Roster Creation Brainstorm

[deadringer]

Mods, forgive me if this should go somewhere else and feel free it move it.

In light of all the issues roster creators have had since OOTP expanded it's minor league structure I was wondering if guys that had done roster creation work or have helped in them could offer some suggestions that either SI / Markus or the community could do to make it easier / faster for them.

What kind of snags are you guys hitting? What takes the longest amount of time? What kind of short cuts could you recommend?

[Tony M]

My problems with the roster creation process are from the standpoint of somebody who doesn't deal with the players per se but tries to tidy up the creations:

1. The lack of a defined database structure that makes the creation of a roster set outside of the game confines more difficult.
2. Hang-overs from 6.5 in the database structure, and the fact that a database can and probably holds a lot of data that is marked as 'invisible' or 'deleted' but can't be deleted. I managed to fix a lot of the missing history in Nomar's set because the database in some places had different team IDs for various pieces of information and this caused it to go missing.
3. No back-formula for calculating ratings from stats. This formula obviously does exist because a Lahman-import uses it.

that's just a start from my view but there's probably more...

[deadringer]

Sweet thanks, maybe some positive open dialog can help Markus / SI as much as it does the community and roster creators.

[Erich Ingram]

I work every year during beta with Markus to make things easier for roster makers. The biggest problems is that we need to find a way to get the raw data turned into OOTP ratings in a quicker procedure than presently for doing the players that haven't participated in the major leagues and for them as well for that matter. Until there is a quicker way to rate players and get the information in the game it is going to take extended periods of time as people try to get ratings done and input into the game.

I do think that with the ability to import things like history and stats it will make it much easier to make roster files in the future once all the information is able to be put into the game.

Also right now with regard to importing of data unless you have at least 2 Gig of RAM it is almost impossible to import stuff, well at least with the size files that I am creating.

Another thing that I would like to see available is the option to completely delete a team from the database or to make that team inactive but still be able to have the stats and history kept for the team.

As for back formulas, I have created my own formulas for rating players that I do feel works pretty well with the game, granted the issues that I have run into there have been with figuring out how to keep top prospects from being dominant as a group too quickly. A few here and there, like Braun and Pence is fine but when there are guys from A ball and AA and AAA taking the league by storm in year one and two then there is a problem.

[deadringer]

Thanks for chiming in Erich, your's was one of the opinions (among others) I was hoping to get. I'm still playing your '06 set and love it.

I would much rather see SI / Markus put their resources into helping roster creators do their thing easier than to chase the MLB licensing.

[kagnew35]

Would a LIVE moderated chat session with Markus be of value to roster and DB makers? My Parachat live chat room has the capability to host such an event. I would suggest that it be by invitation for mod makers ONLY with questions submitted in advance.