Combining Recalc With The Player Development System In OOTP 25

[BaseballReplayJournal]

We had a somewhat intense discussion here about whether it is advisable to run leagues with both recalc and the player development system turned on.

Numerous posters on the official forums have done this over the years.

I was curious, so I ran three test random debut leagues:

• One with the default settings on (development system only)
• One with both the development system and a 5 year recalc turned on
• One with recalc only and no development system

I ran each of these leagues with the default settings, starting the game in 1901 and running it through the end of the 2022 season. I didn't delete any players at the start, mess with the era settings, change around ballparks, or any of the fun stuff. This was strictly an autoplay only experiment.

The results were pretty interesting.

There wasn't a huge difference between having only the development system on and having both the development system and recalc on. Players did what I think we would expect them to do. In both situations, Babe Ruth wound up being a pitcher for about 6 or 7 seasons before converting to the outfield full time. The stats were more or less in line with what I'd expect, though there were a few small oddities here and there — Babe Ruth hit over 1000 home runs in one of the simulations, Ted Williams hit over 1000 in another, Williams had a year where he hit .444, that sort of thing.

However, running with recalc only on really screwed things up.

If you only have recalc running, the game simply doesn't know that players need to retire. Teams would put 80 and 90 year old players out regularly. Moises Alou played through age 122 without any discernible loss in ability.

I'm not sure why recalc is set up like this. Intuitively, I'd expect players to weaken as they get further away from seasons in which they actually played in real life. For whatever reason, the game engine simply doesn't do that.

Having "retire according to history" turned on (it was turned on in all three runs, since it's turned on by default) didn't do anything for the recalc only save. I think this is because I was running a random debut. I'd expect it to work if you had players coming into your save the same year they debuted in real life.

Here are a few takeaways:

• You can run recalc together with the development engine, even in OOTP 25. Personally, I prefer this approach, and am planning on pushing up talent change randomness to the max as well to allow for some in-season variety.
• The development system by itself works well. It seems that the days of Ruth pitching for his entire career are behind us.
• Don't run recalc only. The results were ridiculous. Xander Bogaerts hit .500 in 2013 using this setting, lol.

I made a video explaining all of this here, and created a blog post here with screenshots and stats, for those who are curious.

[imnotsammysosa]

Guys whose careers were cut short in real life used to eventually slow down and have their ratings crater in a reasonable fashion. Now they're just immortal. Something is broken there in this year's version and I hope it's fixed soon.

[LansdowneSt]

If you turn off development- even with recalc on - you MUST, MUST, MUST have retire according to history ON. Natural aging is part of development. You turned off aging in that one test sim.

Nothing is broken. Those cut short guys used to age in a natural fashion because you had development ON (with or without recalc, your choice). The immortality issue is because of your chosen settings. You turned off Retire According to History to see what Gehrig or Koufax did but did not ALSO turn on development (separate toggle).

EDIT: The above "triple MUST" is true for regular historical play, but Retire-According-to-History won't help if you have players out of their real-life years.

[FantasyDrafter]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

If you turn off development- even with recalc on - you MUST, MUST, MUST have retire according to history ON. Natural aging is part of development. You turned off aging in that one test sim.

Nothing is broken. Those cut short guys used to age in a natural fashion because you had development ON (with or without recalc, your choice). The immortality issue is because of your chosen settings. You turned off Retire According to History to see what Gehrig or Koufax did but did not ALSO turn on development (separate toggle).

He said he had it ON for all 3.

I’m not an historic OOTP guy, but I may run these for fun later while waiting for the powers that be to grace us with an update. If I do I’ll post what my game does.

[LansdowneSt]

My comment was mostly directed to the second post and stands for general historic games. I've seen too many immortal player comments on the various threads. Here combined with discord and reddit. Folks making one change to a critical setting without the corresponding move.

Random Debut requires more attention if you turn off development in the Wizard and elect Recalc. Because by the time you get the game started, you have not turned-on development through its separate toggle in the Advanced Mode Game Settings. You can't rely on Retire-According-to-History if Yaz appears in 1914 and is waiting for 1983. You also can't rely on it if Yaz appears in 1992. Or on a modern player that has no retirement day. You will also get borked results if have things like miss-seasons according to history on because Yaz didn't play in 1920 and the game could suddenly sideline him for that reason. Lastly, if a star player in their prime debuts a few years before their irl retirement day, they will hit the year and retire.

Development always needs to be on for Random Debut games. That's why it is the default option in the Wizard. If you are going to change it to Recalc (so players perform with tighter guardrails to year by year performance - and folks like Ruth convert at the appropriate age), you need to make additional advanced setting changes - because of the big change made in the Wizard to turn off development there.

RD is the one place where that RAH and other miss-according-to's should definitely be off. Recalc and development on & that other stuff off is how I think you will find most people play RD. I'd like to hear from others that don't do it that way.

[BaseballReplayJournal]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

If you turn off development- even with recalc on - you MUST, MUST, MUST have retire according to history ON. Natural aging is part of development. You turned off aging in that one test sim.

My experience is that having Retire According To History turned on did nothing for a random debut league.


I assume this is because the game looks to make sure the player retires the same year he retired in real life, and not after the same number of seasons.


I haven't tried it with earlier versions, but I'm pretty sure you'd see similarly crazy results. Although the thought of a 121 year old Moises Alou hitting over .300 is pretty funny...

And I agree after this experiment. The development engine really needs to be on for a random debut league. I can't think of a good reason to turn it off, and turning it off makes things go really crazy.

[thehef]

Many versions ago, you could unselect Retire Accdg to History (and Miss Seasons Accdg to History) and then the aging of players worked fine after guys ran out of real-life stats, and they would still retire at reasonable times (Koufax might play 5-10 more years; Yaz would retire very quickly). Not sure when this changed (or why) but it was probably in the range of OOTP 12 or 14. Something like that...

At any rate, there are SO many ways we can play OOTP. I suppose what some of us don't understand is why we can't play fairly strict historical what-ifs that include players not retiring as they did in real life. And more recently, OOTP has even taken away the ability to turn off RAH & MSAH if you select Real Transactions. (Yes, some will say "if you're using real transactions then part of those real transactions is players retiring when they actually did." Sure, but again, playing it your way can include any number of what-ifs, and what if guys moved around as they did in real life, but some guys didn't retire prematurely (or pass away, such as Munson or Bostock) is a valid "what if." Currently, as I understand it, I can't run those what-ifs unless I go essentially random (non-historical) rosters.

From my perspective, the solution is simple:

a) allow RAH and MSAH to be turned off even if Historical Transactions are selected
b) if Development is ON, OOTP does nothing (pretty sure we've established that when Development is on, players age & retire with reasonableness)
c) if Development is OFF, OOTP applies Development with a TCR setting of 1 to any player who has run out of real life statistics (pretty sure we've established that when you apply even the smallest TCR setting of 1, players will age within reasonable expectations)

I can't speak to the effort to code such a thing, but it seems this would make everyone happy

[jcard]

Another example (well, more like another yearly iteration of the same perennial examples) of how the absence of an authoritative official document explaining the various options and the interplay between them reduces the experience to the farcical. I will admit that until today, I would have thought that MSAH and RAH worked for RD by linking either the player’s in-game career season number or aged-season with the corresponding season of the player’s actual career. I guess that was because I figured that was how the previous system operated. Regardless, after so many years the same nagging uncertainties about integral game mechanics has shed any veneer or patina of mystery or idiosyncrasy that it may have once held, and stands as a bold-faced disincentive to become invested in the gameplay experience itself.

[BaseballReplayJournal]

Agreed - it would be very helpful to have an authoritative document explaining what these options are and how they work together. At the very least, it would avoid a few ridiculous and unnecessary flame wars.

Heck, I'd be happy if we could just edit historical transactions as we played. All other sims I'm aware of allow you to do that.

As for me, I'm probably going to use both development and the 5 year recalc on for my upcoming random debut project. Somebody recommended sticking TCR up to 200 as well, which sounds like fun — give guys a chance to have a horrible year or a great year every now and then.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by BaseballReplayJournal

Agreed - it would be very helpful to have an authoritative document explaining what these options are and how they work together. At the very least, it would avoid a few ridiculous and unnecessary flame wars.

Heck, I'd be happy if we could just edit historical transactions as we played. All other sims I'm aware of allow you to do that.

As for me, I'm probably going to use both development and the 5 year recalc on for my upcoming random debut project. Somebody recommended sticking TCR up to 200 as well, which sounds like fun — give guys a chance to have a horrible year or a great year every now and then.

Enjoy the RD game - it's a fantastic way to play and I wish more folks would give it a try!

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by BaseballReplayJournal

We had a somewhat intense discussion here about whether it is advisable to run leagues with both recalc and the player development system turned on.

Numerous posters on the official forums have done this over the years.

I was curious, so I ran three test random debut leagues:

• One with the default settings on (development system only)
• One with both the development system and a 5 year recalc turned on
• One with recalc only and no development system

I ran each of these leagues with the default settings, starting the game in 1901 and running it through the end of the 2022 season. I didn't delete any players at the start, mess with the era settings, change around ballparks, or any of the fun stuff. This was strictly an autoplay only experiment.

The results were pretty interesting.

There wasn't a huge difference between having only the development system on and having both the development system and recalc on. Players did what I think we would expect them to do. In both situations, Babe Ruth wound up being a pitcher for about 6 or 7 seasons before converting to the outfield full time. The stats were more or less in line with what I'd expect, though there were a few small oddities here and there — Babe Ruth hit over 1000 home runs in one of the simulations, Ted Williams hit over 1000 in another, Williams had a year where he hit .444, that sort of thing.

However, running with recalc only on really screwed things up.

If you only have recalc running, the game simply doesn't know that players need to retire. Teams would put 80 and 90 year old players out regularly. Moises Alou played through age 122 without any discernible loss in ability.

I'm not sure why recalc is set up like this. Intuitively, I'd expect players to weaken as they get further away from seasons in which they actually played in real life. For whatever reason, the game engine simply doesn't do that.

Having "retire according to history" turned on (it was turned on in all three runs, since it's turned on by default) didn't do anything for the recalc only save. I think this is because I was running a random debut. I'd expect it to work if you had players coming into your save the same year they debuted in real life.

Here are a few takeaways:

• You can run recalc together with the development engine, even in OOTP 25. Personally, I prefer this approach, and am planning on pushing up talent change randomness to the max as well to allow for some in-season variety.
• The development system by itself works well. It seems that the days of Ruth pitching for his entire career are behind us.
• Don't run recalc only. The results were ridiculous. Xander Bogaerts hit .500 in 2013 using this setting, lol.

I made a video explaining all of this here, and created a blog post here with screenshots and stats, for those who are curious.

wow thx and that is horribly disappointing. Recalc i would have thought would be closest to reality. And it makes no sense that a player would play to 122...why not 123? crazy

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by thehef

Many versions ago, you could unselect Retire Accdg to History (and Miss Seasons Accdg to History) and then the aging of players worked fine after guys ran out of real-life stats, and they would still retire at reasonable times (Koufax might play 5-10 more years; Yaz would retire very quickly). Not sure when this changed (or why) but it was probably in the range of OOTP 12 or 14. Something like that...

At any rate, there are SO many ways we can play OOTP. I suppose what some of us don't understand is why we can't play fairly strict historical what-ifs that include players not retiring as they did in real life. And more recently, OOTP has even taken away the ability to turn off RAH & MSAH if you select Real Transactions. (Yes, some will say "if you're using real transactions then part of those real transactions is players retiring when they actually did." Sure, but again, playing it your way can include any number of what-ifs, and what if guys moved around as they did in real life, but some guys didn't retire prematurely (or pass away, such as Munson or Bostock) is a valid "what if." Currently, as I understand it, I can't run those what-ifs unless I go essentially random (non-historical) rosters.

From my perspective, the solution is simple:

a) allow RAH and MSAH to be turned off even if Historical Transactions are selected
b) if Development is ON, OOTP does nothing (pretty sure we've established that when Development is on, players age & retire with reasonableness)
c) if Development is OFF, OOTP applies Development with a TCR setting of 1 to any player who has run out of real life statistics (pretty sure we've established that when you apply even the smallest TCR setting of 1, players will age within reasonable expectations)

I can't speak to the effort to code such a thing, but it seems this would make everyone happy

amen

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by jcard

Another example (well, more like another yearly iteration of the same perennial examples) of how the absence of an authoritative official document explaining the various options and the interplay between them reduces the experience to the farcical. I will admit that until today, I would have thought that MSAH and RAH worked for RD by linking either the player’s in-game career season number or aged-season with the corresponding season of the player’s actual career. I guess that was because I figured that was how the previous system operated. Regardless, after so many years the same nagging uncertainties about integral game mechanics has shed any veneer or patina of mystery or idiosyncrasy that it may have once held, and stands as a bold-faced disincentive to become invested in the gameplay experience itself.

<<Another example (well, more like another yearly iteration of the same perennial examples) of how the absence of an authoritative official document explaining the various options and the interplay between them reduces the experience to the farcical. I will admit that until today, I>>
Super Amen

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by BaseballReplayJournal

Agreed - it would be very helpful to have an authoritative document explaining what these options are and how they work together. At the very least, it would avoid a few ridiculous and unnecessary flame wars.

Heck, I'd be happy if we could just edit historical transactions as we played. All other sims I'm aware of allow you to do that.

As for me, I'm probably going to use both development and the 5 year recalc on for my upcoming random debut project. Somebody recommended sticking TCR up to 200 as well, which sounds like fun — give guys a chance to have a horrible year or a great year every now and then.

i suppose it is because we are beta testers

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by BaseballReplayJournal

Agreed - it would be very helpful to have an authoritative document explaining what these options are and how they work together. At the very least, it would avoid a few ridiculous and unnecessary flame wars.

Heck, I'd be happy if we could just edit historical transactions as we played. All other sims I'm aware of allow you to do that.

As for me, I'm probably going to use both development and the 5 year recalc on for my upcoming random debut project. Somebody recommended sticking TCR up to 200 as well, which sounds like fun — give guys a chance to have a horrible year or a great year every now and then.

I've been requesting the ability to edit historical transactions for a few years now. Also requested full editable history. Apparently it'll take some time to code since it's not an easy job.

[imnotsammysosa]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

If you turn off development- even with recalc on - you MUST, MUST, MUST have retire according to history ON. Natural aging is part of development. You turned off aging in that one test sim.

Nothing is broken. Those cut short guys used to age in a natural fashion because you had development ON (with or without recalc, your choice). The immortality issue is because of your chosen settings. You turned off Retire According to History to see what Gehrig or Koufax did but did not ALSO turn on development (separate toggle).

EDIT: The above "triple MUST" is true for regular historical play, but Retire-According-to-History won't help if you have players out of their real-life years.

Was development not off by default on previous versions? I was under the impression that it was. Granted, it’s been a couple versions since I did much with historical, though I played it a ton from 16-22. The immortal players thing is something I’ve never seen before, ever. And judging from the amount of posts we’re seeing about the issue, yeah, I’d say something is broken. I know one thing, I’ve never played with retire according to history on and have no interest in doing so.

So if I use recalc + development on, guys like Koufax will have their career extended, but eventually fall off? If so, that’s all I need. If not, you are incorrect, and something is broken, because this was possible before.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by imnotsammysosa

Was development not off by default on previous versions? I was under the impression that it was. Granted, it’s been a couple versions since I did much with historical, though I played it a ton from 16-22. The immortal players thing is something I’ve never seen before, ever. And judging from the amount of posts we’re seeing about the issue, yeah, I’d say something is broken. I know one thing, I’ve never played with retire according to history on and have no interest in doing so.

So if I use recalc + development on, guys like Koufax will have their career extended, but eventually fall off? If so, that’s all I need. If not, you are incorrect, and something is broken, because this was possible before.

Before OOTP25, there were three settings for Player Development in the Wizard drop-down. Just go back and look at OOTP23 or 24 if you still have it installed.

Selecting recalc in the Wizard when doing a game was fine because the toggle in the game for "Disabling Development" that is found in the Game Settings>Players & Team section (lower left) of the Game Settings menu used to default to unchecked - meaning development was ON by default when selecting reclac in the RD set-up. If you wanted development OFF, there was a third option in the Wizard drop-down that was simply called "Disable Player Development (recommended for replays)". Now that option in gone in the Wizard because "Disable Development" is toggled by default.

There is nothing broken in the game. It is doing precisely what is asked.

Veterans of RD games know to make sure development is manually turned on and Retire/Miss seasons according to history are off when setting up the game in OOTP25. Manually doing that is required because of new OOTP25 RD defaults. Not because the game is broken. All you do when you do that is restore the old RD game defaults set-up. It's just more advanced steps now.

How were people to know to do this? You weren't. Sometimes, defaults are reset in new editions to try and help but don't. People assumed that toggling to recalc was sufficient in the Wizard of an RD game because it always had been. But it is not anymore.

So, to answer this question "So if I use recalc + development on, guys like Koufax will have their career extended, but eventually fall off? If so, that’s all I need. If not, you are incorrect, and something is broken, because this was possible before."

The answer is Yes. - But also, in League Settings>Historical tab, lower left, turn off (untoggle) Retire players according to History and Players miss seasons according to history. Those two being on in an RD game will also cause havoc.

Development on = natural aging and some in-between-the-recalc-waypoint development (lower TCR to minimize).

Development off = no aging or development... ever. Players with these defaults must be force retired out of the game by Retire-According to History.

[BaseballReplayJournal]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

There is nothing broken in the game. It is doing precisely what is asked.

Yeah — I think the problem is not that the game is broken, but, rather, that these options and the effect they have are not clearly explained anywhere.

[FantasyDrafter]

Got around to doing this today. I ran the wizard, only thing I unchecked was “import historical records” (or at least that is what a I thought I was doing - starting with no record book like baseball was just invented). I’m running the default first which is development engine with no recalc. I have a discrepancy from what was reported however - retire players / miss seasons was OFF by default in my game (and I’m running it that way).

[FantasyDrafter]

Started in 1901 and checked it at 1921 and 1941 - seemed like output was very reasonable so far (thought RBI were a little low but I was really nitpicking there).