Your Favourite TRTR (1-15)

[Muppetus Galacticus]

Vote for your favourite Road To Release articles so far. Pretty simple, vote for your top three (3). All links go to the relevant OOTPD thread. I thought I would take the top X from this group and the group of TRTRs still to come and have a final - if we're not too busy at that time

TRTR 1 - Making History with OOTP 2007
By Roger Snell (rasnell)

A German whiz kid programmer. A London company known for the premiere soccer (football) game. A Japanese parent company. A text sim game of America’s national pastime

What do you get when you mix all of those ingredients?

History....according to 2007 beta tester Rasnell.

What you are about to witness when OOTP 2007 hits the market is historic. Markus Heinsohn has tackled more complexities about baseball than I have ever witnessed in a text sim game.

TRTR 2 - By Brian Ash (aka Kaitiaki)

Quite a few people weren't thrilled with the radically new interface that OOTP2006 featured. Brian Ash (aka Kaitiaki) was one of them.

Conceptually, I found 2006's interface to be far more powerful than anything OOTP had ever had before, but in practice I found it clumsier than it should have been and, therefore, somewhat of an impediment to my enjoyment of the game.

With that in mind, I thought I'd take a moment and share my view on the changes that have been made to the interface for 2007 and whether they've improved my experience with the game.

TRTR 3 - Tiger Fan.

By now I am sure you have heard all about many of the great new features and improved gameplay that OOTP2007 has to offer. As a little diversion to pass the time while you eagerly await "Release Day" Tiger Fan thought he would take you on a trip through one of his History of Baseball replays.

SIM 500 HOMER CLUB

NAME - YRS - SIM HR - REAL LIFE HR
Mark McGwire - 87-02 - 742 - 583
Ted Williams - 39-59 - 739 - 521
Barry Bonds - 86-06 - 703 - 734
Babe Ruth - 18-35 - 703 - 714
Ken Griffey Jr* - 89-06 - 606 - 563
Willie McCovey - 59-79 - 595 - 521
Sammy Sosa - 89-05 - 586 - 588
Hank Aaron - 54-76 - 585 - 755
Mickey Mantle - 51-76 - 578 - 536
Fred McGriff - 87-04 - 575 - 493
Mel Ott - 26-47 - 566 - 511
Rafael Palmeiro - 86-06 - 555 - 569
Jim Thome - 91-05 - 542 - 472
Frank Thomas* - 90-06 - 528 - 487
Reggie Jackson - 67-86 - 526 - 563
Eddie Mathews - 52-69 - 523 - 512
Harmon Killebrew - 55-74 - 506 - 573
Gary Sheffield* - 88-06 - 504 - 455

* still active

TRTR 4 - Brian Ash (Kaitiaki)

Online play is one of the most entertaining and challenging ways to play OOTP Baseball.. Read what Brian Ash (Kaitiaki) thinks of this years improvements

But over the last year or so, many of us who play in online leagues have had the feeling that OOTP's online component has been marginalized in favour of new features for the historical or solo fictional player. Not this year. One of OOTP2007's major goals is to improve the online experience, and this blog will show you some of the ways we're trying to do that.

TRTR 5 - Randy Corcoran.

Randy Corcoran is a simple guy, who loves playing baseball sims. He loves OOTP 2007....

Let me preface all this by saying, I didn't like 2006, not in the least bit. I felt overwhelmed at times, I hated the new interface, and this wasn't the OOTP I had grown to know and love. 2006 seemed like work to me. I still held out hope for future versions, even though I wasn't a fan of '06. I guess some would say I was a fanboy of Markus, having seen the game grow since version 3, and how hard he tried to make the perfect baseball game for all the people who enjoyed his game. As a beta tester, I have a new appreciation for the hard work the OOTP team puts into the game. How much they take into considerations everyone's opinion. They truly aim to please as many people as they can. (ok enough fanboy stuff)

TRTR 6 - Roger Snell (rasnell)

If you played previous versions of OOTP, you didn't need long to reshape a team and get them into total dominance in your baseball league, so says Roger Snell (rasnell)

That was mainly because you could easily out-smart the AI in trades, the draft and even basic roster and lineup management.

Well, those days are gone. Markus Heinsohn has made so many tweaks to OOTP 2007, especially to the toughness of the trade and roster management AI, that you've got a real challenge ahead of you now.

TRTR 7 - Syd Thrift.

Let's face it: a lot of us who play OOTP have also read Moneyball, read the Baseball Prospectus annuals, get their hands on anything Bill James has to offer, and generally speaking are major or minor-league stat monsters.

At the very least, if you ask one of us what a .300 average means, or 30 home runs, or 100 RBIs mean, we will tell you (and be prepared to listen for a long, long time!). Well, if you're one of this group, I have got some good news for all of you. This game is taking some very exciting steps forward. Some of what I'm going to say might sound a little technical, but I'll do my best to explain it in layman's terms.

TRTR 8 - Jeff Evans.

Jeff Evans talks about the weather in OOTP 2007

Many fans consider the greatest moment of the greatest game of the greatest World Series ever played to be Carlton Fisk’s home run in Game Six of the 1975 World Series. Fisk willed the ball fair. What would have happened if the wind been a little stronger and the ball went foul? That epic home run was fair by the slimmest of margins; would the 1975 Fall Classic be though of so highly if Fisk’s smash had been blown foul?

TRTR 9 - Comedian2004

If you tried all of the different layouts of the OOTP game, using different settings, you will soon find out that there are millions of ways to play the game.

Who was that - Pick a historical league, any year you want. Import it and then release all the players to free agent to have a draft. Then you go enter the setup and you have the program RENAME ALL PLAYERS. So, now you have real pro players, but you lost their names. Now you can go tell it to remove all of the player's history and then you can't tell who is who. Well, there still is a way, as the new game has a REAL LIFE STATS for real players that shows their real stats. Just hold back looking until the player retires and then you can solve the mystery.

TRTR 10 - Matter2003

It took me until build 216, but I finally realized it. What was driving me absolutely bonkers is what I now love about this game.

was getting irritated that seemingly some years would be statistically out of the range in certain categories over short period sims(10 years or less). I kept trying to tweak and change the modifiers to get results with what they should be. They worked for a period of time, but then needed to be tweaked again, usually in the other direction. Then I went back and started looking at statistics throughout baseball's history. I skimmed through the 80's and noticed that 7 out of 8 years and at one point in that 5 consecutive years had league BA's in the .250's. I then just left all of the modifiers alone, and simmed thru 50 years of OOTP.

TRTR 11 - Nutlaw

One of the most noticeable changes in OOTPB 2007 is the availability of new tools and reports that help organize and speed up the process of evaluating and improving your team.

This means that it is faster and easier to sign free agents, make trades, and build your team in general. That streamlined process of course allows you to spend more of your time enjoying some of the immersive new aspects of the game, such as one of my personal favorites: AI manager histories.

TRTR 12 - Solonor

Solonor talks about why he feels converting your league to OOTP 2007 is a no brainer.

I don't think that this story is going to sound all that different from your own experiences, but I'd like to share my thoughts on how OOTP 2007 is another step forward in the journey toward the perfect baseball sim...and how I came to run a league full of hobbits, orcs, elves and dwarves (ok, so that part might be different). It's also about why in the world I would ever consider upgrading so quickly after last year.

TRTR 13 - Ronco.

Antonio Mota was a bull of a kid even back in 2009 when he was drafted by the New York Attack. He was tall for his 18 years of age, but already carried 225 of what would eventually become his 229 pounds.

Antonio was elated at the opportunity to play big league ball, and quickly moved from his native Puerto Rico to Port St. Lucie, Florida to join the Attack's Rookie League team. Two seasons later, having been blocked by other prospects in the New York organization, young Antonio was crushed to find himself released. But that turned into a blessing when the Cleveland Honey Bees signed him and put him to work full-time in their single-A outfield.

From that point on, everything is fodder for the history books.

TRTR 14 - Radiergoo

According to baseball-reference.com, Alex Rodriguez made $21,680,727 last year, an astronomical sum for a baseball player.

It far exceeds everyone else in the major leagues today, and it really makes the $80,000 that Babe Ruth was paid in 1932 look like petty cash.

Or does it?

TRTR 15 - Will “redsox45” Tuell

In OOTP 2007 Markus Heinsohn delivers a trimmer, sleeker, and much more innovative news system that feels less like a recreation of Othello and more like a late September afternoon – in a Fenway press box.

Markus has added a news writer that lets YOU edit any news story in the game without having to know a thing about “tokens” and “conditions” and the computer gibberish that bogged the game down last year. In fact, type a player or team's name and the game will automatically link you to the appropriate HTML file without any knowledge of HTML whatsoever.

[Zitofan75]

I voted for 1,8, & 13.

1 because it was the first blog and contained alot that excited me, got me fired up.

8 because I want weather and weather effects in the game and was encouraged about what they said.

13 because I liked the article on player development and how players are handled. I want those late round draft picks to occasionally mean something.

[The Wolf]

Why is there no "None of the above" or "I hated them all" button?

[Muppetus Galacticus]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Why is there no "None of the above" or "I hated them all" button?

a) Only 15 options
b) Because I thought I'd be on your ignore list and you wouldn't see it anyway
c) I didn't think of that

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Muppetus Galacticus

a) Only 15 options
b) Because I thought I'd be on your ignore list and you wouldn't see it anyway
c) I didn't think of that

Well, a's a good point, and c's a good excuse. As for b, I don't have an ignore list. You still have me confused with someone else.

[Muppetus Galacticus]

Bump.