Just the facts, Ma'am...

[Charley575]

I don't know from DMB, but I otherwise completely agree. Again, and I know a lot of people get tired of hearing about how 6.5 was so great, and sometimes I am one of them, but in this case, the 6.5 PbP was really good. Not perfect. But it was tight, had some great plays in there, but not too much. It mentioned some statistics of interest, and to me, felt more like listening to a real radio broadcast than this version. Was it a little vanilla? Yeah. Could it have been jazzed up a little for this version? Certainly. I would just like to point out, for clarification, that what I'm asking for is not "less suspense", because I'm afraid that translates to "make it boring". What I'm complaining about is the illusion of suspense. But there is none. If it's smashed, bashed, jolted, bolted...etc, it's an out. In other words I think when they wrote the text file they tried too hard to keep the player guessing. My personal feeling about that is that it is fultile to try to keep the player guessing becasue when you play every single game out, eventually, you catch on, because you've seen all of the text before, and you start to recognize some plays immediately.

[Cooker]

I may be in the minority but I think OOTP2006's PBP is far better than 6.5. Overall it's more readable and enjoyable. I think the text team did a good job.

I don't mind fictional promos (Heinsohn-Duffy Brewery; Dale & Eli's Dad's Ice Cream, etc.). Sure, they get old after hundreds of games, but I understand why the text-team put them in. What might be helpful would be if some talented people in this community offered new "replacement text packages" from time to time. Just an idea to keep them from getting too tedious....

One thing to be fixed is inconsistency within plays. For instance: "Huffman hits a towering fly ball to right field; Simpson moves under it; has it sized up; it's back, back back ... a 434 foot home run for Huffman!" That's irritating. The problem isn't the text; it's how the engine strings together pieces. You can "size up" a routine fly. But no OF "sizes up" a home run. Even if it's only a few feet over the fence, an announcer never describes a right fielder who is sprinting toward the wall as having it "sized up."

The same thing happens describing ground balls. The first PBP "piece" calls it a shot into the hole on the right side of the infield; the next "piece" says it should be an easy double play. The two are mutually exclusive. No announcer begins a desciption calling it "a shot into the hole" before predicting an easy DP. I suspect each "piece" is randomly generated by the text engine. My suggestion is to code the engine so "pieces" are never matched with others that will read inconsistently.

But honestly, I'm not too troubled by the inconsistencies. If they can be fixed, great. But overall I still think the PBP is lots more varied and much better than 6.5.

My two cents. Your mileage may vary.

[Twelvefield]

Originally Posted by battists

I think the bigger question about "hiring a professional" would be this:

A professional what? Writer? Play-by-play announcer? Editor? There were people on the text team whose real-world jobs matched each of those descriptions. I don't think the problem is as simple as "just pay someone to do it."

Hooray for Gastric Reflux and this blast-from-the-past quote:

Originally Posted by Gastric ReFlux

Writing can be an art.

But the real way to solve all this will be to have someone go back in time and kidnap Bernard Malamud. We'll have him write the PbP.

This was from an older argument revolving around a more primitive version of OOTPB. The more things change, you know the rest.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by bababui

And the problem with that would be what?

Nothing. But my point is that the more professionals (of whatever category) you add to make certain areas of the game more professional looking, the more that adds to the final cost.

Where the sweet spot is in terms of retail price vs. cost of features development and improvement is very much up to the individual.

Originally Posted by bababui

And how much could it possibly cost? I'm sure most wouldnt mind paying $32 if it meant a great text file.

Perhaps. But remember the complaining that went on when OOTP dropped in price for awhile, or those who missed the pre-order discount?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by DreamTeams

Also, make sure that the lines makes since or flow logically and you've got it.

The problem there is the way the play-by-play text was programmed to work - since each item is written separately and then put together by the game, with a huge amount of text options it's difficult to be sure each text option fits smoothly with all the other possible text option outcomes.

That's not to say things can't be improved, but there are purely technical considerations that have to be dealt with.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by highandoutside

On top of all that has been mentioned (less suspense, less “great” plays and cutting out the nonsense station identifications) I think what should be added are more references to in-game or season performances of the players. We now have a plethora of statistic to draw from. How about the including more commentary like “Simms is 4-9 in the series” or “Simms is batting .333 with a 1-2 count”. More, quick one- liners that add a statistical context to the at bat or situation would be great.

That's a perfect example of something which comes from the progamming side. The options for such things to be displayed has to be added to the code first, then whomever writes the actual text writes the text that goes along with those options.

[Spritze]

Well I tried it and editing works fine, I just added touchdowns and field goals to the PBP. And sacking the quarterback. Now it is starting to read like a Timothy Leary PBP, surreal as all get out.

[DreamTeams]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The problem there is the way the play-by-play text was programmed to work - since each item is written separately and then put together by the game, with a huge amount of text options it's difficult to be sure each text option fits smoothly with all the other possible text option outcomes.

That's not to say things can't be improved, but there are purely technical considerations that have to be dealt with.

I hope the technical issues can be worked out. It's just very strange when the manager comes out to argue a strike three call, then the guy at first steals second as the manager walks back to the dugout. This kind of thing has to be cleaned up.:-)

[DreamTeams]

Originally Posted by battists

Without disagreeing that there is room for improvement, I'm kind of shocked that after all of the complaining we've heard about this, that no one has created a "vanilla" PbP file. One of the great aspects of this year's product is that anyone with a text editor can change the text. Tired of hearing DaED's name in the PbP? It just takes three steps that even the most technophobic gamer can accomplish:

1. Open up English.xml with Notepad.
2. Search for Dale and Eli's Dad and replace it with something else.
3. Save the file.

You could have done that in the time it took you to post in this thread. Creating a wholly vanilla file would take a little more effort, but as BigCity pointed out, after 6.5, the whole board was filled with people begging for more colorful play-by-play.

I'm not trying be all "It's fine the way it is" about it. I agree that there's still room for improvement, particularly regarding some of the strange combinations of plays. But, at least there's the possibility of taking things into your own hands here, and if there are enough people around who want a more plain version, put your heads together and create one!

Steve

Ok. I did this and had a ball with it. Got rid of some of the fluff and edited others to more of my liking. I never looked at this file closely enough because I thought some of the fluff was hard-coded in. Was even able to edit in some brushback pitches, something I've always wanted to see in ootp. When the changes show up in the game it's quite empowering. I'm going to tinker with this a lot. However, I still feel that the way some of the lines are strung together needs to be given attention.

[battists]

Originally Posted by DreamTeams

I still feel that the way some of the lines are strung together needs to be given attention.

Agreed!

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Well I tried it and editing works fine, I just added touchdowns and field goals to the PBP. And sacking the quarterback. Now it is starting to read like a Timothy Leary PBP, surreal as all get out.

A man after my own heart!

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by Cooker

I may be in the minority but I think OOTP2006's PBP is far better than 6.5. Overall it's more readable and enjoyable. I think the text team did a good job.

I don't mind fictional promos (Heinsohn-Duffy Brewery; Dale & Eli's Dad's Ice Cream, etc.). Sure, they get old after hundreds of games, but I understand why the text-team put them in. What might be helpful would be if some talented people in this community offered new "replacement text packages" from time to time. Just an idea to keep them from getting too tedious....

One thing to be fixed is inconsistency within plays. For instance: "Huffman hits a towering fly ball to right field; Simpson moves under it; has it sized up; it's back, back back ... a 434 foot home run for Huffman!" That's irritating. The problem isn't the text; it's how the engine strings together pieces. You can "size up" a routine fly. But no OF "sizes up" a home run. Even if it's only a few feet over the fence, an announcer never describes a right fielder who is sprinting toward the wall as having it "sized up."

The same thing happens describing ground balls. The first PBP "piece" calls it a shot into the hole on the right side of the infield; the next "piece" says it should be an easy double play. The two are mutually exclusive. No announcer begins a desciption calling it "a shot into the hole" before predicting an easy DP. I suspect each "piece" is randomly generated by the text engine. My suggestion is to code the engine so "pieces" are never matched with others that will read inconsistently.

But honestly, I'm not too troubled by the inconsistencies. If they can be fixed, great. But overall I still think the PBP is lots more varied and much better than 6.5.

My two cents. Your mileage may vary.

I respect your opinion, but if you prefer this version over previous versions, then you must not mind sitting in front of the computer for what seems like forever reading line after line of text, much of which is completely pointless. I would rather have the game move at a more brisk pace. As far as the inconsistencies are concerned, I'm not complaining too much about those because I'm confident that they will be addressed for the next version, but I'm concerned about the pace of the game, and what I believe was a concentrated effort to "liven up" the PbP by keeping the player guessing about the outcome of plays which results in odd and frankly irritating play calls.

[DaddyO]

Originally Posted by highandoutside

On top of all that has been mentioned (less suspense, less “great” plays and cutting out the nonsense station identifications) I think what should be added are more references to in-game or season performances of the players. We now have a plethora of statistic to draw from. How about the including more commentary like “Simms is 4-9 in the series” or “Simms is batting .333 with a 1-2 count”. More, quick one- liners that add a statistical context to the at bat or situation would be great. Just don’t over do it with a bunch of fluff. I like to play pitch by pitch and I am a patient person, but wading through some of the text is starting to get to me. Again, learn from DMB.

DMB has one guy who does PbP. He's good at it. People respond to his PbP. They are always posting PbP that they run across that's context specific and rare, but beautiful. DMB PbP is not perfect. The long-awaited update to version 9 is supposed to be out soon, and it is supposed to include significant additions to the PbP pool. If it actually comes out within the next couple of weeks, I'd strongly suggest someone in OOTP put it through it's paces. It has just the right mix of routine and color. Sometimes your left in suspense, but not constantly hyped. And it lets the game itself be the drama. Face it. Many real-life baseball games are boring. But the beauty of baseball is its rhythms. You put up with all the boredom because you are slowly building story lines that eventually build to a deep, deep drama that manifests itself in a particular play, game, or series. The PbP needs to be a window on that drama, not the drama itself. If the window has stained glass for effect, the drama can actually be diminished.

I know different people will feel differently. I think the ability to modify PbP text, if made easily accessible, is a great feature. Originally, before I bought the game, the Mods section of the forum had people fantasizing about possible PbP mods in the style of specific great announcers. To me, the idea that someone would build a Vin Scully PbP mod captivated my imagination. It must be that the reality has set in that this is a tremendous amount of work which few people have the time for.

Perhaps we will have to wait years for the OOTP2006 foundation to bear the fruit that it's capable of.

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by DaddyO

DMB has one guy who does PbP. He's good at it. People respond to his PbP. They are always posting PbP that they run across that's context specific and rare, but beautiful. DMB PbP is not perfect. The long-awaited update to version 9 is supposed to be out soon, and it is supposed to include significant additions to the PbP pool. If it actually comes out within the next couple of weeks, I'd strongly suggest someone in OOTP put it through it's paces. It has just the right mix of routine and color. Sometimes your left in suspense, but not constantly hyped. And it lets the game itself be the drama. Face it. Many real-life baseball games are boring. But the beauty of baseball is its rhythms. You put up with all the boredom because you are slowly building story lines that eventually build to a deep, deep drama that manifests itself in a particular play, game, or series. The PbP needs to be a window on that drama, not the drama itself. If the window has stained glass for effect, the drama can actually be diminished.

Excellent, excellent post. I hope this part of OOTP 2007 receives the attention it deserves. Too many times the PbP in 2006 reads like a novice broadcaster trying too hard to be dramatic. OOTP 6.5, while the PbP was a bit stale, felt more "natural" than 2006. MOO

[Cooker]

Originally Posted by Charley575

I respect your opinion, but if you prefer this version over previous versions, then you must not mind sitting in front of the computer for what seems like forever reading line after line of text, much of which is completely pointless. I would rather have the game move at a more brisk pace.

Well, as I said in my post, your mileage may vary.

In my experience, with PBP set at its fastest, to me the text moves quick enough. A great deal of pleasure comes from the anticipation of the thing, not just from the thing itself. So some lines of text are I suppose "pointless" (e.g., "Weidle steps off; wants a new baseball; Huffman gets one from the ump and throws it out to him; Weidle steps back onto the rubber; he delivers the pitch..."). It maybe adds three or four seconds of anticipation. But to me that's no problem. Frankly I rather enjoy it. That's what real baseball is like - waiting. Within reason, the anticipation of the outcome can be as enjoyable as the result itself.

But as I said, your mileage may vary. That's fine. I have no problem with those who want a faster-paced PBP. I just think it's okay for those of us who like the heightened tension created by supposedly "pointless" PBP lines to share our views too.

However Markus resolves this is fine. It's not a big deal to me. But Markus should know that not everyone wants to eliminate all the supposedly "pointless" text. That's all.

[Twelvefield]

6.5 more believeable? I don't believe what I have just seen!!!

[DreamTeams]

Wow! All I can say after toying with the text file is that this is truly a fun and creative feature. What I've been doing is editing lines as I watch a game. I keep wordpad open and whenever I see a line I don't like I simply do a find and edit it right on the spot to read more to my liking. Some lines are too long so I make them shorter. Some lines can use more drama, so I add that and keep right on watching. Sometimes all I have to do is edit a word or two. Works great!

I had to learn just a little about how the text flows by looking at the lines in the file and doing some searches on the board. However, I've been able to make changes relatively quickly once I got the hang of things.

I'm starting to dream up some creative ideas. In fact, I now have thoughts of creating several pbp files to be unique to each of my fictional ballparks. Then all I have to do is switch it out depending on the park in which the game is being played. I definitely plan to edit one that reflects the flavor of the championship series and switch to it at the start of the series.

This has not been as difficult as I thought it would be and really adds another creative and immersive element to the game, for me.

[battists]

DreamTeam, if you haven't already, you should really check out the little tool halos17 built. It's a graphical interface to editing the XML file. It's really cool.

Introducing OTE v1

It does get kind of addictive, and what you suggested is certainly doable! (Different XML files for different "announcers.")

[DreamTeams]

Originally Posted by battists

DreamTeam, if you haven't already, you should really check out the little tool halos17 built. It's a graphical interface to editing the XML file. It's really cool.

Introducing OTE v1

It does get kind of addictive, and what you suggested is certainly doable! (Different XML files for different "announcers.")

Thanks for pointing this out, battists. This will be handy.

[billethius]

Originally Posted by battists

Without disagreeing that there is room for improvement, I'm kind of shocked that after all of the complaining we've heard about this, that no one has created a "vanilla" PbP file. One of the great aspects of this year's product is that anyone with a text editor can change the text. Tired of hearing DaED's name in the PbP? It just takes three steps that even the most technophobic gamer can accomplish:

If there's demand for a purely vanilla xml file, it should be pretty easy to do. All you'd do is strip out all but one object for each PBP category and make it as simple as possible. Maybe I'll tackle that just to see how that'd change the feel of the PBP.