Players peaking and declining too early?

[Ron.]

Has anyone else noticed players peaking and declining in an unrealistic manner? Not only are even the best position players completely unplayable by the age of 32, there are many players who are completely burned out by the time they reach what should be their peak years. Here are just a few examples I've noticed in my current game.



Bob Perez won the MVP in his first full season at the age of 25. Now at the age of 29 his ratings have nose-dived and he struggling to maintain a .700 OPS. He has never suffered any injury more serious than an oblique strain.



Rafael Ynoa was 3rd in the MVP race at the age of 26. At the age of 30 he was out of the league, 1 year after signing a 7-year, $135 million contract with the Astros. He never suffered any injury more serious than a fractured rib (4 weeks).




This one was the most frustrating. Jefry Marte debuted at 19 and won the MVP at 23. He was practically unplayable by 30 and is currently in the minors at 31. His most serious injury was a partially torn labrum (3 months) early in his career.

I really can't think of any hitters (pitchers are a different story, of course) who had steep early declines like these that weren't the result of serious injuries, but it seems to be common place in OOTP.

[RchW]

You need to adjust aging and development modifiers. See the screenshot.

My modifiers seem to work well for modern MLB type leagues. I just reduced the batter aging to 1.2 from 1.3. I'm a strong believer in reduced development speed. The number of 19-22 year-old players that make the majors is quite low.

[Ron.]

Thanks. I notice you have "Talent Change Randomness" set to 15--mine is set to 1, which I guess was the default since I haven't changed it. It seems weird that it would default so low since it indicates that 100 is "average." Is 15 going to be a significant difference from 1, and is 100 way too much?

[oman19]

Hmmm weird yours is at 1 for default I believe most everyone's is at 100.

[oman19]

Originally Posted by RchW

You need to adjust aging and development modifiers. See the screenshot.

My modifiers seem to work well for modern MLB type leagues. I just reduced the batter aging to 1.2 from 1.3. I'm a strong believer in reduced development speed. The number of 19-22 year-old players that make the majors is quite low.

Hey RchW... I'm still searching for those perfect Aging modifiers. I'm running into the same problem as the op where players are unplayable by 30. I see you set yours at 1.2...does this not mean that they age more quickly therefore unplayable sooner. I might misunderstand on how the modifier works so any help would be appreciated.

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by oman19

Hey RchW... I'm still searching for those perfect Aging modifiers. I'm running into the same problem as the op where players are unplayable by 30. I see you set yours at 1.2...does this not mean that they age more quickly therefore unplayable sooner. I might misunderstand on how the modifier works so any help would be appreciated.

I keep hoping for RonCo to give us new settings. AFAIK, 1.2 would speed up aging. Somewhere between .8 and .9 feels right for dev. Aging probably needs to be slowed down even more than that.

[oman19]

Yeah I've sent RonCo a few messages on the subject and we've talked about it but he has yet to upgrade to X so hasn't run any tests on ootp x thus far.

[timmermac]

I'm actually not noticing this with the historical that I'm running right now. I've got both Honus Wagner and Nap Lajoie on my team as 33ish year olds, and they've maintained MVP-candidate performance for the most part. Other older players on other teams also perform fairly well. I haven't changed any of the development modifiers from their default levels.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by oman19

Hey RchW... I'm still searching for those perfect Aging modifiers. I'm running into the same problem as the op where players are unplayable by 30. I see you set yours at 1.2...does this not mean that they age more quickly therefore unplayable sooner. I might misunderstand on how the modifier works so any help would be appreciated.

I'm certainly not the expert but my understanding is that too fast a development speed will have players peak too early, ie age 23-25 or less instead of 27-28. Players decline after peak, so let's say for example (arbitrarily), that players show significant decline at 5-7 years after peak. You can see that for the same aging setting an early peak player will decline significantly at age 28-32 while a standard or correct peak player will decline significantly at age 32-35. From observation we know that the latter result is more like real life. I'm sure it is much more complex than that and there are outliers that do better and worse but for the most part I'm happy with these settings.

Use your league history (look at team stats) or export csv files to calculate average player age. This is a good indicator of the correctness of your settings. Baseball Reference has these for real life. I think it is 27.4 or thereabouts for current MLB. If you have a league average age of 25-26 you are giong to have a lot of dead stars.

[damientheomen3]

i set my aging modifiers at .85 and for me most players age realistically

[Afino]

Oh, and if you have feeder leagues, I'd advise both numbers being dialed down, probably under 1.000.

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

i set my aging modifiers at .85 and for me most players age realistically

What about your dev modifiers?

[damientheomen3]

i leave them at their defaults.

[MimesisBTG]

Originally Posted by RchW

You need to adjust aging and development modifiers.

Thank you everyone for the recommendations, which are very helpful, but shouldn't the modifiers be more realistic at their defaults? Just a suggestion for future patches/versions.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by MimesisBTG

Thank you everyone for the recommendations, which are very helpful, but shouldn't the modifiers be more realistic at their defaults?

How long have you been playing OOTP?

[MimesisBTG]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

How long have you been playing OOTP?

haha - Point taken sir! I suppose it can't hurt to try though

[AshBats48]

I've noticed the change in aging from 9 to X. In 9 I was very happy with the hitters aging, but not the pitchers.

Now in ten the pitchers are where I expect them but find more to be desired with hitter aging.

I think the biggest problem in the aging system is that lacks "grinder" players or average guys who make a career out of durability and reliability.

[eodgooch]

I want a clarification...

Player Aging is faster if the value is greater than 1 or less than 1?

I see two varying opinions in this thread and I need to figure out which is which.

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by eodgooch

I want a clarification...

Player Aging is faster if the value is greater than 1 or less than 1?

I see two varying opinions in this thread and I need to figure out which is which.

Players age fast if the value is greater than 1.

I have my dev set at .700 and my aging set at .400. The results look reasonable to me so far. It's far from a RonCo study, but it's working better than the defaults.

[eodgooch]

awesome, thanks for the clearing that up for me.