Well, now. OOTP 9, and it's last update has come, and OOTP 10 is now being worked on. I just now noticed this thread when doing a google search for a collegiate league for OOTP9 (I am creating one myself at this point, because I failed to find a real college league, with all 30 conferences and teams. I may provide this to the community at some future date. Perhaps when OOTP 10 comes out.)
Anyway, that being said: I at first was a bit intimidated by the interface myself, but have come to love it. The functionality of the interface is pretty incredible, and quite powerful, with links to look at whatever the hell information you wanna look at, with no restrictions.
The biggest thing that still needs worked on, IMO, is the league creation process.
The collegiate league that I am working on, for instance, is taking a lot of time to set up. I cannot save the progress I have made so far in creating the league without actually finishing it, and continuing into the actual game. (30 D1A conferences with at least 10 teams each, with all of their own cities and stadiums and etc....this naturally take a long time just to do the research alone!) would be nice that once you start the game, ALL options will still be available, in order that we can save the league first as a template (a nice feature that it currently has) once the entire league structure is set up, then be able to test the league with the various different options throughout, rather than having to recreate the ENTIRE THING once again from scratch.
An example:
Player suspensions option, both for fighting, and drugs.
If you leave it unchecked at the beginning of the league, once you start the game, it is too late to go back and add it in again. Same with being able to "scout foreign countries" option. This is especially true for historical simulations.
I started a historical sim once with "Hidden Players" checked, and my 1871 league (up to 1873 by this point) became so incredibly chocked by foreigners, it wasn;t even funny at all. 3/4 of my team were from foreign countries.
I started it again, this time I wanted to test a different type of historical league. I started a league in the year 2000, with "hidden players off." Year of simming later, I couldn't turn Hidden Players back on if I wanted to.
The point:
I wold like to start a career in 1871 with all historical players, and simm al the way up until 2008, and switch over to being able to scout for hidden players.
That is when I turned my attention to creating a modern college league, and there are STILL more options tht I cannot mess with once the league is created, which is why I wish that either the current league creation process can be saved, before actually CREATING the league, or being able to go back and use ALL options available only during league creation. This way I can save the league as a template once I am happy. Test a few years, tweak some options until I am happy, and test a few more years and so on, until I have the "perfect" set up. Then I can go back to my saved template and start again with the "perfect" settings and start from year 1, and be happy with the league forever.
Not to make my post seem "TOO" pessimistic, the game is by far the greatest baseball sim ever created. But no matter how great a game/program is, there is ALWAYS room for improvement! That is what we call the "strive for perfection."
