Suggestions: The Interface (GUI)

[ptwarr18]

Suggestion
Add "Last 10 Days" as a split for viewing stats.


Reason
A lot of online leagues, including all three that I am in, sim 10 days at a time. This would make it easy to see how a player did in the last sim period.

As a Commish, it would make things very easy for my "Who's Hot" and "Who's Not" part of my webpage.


Importance
Medium

[Crimguy]

Suggestion: Adjustible notification of players being placed on waiver wire via email.

Reason: Allows you to be informed of a possibly available player without having to check the wire every week.

Importance: Minor

[Crimguy]

Suggestion: allow the navigation of emails like an actual email client, with keyboard shortcuts etc.

Reason: self-explanatory

IMportance: High. It's currently much easier to manage mail in FM than OOTP. I do like the ability to delete messages though.

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
PitchFX animation, like mlb.com has on their Gameday webcast

Reason
It's cooler than snot!

Priority
LOW

[bailey]

Suggestion:

Have the "Print Scrn" key automatically save the screenshot in a folder called "screenshots" with an optional prompt to name the file.

Reason:

You can only make 1 screenshot and then you have to leave the game to go to a paint program to save it there. It would be useful for people taking snapshots of lineups, scouting reports, standings on a certain date without having to leave the game every time.

Priority:

[Swimmer]

Suggestion
Currently, if you add a league after the creation of the universe, you cannot define the level of the league, it defaults to ML. This needs to be added to the wizard, or even better, there needs to be a way to set MLE's/PCE's in the wizard.

Reason
The wizard creates enough new players to populate the league. If you are adding an unaffiliated minor league or an international league, you don't want those players to be created at higher league equivalents.

Priority
High. This impacts long term historical simmers who are trying to sim the addition of leagues over time as well as fictional simmers who like to have universes that are dynamic.

[Crimguy]

Suggestion: Different info in different places


Urgency: Medium

Reasons: From playing a lot (too much!), I've noticed a few things that would probably be helpful to many players out there.

1) Put injury status/physical condition on 1st page of player profile. That info doesn't appear anywhere it seems except when you put him on the disabled list or on the team page.

2) Put Scout/Manager advice on a page in each players profile. Info that you receive elsewhere should be put somewhere on the profile - probably the scouting page, such as
-Possibly ready for AAA.
-Overmatched at ML Level
-Not effective at 3rd Base. XXX committed 2 fielding errors since June 1
-XXX not developing as quickly as we had hoped.

[endgame]

Suggestion: Utilize black space under batter in Broadcast

Priority: High

Reasons: Easy way to provide a bit more info when playing out games.

The black field under the batter's profile/pic could easily hold at least two info lines that would add to the playing experience:

1) Summary of last year's stats including at least BA, HR, RBI, SB, RS, OBP, and SLG. I'm open to what limitations apply.

2) Summary of day's performance line: 2 for 3 today with a double and a walk so the peformance is all inclusive.

Just that little bit of flavor would increase the immediate experience and eliminate the number of clicks that effectively 'leave' the batter's box for the commentary.

[JohnBigBoots]

Suggestion

Separate Windows for schedule, roster, game play, etc.

Reason

Way too much mouse clicking going back and forth between the game and roster in order to make substitutions.

I would love to have the roster and game in separate windows so I can see batting and pitching splits for players without leaving the game window. Presently, in order to make a substitution you need to leave the game window, navigate to the roster and click and each individual to see their splits against the opponent. Then, you need to exit back to the roster to make the change, and then navigate back to the game window to resume the game. A lot of mouse clicking would be eliminated if this information were already on the screen.

Priority

High. Save us from Carpal Tunnel.

[voxpoptart]

Suggestion
On the Lineup screen, if the player's team is in a DH league, the default screen should be RHP+DH, not RHP.

Reason
It's irritating to constantly have to skip past a screen I never use.

Priority
Medium-to-Low. On the other hand, it should be an easy change, shouldn't it?

[voxpoptart]

Suggestion
In DH leagues, the Team History screen, under Position Players, should include each year's most frequently used DH alongside the other eight positions.

Reason
DH's get just as many at-bats as anyone else. Besides, a player will often be a DH one year, a position player the next, so it appears as if he's vanishing from the team and returning (and, often as not, vanishing again and returning again).

Priority
Medium-to-Low.

[Kaitiaki]

Suggestion

Add more visual components (charts and graphs primarily) to the interface (mostly the Player Profile screen). These were present in OOTP6: ratings/potential were represented both numerically, and with a coloured bar that filled up the closer the player got to a "maximum" rating; and there was a tab of the Player Profile screen that displayed charts of a variety of things, including the player's batting average over the course of the season.

Reason

While OOTP will always remain 'numbers-heavy' because it is a statistical game, many people are highly visual thinkers who have an easier time understanding information if it is presented in a non-numerical form. The addition of more OOTP6-style visual components will also further reduce the sensation of 'playing a spreadsheet'.

Priority

Medium.

- Kai

[Kaitiaki]

Suggestion

Add an "Injury Summary" section to the Player Profile screen. This could go below the already-present Injury Status information, or be given its own little tab in the same part of the screen. It should list the following information:

- Number of Day to Day injuries in a player's career
- Average number of Day to Day injuries per season
- Average length of Day to Day injuries
- Number of "lost-time" (non-DtD) injuries in a player's career
- Average number of lost time injuries per season
- Average length of lost time injuries
- Number of times placed on DL in career
- Average number of trips to DL per season
- Average duration of time on DL

If space is an issue on the screen, obviously some of those fields are less crucial the others. The 'raw totals' are nice, but probably less necessary than the information about average number and length of injuries. Also, the information about DtD injuries is less crucial than the information about lost-time injuries.

Reason

With the various "injury proneness" ratings no longer visible to the user, the only way to assess the likelihood of a player being injured is through their injury history. This is realistic, and therefore good. However, the way OOTP presents that injury history - mixed in with all the other player history notes, including Player of the Week awards, contract changes, standout performances and so on makes it a chore to determine whether a veteran player - especially a talented one, who will have a long history file - is "injury prone" or not.

The suggested injury summary would simply distill and summarize the information already present in the player's general history (no additional or "secret" information would be given), and present it in a more easily digestible format for the user. Making important information easier to find and faster to use is always beneficial, as it reduces the sensation of having to 'fight' the interface to find the facts and statistics I need to play the game.

Priority

Medium.

- Kai

[Kaitiaki]

Suggestion

Add the ability to create, display and save (as part of a View) "custom statistics". These would be combinations of two or more statistics that the game already tracks that, while not needed universally enough to make it worth adding them to the 'game proper', users would still find useful on an intermittent or limited basis.

For example, one way to measure power that the game does not track explicitly is home runs per plate appearance (HR/PA). Since the game does, however, track HRs and PAs separately, when I'm trying to decide who my best power hitters are it would be nice to have the game calculate that for me and then sort a View by the result. Another example: I often like to get a quick gauge of a player's cost effectiveness by comparing his VORP to his Salary (mathematically, Salary/VORP). Again, the game provides both components of the equation, but no way to combine them.

Currently, to achieve either of these things I have to set up a view that contains all of the 'source' statistics, create an HTML report of that View, paste the information into Excel, and then have Excel perform the calculation and sorting.

It should be made clear that for practical reasons this is not intended to be a terribly robust feature: users would not be able to ask OOTP to track game statistics that it is not already tracking, and custom statistics that require more than one or two basic mathematical operations would not be supported.

The implementation could be done through a screen similar to the one currently used to create a custom Filter, with the user presented with drop-down lists of available statistics and the ability to enter mathematical operators between them to define their relationship. The resulting stat could then be saved, like a Filter, and a "Custom Stats" tab could be added to the Customize View screen to allow users to select and add them to their Views.

Reason

The additional flexibility provided by the custom statistics would allow players to make more nuanced managing decisions, and the ability to do this sort of calculation and sorting within the game would be a boon to those users who already battle through exporting the data to a spreadsheet program to do it anyway.

Priority

Low.

- Kai

[Ktulu]

Suggestion:

Add a drop shadow/outline to the text at the top of each team section with the ability to select the color in the team colors section.

Reason:

A lot of colors that look good together in a uniform or logo do not match up well when it comes to text on a background. Adding an option to specify a color for a text outlline would greatly improve the look(and readability) at the top the team pages.

Priority

Medium

[Ktulu]

Suggestion

Any statistic or detail tracked by the game should be available in every section that allows the user to customize the view.

Reason

The data is there so why can't we grab it? Example on the hof screen there are columns for all-star games, gold gloves and mvp's but this data isn't available on the retired players screen where it would be extremely useful in sorting players for hof induction.

Priority

High because the data is there and it would not be much work to give us access to it.

[Ktulu]

Suggestion

Allow full customization of the "spread sheet" columns a la FPS Baseball.

Reason

Currently we can select what we want to see (most of it anyway), but not how we see it. We should be able to move columns into the order we want and select the width of each column.

Priority

Medium

[Ktulu]

Suggestion

Allow the ability to set filters based on statistics.

Reason

We can filter by ratings and attributes so why not statistics?

Priority

Medium

[BKL]

Suggestion

I would like to see the simulation screen be an option as a main screen. This is the screen that shows standings, news, and leaders all on one page when the game is simulating. The screen currently isn't available if you are not simulating.

Reason

The simulation screen nicely summarizes everything that is happening in the league, by league. Currently, you have to scroll down to see everything. Also, the current league home page doesn't break out leaders by league.

Priority

High

[lt2cents]

Suggestion

Add a couple alternates to the way buttons are handled in the managers game control window when playing out a game and let the manager choose which alternate to use.

Right now, depending on the pitch count and base runner situation, the option numbers and button position move around in the game control window. To this way of handling this add two other ways. 1- don't move the buttons around or change the option numbers. Just leave out buttons not applicable to the situation and inactivate number keys not applicable-- but leave the number system constant so that bunt is always '3', etc. no matter the game situation, not changing to '2' or whatever. Alternate 2- let the manager assign keys for the options, e.g. assign 'b' for bunt, 't' for take, etc.


Reason

For some managers who prefer to use the keyboard a consistent use of keys for the options, or even for the manager who uses the mouse to click the button, a consistent location for each button, is preferable to the current floating situation. Also, should be relatively simple to program.


Priority