A most fascinating game...

[realstar]

This computer game is absolutely fascinating. I might go so far as to say it's the most interesting thing I've ever come across in my entire life (60yo this year). But it does have a few flaws.

Generally, the developers concern themselves too much with making a challenging computer game instead of focusing more on creating a baseball simulation. You have to give them credit for trying, however because they are working with basically lousy statistical data. All baseball stats are dubious, at best.

It even says so in the quotes.. (paraphrasing ?who was it?) 'some guys never played baseball as kids.' This is important. Because stats nerds with little on the field experience, don't get it. In one argument.. uh, debate I had on this forum, one of those stats heads had the gall to say 'fielding is not important.' Well, yeah. If you base your knowledge on bogus Range Factor & Zone Range. He went on to say that 'admittedly the stats formulations are useless.' Well, then. Make up your mind. LoL

Point being, stats are all we have on OOTP. When we invented games as kids, using dice, spinners & little pieces of paper with God knows what written on them (based usually on the infamous 'All Star Baseball' board game) we were always calculating according to our real life experience playing ball. We were never putting in stuff to make the game more challenging or sellable to the public. And we never claimed those games were good simulations of baseball. Consequently, we were always editing & refining them whenever things seemed unrealistic.

OOTP started out with this lousy idea that you could base a baseball simulation on sketchy scouting. Wrong. I mean, it makes sense, to some extent. But you're gonna have to be careful with that. Especially with historical baseball. Because you're prone to running into situations where the scouts didn't see that Brooks Robinson is a good fielder, ditto Willie Mays. Both of which has happened many times on various versions of OOTP.

Ridiculous random ratings are one thing, but when developers appear to be using the random factor to trick the user into playing what should be a good player according to ratings, but whom is apparently lousy or going through a slump, then it starts to get downright immoral. You're supposed to be able to get pure ratings according to stats, without random scouting errors. But this never works. Apparently rating error is infused into the game algorithms so much that it's unavoidable. Often I've said outloud to the screen "Just give us the damn quality of a player & stop trying to sneak around & trick us." This isn't Chessmaster. I don't need lessons on managing a ball team.

All I want is clean, pure ratings, with no A.I. hanky-panky. I'm not interested in competing with a computer program. I'm not really interested in computers at all, frankly. I only love the game of baseball. So what to do?

The game cheats. Cheat back.

Always play in Commish mode & learn to use the Editor function. When the program sabotages a player you know, historically, to have been a good player, where it clearly states how the player fared in a given year, in stats given for that player, when you can see how the computer is using a random factor to underrate a player on your team--apparently in order to make the game more challenging--just go into the editor & fix it.

What I do... Look at the year you are playing--some things vary in this, such as when you are allowing players from other years to be put into a fantasy game, so you'll have to use your better sense of judgement & be as fair as possible. Look at the fielding/hitting/pitching stats for the player's 'real life' performance of that year. Then compare those stats to the ones given in the Editor. You may need to do some calculating because IP & AB are going to be different. You can change these numbers in the Editor, but it wont hold. So you'll have to go into the changeable numbers under various ratings to change a player's Game Stats (what the A.I uses), one by one. As you do this, the player's ratings will change accordingly. It's a tedious business, but once you get all the Editor stats to reflect the player's actual stats, then you can go back to the Profile page & see what the player's ratings should really be. Note how much more realistic that is, and how the game has been sabotaging your player.

The most difficult editing is in fielding. Because there are no stats given in the Editor for fielding. Only changeable numbers which change the ratings. So you'll have to look at a player's Real Life historical fielding stats & judge how well the player fields by using your knowledge of Range Factor & Zone Rating & Effectiveness etc interpretation. Again, you'll have to use your better judgement for this & try to be as fair as possible. But you will notice that the game sabotages the user's players, fielding-wise. Like, a lot. This is especially infuriating when you discover how your pitchers have been sabotaged by cleverly decreasing Potential, apparently according to a random factor. Hey. It's not random when most of your players are having their Potential ratings reduced. That's called sabotage.

Again, I'm not interested in a challenging computer game. All I'm interested in is a realistic simulation, portrayal of PLAYER'S ABILITIES.

Somehow, developers got the idea that if they fudge player abilities (ratings) with stuff that looks like it's a random factor, then it would be more challenging for the user to play their game. Wrong. All it does is make the game less realistic.

Instead, the philosophy should be: Hands off the players' abilities. Let the game of baseball play out, without tampering with the evidence. Enough random stuff will happen naturally, if you will just do it that way.

[Mariner and Giants Fan]

Originally Posted by realstar

This computer game is absolutely fascinating. I might go so far as to say it's the most interesting thing I've ever come across in my entire life (60yo this year). But it does have a few flaws.

Generally, the developers concern themselves too much with making a challenging computer game instead of focusing more on creating a baseball simulation. You have to give them credit for trying, however because they are working with basically lousy statistical data. All baseball stats are dubious, at best.

It even says so in the quotes.. (paraphrasing ?who was it?) 'some guys never played baseball as kids.' This is important. Because stats nerds with little on the field experience, don't get it. In one argument.. uh, debate I had on this forum, one of those stats heads had the gall to say 'fielding is not important.' Well, yeah. If you base your knowledge on bogus Range Factor & Zone Range. He went on to say that 'admittedly the stats formulations are useless.' Well, then. Make up your mind. LoL

Point being, stats are all we have on OOTP. When we invented games as kids, using dice, spinners & little pieces of paper with God knows what written on them (based usually on the infamous 'All Star Baseball' board game) we were always calculating according to our real life experience playing ball. We were never putting in stuff to make the game more challenging or sellable to the public. And we never claimed those games were good simulations of baseball. Consequently, we were always editing & refining them whenever things seemed unrealistic.

OOTP started out with this lousy idea that you could base a baseball simulation on sketchy scouting. Wrong. I mean, it makes sense, to some extent. But you're gonna have to be careful with that. Especially with historical baseball. Because you're prone to running into situations where the scouts didn't see that Brooks Robinson is a good fielder, ditto Willie Mays. Both of which has happened many times on various versions of OOTP.

Ridiculous random ratings are one thing, but when developers appear to be using the random factor to trick the user into playing what should be a good player according to ratings, but whom is apparently lousy or going through a slump, then it starts to get downright immoral. You're supposed to be able to get pure ratings according to stats, without random scouting errors. But this never works. Apparently rating error is infused into the game algorithms so much that it's unavoidable. Often I've said outloud to the screen "Just give us the damn quality of a player & stop trying to sneak around & trick us." This isn't Chessmaster. I don't need lessons on managing a ball team.

All I want is clean, pure ratings, with no A.I. hanky-panky. I'm not interested in competing with a computer program. I'm not really interested in computers at all, frankly. I only love the game of baseball. So what to do?

The game cheats. Cheat back.

Always play in Commish mode & learn to use the Editor function. When the program sabotages a player you know, historically, to have been a good player, where it clearly states how the player fared in a given year, in stats given for that player, when you can see how the computer is using a random factor to underrate a player on your team--apparently in order to make the game more challenging--just go into the editor & fix it.

What I do... Look at the year you are playing--some things vary in this, such as when you are allowing players from other years to be put into a fantasy game, so you'll have to use your better sense of judgement & be as fair as possible. Look at the fielding/hitting/pitching stats for the player's 'real life' performance of that year. Then compare those stats to the ones given in the Editor. You may need to do some calculating because IP & AB are going to be different. You can change these numbers in the Editor, but it wont hold. So you'll have to go into the changeable numbers under various ratings to change a player's Game Stats (what the A.I uses), one by one. As you do this, the player's ratings will change accordingly. It's a tedious business, but once you get all the Editor stats to reflect the player's actual stats, then you can go back to the Profile page & see what the player's ratings should really be. Note how much more realistic that is, and how the game has been sabotaging your player.

The most difficult editing is in fielding. Because there are no stats given in the Editor for fielding. Only changeable numbers which change the ratings. So you'll have to look at a player's Real Life historical fielding stats & judge how well the player fields by using your knowledge of Range Factor & Zone Rating & Effectiveness etc interpretation. Again, you'll have to use your better judgement for this & try to be as fair as possible. But you will notice that the game sabotages the user's players, fielding-wise. Like, a lot. This is especially infuriating when you discover how your pitchers have been sabotaged by cleverly decreasing Potential, apparently according to a random factor. Hey. It's not random when most of your players are having their Potential ratings reduced. That's called sabotage.

Again, I'm not interested in a challenging computer game. All I'm interested in is a realistic simulation, portrayal of PLAYER'S ABILITIES.

Somehow, developers got the idea that if they fudge player abilities (ratings) with stuff that looks like it's a random factor, then it would be more challenging for the user to play their game. Wrong. All it does is make the game less realistic.

Instead, the philosophy should be: Hands off the players' abilities. Let the game of baseball play out, without tampering with the evidence. Enough random stuff will happen naturally, if you will just do it that way.

I really believe that you are overthinking things here. Why not try playing the game as an observer to see how it plays out as then you don't have players for as you say it "to screw around with"...

Interesting comments though I am not in agreement with your main theory. Oh I am 61 and a huge baseball fan that has been playing games/simulations since the 1960's and OOTP is easily the best ever though I still enjoy DMB.

[bjohn13]

I played baseball as a kid. I learned SABRmetrics as a 15 year old in 1990 when I bought a copy of Bill James Total Baseball. I became sold on it.

The rest of the baseball world caught up in the 2000s.

Baseball is a 100% statistical games. Successful managers in the Big Leagues follow statistical insight, including trends and splits, to win ball games.

And to address your point, fielding is important. It's just that the best fielder in the league is only incrementally better than the average fielder, so it's not nearly as important as pitching or hitting. And we can measure this very easily using the statistics you derided. It is through this statistical evaluation that we have come to a consensus that Joe Morgan and Derek Jeter were average defenders, all things considered, while Bill Mazeroski and Ozzie Smith were two of the greatest of all time.

[realstar]

maybe I was born to work for MSNBC

LoL