WANTED - A straight answer about "real historical pitches"

[Gambo]

I have owned every version of OOTP since the 2nd version and this is the 1st time I've been totally in the dark concerning a feature in the game. So for the 1st time I'm asking those in the know what's going on since nowhere on this board can we get a definative answer.

The importing of real historical pitches was an announced feature for OOTP10 and as which much of the pitching system it is not working as planned. Now, when I look through the OOTP10 feature list I don't see it anywhere. It is now a month until football season and this "feature" is still in limbo.

You can find mentions of this issue in several posts but they are scrambled around the board and there have been diverging reports of it's status and what the hold up is.

All I think me and numerous people on this board are wanting to know is what is going on with this feature. I am and many other may be holding up creating leagues awaiting the patch and want to know if it is for naught.

Some basic information would be...
What happened with it's functionality?
Will it be in the 3rd patch?
Will it be held until next year's game?

[BusterKing]

I think Markus is still on vacation, taking a break from it all since it was apparently the best version ever released with the fewest bugs.

But this pitching problem for some reason wasn't considered a major bug which many if not most of us think that it is.

[PhillieFever]

I for one also want to know about this.historicals are really being hurt by real life SP's being relegated to BP duty for their career because of design decisions.I shouldn't have to scour the league before every season and check to see if former MLB starters have only two pitches,and if they do add one.I mean I started my 1975 league,and Steve Carlton and Ron Guidry among others had just two pitches.Grover Cleveland Alexander,one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball,also has just 2.This needs to be fixed,but unfortunately we're in the dark because the design team has been MIA for over 2 months!

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Gambo

The importing of real historical pitches was an announced feature for OOTP10 and as which much of the pitching system it is not working as planned.

I don't have any answers, but I do have a question. What does this mean? As far as calculating outcomes in OOTP, pitchers could be throwing four different types of spitballs. So I don't quite understand what's at stake here. Inquiring minds want to know...

[BMW]

Originally Posted by SteveP

I don't have any answers, but I do have a question. What does this mean? As far as calculating outcomes in OOTP, pitchers could be throwing four different types of spitballs. So I don't quite understand what's at stake here. Inquiring minds want to know...

That brings up an interesting point. There's no spitball rating. It was a legitimate and well documented pitch. It was likely thrown in the 1800s, and was thrown legally until 1934 when the last grandfathered player, Burleigh Grimes, retired.

I guess you could compensate by giving the pitcher a nasty knuckleball with some other pitches as well. Although I remember a while back looking at the game engine and seeing that OOTP had a certain way that it gave a player a "knuckleballer bonus". (This bonus was in OOTP 9 too.)

I think the pitcher needed to have just a knuckleball and fastball... But at this point I'm just desperately attempting to remember.

[Cryomaniac]

Apparently knuckleballers only need 2 pitches to be effective (maybe only the knuckleball if it's rated 20/20 I don't know). I think a spitball should be in the game, maybe even have an option to allow it or not in the league rules page, and have players suspended for using it.

But once you include the spitball, what about the other kinds of illegal pitches, like vaseline balls or emery balls, or every other possibility.

[TribeFanInNC]

Originally Posted by SteveP

I don't have any answers, but I do have a question. What does this mean? As far as calculating outcomes in OOTP, pitchers could be throwing four different types of spitballs. So I don't quite understand what's at stake here. Inquiring minds want to know...

I think it is an immersion thing. I doubt it matters to the outcome of historical play. As long as they are imported with a repertoire that produces similar stats to RL, then the rest I guess is immersion icing.

Hard to be immersed in historical play when Rapid Robert is buzzing them in at 87 mph (as in Big Six's recent dynasty). It would probably bother me too, though I haven't played any historical in OOTP X yet.

I'm sure some people feel a little misled/disappointed too.

[landru]

Originally Posted by BMW

That brings up an interesting point. There's no spitball rating. It was a legitimate and well documented pitch. It was likely thrown in the 1800s, and was thrown legally until 1934 when the last grandfathered player, Burleigh Grimes, retired.

Yes, I've wondered about this too. There have been a number of pitchers (...cough...Gaylord Perry....cough....) whose ability did not come from the legal pitches in their repertoire. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a rating (maybe invisible?) that showed up in the scouting reports saying "Pitcher X also has an out pitch that he uses from time to time, but be sure the umpire isn't looking!" And then, of course with this pitch you could have play-by-play texts of "Wow, that pitch dropped and swooped like a hummingbird!" or "Batter Y had no idea where that pitch was going!" (or whatever, just to signify that a spitball pitch got the guy out). And of course, if a pitcher does have this pitch - they are going to get thrown out of games or suspended! Cool!

As a side issue along the "illegal" lines, has there been any talk of modellng steroids in OOTP? The player gets a sizable performance bonus, but then he is more liable to get suspended, more liable to be ineligible (or like in McGwire's case - not voted for) for the Hall-of-Fame etc. There could even be a FaceGen option to give the player the bloated StayPuft Marshallow Man Barry Bonds face!

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by landru

As a side issue along the "illegal" lines, has there been any talk of modellng steroids in OOTP? The player gets a sizable performance bonus, but then he is more liable to get suspended, more liable to be ineligible (or like in McGwire's case - not voted for) for the Hall-of-Fame etc. There could even be a FaceGen option to give the player the bloated StayPuft Marshallow Man Barry Bonds face!

Players can get drug suspensions, I think it's pretty random and based on Intelligence and work ethic ratings, i.e the lower they are they more likely a player is to get a drugs suspension.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

I think it is an immersion thing. I doubt it matters to the outcome of historical play.

That was my guess, but I'm also not clear on what is required to solve the "problem" at this point. I know during Beta there was a volunteer effort underway to populate the Lahman DB with historical repertoires in some manner, but I suspect that never was completed. So, are there other DBs out there that have these repertoires but can't get them imported? Are there people who would create such DBs if the game would import them? After all, if the data isn't in the DB, there's nothing that Markus can do to solve the problem.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Are there people who would create such DBs if the game would import them?

I'd say that's almost a 100% certain "yes".

Edit, this is my 1234th post lol.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I'd say that's almost a 100% certain "yes".

Edit, this is my 1234th post lol.

Then it's a chicken-or-egg problem. Markus can't create and test the import of such a DB until one has been created (I suppose I shouldn't be speaking for him -- but that seems elemental to me). Whether he would do it for something other than a modified Lahman is anyone's guess.

[pstrickert]

Maybe Garlon will see this thread and respond. He's the one who's been adding pitch types to the historical DB.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Then it's a chicken-or-egg problem. Markus can't create and test the import of such a DB until one has been created (I suppose I shouldn't be speaking for him -- but that seems elemental to me). Whether he would do it for something other than a modified Lahman is anyone's guess.

I wouldn't say that's the case. Unless the DB gets filled in with bogus data, about 70%+ of the pitchers in the history of the game...their pitches are lost to time.

The only options are:

1. Populate that 70% with fictional data within the database.
2. Use the current import logic that generates fictional pitches for players in the database lacking pitch data in the import file.

So if the plan is the latter, he could test the import even if there are pitchers with no data.

Another thing is that when I took a look at the master.csv (after Gambo mentioned it), there are more additions to that file beyond the pitches. So it may not be as simple as that. It may be a package deal, where Markus needs to get 100% of those new fields working, and the pitch data only represents a portion of those new fields.

[clamel]

Originally Posted by Gambo

I have owned every version of OOTP since the 2nd version and this is the 1st time I've been totally in the dark concerning a feature in the game. So for the 1st time I'm asking those in the know what's going on since nowhere on this board can we get a definative answer.

The importing of real historical pitches was an announced feature for OOTP10 and as which much of the pitching system it is not working as planned. Now, when I look through the OOTP10 feature list I don't see it anywhere. It is now a month until football season and this "feature" is still in limbo.

You can find mentions of this issue in several posts but they are scrambled around the board and there have been diverging reports of it's status and what the hold up is.

All I think me and numerous people on this board are wanting to know is what is going on with this feature. I am and many other may be holding up creating leagues awaiting the patch and want to know if it is for naught.

Some basic information would be...
What happened with it's functionality?
Will it be in the 3rd patch?
Will it be held until next year's game?

I for one have been rumbling about this too in several threads.
It was issued as a big new thing...
So what´s the new big thing about pitching if not what I think most folks believed it to be.
Yes it takes a hell work to get most pitching repertoires in order but surely the injury file is remade over and over again. That´s a lot more work IMHO.

Then the effect to whatever pitches a pitcher threw is important.
The ads did mention about certain pitches was to prefer in certain situations. To induce groundballs and lefty vs lefty stuff.
It really painted a picture I can´t see really happend.
Next time great promises and selling talk will be under close observation.

Hope it will be fix (whatever fix Markus think is wrong) in the next patch.
Else it sounds more like politicians whatever we promised was missunderstood or will come next time you vote for us.

[rwd59]

Originally Posted by PhillieFever

I for one also want to know about this.historicals are really being hurt by real life SP's being relegated to BP duty for their career because of design decisions.I shouldn't have to scour the league before every season and check to see if former MLB starters have only two pitches,and if they do add one.I mean I started my 1975 league,and Steve Carlton and Ron Guidry among others had just two pitches.Grover Cleveland Alexander,one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball,also has just 2.This needs to be fixed,but unfortunately we're in the dark because the design team has been MIA for over 2 months!

This issue is a killer for historicals because it is a never ending thing. As PhillieFever said, I am tired of having to go through and edit pitchers every single season. There is no way this is not a bug. Guys who started 90% of their career games being imported with almost non-existant stamina is a bug, plain and simple.

[risp2out]

Originally Posted by rwd59

This issue is a killer for historicals because it is a never ending thing. As PhillieFever said, I am tired of having to go through and edit pitchers every single season. There is no way this is not a bug. Guys who started 90% of their career games being imported with almost non-existant stamina is a bug, plain and simple.

One interim fix would be that when re-calc is on, the game would recognize a pitcher who primarily started within the one or three year re-calc window and give them adequate pitches and stamina. This is not the full "real pitches" immersion experience, but at least Dizzy Dean would not be a lifetime reliever.

[rwd59]

Originally Posted by risp2out

One interim fix would be that when re-calc is on, the game would recognize a pitcher who primarily started within the one or three year re-calc window and give them adequate pitches and stamina. This is not the full "real pitches" immersion experience, but at least Dizzy Dean would not be a lifetime reliever.

I don't do recalc. According to PhillieFever, recalc does no good in this case either since the player is only assigned 2 pitches upon import. The stamina will change with recalc, but the number of pitches do not.

[PhillieFever]

Originally Posted by rwd59

I don't do recalc. According to PhillieFever, recalc does no good in this case either since the player is only assigned 2 pitches upon import. The stamina will change with recalc, but the number of pitches do not.

This is exactly correct.Their stamina will change with time depending on their role but they never add a pitch to become full fledged starters.What puzzles me,what actually triggers lifetime starters to have only 2 pitches.Supposedly,the game was setup so that depending on the player's lifetime stats,they would be assigned one of 25 different combinations of pitches.Obviously something is wrong with the formula if Hall Of Famers are importing with just 2 pitches.And its not just one guy either thats the disturbing part.

[PhillieFever]

Originally Posted by risp2out

One interim fix would be that when re-calc is on, the game would recognize a pitcher who primarily started within the one or three year re-calc window and give them adequate pitches and stamina. This is not the full "real pitches" immersion experience, but at least Dizzy Dean would not be a lifetime reliever.

I'd be cool with this actually.Since its so late in the dev cycle,I'd be happy with correct roles for all pitchers in this version.Save historically accurate pitch repertoires for the next version.I just don't like that it was promoted as a key feature of the game and then never implemented