Does OOTP Player Development Needs to Be Fixed?

[jarmenia]

Its been documented time and time again that players in OOTP do not develop realistically. The cases where four or five star prospects make it to the Majors at the age of 20 and by age of 22 have completely forgotten how to play the game of baseball have been documented many times. 28 year olds hanging on in AA only to get a sudden talent bump to make them Major League quality players just isn't right. Yes, randomness does account for some of this, but it happens way to frequently to just be bad luck.

The development model, not the scouting model is what determins if a player is a five star prospect or a one star prospect. IMO this is the job of scouting. The average player should follow a bell curve growing to a peak and then losing skill with age. The scouting model should be what produces the busts and the gems in the late rounds of the draft. A perfect example of this is Mike Piazza.

Does anyone honestly believe Mike Piazza suddenly woke up one morning with star baseball potential AFTER he was drafted (this is the way OOTP works)? A better explanation of this is that he always had that potential, its just the scouts missed it. That, IMO is how OOTP should work.

The issues with minor league, and development in general, have been shown to Markus time and time again but he refuses to even listen to discussion of addressing the fundamental issues with the development engine. RonCo burned himself out trying to convince Markus of the issues. Markus has always taken the stance that since the Major League numbers are almost perfect (and they are), that the issues with the Minor League development isn't a problem because this is a Major League baseball sim. He's also stated that only a small minority actually see this problem and most people wouldn't notice a difference.

In Markus' defense, it would take quite a bit of work to fix the development the engine, and there's no way the necessary changes could be made for OOTP 9. My biggest beef is that he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that there is a problem nor spend the effort at any time to fix it in the future. At a time when people say please fix the existing issues before adding new features, it seems this would be higher on the priority list.

So I ask, do you think there's a problem with the development model?

[darkcloud4579]

Biggest problem with the game other than finances and frankly, more important. At least you can tweak finances.

[ctorg]

Here's my main thing:

I think hitters are pretty well modeled in the majors (I admit that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the minors), but pitchers do not produce realistic numbers. They are way too consistent and there are far too many who pitch every five days. There needs to be wider variation from performance to performance and there needs to be a higher rate of very short term and day-to-day minor injuries for pitchers.

Regarding "potential", I don't think you can view it as a literal potential. Or maybe you can but you have to define it a little differently. Maybe Mike Piazza didn't have the potential to become a star, but he made some changes to his approach that increased his potential. There are lots of guys in the minors who make changes to their batting styles or add a pitch and suddenly break out. I think changes in potential are a great way to reflect that.

[Syd Thrift]

I agree with ctorg on this. I'd like to see potential done away with altogether but it's not nearly as big an issue as the way pitchers are modeled in the game. I'll go back to my soapbox about drastically increasing pitcher injuries as a way to fix this.

[Another Mike D]

I think it's a problem when you play with scouts off, draft a pitcher who is 8/8/8, and then without injury and pitching well, downgrades to 5/4/5 in a month. Maybe it produces realistic results eventually, but let's face it, it's a fairly rare real life event for a prospect to go from lauded to to barely A-ball caliber in a month.

I believe if the presentation of it were changed, it may be better. Like instead of downgrades, guys just failed to live up to the ratings and never made it out. I'm sure that would be hard to implement, having 20 guys in the minors who were 5* caliber that only 3-4 will ever develop.

[Who Killed Kenny?]

Didn't someone do a study on this last spring and found that the current player development was actually on par with real player development?

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by Who Killed Kenny?

Didn't someone do a study on this last spring and found that the current player development was actually on par with real player development?

That was RonCo and the results are on par with real player development but the way it gets there is WAY off.

[BusterKing]

Maybe this is a too complicated job to implement?

Sometimes short cuts are the answers when no ones know any better and don't complain about it.


Now that someone is making a big deal out of this it may be finally worked on.

Lets hope.

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by BusterKing

Maybe this is a too complicated job to implement?

Sometimes short cuts are the answers when no ones know any better and don't complain about it.


Now that someone is making a big deal out of this it may be finally worked on.

Lets hope.

That's the intent. To show that its not the minority that think there's a problem which seems to be the impression Markus is under.

[deadringer]

Originally Posted by jarmenia

That was RonCo and the results are on par with real player development but the way it gets there is WAY off.

And this is what seems to be the big issue for most that are unhappy.

I agree with the notion that overnight sensations and busts should decidedly come more from the scouting variance then the development engine. I understand the argument that players can learn a pitch or correct their swing and improve to a point and I'm glad that's in OOTP.

My issue is the severity of the changes. The frequency of talent boosts and cuts seems pretty right on to me it's just the severity of these changes that frustrate me to no end. Having a guy go from a touted blue chip prospect to a guy who will never makes the bigs overnight seems very unrealistic barring a major injury.

Blue chip guys do become busts in real life and I accept that. Maybe it wouldn't frustrate me if a guy went from blue chip to nobody over a matter of months and multiple dips.

[Ambermonk]

I have scouting off, so supposedly I see the correct potential for all of my players. It is so disheartening to see the majority of adjustments for my players' potentials adjusted down every season.

I can offer no logical explanation why, once so many of my players receive professional training, their potential drops down.

Disheartening is not a word that you like to see used when describing a game that you paid money for.

[Neags23]

Other than certain bugs that affect online leagues (waivers, personnel), the biggest gripe you'll hear on an online league forum is the amount of prospects that get pummeled with talent drops.

Everyone is aware that in real life, a large number of prospects don't pan out. But that's not what happens in OOTP. What happens is that you eagerly download the latest league file to see how your team did and you check your development report to see that your 1st round five star pick is now a one star guy. Overnight. That isn't fun or realistic. It's just frustrating.

[johnnybourbon]

I havent had my league running for long enough to notice any developmental or aging problems. Did RonCo look into those modifiers when he investigated player development?

[SittingDuck]

Originally Posted by Neags23

What happens is that you eagerly download the latest league file to see how your team did and you check your development report to see that your 1st round five star pick is now a one star guy. Overnight. That isn't fun or realistic. It's just frustrating.

Dear Lord....

I am new to the game, but that absolutely blasts me off my rump. I cannot accept that for a game as strong as this one is.

This whole area needs to be addressed, otherwise the player development aspect is simply broken.

[RonCo]

The development mechanism was great for its time, but is now obviously flawed at a deep level, and makes it difficult for the game to truely model human beings.

Hitters who make the majors are as well done in v2007 as they ever have been in OOTP (and maybe as well done as OOTP's mechanism will allow), but still have a few oddities. Pitchers are still flawed. Players who don't make the majors are often pretty far out of line. The entire player creation process in v2007 and before is just flat-out wrong, and doesn't help. Can't speak for v9, of course.

The baseline OOTP model is not _massively hard_ to fix--though it would certainly time-consuming. I've written about a gazillion papers on this, and will leave them to speak for themselves, though. "Fix" is the wrong term, of course. Ultimately, for things to work well the entire model of how development happens under the hood needs to be removed and replaced with one that mor properly follows how humans develop.

[BusterKing]

Lets see if we hear from Markus about all of this.

It won't be good for business if he avoids posting in this thread.

[conception]

If you think that guys suddenly emerging as legitimate prospects after years of average minor league performances is unrealistic, you obviously haven't seen Geovany Soto. It happens with other players too. The difference between very good and average players isn't all that much, and sometimes it just takes something to click in a player. OOTP doesn't replicate real life 100 percent, but this is nearly impossible. As it is I think that it is probably as good as possible.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Another Mike D

It's a fairly rare real life event for a prospect to go from lauded to to barely A-ball caliber in a month.

I can't think of a baseball example, but Ryan Leaf comes to mind

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by conception

If you think that guys suddenly emerging as legitimate prospects after years of average minor league performances is unrealistic, you obviously haven't seen Geovany Soto. It happens with other players too. The difference between very good and average players isn't all that much, and sometimes it just takes something to click in a player. OOTP doesn't replicate real life 100 percent, but this is nearly impossible. As it is I think that it is probably as good as possible.

That type of thing happens in RL you are right, but the way that should be implemented without scouts IMO is that the player never reaches his potential, then one day does. In OOTP that player suddenly gets a talent boost. Its the development engine's job to develop the players, its the scouting engines job to mask the true development engine.

[Ambermonk]

As I near the end of my current season, there are exactly 100 player development items listed for my Single-A team:

35 went UP,
65 went Down.

Not very encouraging. I have coaching turned off so I don't know how this affects development - but I would think that even default coaching should do better than this.