Is the fun back?

[Curtis]

What part of 'Wait until you've played the demo to decide' isn't sinking in? Would you buy a car based on someone's internet recommendation? Take it out for a testdrive and stop deciding what you're going to do based on whether or not you like someone's posts.

[Rockpile]

Originally Posted by rasnell

How is the fun back? As a historical simming purist, I could care less about FaceGen but some folks will love it and it is neat. You could make this game cook hot dogs and popcorn and I wouldn't care. The heart and soul to me are interesting and realistic play by play, an AI that is sensible when managing rosters and making draft picks, an AI that is tough on trades and season and career leaderboards that absolutely make sense. What Markus has done to address the historic simmers is what is so dramatically improved with 2007.
.

As mainly an online player and fictional league simmer this is all still great news.

You know what would make me an OOTP historical simmer? The draft picks came in as AA guys instead of major league ready through a database. Maybe this happens already, but I am really annoyed at being able to draft major league ready talent in "historical" sims.

[Rockpile]

Originally Posted by Curtis

What part of 'Wait until you've played the demo to decide' isn't sinking in? Would you buy a car based on someone's internet recommendation? Take it out for a testdrive and stop deciding what you're going to do based on whether or not you like someone's posts.

Right...but until the car is available for test drive, intersted buyers want to know as much as they can about it.

Beta testers in this community are really good about sharing reviews/info and I trust them.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Rockpile

Right...but until the car is available for test drive, intersted buyers want to know as much as they can about it.

Beta testers in this community are really good about sharing reviews/info and I trust them.

That's my fault for not quoting the post I was responding to, which was enuttage's. Sorry. Two of yours came in while I was typing. Thank you for taking it well.

[Rockpile]

Originally Posted by Curtis

That's my fault for not quoting the post I was responding to, which was enuttage's. Sorry. Two of yours came in while I was typing. Thank you for taking it well.

I knew it wasn't directed at me... Thanks though. Point still stands, I think.

[fantom1979]

As someone who dropped 2006 sometime within a month or two, I really hope the fun is back. I played version 4 for almost 3 years, but couldn't really get into 2006 beyond helping test for the dream team. I think player stat accuracy combined with the interesting transactions the AI made killed it for me. I would spend hours at a time setting up leagues with tweaks in the modifiers, only to see multiple players hit 1000 homeruns or watch a superstar player sign with the Japanese league for 18 million when their cap number is set at 20 mil and their superstar level is set at 4 million.

I really want to buy this game, not having a baseball sim to play for the last six months has been a drag. I will try the demo before I buy. I have a lot of faith in Markus and the beta testers, but I have to see it first.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

I would spend hours at a time setting up leagues with tweaks in the modifiers, only to see multiple players hit 1000 homeruns

Specifically, look for the "235 years of baseball" blog.

[enuttage]

Originally Posted by Curtis

That's my fault for not quoting the post I was responding to, which was enuttage's. Sorry. Two of yours came in while I was typing. Thank you for taking it well.

What was wrong with my post?

I was just noting what sounded good and what sounded bad. Just talkin' like everyone else. I'm particularly interested in the interface, which will bring the 'fun' back for me.

I'll definitely be trying out the demo.

Not sure what rubbed you the wrong way. I'm actually excited about this game having some potential for drawing me back in.

And FWIW, Steve is a trusted poster and member of the game's team. RBL is a longtime forum member and someone who I respect and trust (as is Steve). Just interesting to see their different responses and take them all in.

So, yes, I do listen to advice from others, in both cars and games. And one is a multi-thousand dollar purchase. I've bought cars undriven before, and I've bought games unplayed before. I've been burned on both. I've also been pleasantly surprised by both. Last year was the first time in purchasing either that I'd been disappointed in a 'repeat' product, including automobiles.

I even 'helped' in late beta testing last year. I'm equally pensive and excited about this year's possibilities. Just talkin'. If we shouldn't express our opinions and talk here, previous to a demo, then am I allowed to post concerns and excitement if I pre-order? Is that how it works?

How is my post different in spirit than the OP's and others', where they mention that they thought the interface (among other things) was unintuitive and 'muddy' and took the fun out?

Bottom line is that I wouldn't be back here if I didn't see some real potential for the new game. Time will tell, but overall it seems to be 'back on track'. But I'm also not going to hide, suppress, or otherwise filter the fact that I thought 2006's interface was a real turd, and if 2007's isn't improved, I won't buy it. Just this single poster's take on things.

[CHCfan]

Originally Posted by Rockpile

Is REM back? I hope so.

REM never left, they've just become less good and less relevant.

[battists]

Yah, I guess the point I was trying to make is this: don't approach 2007 with the idea that SI/Markus totally scrapped 2006 and recreated the game from scratch again. They didn't. Apart from a new skin, the overall presentation of the game is similar to 2006, as you can tell from the screenshots.

That said, the game is much "tighter" now. Pages have been redesigned, and changes to the interface have made it more intuitive. On top of that are a slew of new features, plus an in-game help system.

This makes for drastic improvement in the user experience, IMHO. But, I didn't HATE 2006, so I can appreciate the improvement. It sounded like the original poster just couldn't get past it at all, so I'm not confident that enough will have changed for someone who reacted that vehemently to the interface to enjoy 2007.

We'll see in a little over a month, I guess!

[Craig Scarborough]

Originally Posted by rasnell

If you're new to this game, it is going to take a lot of effort to master this. But there's a lot of fun in tinkering to get exactly the settings that you want and test your own universe.

See, this concerns me. Suppose I want to play regular major league teams utilizing the era of 1980s baseball (e.g. 30 homeruns meant something, players would actually steal a base, etc). I don't want to have to tweak and re-tweak parameters ad nauseum to get the experience I want. Having to sim 20 seasons and realizing it's still not where I want it to be gets frustrating and eventually I give up.

Is OOTP 2007 capable of minimizing this process?

[battists]

Originally Posted by Craig Scarborough

See, this concerns me. Suppose I want to play regular major league teams utilizing the era of 1980s baseball (e.g. 30 homeruns meant something, players would actually steal a base, etc). I don't want to have to tweak and re-tweak parameters ad nauseum to get the experience I want. Having to sim 20 seasons and realizing it's still not where I want it to be gets frustrating and eventually I give up.

Is OOTP 2007 capable of minimizing this process?

It depends on your expectations. If you use a historical database like Lahman and import 1980, you should be able to play out a season with no tweaking and get reasonable 1980s results, statistically speaking. Very easy to import, very easy to get started.

However, the more detail-oriented you are, the more settings there are to look at and potentially tweak. There's simply no way to optimize the game for EVERY different way people want to play. If you want to import historical 1980s players into your 1990 world, and change it so that the league batting average is .400, you can do it - but as Rasnell suggests, there's a lot of tweaking to be done.

There's simply a lot of options that can customize the way the game plays out. Even if you just want to do a straight historical sim, there are options about how you want the game to calculate player ratings, and so forth.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Craig Scarborough

See, this concerns me. Suppose I want to play regular major league teams utilizing the era of 1980s baseball (e.g. 30 homeruns meant something, players would actually steal a base, etc). I don't want to have to tweak and re-tweak parameters ad nauseum to get the experience I want. Having to sim 20 seasons and realizing it's still not where I want it to be gets frustrating and eventually I give up.

Is OOTP 2007 capable of minimizing this process?

Just decrease the player creation modifier for HR to 0.75, and set the league strategy of stealing to OFTEN and you're set It's all on a single screen (league strategy tab).

[PotatoPeeler]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Specifically, look for the "235 years of baseball" blog.

Is this going to be our Valentine's Day gift? I'm growing impatient.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by PotatoPeeler

Is this going to be our Valentine's Day gift? I'm growing impatient.

I have no idea when; I know that this blog is "under construction".

[Craig Scarborough]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Just decrease the player creation modifier for HR to 0.75, and set the league strategy of stealing to OFTEN and you're set It's all on a single screen (league strategy tab).

Thanks, Markus - that's what I was looking for. My apologies for neglecting to say I play purely fictional and thus the confusion.

[rewc27]

Originally Posted by bigcat

I'm not surprised that the beta testers like it. With all due respect to the fine people who do the testing and they do an excellent and under-respected job, they are all hardcore fans of OOTP and Markus. They aren't likely to go beyond finding bugs and writing PbP to intensively looking at questionable design.

Actually I was not a fan of 2006 at all, and put on the shelf after about the first month. I can say not all testers were fans of the last version and I can say all these guys are looking at every single nook and cranny of the game and trying to improve it.
I agree the fun factor wasn't there in 06, I do think it is back in 07. This game isn't 6.5 but it isn't 2006 either, nor should it be either. As people suggested, try the demo before you make a decision. I really feel if people give it a fair shake, they will find a great game.

[fhomess]

This is long, so I apologize for that...

First, let me say that I bought 2006, tried to play it for about a week, but gave up. None of my online leagues switched, so I never went back. I was intrigued by the multiple leagues concept, but just had so much trouble figuring out how to set it all up that I left it alone. I felt very strongly that I had wasted my money on the game, and to a large extent, I still do. Given the play I got out of OOTP4, 5, and 6/6.5, I don't mind supporting Markus and his team.

I applied for the beta team with one thought in mind: My online leagues (all in 6.5) had reached the limits of what the game could handle. I wanted to go beyond that, but OOTP2006 was not the answer, so maybe I could help OOTP2007 become the answer.

First OOTP2007 build comes out - like RonCo said, the beta fanboys hailed the new version with shouts of joy. The feature list was impressive already but I was annoyed. We hadn't tested any of it yet and the previous version stunk, IMO. If the beta was going to be a bunch of fanboys applauding every change Markus made, we were in for another long year. For the OP's assertion that 2006 was bad because of the interface only scratched the surface for me. There was so much more wrong with it, IMO. Anyway, it soon became apparent that the new version was improved but still had many of the flaws of 2006. Fanboyism died away in January as we found new ways to break the game.

People started nit-picking details in player ratings, stats, roster management, financials, and other various areas. Markus made tweaks as it was shown that the game wasn't working right. Markus pushed back on areas he felt were ok as they were or weren't high enough priority to get changed this year. If the betas felt Markus was wrong, we went back and forth. I've lost track of how many times this has happened. The betas are a pushy bunch. As far as I can tell, every beta has an idea of what the best version of OOTP will be like, and we want it now and we're going to let Markus know what needs to happen to fix it. For his part, Markus has listened and responded thoughtfully to all criticism. I've been impressed to see him make fixes he didn't really want to when presented with enough data to show him how and why it needs to be changed. I never fully realized just how much effort he puts into the game, and at times I've pulled my hair out when seeing a certain bug get addressed before another I thought was higher priority, but he really works hard and cares a lot about the finished product.

So, my take on various things in 2007:
The Interface: The look and feel is pretty much the same as in 2006. There's a lot more shortcuts now, though, so things go faster. In my own mind, the OOTP6.5 interface was simpler because there was less you could do. I think for the level of complexity, the learning curve is probably about the same. I didn't find OOTP4 (my first version) to be particularly easy to navigate when I first got it. I'm still not a huge fan, but I also haven't taken time to get to know portals like the manager home page as I've been testing rather specifically. The forward and back buttons have worked well for me. Right click player options are nice. The ability to meet a player's salary demands make contract negotiation quicker.

League Setup: This was a pain to me in 2006 as I mentioned above. The League Creation Wizard walks you through the major decision points. As someone who prefers the fictional side of things, I always find myself making minor tweaks in advanced mode after going through the wizard. At this point, I'm fairly quick about it. One thing I will say is that the game is so flexible that if you're trying to do anything unique, you might want to try a few different configurations for a season or two before committing your heart to a project. You can do A LOT with the game, and that's one of my favorite things about it. You can also get really annoyed if you missed a setting that has an undesirable impact on your league. As far as I can tell, fictional is the most difficult configuration because the desired end result is all in your head. If you want historical, the game seems to handle that rather well with all the new historical features. Modern day also seems to work well. To be fair, if you're the type of gamer who cares immensely about getting your league just right, then the need to test out some settings was there in 6.5, too. 6.5 didn't have the flexibility of 2007, though, so it may have been quicker, but it was not able to do what 2007 can.

In-Game: This, to me, is every bit as fun as it was in 6.5. The PbP has gotten a lot of attention, and IMO is improved over what I've heard about 2006 (since I didn't play out many games in 06). The sim options should keep people who want to control a game at a faster pace happy. I haven't played a ton of games, but in the games I have played out, the AI has only made truly odd strategy decisions in games played using some of the earlier builds. So that seems to be ok, too, although I'm not sure how demanding I am.

So, do I think OOTP2007 is the answer to my online league question? Well, yeah, I think it will be. I don't believe it'll do everything perfectly, but there are enough improvements to the game that specifically address online league concerns that I would have confidence in upgrading any of my online leagues. I've been involved in a beta league for online leagues and the ability to download the league file directly in the game works great and is much nicer than the 6.5 method, although not uniquely new to 2007. The commish portal, the ability to write your own news articles, pick awards winners, and some of the financial improvements have me feeling that the game will handle the online league world well. One of the things I love about online leagues is that I don't believe any AI, no matter how well written, can be as interesting to compete against as a human opponent, so the fact that I feel confident the new version can handle the demands of an online league makes me rather happy.

[DMN]

As one of the beta testers this year I would like to add a couple of things or I guess restate a couple of things others have posted.

1. The testers are NOT all fan-boys!
2. I have seen some downright arguements and posts from testers really taking Markus to task over an issue, an idea or something they feel the game lacks.
3. I was one of the first last year to post that the 2006 version lost the "Fun Factor" for me!!!
4. I tried 4-5 times to get into the 2006 game and never did!
5. I am not very smart and not into all the complexities the 2007 game has, but I have HAD FUN testing this game.
6. The new version is FUN to play! does it have everything I want, no it does not. But it has features I never dreamed of and while the learning curve for an old guy like me is steep, it is not that hard.....even for me!
7. Did I mention the 2007 version is FUN.

David

[zekester91]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

I have no idea when; I know that this blog is "under construction".

hasn't it been said that we won't see any blogs or massive news untill 30 days before launch which is like 7 days 15 hours and 4 min and counting