Suggestion Collection Thread: News and In-Game Text

[battists]

I'm going to be posting a number of Suggestion Collection threads like this one, each one designed to collect a number of ideas for one specific area of the game. I'm going to compile these suggestions into some kind of helpful format, and see if this helps Marc and Markus. If necessary, I'll create polls later on to gauge the relative interest in different features.

However, if you want to join my thread, you need to follow my rules, and here they are:

1. Only 1 suggestion per post.
2. Suggestions must be on-topic for the thread.
3. Constructive, non-inflammatory suggestions only. I'm flat-out deleting posts that are angry in nature. If you want to do that, start your own thread.
4. No comments on others' suggestions necessary. That means, no posts saying "Great idea!"
5. No linking me to other forum threads. If it's important enough to you that you want it in this thread, then it should be important enough to put it in the format I've asked for here.
6. You can certainly post suggestions that conflict with or build upon earlier suggestions. You can also add screenshots of mockups and such if they help.

Format for Suggestions:
Suggestion: What is your suggestion? Be as specific as possible; include the screen you're talking about, if applicable.
Reason: Why do you think this is important?
Priority: High (MUST have), Medium (should have), Low (nice to have)

Thanks for participating!

Steve

[battists]

Today's Topic: In-Game Text and News Articles

What's In?
- Suggestions about the existing news articles / e-mails
- Suggestions for new news articles / e-mails
- Suggestions for additional tokens or conditions in the XML engine
- Suggestions for additional features related to mail/news

What's Out?
- Discussion of Play-by-Play text or conditions (please post these in this thread).

[battists]

Suggestion: News articles for rumored trades and completed trades. Rumored trades should only be for significant players.
Reason: Currently, there are no news articles about trades.
Priority: High

[cmdroverbite]

Suggestion: News articles for winning playoff series and championships.
Reason: Not that the game is unplayable without it, obviously, but it's bizarre and it seems frankly a bit slapdash that the game's news engine notes every 5 for 5 day at the plate but passes by a team winning the World Series without comment.
Priority: Medium to high (shouldn't be at the top of the priority list for a 1.0.3 patch, though it would be a pleasant bonus but pretty much a must-do for 2007.)

[cmdroverbite]

Suggestion: Preseason news articles that attempt to handicap the favorites. FM '06 does this by telling me the pre-season betting odds on the four or five preseason favorites in my division, as well as the odds on my team. OOTP could do something similar, or even something as basic as "SION prognosticators believe that the Buffalo Gladiators and the Asheville Blazers are the favorites to reach the Championship Series. Unfortunately for the Anaheim Warriors, it looks like a long, tough rebuilding season." It doesn't have to be any major heavy-duty calculation to produce these predictions -- to produce the above story, you could simply do a brute-force search for the two teams with the highest total Overall ability scores on their 25-man roster and the one with the lowest and plug them into that template.
Reason: A big part of what's hurting the game is how sterile and flavorless the presentation is. (How many people have said that the game seems technically impressive without being fun?) More news stories that give the sense of being part of an active baseball league would do wonders for the fun factor.
Priority: Medium

[cmdroverbite]

Suggestion: Random (or perhaps not-so-random) news stories that reflect players' personality ratings: a player with a High Demand For A Winning Team could call a press conference to suggest he wants off of his present bunch of losers, a player with high Leadership could call a team meeting to try and shake up a team in a rut, a player with high Loyalty in his contract year could say something about how much he loves playing in his present city and hopes he can finish his career there, etc.
Reason: Makes the game more immersive, and up the fun factor. Makes the players more than two-dimensional ciphers. Adds variety to the gaming experience.
Priority: Medium

[cmdroverbite]

Suggestion: News articles triggered by long winning or losing streaks.
Reason: More immersion, more fun. Something like "Red Hot Lions win 10th straight" makes it easy, especially for simmers, to follow the action in the league.
Priority: Medium

[cmdroverbite]

Suggestion: The game should send a series of, oh, say, five personal messages during the first five days after the start of the game, or the first five days after the inaugural draft. These "Welcome Messages From Your Personal Assistant" would be a sort of micro-mini tutorial walking new GMs through the interface, telling them where to find the free agent list, the trading screen, etc.

E.g.: "Welcome GM! We're all hoping you have a long and fruitful career with the Cincinnati Snouts! Now's an excellent time to get one of your scouts to work gathering intelligence on the league, or possibly looking for talent overseas. To scout your league, [blahx3], to scout overseas, [blahx3] To learn more about scouting, read page xx of the manual or page xxx of the Game Guide.

This option should be on by default when installing but able to be turned off permanently in preferences.

Reason: The beginning of the game is a bit abrupt, with little fanfare and little guidance for the first-time player -- and much as we'd like to believe otherwise, lots of people like to fire up a game without so much as touching the manual.

Priority: Medium.

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

Suggestion: Make it so the ingame font size can be easily changed.

Reason: Make it easier to read.

Priority: For me I would say high. For others, who knows?

[battists]

Suggestion: News articles for injuries to significant players.
Reason: Would add more variety to the news articles.
Priority: Low

[battists]

Suggestion: News articles like in 6.5, from your minor league coaches, saying "So and so is doing well at AA, you should promote him." The ones in 6.5 were a little too simple, but I'm sure we could come up with a much more flexible list!
Reason: More variety, and helps the manager feel more involved with his league.
Priority: Medium

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion: Bylines and logos for news articles

Reason: The news should come from a customizable source, with a customizable logo. The in game news could come from a beat reporter or a national news source (from Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News to Peter Gammons at ESPN.) The reporters could be generated just like staff members are, except that they are not hired/fired by the club. The news organizations should be fictional (New York Picayune or SION) but should be customizable to turn them into real newspapers or networks. A graphics folder could collect their logos. Those logos would be used just like the Baseball America logos. Attached is a really rough example.



Priority: Low

[Raidergoo]

Processed to this point.

[battists]

Suggestion: When a free agent signs with another team, they should send an e-mail to all teams that bid on them, telling them where they have decided to sign.
Reason: Right now, it's sometimes unclear that someone you have offered to has signed elsewhere.
Priority: High

[palyak]

Hi,

Have you ever visited the milestone section of mlb.com? It is in their stat section. I wish 06 would not only give the number milestones ... but also note players as they pass other players in all time leader list ... ie Bobby Brown moved in 24th place all time with 514 homeruns passing John Doe.

Thanks

[redsox45]

Suggestion: Milestones for H, HR, RBI, W, SV, K at regularly spaced intervals

Reason: It would help to create a sense of history for the league, plus make it easier for people to track the greats of their games.

Priority: Shoulda been in OOTP2006 but there was no time

Will

[KGAGE]

Suggestion: Weekly columnist writes his/her opinion on the state of your team/players. You could even have different columnist profiles with grumpiness ratings. The columnist would basically be a window on how your fans feel about the job you are doing. It could also influence what the GM thinks of you as well.

Reason: Emersion into this fictional baseball universe.

Priority: Low

[Raidergoo]

Processed to this point.

KGAGE: Keep them coming. You've made some points that really resonated with me.

[56lightsout56]

there is currently an award for pitcher of the year

Suggestion: Add an award for Fireman of the year (like MLB's Rolaids Reliever of the year).

Reason: mirror RL awards

priority: medium?

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion: Real World news articles in your in box once or twice a year, triggered by the events of the day.

Reason: Do you realize when Custer was making his last stand, the Chicago Cubs were on the way to a pennant, that the day AFTER the battle they beat New York 6-4? That the President of the USA missed Opening Day 1912 due to govt's response of the Titantic sinking? Baseball is has a huge history, and adding historical news articles on a rare occasion could add to the immersion factor in a historical game.

priority: low