What would get you to get OOTP9?

[mikev]

Originally Posted by RBLwebguy

Explain? I run a league with the 2007 version and have yet to experience to many issues.

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Please explain this. I am very curious to here your ideas, as I consider the online portion extremely vital.

The Rule 5 draft is broken. Once a player is selected in the Rule 5, he just goes onto the selecting team. He can be waived, released, demoted, basically treated just like any other player.

Signing personnel is broken. It should work like free agent players, simple enough. Instead, an available scout/coach/whatever automatically signs with whoever makes him an offer first.

Running the draft is a nightmare. There's no way to run the draft while online sims still take place. That said, if you hold the draft during the season, there are 2 choices - 1) Stop simming completely while the draft is held via forums, private lists, or some other out-of-game method, or 2) Auto-Draft and get the luck of the draw. Now, Getch's utility is awesome and makes the draft a WHOLE lot cleaner, but it's still more of a workaround and there's no way within OOTP to run the draft in an efficient manner right now.

File sizes are unacceptable. The GUBA is a 36 team league with scouts enabled, no other coaches (see above), full minors and no feeder leagues. The small league file size is generally around 30mb, and HTML reports are generally around 50mb. Several times each season when a FaceGen update is run those sizes can nearly triple.

Free Agent compensation is broken. This should just mirror MLB rules, plain and simple. It doesn't.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

[Russ]

Just to echo some thoughts:

Scouting/Minor League Coaches are a good idea and allow for some pretty cool stuff, but the boredom of mindless pointing and clicking to renew contracts, no update if a coach or scout has left and all the good ones are signed, and the huge advantage scouting foreign countries gives a human player, it's just better to play with them off for me. Improvements in this area would go a long way towards me buying the new game.

I'm not down on the AI as much as I was with 2006, but please do your best to eliminate the need for certain house rules. I don't have the will power to not cheat every once in a while.

Pitching - Just label SP, MR, and CL as P. I would rather them be labeld LHP/RHP. Let the user determine the roles. Rate pitchers against all pitchers.

My pet peeve is the PbP. The wording is fine, but every game is played in a vacuum. I would really like some of the stuff that was in 6.5 PbP to come back like, "he's currently 3rd in the league in batting, two shy of HR number 500, just broke the all-time record for strikeouts, etc."

50% of these and I'm in.

[Jestor]

I'm done with any new versions of OOTP until the interface stops being so clunky and cluttered.

6.5 does a beautiful job of presenting a lot of information in a well-designed spatial arrangement.

From that time on, it's regressed to the point where I hate it even more than the pre-FM2K8 interface.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by mikev

The Rule 5 draft is broken. Once a player is selected in the Rule 5, he just goes onto the selecting team. He can be waived, released, demoted, basically treated just like any other player.

Huh. Not in my game. A rule 5 pick must spend the whole season on the active roster or 15-day DL.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by magnet

Huh. Not in my game. A rule 5 pick must spend the whole season on the active roster or 15-day DL.

However, if you decide you don't want him anymore there is no way to give him back to the team he was selected from, as the Rule 5 draft is supposed to actually work.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by mikev

However, if you decide you don't want him anymore there is no way to give him back to the team he was selected from, as the Rule 5 draft is supposed to actually work.

That much is true. But you didn't mention that part before.

[whizkid1950]

I love OOTP. I say this with no mean-spiritedness whatsoever. But... I've spent my last penny on OOTP until the version comes along that:

a. Is as easy to navigate as 6.5 was, so that I can immerse myself as a GM instead of immersing myself as a Championship Manager/menu option memorizer, and...
b. Has every feature 6.5 had.

Until then there's no point (for me) to spend money on a game that's not as fun as the one I bought in 2005 for $29.95.

[The Wolf]

A lot of people (me included) wish that OOTP9 could be based on OOTP6.5 rather OOTP2006/2007/8. I don't think anyone at OOTP HQ has any idea how much so many of us reject the current interface.

[bababui]

Using the bookmark feature makes the interface very easy to use. Markus..dont listen to the OOTP Luddites!!

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by bababui

Using the bookmark feature makes the interface very easy to use. Markus..dont listen to the OOTP Luddites!!

Nothing could make that interface easy to use.

[bababui]

The game is vastly deeper and needs a deeper interface. If one can surf the web one can figure out the interface. If you can figure out the harder Hearts of Iron interface, you shouldnt have much trouble with this one.

[andymac]

Yea, I don't get the interface complaints. You can get to most things very easily and anything that is deeper that you use a lot can be set as a bookmark. I think the game overall is much better now than 6.5 but I can't get my head around the pitcher model and it has ruined the game's playability for me. Relief pitchers are failed starters 95% of the time in real life and, to me, it should be a priority to get that modeled correctly. Apparently it isn't.

[Eckstein 4 Prez]

I understand the interface complaints, but I think a deeper game is necessarily going to have a more complex interface. After accounting for this, I don't think the interface is that bad, although I hated it for the first several months.

I just want to see the many, many bugs dealt with, and to see the in-game AI improve (and there's lots of room to improve it).

As for whether I'll buy, I might. I'm in no hurry, but if this version ends up being a big leap forward in AI and squashes some of the longtime bugs it'll be well worth it.

[rudel.dietrich]

I want it to be easier to set up a league
As it is now its so much effort to start a league and then one little option being off ruins the entire thing

Either the finances get messed up or too much talent, too little talent etc

I just wish everything was streamlined and the game stepped in and helped you make some of the creation options to where they would not break the game

As it is now many of my games are abandoned when something falls apart

[pseudofool]

The interface is fine. The Sim screen with the standings and leaders needs to be customizable though. I mean seriously. Allow us to pick what stats, what standings, what players to show while the AI sims.

[ctorg]

OOTP2007 restored my faith in OOTP. I'll buy OOTP9, though I may wait a little bit until a patch (I say that every year but rarely do it).

[TribeFanInNC]

I agree with mikev's comments about online leagues. Those are all pretty annoying at the least and deal breaking at the worst.

Personally though, I have more fun drafting offline anyway, so that isn't a big deal. One of the leagues I'm in releases the draft pool in March, we scout during spring training, then begin the draft offline in forums around Opening Day. We finish the draft around the time the draft occurs in game and gives us about 2 realtime weeks to draft. I think this works great and doesn't require stopping sims at all. But, I can see your point about not being able to draft in-game.

[Prodigal Son]

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

I want it to be easier to set up a league
As it is now its so much effort to start a league and then one little option being off ruins the entire thing

We need a league creation interface that is powerful and robust yet more streamlined, quicker, and easier to use. To create my RWB template, I had to spend several hours creating leagues, testing them, starting over, changing a small option or two, trying again, etc.

[andymac]

Originally Posted by Prodigal Son

We need a league creation interface that is powerful and robust yet more streamlined, quicker, and easier to use. To create my RWB template, I had to spend several hours creating leagues, testing them, starting over, changing a small option or two, trying again, etc.

I agree, this could/should be vastly improved.

[Solonor]

Originally Posted by mikev

The Rule 5 draft is broken. Once a player is selected in the Rule 5, he just goes onto the selecting team. He can be waived, released, demoted, basically treated just like any other player.

Not in my copy of the game... and we've been running a successful online league, even through the horrible OOTP 2006 conversion and right up through OOTP 8 now.

Originally Posted by mikev

Signing personnel is broken. It should work like free agent players, simple enough. Instead, an available scout/coach/whatever automatically signs with whoever makes him an offer first.

AGREED!!

Originally Posted by mikev

Running the draft is a nightmare. There's no way to run the draft while online sims still take place. That said, if you hold the draft during the season, there are 2 choices - 1) Stop simming completely while the draft is held via forums, private lists, or some other out-of-game method, or 2) Auto-Draft and get the luck of the draw. Now, Getch's utility is awesome and makes the draft a WHOLE lot cleaner, but it's still more of a workaround and there's no way within OOTP to run the draft in an efficient manner right now.

I see what you're saying, but it's never been a problem for me. My GM's just submit instructions for the draft (whether it's "let the AI pick" or a specific, prioritized list of players or some combination), and I do the picks. Of course, we only pick the first 5 rounds. Anything more than that would get old real fast! (But there's rarely any talent beyond the 5th round anyway...a different subject entirely.)

Originally Posted by mikev

File sizes are unacceptable. The GUBA is a 36 team league with scouts enabled, no other coaches (see above), full minors and no feeder leagues. The small league file size is generally around 30mb, and HTML reports are generally around 50mb. Several times each season when a FaceGen update is run those sizes can nearly triple.

We're only 24 teams with full minors and no scouts (which are a PITA for online anyway), and the files are nearly that big. HOWEVER, we never send the entire league zip out more than once or twice a season. Why would you? The league update works fine, and it's usually no bigger than 2 or 3 MB.

Originally Posted by mikev

Free Agent compensation is broken. This should just mirror MLB rules, plain and simple. It doesn't.

YES! There are quite a few roster rules that are not followed, and that's my number one issue.

All that being said, I don't think there's any huge problem with online leagues. We're in our 14th season (almost 5 years), and I don't think there are any horrible, horrible problems with online play. Just annoyances.