OOTP 11 "Back of the Box" Feature Ideas

[OakDragon]

- How about a wizard to walk you through creating your own player?

Then once the player is created, have a way to track the player's progress in more detail... like a team homepage equivalent for the player. Showing their progress over the season, day to day, week to week, month to month. Showing streaks, trends, with links to boxscores and recaps of games they played in, etc. Keeping detailed track of the player's stats vs. individual teams, in different situations, etc.

[OakDragon]

Of course, a real whizbang of a back-of-the-box feature would be an ITP module for OOTP.

[TribeFanInNC]

Originally Posted by Nihilianth

Yeah, actually, I was just wondering how, exactly OOTPD is getting away with including an MLB quickstart with team names, logos, and stadium names already?

Names are not licensed I guess. I don't think the logos come with the game, do they? Pics and logos are usually user mods.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

I love the idea, but it was totally over the top. Consider this: how many people out there could even understand that paragraph? I'm even kind of embarrassed that I do.

Over the top? Me? No way!

I am writing for an audience of three people. If Steve, Andreas, and Markus can decipher it and like it, well, then, I got my point across.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by BMW

Someone asked me about creating baseball cards using the FaceGen pics. If you wanted to print out baseball cards the size of postage stamps, they would be adequate.

make the images vector instead of raster(?) and problem solved.

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

I posted this in another thread, but thought I'd capture it here as well:

"OOTP needs a hook for the casual fan.

Dont' they already have EA sports for that?

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

I love the idea, but it was totally over the top. Consider this: how many people out there could even understand that paragraph? I'm even kind of embarrassed that I do.

The smart ones. (or the ones that have been doing IT for longer then sanely allowed)

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by BMW

Someone asked me about creating baseball cards using the FaceGen pics. If you wanted to print out baseball cards the size of postage stamps, they would be adequate.

And even considering that, they look lousy, because baseball cards that you buy have action shots on them. They don't have a picture of the guy staring into the camera (or slight variations of guys looking into the camera), at least most of them don't. Even cards created 100 years ago had at least drawings/paintings of players in action.

If you wanted ones the size of baseball cards, suitable for printing, you'd need a 300 dpi image at roughly 2.25 at 3.50 inches. They'd be about 1/2 a MB each.

Doing them on demand wouldn't be much of a problem, but if you did a whole league, that could be 3-4 GB of data for just the card fronts alone.

Don't know about the practicality of including them out of the box, but I'll point you to Featherheads.com, where Florida Featherheads owner Kevin Lewis showcases a few of the PEBA baseball cards he's created using FaceGen pics. I don't know about you, but I think they look great even if they aren't action shots. Could something like this work as a back of the box feature? In my mind, absolutely yes. It's one more way for OOTP players to connect with their virtual players.

Again, I can't speak to the practicality of generating cards like this, but I sure can imagine at least a few people saying, "Wow, that looks cool!" and plunking down some cash for this kind of feature.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

make the images vector instead of raster(?) and problem solved.

Considering FaceGen is a company that OOTP licenses and they do not give you the capability of creating vector images and the average user doesn't have software to open, view or print vector images and OOTP cannot display vector images, what problem does this solve?

[Le Grande Orange]

If nothing else, recreating something like a baseball trading card inside OOTP for display inside the game is certainly possible. I once did a mock-up of a redesign of the player info screen which included a baseball card-like item so as to add some graphical flourish to the screen.

[Goody]

The game has almost everything you could ask for already. Its hard to come up with new back of the box features.

The product is that good.

I'm wracking my brain here...

A record function which will allow output of play by play, box scores, etc. to a webpage in real time as the commissioner sims a big game.

Even if is just spitting the pbp out to the clipboard so that commish can paste it into a chat window...if nothing else. That would be awesome.

[Vinny P.]

Originally Posted by TribeFanInNC

Names are not licensed I guess. I don't think the logos come with the game, do they? Pics and logos are usually user mods.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure logos do come with the game with the MLB quickstart. Been a while since I explored that quickstart, anyway, and running out of HD space in my PC, so I'm not going to check on that lol.
And since endgame brought up the point about the logos not being MLB standard, that's a good point. And the Lahman IS licensed, so tht takes care of player, and team names, I guess.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by BMW

Doing them on demand wouldn't be much of a problem, but if you did a whole league, that could be 3-4 GB of data for just the card fronts alone.

Yes, which is why I suggested they be both printable and able to be saved if the user wants to save them. Doing them on demand was, I thought, kind of understood.

[silvam14]

I know that there are some people who feel having a more open style league system a la soccer is taboo, but I have been pining for it in OOTP since it was with SI.

I am a fictional player only and it has been a wish of mine since the ability to have multiple leagues was introduced to OOTP in 2006 to be able to have a champions league style tournament with the top 2 or three teams from each major league together to determine one champion.

I really wish this could happen. The wayFootball manager is able to have all of the cup tournaments coincide with other league's schedules is fantastic IMO.

Also, The same holds true for international play. Why can't we have the ability to create a World Baseball Classic which essentially would pick and choose players from their teams by nationality just like Football Manager does with the world cup? This would open up so much more creativity in "World" designs it would be unbelievable. I could go on and on here, but these features have been asked for every year by many others and each year has been said. "Not in this year's version, Sorry" I would like to know what kind of plan there is for this?

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by silvam14

I know that there are some people who feel having a more open style league system a la soccer is taboo, but I have been pining for it in OOTP since it was with SI.

I am a fictional player only and it has been a wish of mine since the ability to have multiple leagues was introduced to OOTP in 2006 to be able to have a champions league style tournament with the top 2 or three teams from each major league together to determine one champion.

I really wish this could happen. The wayFootball manager is able to have all of the cup tournaments coincide with other league's schedules is fantastic IMO.

Also, The same holds true for international play. Why can't we have the ability to create a World Baseball Classic which essentially would pick and choose players from their teams by nationality just like Football Manager does with the world cup? This would open up so much more creativity in "World" designs it would be unbelievable. I could go on and on here, but these features have been asked for every year by many others and each year has been said. "Not in this year's version, Sorry" I would like to know what kind of plan there is for this?

Iknow that if you could do a WBC I would create leagues in more countries than I currently do.

[BMW]

I do really, really want real Winter Leagues and WBC-style leagues.

[Bobbuttons]

I still would like to see some kind of lower league co-efficient added in, along the same lines of the current financial co-efficient. It's a real pain to set up one major league, then several lower, unaffiliated leagues, since you have to go in and tinker so much with the financials of each lower league to make it to where the right amount of really low class major league players take offers to be upper tier players in lower leagues (and vice versa). A way to ease this would be to have each league get a co-efficient ratio of the highest league (in this case, the only major league). Such as lower league B would have financials of only 30% of what the major league is currently set at.

[Vinny P.]

Originally Posted by silvam14

I know that there are some people who feel having a more open style league system a la soccer is taboo, but I have been pining for it in OOTP since it was with SI.

I am a fictional player only and it has been a wish of mine since the ability to have multiple leagues was introduced to OOTP in 2006 to be able to have a champions league style tournament with the top 2 or three teams from each major league together to determine one champion.

I really wish this could happen. The wayFootball manager is able to have all of the cup tournaments coincide with other league's schedules is fantastic IMO.

Also, The same holds true for international play. Why can't we have the ability to create a World Baseball Classic which essentially would pick and choose players from their teams by nationality just like Football Manager does with the world cup? This would open up so much more creativity in "World" designs it would be unbelievable. I could go on and on here, but these features have been asked for every year by many others and each year has been said. "Not in this year's version, Sorry" I would like to know what kind of plan there is for this?

Well, this is great and all, but I think having the winter leagues act a bit more the way they do IRL is much more important than adding a new feature that isn't really realistic IRL.

I'm not saying your idea is a bad one at all by any means. In fact, I like that idea, and I thought the same thing myself many times in the past. However, I think adding more "real" features that are not in the game yet is more important than adding something that doesn't exist. I would also love to see the whole 4 year-ban of high school players entering the pros as an option, but since a real life rule, I would set that on the back burner. (Besides, apparently someone said that kind of rule would be extremely difficult to program. But that shouldn't stop anyone from throwing an idea out there lol.)

[silvam14]

Originally Posted by Nihilianth

Well, this is great and all, but I think having the winter leagues act a bit more the way they do IRL is much more important than adding a new feature that isn't really realistic IRL.

I'm not saying your idea is a bad one at all by any means. In fact, I like that idea, and I thought the same thing myself many times in the past. However, I think adding more "real" features that are not in the game yet is more important than adding something that doesn't exist. I would also love to see the whole 4 year-ban of high school players entering the pros as an option, but since a real life rule, I would set that on the back burner. (Besides, apparently someone said that kind of rule would be extremely difficult to program. But that shouldn't stop anyone from throwing an idea out there lol.)

Well, I'm glad I prefaced my post by stating I'm a fictional only player which means I don't care about "Real Life" rules. But in the case of the Winter Leagues, it would use some of the same functionality I'm talking about. The ability to pluck players off of their contracted team to play in a tournament or Off-season league is exactly one of the things I am hoping for.

Fictional play is probably not something that will sell many copies of OOTP as I know using real rosters and historical rosters appeals to many from the beginning. I do however believe, that once someone tries to play with real rosters and historical rosters, they will soon find, like I have, that the best and most fun way to play is fictional.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by BMW

I do really, really want real Winter Leagues and WBC-style leagues.

And I really don't want them. Go figure.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

And I really don't want them. Go figure.

I move that I win, based purely on good looks.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by BMW

I move that I win, based purely on good looks.

You would lose on looks, talent or seniority.