Massive Ratings Nerf in RDBL (OOTP18)

[LordKilborn]

Commish Dawson asked me to post this as he is busy for the holiday.

Our league converted from 17 to 18 at the beginning of our latest season (2037). We just finished our first season in 18, and with the first player development report of the offseason, we experienced across the board nerfing of player abilities or, in some cases, entirely inexplicable changes.

A few examples:

• 28-year-old OF/hitter with no injuries during the year stole 60 bases in 70 attempts - his speed dropped from 80 to 30, similar drops in stealing and baserunning ratings;
• Established pitchers in their mid-20s with no injuries seeing their velocity dropping from 98-100 down 6-8 mph, with corresponding drop in "stuff";
• A 42-year-old pitcher seeing his velocity go from 87-89 up to 95-97;
• Multiple players in their prime coming off their best years experiencing a 15-point ratings drop;
• A mid-20s player coming off a season where he hit .330 with 26 HR and 108 RBI (and no injuries) seeing his contact drop from 70 to 25 and power from 55 to 40;
• Multiple pitchers seeing their "stuff" drop from the 60s and 70s into the 30s.

All of these changes occurred without changes in scouting directors or anything else. The season simply ended, that's all. Very few GMs do not have massive ratings changes across their systems.

This would be one thing if performance matched the rating changes, but in many cases, the performance of a player is top-of-the-line, and the ratings drop off a cliff.

The wide variation in this has thrown a lot of our GMs' minor league systems and future plans into chaos, and several have suggested shutting down 18 and going back to 17. There certainly seems to be some glitches in 18 beyond anything we've ever experienced when shifting to a new version - first the massive uptick in injuries (our injury setting is "very low"), and now this.

Please give us guidance on what in the world is happening and how to fix it or prevent this wild variance from ever happening again.

-Kilborn

[CRPerry13]

Same League:

here's a link to a Google Docs with screenshots of several examples of this problem.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Lukas Berger]

There should be anything about 18 itself that would cause anything like this, it must be some sort of setting error or random weirdness.

I saw this happen in one random debut league that was trying to use neutralized stats (which were borked for a while) and this resulted in the new draft class loading with crazy high ratings, that depressed the ratings for all other players in the league.

It's possible something like that happened here.

Your best bet would be to point us to your league file so we can try to take a look at it and see what's going on.

[CRPerry13]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I saw this happen in one random debut league that was trying to use neutralized stats (which were borked for a while) and this resulted in the new draft class loading with crazy high ratings, that depressed the ratings for all other players in the league.

Hah! I'm in that league as well. Maybe I'm a bad penny.

[PDHitman]

Lukas,
The Random League you remember was us also....when we imported our draft class this season using 18.

[PDHitman]

Lukas,
I'm not able to access the FTP, it says I dont have access....going to ftp://ootpsupport.com/incoming/ootp/saved_games/

I sent you a Google Drive link to our .dat files, hopefully you got that and can access them to help us fix the issue.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by PDHitman

Lukas,
The Random League you remember was us also....when we imported our draft class this season using 18.

I did get the email, I should be able to access the file no problem.

I was off today for the holiday, haven't taken a look yet, but did you import another draft class at all?

Because just off the top of my head, this sounds like pretty much the exact same thing as happened there!

[PDHitman]

We did delete and reimport a draft class and that fixed things. We just finished the World Series and Nov 10 was the 'scouting update' that botched things up. No new players came in to cause this....I'm stumped. At what point of the year does 'recalc' settings get applied to ratings?

[PDHitman]

Lukas,
Our league is at a standstill until we get this resolved.

[Lukas Berger]

So it looks like the issue is that you guys have the 'recalc player ratings based on real stats' button turned on.

So the game is simply doing that, it's recalcing based on the real stats.

The players who took the huge hits are either guys who were not playing at this point in their careers in real life or who played but were really bad.

The 60 of 70 SB guy is Kal Daniels and he's going into his age 28 season. IRL that was the last year of his career and he went 0 for 2 in steals.

The .330 hitter with 26 HR and 108 RBI is Jack Salveson and he didn't play at all in MLB between ages 22 and 30 irl.

What you guys will need to do is to restore the game to a backup from before you hit the offseason and the game recalced the ratings and uncheck the 'recalc player ratings based on real stats after each season' button.

Then the development engine will take over and you'll get the same sort of results you've seen in the past. You won't see the wild swings based on player's real life performances.

[LordKilborn]

Thank you for your work on this. We have backed up and are re-simming the majority of the last season, calling it our alternate universe 2037. Hopefully, this time, there won't be a massive rating nerf at the end of the season thanks to that setting turned off.

Now let's see if the Dodgers can catch lightning twice, or if someone else sneaks in for a Marty McFly, alternate reality World Series win!