now he's still one of my favorites and I've taken on his name for my Steam account, among other things.

Having played out every one of his agonizing injuries, Daniel Hall lives forever. The good stuff lives forever. Basically stealing Tetsu Osanai from the dumb Canadiens and having him start about 1,100 consecutive games before he broke apart, the odd and miraculous career path of 2-pitch wonder Scott Wade, or - Raccoons aside - the mind-boggling 1994 playoffs when sophomore Sonny Reece belted game-winning home runs for the Thunder in game 7 of both the CLCS and the World Series. Sonny Reece had a wonderful career, never was a Raccoon, but I still got to follow him amass almost 3,300 career hits and five World Series rings, a few of them even by destroying the Raccoons.

The good stuff lives forever - infamy lives forever, too. The stuff that makes you wish you could just shotgun that bozo off the mound, like when Juan Diaz threw three wild pitches in a single at-bat during the Raccoons' lowest lows. Trades that made sense at the time, but then resulted in gaining three games of outfielder Raúl Castillo in a deadline deal in '90 (before he shed a limb and spent the rest of his days on the DL) while sending future Hall of Fame starting pitcher Dennis Fried to the Blue Sox after just a cup of coffee in '89. Oh, '89, that agonizing World Series the Raccoons lost to the Wolves, when Glenn Johnston dropped Ed Parrell's soft fly in game 6, and the Wolves won in extra innings for the third time. The Raccoons needing to win to force game 163 against Stanton Martin's Crusaders in 2009, with Keith Ayers carrying the winning run, but being thrown out at home in the 14th inning, and the Racccons go on to lose in the 16th. "... and Keith Ayers was out at home" is a running gag for me now.

That's all the same league, which is the only one I've played for more than half a season since 2012. Even then I don't know everything, but I know enough to never hit that sim button ever again. In my opinion, less is more with this game. Play less, but actually play it, don't just whack the sim season button. It takes a time investment to build a meaningful amount of history, but the gains to be made are tremendous.

Déjà Bru · 08-06-2016, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ootpFox07

My issue now is I can no longer play on my work machine during lunch nor can I even reach the OOTP forums during the day. My work productivity has certainly increased but my OOTP immersion is way, way down.

I like this progression of smileys which reveal successive realizations and resulting mood changes:

"Heh, that's funny, isn't it?"

"Wait a minute. No, it's not funny."

"As a matter of fact, it stinks!"

Déjà Bru · 08-06-2016, 02:20 PM

Tell you something else, on a more serious note. Although I respect fellows who play all their games out, taking their time and importing their leagues from one version of OOTPB to the next, I have to say this:

By not playing all my games out, I have discovered different ways to PLAY the game itself. Does that make sense?

Discovering different ways to look at and do things. Doing other things differently from the same old ways. Looking at some stats closely for the first time. All things that I did not have time to do before when I was primarily clicking "Next Game."

Here's a dumb example but one that made me come back here and post this: You know the Overview screen where you can manage your minor league affiliates? For years and years, I have been making my moves in that screen and always having to open up player profiles to see current stats. Why? Because the stats did not fit well in the Overview screen (I play with increased font size).

Just today, I "discovered" the separate Minor Leagues page. I knew about it of course but I never bothered to look at it before. I used to scramble to do my minor league moves periodically between played out games. Now, with a more elevated viewpoint and some "spare time," I found that you can have stats showing on Minor Leagues and ratings appearing on Overview. Perfect.

Dumb example, yes, but that's what I am talking about.

homerj · 08-06-2016, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

My immersion has gone up by being able to see my GM moves pan out, or fizzle, whereas before I might be getting a bit bored by now with only a couple of seasons under my belt.

Yes this a thousand times over. If I can't see how my draft picks are going to pan out, current prospects, how long term deals are going to help/hurt me 5 years down the line, what's the purpose of it all?

Not to say I don't watch a couple of the key games during a season, and just sim months at a time in one clip, but if you concentrate too much on the day-to-day, you miss one of the best things about OOTP which is sitting in year 2041.

The Yurpman · 08-06-2016, 03:05 PM

My approach to things...

I sim day-by-day but don't play out any of the games. I check the box score of my team's game. Then I check the FA Pool, Waiver Wire, Transactions Log, etc. I might look at making a trade as well.

Between all of that and managing the roster of the MLB and minors it can take me five months, easily, to finish one OOTP season.

homerj · 08-06-2016, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Yurpman

My approach to things...

I sim day-by-day but don't play out any of the games. I check the box score of my team's game. Then I check the FA Pool, Waiver Wire, Transactions Log, etc. I might look at making a trade as well.

Between all of that and managing the roster of the MLB and minors it can take me five months, easily, to finish one OOTP season.

I think something that would REALLY help with that, is if we could get "personal messages" that stop a sim that could automatically check on things like that. For instance, I may be in the hunt for a 2nd lefty reliever with certain attributes, but don't want to check the FA and waiver wire every day. I'd like to put it in as a filter, and as soon as one comes up say "HEY LISTEN!".

robwondah · 08-06-2016, 04:13 PM

I also do find myself in the middle. There’s moments where game play is daily. Just recently, I haven’t been able to play for a few months, so I found myself simming a week-by-week to see where it goes. See if there were any great highlights. See where my team is and things like that.

What I do want to mention is I would promote going into the game with an outside element. An example that I wish was my creation, but one of my close friends has a running gag with all of the EA sports games and it is the tale of Chunky Salsa.

Chunky has played in the NBA, NHL, NFL. Post career as an entrepreneur, he is noted for bringing a team into LA as the Aftershocks, but probably most hated for moving the Minnesota Vikings to London and changing their name to the Monarchs. He has recently caused more controversy as he assumed a false identity to be drafted into a soccer league in Europe. Now I think it might be time for Chunky to take a stab at managing a MLB team or even steal Manfred’s job and be the Commissioner.

Maybe shaking something like that can build engagement with the league?

aquapong · 08-06-2016, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aborelli24

Whenever i do a Standard OOTP 17 game i always find myself doing the same thing, simming the entire season to see how my team pans out. Ive tried to do a day by day career but i always get bored and end up simming the entire season. I want to be able to become more "into" the game and use all the data i have out in front of me. Anyone have any tips?

p.s. its not that i dont like the game, i love it. i just want to be able to do more and become more into it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I find the game by game boring as well. I like being GM.

TheScuderia · 08-07-2016, 03:32 PM

I like to manage the first game of each regular season series. Late in the season I will play out a full series if it has big playoff implications.

I quick sim the remaining regular season games. This keeps me connected to my team and enables me to play through a full season at a fairly brisk pace.

discodude5 · 08-07-2016, 04:38 PM

I try to play as quick as possible when not in contention and slower when I have a chance at playoffs which means some seasons go by fairly quick when I'm just making gm moves and rebuilding the team.
I make a point of watching for possible records being broken while in fast sim mode and trying to watch for other interesting things happening like long win/loss/hitting streaks and I will slow it down when those happen.

I sim weekly until about mid season then take more time to watch for FA and waivers to fill holes by injuries/under performing players.

If my team is in the playoff hunt I sim day at a time starting just before the trade deadline.
If my team is out of it I look to make trades for next year and then after the deadline has passed resume weekly or even 2 week sims.

I find using this style I'm not out of touch with what's been happening in the league while able to go quicker at times to get to another season where my team is competitive.

So if you want to get more into your league I like the suggestions of others here and try the 2 week or 1 month sim to start.

BBGiovanni · 08-07-2016, 11:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

By not playing all my games out, I have discovered different ways to PLAY the game itself. Does that make sense?

Discovering different ways to look at and do things. Doing other things differently from the same old ways. Looking at some stats closely for the first time. All things that I did not have time to do before when I was primarily clicking

Makes perfect sense, I have almost always played out games, so simming multiple seasons has made me find new reports, new ways to search, new ways to store records, etc. It's been surprisingly fun just to watch tandom guys set records and make the HoF.

By the way, a couple posters seem to think these posts are criticizing the OP for "playing wrong", but I didn't intend anything of the sort, just to give he/she suggestions.

fredbeene · 08-08-2016, 12:29 AM

being new to this version, i am spending to much time trying to figure out how to do what i want to do.
i couldn't even figure out how to 'WATCH' the playoffs in broadcast mode of the 1973 season!
I personally like a combination GM manager.
I had a 0 0 tie going in 13 innings with Gaylord Perry vs Jim Palmer. Cmon that was exciting : ) As long as Baltimore AI was changing palmer, i wasn't changing perry.
I like tweaking players so the guy you never heard of but had a cool baseball card actually has potential..
what if bill plummer didn't play behind johnny bench...
what if al kaline played 5 more yrs (i wish i could figure out how to lengthen players careers in the seventies)

08-05-2016, 03:57 PM	#1
aborelli24 Bat Boy Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 16	Always Find Myself Simming the Whole Season Whenever i do a Standard OOTP 17 game i always find myself doing the same thing, simming the entire season to see how my team pans out. Ive tried to do a day by day career but i always get bored and end up simming the entire season. I want to be able to become more "into" the game and use all the data i have out in front of me. Anyone have any tips? p.s. its not that i dont like the game, i love it. i just want to be able to do more and become more into it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

08-05-2016, 08:43 PM	#3
Déjà Bru Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Long Island Posts: 11,741	One thing that I have discovered is that I do *not* have to play out games in order to be immersed. I used to play out games, not anymore. What I miss in individual gameplay, I gain in being able to amass history, watch player career arcs, witness the rise and fall of dynasties, all in a reasonable amount of game playing time. Days and weeks rather than months and years. Put it this way: The league I am in now is 23 years old. It has taken me over a month to play this much by not playing out my games. In the old days, maybe I'd be in Season 2 or 3 by now. My immersion has gone up by being able to see my GM moves pan out, or fizzle, whereas before I might be getting a bit bored by now with only a couple of seasons under my belt. __________________ - Bru

08-05-2016, 08:54 PM	#5
ootpFox07 All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 1,692	I agree with quick simming. I generally take a loooooong time to work the off-season then quick sim the regular season and then play out most (if not all) the post-season games. I am a total sucker for the post-season and I still make up detailed playoff recaps. My league is 105 years in. I hyper simmed the first 90 years (1910-2000) then took one moth to play out each other season until I caught up to the current year which was 2010. Now I play out the current year season annually for about 6-8 weeks. My issue now is I can no longer play on my work machine during lunch nor can I even reach the OOTP forums during the day. My work productivity has certainly increased but my OOTP immersion is way, way down. __________________ OOTP Mods and Sites: SimLeaguesPro - The new Premiere site for Online Leagues that runs Fantasy Leagues off OOTP games! OOTP Fantasy Leagues - The original mod to run Fantasy leagues off OOTP games. Gaming Channels: GamerFox015 YouTube Gaming Channel with OOTP content Twitch.tv channel for live sims

08-05-2016, 09:30 PM	#7
dave1927p FHM Moderator Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Brantford, ON Posts: 2,909	Some people are simply season simmers....not that theres anything wrong with that. I actually started that way. It took me at least 3 versions before I started getting more into the day to day or week to week. __________________ IN 1964 THE LEAFS WON THE STANLEY CUP :: IT'S ALSO THE YEAR THE CANADIAN FLAG WAS DESIGNED...coincidence?

08-06-2016, 02:31 AM	#9
Westheim Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 14,065	Playing out games is a considerable time investment, but it's so worth it on so many levels. Simming seasons at a fingers' click de-humanizes the players and reduces them to a set of more or less pretty numbers, regardless of the league, be it real MLB or fictional or whatever. Everything becomes the same, nothing stands out. Oh that guy Stanton Martin won the MVP again. Okay. (sims next season, too) Nah. Playing my fictional league day by day, which I have done for the last 4+ years (37 seasons now), I get an actual, living league rather than glorified spreadsheet animation (it's also the only league I play these days). That Stanton Martin guy, brutal rightfielder on the Crusaders, but always hurt, constantly hurt. When my Raccoons go into a series with the Crusaders - six times a year - the first thing to check is whether Stanton Martin keeled over since being Player of the Week a fortnight ago, swatting .480 with five dingers, which is what he does for a living. Nestled in the cleanup slot between Martin Ortíz and B.J. Manfull, each of them a cleanup hitter in his own right (and this also gives the Crusaders a left-right-left middle of the order that is insanely hard to get through with mediocre pitching), he professionally kills pitching for a living. He didn't even get good until he was 26, just at the right time for the Crusaders to break out of a decades-long slumber. Oh, the times; around 2000, when both these teams were so bad and total dorks on either team spun no-hitters against the hapless opposition. Bob Joly, more of a nuisance than a pitcher, threw the one for the Raccoons. Bob Joly! Almost 15 years later, and I still can't fathom it. I guess there was a conjunction of six planets that day. I can't even imagine what I'd do right now when simming. None of these would have mattered to me, simming it in late (actual) 2012. By now I'd be in the 2077 season of my 32nd league. Nothing matters. Bad result there? Oh well, sim another season. Sim until it gets good. But then, not even the good stuff matters. Playing day by day, everything lives forever. I'm still revelling in picking Daniel Hall over Andres Ramirez with the #2 pick in the first ever amateur draft in my league. True, Ramirez is the all-time saves leader and went to the Hall of Fame, while Hall spent about as much time on a stretcher as on the field, but he was still Dan The Man, and while retired for 20 years now he's still one of my favorites and I've taken on his name for my Steam account, among other things. Having played out every one of his agonizing injuries, Daniel Hall lives forever. The good stuff lives forever. Basically stealing Tetsu Osanai from the dumb Canadiens and having him start about 1,100 consecutive games before he broke apart, the odd and miraculous career path of 2-pitch wonder Scott Wade, or - Raccoons aside - the mind-boggling 1994 playoffs when sophomore Sonny Reece belted game-winning home runs for the Thunder in game 7 of both the CLCS and the World Series. Sonny Reece had a wonderful career, never was a Raccoon, but I still got to follow him amass almost 3,300 career hits and five World Series rings, a few of them even by destroying the Raccoons. The good stuff lives forever - infamy lives forever, too. The stuff that makes you wish you could just shotgun that bozo off the mound, like when Juan Diaz threw three wild pitches in a single at-bat during the Raccoons' lowest lows. Trades that made sense at the time, but then resulted in gaining three games of outfielder Raúl Castillo in a deadline deal in '90 (before he shed a limb and spent the rest of his days on the DL) while sending future Hall of Fame starting pitcher Dennis Fried to the Blue Sox after just a cup of coffee in '89. Oh, '89, that agonizing World Series the Raccoons lost to the Wolves, when Glenn Johnston dropped Ed Parrell's soft fly in game 6, and the Wolves won in extra innings for the third time. The Raccoons needing to win to force game 163 against Stanton Martin's Crusaders in 2009, with Keith Ayers carrying the winning run, but being thrown out at home in the 14th inning, and the Racccons go on to lose in the 16th. "... and Keith Ayers was out at home" is a running gag for me now. That's all the same league, which is the only one I've played for more than half a season since 2012. Even then I don't know everything, but I know enough to never hit that sim button ever again. In my opinion, less is more with this game. Play less, but actually play it, don't just whack the sim season button. It takes a time investment to build a meaningful amount of history, but the gains to be made are tremendous. __________________ Portland Raccoons, 95 years of excell-.... of baseball: Furballs here! 1983 * 1989 * 1991 * 1992 * 1993 * 1995 * 1996 * 2010 * 2017 * 2018 * 2019 * 2026 * 2028 * 2035 * 2037 * 2044 * 2045 * 2046 * 2047 * 2048 * 2051 * 2054 * 2055 * 2061 * 2071 1 OSANAI : 2 POWELL : 7 NOMURA \| RAMOS : 8 REECE : 10 BROWN : 15 HALL : 27 FERNANDEZ : 28 CASAS : 31 CARMONA : 32 WEST : 39 TONER : 46 SAITO Resident Mets Cynic - The Mets from 1962 onwards, here.

08-05-2016, 04:49 PM	#2
Bluenoser Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: In The Moment Posts: 14,496	I love this question - it always comes up - how do I get into my league? Do you follow real baseball? Do you have a favourite team? Do you follow them? Do the same in OOTP - get to know your team, get to know your players, and get to know the league. Simming 1 year at a time I guess you get to know who wins the Cy and MVP every year, but not much else You have to immerse yourself in it, make it your own little world.

08-05-2016, 08:58 PM	#6
BBGiovanni All Star Starter Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Republic of California Posts: 1,911	I'm surprised you don't control any roster moves at all? Even if all you did was put guys on and off the DL when necessary I think it would help you follow along during the season. Alternately, why not make yourself a GM/Manager that can't be fired but set so that the computer does everything you don't want to do. Then, manage (or unmanage, as you like) up through your team's minor league system one level at a time. Start at rookie, go the next year to A, then AA, then AAA (etc), and in 4 years you will know the players throughout your system quite well. Finally, have you tried simming a month at a time instead? Or two months, etc? Simming two weeks at a time would be great, but try month by month and see how that goes. At the end of whatever period you try, review the stats, transactions, etc. Consider keeping a journal for a player or as manager (sort of like what you see in the Dynasty forum here but just for you and as informally as you want). I've been working for a few weeks on a fictional history and have simmed out 1870-1948 (with no crashes.. no jinx!) and only one restoration from backup so far. I've always managed game by game (until a season is lost anyway) and this experience has been really interesting.

08-06-2016, 01:08 AM	#8
MrBojangles All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2016 Location: low and inside Posts: 568	I am somewhere in the middle. I like seeing the arc of time but I love the day to day decisions that build that arc. So, I slow down and get into detail, and then I sometimes sim for a while.

08-06-2016, 02:20 PM	#11
Déjà Bru Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Long Island Posts: 11,741	Tell you something else, on a more serious note. Although I respect fellows who play all their games out, taking their time and importing their leagues from one version of OOTPB to the next, I have to say this: By not playing all my games out, I have discovered different ways to PLAY the game itself. Does that make sense? Discovering different ways to look at and do things. Doing other things differently from the same old ways. Looking at some stats closely for the first time. All things that I did not have time to do before when I was primarily clicking "Next Game." Here's a dumb example but one that made me come back here and post this: You know the Overview screen where you can manage your minor league affiliates? For years and years, I have been making my moves in that screen and always having to open up player profiles to see current stats. Why? Because the stats did not fit well in the Overview screen (I play with increased font size). Just today, I "discovered" the separate Minor Leagues page. I knew about it of course but I never bothered to look at it before. I used to scramble to do my minor league moves periodically between played out games. Now, with a more elevated viewpoint and some "spare time," I found that you can have stats showing on Minor Leagues and ratings appearing on Overview. Perfect. Dumb example, yes, but that's what I am talking about. __________________ - Bru

08-06-2016, 03:05 PM	#13
The Yurpman Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2012 Posts: 320	My approach to things... I sim day-by-day but don't play out any of the games. I check the box score of my team's game. Then I check the FA Pool, Waiver Wire, Transactions Log, etc. I might look at making a trade as well. Between all of that and managing the roster of the MLB and minors it can take me five months, easily, to finish one OOTP season.

08-06-2016, 04:13 PM	#15
robwondah Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 287	I also do find myself in the middle. There’s moments where game play is daily. Just recently, I haven’t been able to play for a few months, so I found myself simming a week-by-week to see where it goes. See if there were any great highlights. See where my team is and things like that. What I do want to mention is I would promote going into the game with an outside element. An example that I wish was my creation, but one of my close friends has a running gag with all of the EA sports games and it is the tale of Chunky Salsa. Chunky has played in the NBA, NHL, NFL. Post career as an entrepreneur, he is noted for bringing a team into LA as the Aftershocks, but probably most hated for moving the Minnesota Vikings to London and changing their name to the Monarchs. He has recently caused more controversy as he assumed a false identity to be drafted into a soccer league in Europe. Now I think it might be time for Chunky to take a stab at managing a MLB team or even steal Manfred’s job and be the Commissioner. Maybe shaking something like that can build engagement with the league?

08-07-2016, 03:32 PM	#17
TheScuderia Bat Boy Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 4	I like to manage the first game of each regular season series. Late in the season I will play out a full series if it has big playoff implications. I quick sim the remaining regular season games. This keeps me connected to my team and enables me to play through a full season at a fairly brisk pace. Last edited by TheScuderia; 08-07-2016 at 03:34 PM.

08-07-2016, 04:38 PM	#18
discodude5 Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Saskatchewan Posts: 371	I try to play as quick as possible when not in contention and slower when I have a chance at playoffs which means some seasons go by fairly quick when I'm just making gm moves and rebuilding the team. I make a point of watching for possible records being broken while in fast sim mode and trying to watch for other interesting things happening like long win/loss/hitting streaks and I will slow it down when those happen. I sim weekly until about mid season then take more time to watch for FA and waivers to fill holes by injuries/under performing players. If my team is in the playoff hunt I sim day at a time starting just before the trade deadline. If my team is out of it I look to make trades for next year and then after the deadline has passed resume weekly or even 2 week sims. I find using this style I'm not out of touch with what's been happening in the league while able to go quicker at times to get to another season where my team is competitive. So if you want to get more into your league I like the suggestions of others here and try the 2 week or 1 month sim to start. Last edited by discodude5; 08-07-2016 at 04:48 PM.

08-08-2016, 12:29 AM	#20
fredbeene All Star Starter Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 1,674	being new to this version, i am spending to much time trying to figure out how to do what i want to do. i couldn't even figure out how to 'WATCH' the playoffs in broadcast mode of the 1973 season! I personally like a combination GM manager. I had a 0 0 tie going in 13 innings with Gaylord Perry vs Jim Palmer. Cmon that was exciting : ) As long as Baltimore AI was changing palmer, i wasn't changing perry. I like tweaking players so the guy you never heard of but had a cool baseball card actually has potential.. what if bill plummer didn't play behind johnny bench... what if al kaline played 5 more yrs (i wish i could figure out how to lengthen players careers in the seventies) Last edited by fredbeene; 08-08-2016 at 12:31 AM.