how long to create a new league?

[mitchkenn]

usually when i want to create a new game season, i just start a new historical league in either 1901 or 1871 and slowly expand it with fictional teams,players ... after a while, it slowly becomes a semi-historical (emphasis on semi ...). My last league lasted 63 years but i ended up running 3 different teams in commish mode and it just got to be more a hassle than enjoyment.

so i decided to try the opposite. Created a fictional league but inserted about what would be 50% real players. i grabbed a bunch of logos from the boards, but made a lot myself, made uniforms (some with the game jersey maker, some with justfan's great program. They are far from great, but work good enough for me, so i'm pleased with them.. Then i went to Baseball Reference and found lists for rookies for seasons 1871-2020. Hand picked (every unscientifically and not too objectively) players for my drafts. (Typed the players and base numbers up in Word pad, so i can edit up coming draft players.) While not enough to FILL the drafts, the game will create the rest.

All in all, it's taken me 2 and a half months - working on it about 4-5 hours a day. And today, i actually began playing (simming) 10 games of spring training.

Just was wondering how long any one else take to create their leagues? i just hope that my attention span lets me keep it going for more than my last one.

[The_Offspring187]

I started my NABA with OOTP 13 from a Quickstart someone made back then. I have tweaked it over the years and through different versions of the game. It took me hours to first set it up. But I've put even more hours into playing it.

I started in 1880 and simmed through 1999. I began watching game by game in the year 2000. I'm in 2008 now and have had a blast getting to know my league.

This comes after I lost a longtime league to corrupted data and learned a hard lesson about backing up my leagues. I'm so glad I fell back in love with another league and in turn the game again.

[luckymann]

I get almost as much satisfaction out of the conceptualisation of a universe as from the finished product.

My tendency toward obsessiveness means every save is long in the planning. Like most things in life, it usually turns out the more I put in the more I get out.

So loads of thought goes into planning out the league's trajectory, mix of players and realism v made-up elements, team locations. Then even more adding graphics and naming parks the way I want them to be named.

In the case of my ACBA (100 teams) and TBA (300+ teams) saves, this means months of prepping and copious note-taking, testing and simming before I actually kick the league off.

Now with my website being used as the hub for a lot of my OOTP goings-on, there's a bunch of extra work to do at each and every turn. I won't lie, there are times when I just can't be bothered. The writing of recaps and storylines kills me on occasion. But I soon buckle because I know I couldn't stand anything less than my best being on offer. And when I've punched through those times of inertia I get even more pleasure from the finished product, knowing just what went into it.

Good luck with your new world. I'd be surprised if it doesn't repay tenfold every drop of effort you've poured into it.

[Dutch Alexander]

It took me YEARS to set up my fictional league. I started with OOTP18 and only actually started playing this league in OOTP 21. It's a short season 10 team league that play a 72 game schedule with a secondary 10 team league that play a 54 game schedule. Between the 2 leagues there is promotion/relegation. All "Major League" teams have 2 minor league teams, one "reserve" team and one "talent" team with an age limit of 21. On top of that teams have an International Complex that basically functions as a youth system. In my world there is no draft, teams acquire players through scouting and a few established international free agents that are generated each year.

In order to get the financials right and get the statistical output I want I literally had hundreds of 50+ year test runs after which I put the results into Excel sheets to recalculate the modifiers to then run another test with the new modifiers. To get this league to function the way I want was a complete and utter nightmare. In this game you have so many options, which is great, but that can also work against you as things can become very complicated.

[mitchkenn]

Originally Posted by Dutch Alexander

It took me YEARS to set up my fictional league. I started with OOTP18 and only actually started playing this league in OOTP 21. It's a short season 10 team league that play a 72 game schedule with a secondary 10 team league that play a 54 game schedule. Between the 2 leagues there is promotion/relegation. All "Major League" teams have 2 minor league teams, one "reserve" team and one "talent" team with an age limit of 21. On top of that teams have an International Complex that basically functions as a youth system. In my world there is no draft, teams acquire players through scouting and a few established international free agents that are generated each year.

In order to get the financials right and get the statistical output I want I literally had hundreds of 50+ year test runs after which I put the results into Excel sheets to recalculate the modifiers to then run another test with the new modifiers. To get this league to function the way I want was a complete and utter nightmare. In this game you have so many options, which is great, but that can also work against you as things can become very complicated.

that much time, effort and vision is impressive!

the most time i spent (besides getting the rookies #s) was getting my minor leagues set up. The game does some weird stuff on it own (like putting Hawaii and New York in the same minor league) - so i got out an Atlas and made the affiliated minor league teams within 200 miles of the Major League city, if at all possible.(of course, some of these cities may never really had a minor league team, but they got one now!) i still need to tweak one major league division, but i'll wait until i get a full season finished. Like you it seems a lot of the enjoyment comes from the time and frustration of getting things set up just like you envision and then having the whole thing work.

[Sizeman21]

My attention span is short so I work on my league in short, obsessive burts before losing interest for awhile.

Between tweaking things, adding minor leagues and a college league, naming every single stadium in the leagues I made, editing the database and simming seasons over and over to see if the game plays realistically, I can say it has taken me four years to go from concept to finished product on my Elyria Baseball League. I don't think I intended it to take that long but I added new logos to my game and thus remade the league structure which took time.

I say it was all worth it. I love playing fictional and am always looking for non MLB creations people have made.

[Ktulu]

Months. Assembling and creating uniforms/logos/names is probably the most time consuming part. Then there's testing that league settings are all where you want them so that financials and stats work the way you want. (Saving templates in league setup is a lifesaver here). It can get even more complicated if you start creating leagues in different countries, different levels and restricting rosters to player nationalities, adding promotion/relegation etc. And if you really want to go deep down the rabbit hole you can create a custom fictional world database.

Current project I'm working on is something I started way back for OOTP12. Completely fictional countries and cities with custom player name files and ethnicities. Had to update the world.xml file because the format has changed a bit since then, but it appears to be working correctly. League structures are pretty much set, currently working on logos/uniforms then just have to setup finances/stats. Should be ready to go for OOTP22.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by Dutch Alexander

It took me YEARS to set up my fictional league. I started with OOTP18 and only actually started playing this league in OOTP 21. It's a short season 10 team league that play a 72 game schedule with a secondary 10 team league that play a 54 game schedule. Between the 2 leagues there is promotion/relegation. All "Major League" teams have 2 minor league teams, one "reserve" team and one "talent" team with an age limit of 21. On top of that teams have an International Complex that basically functions as a youth system. In my world there is no draft, teams acquire players through scouting and a few established international free agents that are generated each year.

In order to get the financials right and get the statistical output I want I literally had hundreds of 50+ year test runs after which I put the results into Excel sheets to recalculate the modifiers to then run another test with the new modifiers. To get this league to function the way I want was a complete and utter nightmare. In this game you have so many options, which is great, but that can also work against you as things can become very complicated.

can you post your financials? I have an extremely similar league

[Dutch Alexander]

Below the Finance settings of my 2 leagues. The first one is of my top league and the second is the lower league. Between the 2 leagues there is promotion/relegation.

[Dutch Alexander]

Here are the financial reports of both leagues at the end of last season. My goal was to set up a semi-professional league with budgets and salaries that are somewhat relatable.
I also wanted to create financial imbalance between leagues so that relegation is devastating and also an imbalance between teams so that you have some powerhouse teams, similar to European soccer leagues.

I use market size to create this imbalance. the main source of income for teams is media revenue, which is dependant on market size.

[Dutch Alexander]

A consequence of this setup is that teams who relegate end up in financial trouble. In the lower league the revenue is not enough to pay the expenses. If you look at the financial report of the lower league you see that the Pinguins (yes, this is spelled correctly!) have by far the highest payroll as they were relegated the previous year. Most players have standard opt outs in their contracts, but if the contract is good they rarely excercise this option. Even though the higher league reputation is maxed out and the lower league is bottomed out.

What we really should have is team relegation clauses in contracts (team optouts or salary reductions) to prevent financial ruin.

The result now is that relegated teams cannot afford to acquire free agents as their budget is already exceeded, so they better promote again very quickly with their current roster or they could end up stuck in the lower league long term.

[Dutch Alexander]

Below the accounting page of the Pinguins. As you can see their expenses far exceeded their revenue because of their high payroll and they had a huge financial loss. Usually this is corrected automatically by the game via cash from owner the next season so that their finances are kept in check. But still they start with a negative starting balance so they have no budget for free agents.

Ideally there should be team opt-outs in contracts when relegated (termination of contract or automatic salary reduction while not playing in the highest league).
Salary reduction would make players opt out of their contracts sooner when relegated and this would allow teams to control their finances better.

[dward1]

there are relegation opt-out clauses but I have never seen them activated, they don't seem to work. Love the Dutch game, I've played at some of these places before...will dive into your numbers soon