Feedback Needed / OOTP 11 Features

[JTSMOOTH]

Originally Posted by tehwholeworld

- ROOGY/LOOGY option for pitchers
- pinch hitter depth charts; This was in OOTP 6.5, why shouldn't it be in OOTPX/11?

I do miss the pinch hitter depth charts as well

[Jontler]

Originally Posted by Buane

As far as I'm concerned, OOTPXI would do well to add a few new changes geared towards Online Leagues. There are some aspects of the game that aren't perfect, but sort themselves out in AI leagues. In online leagues, with a league full of human managers, these weaknesses are really brought straight to the forefront.

The Free Agency system needs an overhaul. Or at least, a seperate "online" setting for use in online leagues. The current system is at the mercy of the AI engine which basically decides what a player is worth, with that player scoffing at any offer it deems is too low. Now sure, players' demands do start to come back down as free agency moves along, but while AI teams will attack any free agent with escalating offers over the entire course of free agency, human teams will smartly spend their money elsewhere. Why wait around doing nothing from November to February to see if the high-risk high-reward 39-year-old catcher who wants $20 million dollars will drop his demands to something more realistic, when you can just go sign the average 28-year-old catcher for $10 million dollars. Or heck, why not go spend that $20 million on a different position altogether?

The result of this is either one of two scenarios. One: good players' careers get cut short because by the time their demands drop to something sort of reasonable (if they even drop that far at all), the money has been mostly spent over the course of the offseason, and the player no longer has any suitors even at the reduced price. Or, two: players sign contracts worth less than what they were offered during free agency.

It is the second scenario here that is the most frustrating in an online league. It's not uncommon for a player who's asking for $20 million to turn down offers of $14 million in November and December. Then in March as Spring Training is beginning, or perhaps on Opening Day, that player accepts a deal worth $8 million. How do you feel if you're the team that offered $14 million, got turned down, and had to spend your money elsewhere?

How should the system work? Well, quite simply, players should never discard an offer if it's the best offer they've received so far. The relationship between that offer and the offer the player is looking for should determine how long the player waits before accepting the deal, but it should never be completely disregarded just because it's "too low." If I offer the catcher $4 million instead of the $20 he wants, he shouldn't tell me to get lost, but he should instead wait until Spring Training is about to begin before he signs it. This turns the free agent market into a much more market-driven system. Players contracts are worth what the league decides they're worth, not that the game decides they should be worth.

While we're on the subject of when a player signs, another thing that plagues online free-agency is the sniping of players by other teams as the season approaches. Everyone who's ever been in an online league has had the following happen to them:

First offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Second offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Third offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Fourth offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Fifth offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Sixth offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Seventh offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Eighth offseason sim: Player A loves his offer.
Final offseason sim: Player A has received a better offer from Team X, and has signed a contract with them instead!

It's not uncommon to download a newly simmed file and find that the player who's favored your offer all offseason has not only gotten a better offer from another team, but has signed with that team, sometimes on the same day. There needs to be an option for leagues to set a "grace period," or the amount of days a player must wait before signing a contract after receiving a new top offer. NO online league can sim the offseason day-by-day, so being able to mandate that free agents must wait 7 days to sign a contract gives other teams a fair chance to make a counter-offer without the player being stolen away from them.

Now these changes would move the free agent system towards being market-driven, something it's not at all right now. Instead of having to pay players what they're asking for, the league would set its own worth for players. Aging, injury-prone first-basemen who are worth $8 million would now get $8 million, and not the $15 million that they're demanding.

As a by-product of a new free agent system, you would greatly enhance the viability of using the Free Agent Compensation System in online leagues. In theory, the compensation system makes sense to use, both from a realism perspective and a parity perspective. And in my experience, there are leagues out there that want to use it, but two things are stopping them. For one, and this is speaking as the Commissioner of an online league, why would I ever want to use a system in my league that I have absolutely no control over? Solution: make Player Types (Type-A, Type-B, No Compensation) editable in the player editor. Emulating the convoluted, ill-conceived compensation system of the real world was a questionable choice at best, but giving the commissioner no control over what players are what type is a deal killer.

The second thing that stops leagues from using the Compensation system is the concept that now, not only do you have to pay that aging catcher the $20 million he's demanding, but you have to lose a 1st rounder just for the priveledge of overpaying him. In a system where the market truly sets the price for each player, each league would put its own price on the loss of a first rounder. There's nobody who would ever overpay to get an average player AND lose a draft pick doing it...but to get an average player for a reduced price? That might be worth the loss of the pick. Under the current system, that doesn't happen, because players will refuse to even look at a contract that's too far beneath their game-mandated demands. So, in my opinion, for Free Agent Compensation to work, the free agency system has to be changed in the manner which I outlined above.

There's a litany of things that could be changed, or adjusted, or added, as far as online leagues are concerned. They work very differently than solo-play leagues. I'm not going to pretend to tell you which part of your customer base is most important to keep happy. And, as such, I'm not going to pretend that the online-league player community should get everything it desires either. But this issue is at least a good start, and fixing it would go a long way to solving some long-standing problems that plague online-leagues with every passing season.

This is made of win and deserves serious attention in OOTPXI.

As a small addendum to it, it should be noted that right now, in the Front Office tab, the amount of money in favored contracts is currently public information for all players in an online league. Combine this with the fact that players will happily report who favors their contract and they won't hold onto or even listen to low offers, and you make it very easy to figure out exactly how much each team has on each player. In online leagues, this leads to a "bid -just- a bit over" attitude regarding free agents.

Really, having the amount of money locked up in favored contracts be public information is utterly idiotic. I can see how it was overlooked with, ah, certain biases in development audience, but it makes no sense whatsoever for online leagues.

But yea, Buane is made of win. Please implement.

[Jontler]

Originally Posted by tehwholeworld

- ROOGY/LOOGY option for pitchers
- pinch hitter depth charts; This was in OOTP 6.5, why shouldn't it be in OOTPX/11?
- a defensive stat that actually matters (such as UZR)
- cash on hand applying to future seasons as opposed to just the current
- a system that doesn't randomly create your budget way below your revenue from the previous season
- minor league reports that don't suggest players should be in minor league levels that don't actually exist in the league
- proof that Markus actually cares about online leagues as opposed to merely historical simmers
- the ability to turn off the personality system completely and not just hide the ratings
- ability to schedule promotions to draw more fans; this was in OOTP 6.5, why shouldn't it be in OOTPX/11?
- the expanded stat screen to actually show HR/9 instead of making the user calculate it themselves; it's on the leaderboards page, why isn't it in player profiles?
- expanded stats in the player profile such as FB%, GB%, LD% since the engine tracks that stuff anyway
- ratings not getting sorted by value with only potential ratings on

This is also made of win.

[Kitsune]

Instead if the one price fits all idea for a stadium... why not multi tiered stadium seating so that you can assign different ticket prices to different areas of the stadium.

[Killing Time]

Originally Posted by tehwholeworld

- proof that Markus actually cares about online leagues as opposed to merely historical simmers

That's the most ridiculous thing I've read on this board in a long time.

[KennyV17]

Something that my league has been hoping for is when viewing players, under the scope options, allow us to select "Real Life Stats".

Our league is fictional using real players. Although we use the ratings to determine a players potential, from time to time we would like the ability to sort players based on their Major League Baseball stats.

Since the information is already there, I would think this would be easy to accommodate.

Kenny V

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Instead if the one price fits all idea for a stadium... why not multi tiered stadium seating so that you can assign different ticket prices to different areas of the stadium.

Doesn't really add anything to the financial model I don't think. Plus there's almost no historical data on ticket prices listing it by seat type; indeed, there's very little historical ticket price data at all. You'd need attendance by seat type in order to construct the model which produces realistic results.

It's simpler to just go with one average ticket price, and focus on other areas of the financial model which can be improved to produce better historical and current results.

[markmcghee]

I'm 99% sure that Layman lists the manager name with each team. Why not import it during league creation?

One more for the wish list, this one may be impossible though. Again for historicals, it would be cool if all the coaches were retired big-leaguers whose names are pull from Layman. I'm thinking that you could create a coaches pool from the names of players who played in the bigs 15 years prior to the start date of the league that you are creating. The distribution among Man, PC, BC, etc could be purely random. Just think it would be cool to start an 82 league and see Whitey Herzog, Tony Larussa, Gene Green, Red Munger etc pop up in coaching positions.

[Jontler]

It would also be reeeeeeeally nice if the next version of OOTP had screen resolutions that were compatible with a netbook. I had high hopes when adjustable screen resolutions was added in the recent patch, but the lower bound was too big for my netbook.

I know I'm not the only person who would get use out of this.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by JTSMOOTH

I do miss the pinch hitter depth charts as well

Pinch hitter depth charts are long overdue for a return to the game.

Sigh. Another great feature lost in that horrible transition to OOTP 2006.

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Pinch hitter depth charts are long overdue for a return to the game.

Sigh. Another great feature lost in that horrible transition to OOTP 2006.

Well, in most things I have zero nostalgia for OOTP6.5, but in this respect I emphatically agree. I have the feeling that putting a PH depth chart back in has always been the next item on the "to do" list that Markus never quite gets around to before release -- and then it's too late!

[rich12545]

Don't know if this has been mentioned. Re widgets, it would be nice if each widget window would be resizable like regular window's windows.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by thbroman

I have the feeling that putting a PH depth chart back in has always been the next item on the "to do" list that Markus never quite gets around to before release -- and then it's too late!

Which is exactly why it should be Job One on OOTP 11.

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Which is exactly why it should be Job One on OOTP 11.

I wonder if it doesn't require more interface tweaking than we think. From our side it looks like such a small change, but there's got to be some explanation why year after year it doesn't make it in . . . .

[conception]

I never was exposed to PH depth charts because I started with 2007. That is the one area of roster management that we have absolutely no control over, which is strange given the level of management options we are given in other areas. It's frustrating to see the AI pick its favorite bench player to use as a pinch hitter over and over, regardless of whether or not they are effective in that role. I'd certainly like to see some control over that.

[WWBL Commissioner]

Please fix the in game schedule generator. It has been the same since OOTP 2 and that is not a good thing. We should not have to go out to third party people for this aspect of the game. I used the game generated schedule in my league this year and it is really terrible. Please improve it this time around

Also I agree with the pinch hitter depth chart, I would really like so see this returned

Thanks

[mgom27]

Option to say want to Save or not.

Pick when you want to start at like lets say I want to pick today it would now in 12 days that Free-Agent Period starts.

[lordchaos]

Just tried Puresim2 historical import function and I like it better. Allows more varied selection of who to import into the league. Can select entire years, individual teams or players. Download the demo and see what I mean.

[bmilito]

My apologies if this has already been posted, but here are my suggestions:

- A nice feature to have in the game would be the ability to compare 2 or more players on one screen, without having to jump back and forth between profiles. I am in 2 different online leagues and find it cumbersome when looking over trade offers that I have to jump back and forth between player profiles to compare all of the players involved.

- Also, making a version of the "Trade" screen available in online leagues. You could make the "Initiate Trade" feature available for online GMs to evaluate a trade offer, but kill the Force Trade/Complete Trade buttons for those that are not Commissioners. With the email engine built in, you could use the "Submit Offer" button to email the GM of the other team regarding the trade offer. You could also make the "Shop A Player" feature available and the game engine would send OOTP messages to other GMs that certain players are available and they can respond by sending counteroffers back for said player/players.

[thomamon]

I wish in an online league, owners can propose trades to each other, and if they both export it and can some way import it, the trade would be processed for the start of the next sim.