My ideas for a version 4.1!

[rwmorey]

Hi..

Okay, I have gotten to the point where I almost don't want to play OOTP anymore until these serious usibility issues gets fixed..
Lets call it version 4.1 !

First of all, when signing coaches / scouts -- why does the screen
always return to the default sort after you sign or attempt to sign
a coach ? This is very frustrating, especially when I sort by skill
and then try to sign a coach only to have him tell me "I don't like
your organization" and then I click off his screen and the sort
goes back to whatever the baffling default sort is. Also, why isn't
the coaching signing like the free agent signing in that you get
e-mails, etc.. from the coaches about offers and what not? It seems that all the coaches sign after the first day.

And why have a free agent send me two e-mails before I can read either one, first telling me another team has made a better offer and then telling me he's signed with that team? That's annoying to see the e-mails but not being able to read and respond to them until the guy has already signed.. I understand the player not waiting for me to make an offer, but how about just one e-mail then ?

I also don't like in the coaches and free agent screens that when
I click on the person to view them I get the silly "Edit / Delete"
button.. There should be some other method for deleting so that
when I click it is obvious that I want to edit. Maybe have an EDITOR ON option to enable the delete question.

I also would like to see an easy way to look at what players are on the trading block -- maybe an option to select all players of a certain type who are on the trading block.

Or better yet, a "matching" system where if I have a weakness for
say CATCHER and I have SHORT STOP on my trading block and another team needs a SHORTSTOP and they have a CATCHER on the block the system would tell me of a possible match.. if we can negotiate a trade.

I also feel like the game is very slow -- and the response to button clicks is very slow too.. Often times I get a notice about e-mails, with the question of "Stop Simulation" and I click "NO" and I see the button change color and indicate the click but that screen stays on my machine for like a minute.

Although I like this game a lot, it has a "dated" feel to it because
the interface seems like it was developed pre-windows and so the buttons and dialog boxes don't behave like a typical windows app.. I know it would take a fair amount of time and effort to convert the UI but I think for version 5 doing so would be a great step.. of course before taking on that tasks, many of these (and other) usability issues need to be addressed.

I also wish I could turn off non-trade offer e-mails during the sim.


Any comments? I'd love to hear a response from the developers about these ideas and also the status of the next patch which is supposed to include the "counter offer" feature.

Rich

[DiversionX]

Great post there, rwmorey, you just verbalized a lot of the things I've been trying to figure out how to say.

As for the look and feel of the game, I think you're right. Mogul looks like it's been coded in Visual Basic and I think that is part of the reason it's easier to "see" and why it runs faster. In trying to create a certain look or feel Marcus has made it so the game is really only playable at one resolution, and if you need bigger fonts you're out of luck. Using Windows system fonts and a more standard application "look and feel" might go a long way toward making this game better.

Finally, it doesn't happen as often now that I've applied Windows 2000 service pack 3, but the game still crashes every once in a while and I'm never sure if it's number crunching or genuinely hung. A progress bar for certain actions (simming, running days in free agency, drafting) would be a wonderful addition.

[SufferingSoxFan]

I run my game on a Dell 1.2 ghz pentium 3 notebook with XP professional. I have never encountered a crash, or a hangup, or general slow playing conditions.

I would actually like to see a better search/query feature such as the one in Mogul. For example, let me see all catchers with 10mm or less in salary, younger than 30 years old, and with an average homerun talent who hit atleast 30 doubles in the previous season. This would be fantastic for trading.

Also, I agree that a matching process for trades would be great.

[DiversionX]

Well, the game crashes on me from time to time, what can I say. I have a gigahertz Athlon with 512 megs of RAM and Win2K sp3. I just think in an effort to make OOTP's "look and feel" something unique Markus might have short-changed himself in the area of portability. The game is unplayable on anything less than 1024x768, believe me, I've tried it on 800x600 and it just sucks.

[rferry]

if Mogul is coded in visual basic, im never buying that game again. its an extremly limited programming language. i think its best that markus attempts to make the best game he can using with the language he feels most comfortable with.

[DiversionX]

Hey, just saying the graphics have always been one added thing that seem to make OOTP a bit less stable than other stat/sim games.

And C++ is the ultimate language, thank you. :-P

[rwmorey]

I was just looking over old posts of mine and came across this one.. The sad thing is that from Verision 4 to 5, 6, 6.5 and now 2006 these issues are still issues..

I also feel like the game is very slow -- and the response to button clicks is very slow too.. Often times I get a notice about e-mails, with the question of "Stop Simulation" and I click "NO" and I see the button change color and indicate the click but that screen stays on my machine for like a minute.

Although I like this game a lot, it has a "dated" feel to it because
the interface seems like it was developed pre-windows and so the buttons and dialog boxes don't behave like a typical windows app.. I know it would take a fair amount of time and effort to convert the UI but I think for version 5 doing so would be a great step.. of course before taking on that tasks, many of these (and other) usability issues need to be addressed.

[Qrusher14242]

Yes it is sad. I wish they had someone there just to work on the UI. Trying to stop an Autosim is hell, it takes forever to get the game to recognize i clicked it.

Football manager is a little better, but still sometimes it takes a while to recognize mouse clicks. I hope he improves it, but even with a rewrite, the UI still feels dated.

[rwmorey]

Yeah.. I was very excited about the new version of OOTP because of the news that it was going to be rebuilt from the game up. I don't know if you were around back when a guy was going to make a game call "Franchise Baseball." That game never got anywhere but some of the screen shots looked great -- featuring the more standard Windows based UI a lot of us seem to be looking for. Anyway, I believe that one of the two guys from that project had joined the OOTP team so I was keeping my fingers crossed that some of the nice UI stuff from that game might end up in OOTP. Oh well.