Suggestions: Scouting

[battists]

This suggestion thread is designed to collect suggestions for the next version of OOTP, on the following topic:

Scouting

Includes
- Everything related to scouting.

Excludes
- Uh, stuff not related to scouting

Instructions
We will use this thread to collect suggestions on the above topic. Later on, we hope to present this information back to the community in a way that would allow you to vote and prioritize certain features.

If you would like to participate, here are the rules!

1. Only 1 suggestion per post.
2. Suggestions must be on-topic for the thread.
3. Constructive, non-inflammatory suggestions only.
4. No comments on others' suggestions are necessary. That means, we don't need 15 posts in the thread saying "Great idea!" or "I agree!"
5. Please don't link to other forum threads as your way of making suggestions. ("My suggestion can be found HERE.") If it's important enough to you that you want it in this thread, then it should be important enough to put it in the format I've asked for here!
6. You can certainly post suggestions that conflict with or build upon earlier suggestions.
7. Mockups are welcomed, they really help Markus see what you're interested in accomplishing.

Format for Suggestions

Suggestion
What is your suggestion? Be as specific as possible; include the screen you're talking about, if applicable.

Reason
Why do you think this is important? If this is to correct what you perceive as a problem in OOTP 2007, what is that problem? Be as specific as possible.

Priority
In your opinion, how important is this suggestion?
High (MUST have), Medium (should have), Low (nice to have))


Handy Cut-and-Paste Suggestion Form:

Suggestion


Reason


Priority


Thanks for participating!

Steve

[battists]

Suggestion
Have a way in the Scouting drop-down to show an "average" rating of every scout on your team who has scouted a player.

Reason
Currently, if you want your scouting team's overall impression, you have to look at the individual players' scouting reports screen one-by-one. Doing this would allow you to see averaged ratings on screens like the FA screen, Roster screen, etc.

Priority
High

[battists]

Suggestion
Have a way for scouting reports not to get lost when a scout leaves your team.

Reason
It doesn't make any sense that you lose all of your existing scouting information when a scout leaves your team.

Priority
Medium

[battists]

Suggestion
Bring back text descriptions by scouts, using the XML text engine. The text team can build a wide variety of messages so that each player gets a nearly unique description from any scout who reviews him.

It could look something like the middle section on this page:

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/m...jsp?mc=wieters

Reason
This is an area that really added a sense of immersion in OOTP 6.5, even though there weren't enough different phrases in that game. With the new text engine, there is a huge opportunity to present some really cool descriptions of players. This would in turn increase the "fun factor" of the game and reduce the reliance on sheer numbers.

Priority
Really, really fantastically high.

[injury log]

Suggestion

Introduce the option to automatically delete scouting reports that are x years old, x being a number decided by the game player.

Reason

Seven year old scouting reports are not especially useful. It would be especially useful to be able to delete old reports if other scouting improvements are implemented- if, say, averaged scouting reports are implemented, as in post 2 above, I'd want to be able to filter out the old reports.

Priority
High.


And if I can add one comment to the previous post, text-based scouting would be an absolutely outstanding addition to the game. If it were introduced, I'd want to be sure the option would exist to play only with text based scouting, and with no ratings-based scouting.

[Stu]

Suggestion
Save past Scouting reports on a Game Log type page. It would show the date of the scouting report and the ratings scouted on that date. Also give the ability to delete old reports in order to lower the file size in online leagues.

Reason

It would be nice to see past scouting reports of a player from each of your scouts so you could track improvement/decline

Priority
Medium

[Mattymo]

Suggestion
I might need help with this, because I have a tough time putting into words what I mean...But include an option to play WITH scouts, but WITHOUT "scouting". In other words, have it work the same as it did prior to OOTP2006, when I would click on a player's profile and see his ratings/potential according to the scout on THAT day. Not have to go scout him for a day, etc.
Reason
I find scouting in 2007 too tedius, I just want quick answers as to what the ratings are, but I don't like using the "true" ratings, I still want to have the variable that is the scout.

Priority
medium

[injury log]

I have a rather involved set of suggestions for modifying International Scouting in OOTP, which are all intended to work together. I'll do my best to break them down into individual suggestions...

Suggestion

Make AI teams more active in international scouting. I would find it especially interesting if this were linked with an AI team's 'Team Focus'; prospect-hungry rebuilding teams might focus more on international scouting than 'Win Now' teams.

Reason

As many have noted in the General forum, it is too easy to gain an unfair advantage by heavily scouting nations with good baseball programmes.

Priority

High.

[injury log]

Suggestion

When high-potential prospects (or MLB-ready players) are signed via international scouting, report the signing with a dedicated news message (i.e. a news message different from the standard Free Agent messages, which mentions the country the player is from).

Reason

I want to know when an AI team has signed an ML-ready free agent from another country, and when a new top prospect has entered the minors.

Priority

Low.

[injury log]

Suggeston

Introduce an international signing period (the date could be customizable, but ideally it would be an off-season event) during which all international signings take place.

Reason

This would eliminate the somewhat implausible situation of a team signing an MLB-ready player midseason through international scouting. An international signing period, implemented well (see suggestions below...) could provide an interesting event during the dead period of the offseason. This would also come closer to emulating the real-life international signing periods in MLB, even if the proposed offseason date might be wrong. The main reasons I would find this interesting have to do with other ideas I have about international scouting, which I'll explain in my next post.

Priority

High.

[Sweed]

Suggestion:
Have scouting reports come in over the course of the time the scout is "on the road". What I mean by this is if a scout takes 280 days to fully scout MLB you get no news from him until after the 280 day cycle. I'd like to see perhaps monthly or quarterly reports coming in on the teams he's already seen. I'd suggest he would start in the league his team is in and them move to the second sub league. Or perhaps we could designate what order we'd like him to scout the league.

Reason:
As it is now if you send him to fully scout a league it's like he fell off the face of the earth When if fact he is holding information that could be valuable to me now.

Priority:
medium for me, others MMV

Additional comment:
Maybe this is not doable because of player movement? You could have situations where a player would move from one team to another and never get scouted due to the scout missing him because of the timing of the player switching teams compared to when the scout saw the teams in question play.
Of course this timing problem could also add to the reality of the game.

[injury log]

Suggestion

Create two types of 'hidden players'/international players: those that are 'public knowledge', known to every team (just as in real life, with established players like Daisuke Matsuzaka, and prospects like Carlos Triunfel or Angel Villalona, etc) and those that are genuinely hidden, and only discovered by sending a scout to a country.

Genuinely hidden players should, almost universally, be very raw and very young. If an international signing period is implemented, a scout busy scouting a nation could report once, just before the international sign period begins, on all the hidden players he has discovered (instead of sending several messages during the year).

Those international players known to every team should include some established players (a customizable number) and some raw prospects. A news message at the beginning of the international signing period could inform teams of the established players hoping to come to MLB (or whatever the league name), and of the SISA-ranked top prospects in the international pool.

Reason

Many international signs in real life are not players discovered by the signing team, so the OOTP model seems very unrealistic. By making many international players public knowledge, the AI teams would be better able to compete for international players.

Priority

High.

[injury log]

Okay, just about done; this suggestion links in with my suggestions for an international signing period, and for international signs who are 'public knowledge'.

Suggestion

Have all internationally scouted players' contracts determined through an imitation of the Japanese posting system, both for players who are 'public knowledge' and for players who are 'genuinely hidden' (because the AI teams might discover the same genuinely hidden players). This could surely be implemented for established players coming to the new league, but would also make sense for prospects, if they are able to demand signing bonuses (as I've requested in the Contracts thread). Instead of bidding for the right to negotiate with a player, I would envision something much simpler- you would instead submit the salary/bonus you intend to pay, and the highest bid wins.

Reason

Man, it would be fun to have a one-bid blind auction signing system implemented, and to have to guess what bid might secure the player you want. I'd think this would be especially fun in online leagues. The financial complexities would add a new dimension to the game when deciding how much budget to allocate to signing international prospects. It would also be interesting, from a gameplay perspective, to have a different way of acquiring players, different from normal free agency- variety is good.

Priority

High, for me.

[injury log]

Last suggestion on international scouting, and then I'll be quiet.

Suggestion

Make international scouting reports much less reliable than reports from the home nation.

Reason

This would seem more realistic to me; in real life there seems to be almost no consensus among scouts about how well most international imports will perform in the Majors (e.g. the various scouting opinions of Ichiro before he came to the US). It does seem as well that many successful players signed internationally began as entirely unheralded prospects.

Priority

Low/Medium.

[ctorg]

This is a pretty huge overhaul rather than a minor tweak. I know it's unlikely that I'd see this replace the current system, but if there could be a way to make it work with it, great.

Suggestion
Have a "scouting director" rather than individual scouts, but limit the number of activities that can be performed at a time.

Reason
Having to click between scouts is pointlessly cumbersome, no matter how many automated features there are related to it. It is impossible to get a full picture of the league in one snapshot because different scouts have looked at different things. I think the scouting director option is better than using averages of multiple scouts because it streamlines the scouting process and simplifies it without dumbing things down. It creates less micromanagement for basically the same amount of information.

Priority
High, but long-term. I don't think the current scouting system works that well, but considering the effort the overhaul would take, I think it should be counted as something that is not necessarily going to get fixed right away.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by ctorg

This is a pretty huge overhaul rather than a minor tweak. I know it's unlikely that I'd see this replace the current system, but if there could be a way to make it work with it, great.

Suggestion
Have a "scouting director" rather than individual scouts, but limit the number of activities that can be performed at a time.

Reason
Having to click between scouts is pointlessly cumbersome, no matter how many automated features there are related to it. It is impossible to get a full picture of the league in one snapshot because different scouts have looked at different things. I think the scouting director option is better than using averages of multiple scouts because it streamlines the scouting process and simplifies it without dumbing things down. It creates less micromanagement for basically the same amount of information.

Priority
High, but long-term. I don't think the current scouting system works that well, but considering the effort the overhaul would take, I think it should be counted as something that is not necessarily going to get fixed right away.

I LOVE this idea.

It would make things much less cumbersome in terms of scouting, but still give you the ability to perform multiple scouting tasks at the same time.

You could have a simple dropdown or check box interface to select what you want your Scouting Director to have his "Staff" doing. For example you could say, "OK this week I want your staff to scout our upcoming opponent and Teams A, B and C."

To add to this idea, you could have a scouting budget. The more money you allocate towards your scouting department, the more tasks they could perform simultaneously. A higher budget could also shorten the amount of time it takes to perform these tasks.

[Stu]

Suggestion
Make "Scout Upcoming Opponent" mean something.

Reason

You always hear players talk about the work of their advance scouts and how well they were prepared to face a lineup or face a pitcher. Have it give a very slight edge to the team with better advance scouting.

Priority
Medium

[Stu]

Suggestion

Make the time to complete different scouting tasks editable

Reason

This would be helpful for online leagues so you could make scouting a team take 1 sim, organization 2 sims, etc based on your league's sim length.

Priority
Medium

[Burgandy]

Suggestion

Make it possible to automatically schedule a scouting task before a certain event. Say you want to automatically begin scouting a different league with each scout right after the trading deadline.. you select a new "Begin After" or "Complete By" button. The Begin After button reveals a drop-down list of events like Opening Day, Draft Pool Reveal, All-Star Game, Regular Season Ends, Playoffs End, Trading Deadline, etc etc. The Complete By button does the same thing, but it allows your scout to start so the task is completed by the day of a certain event. Or you can also choose to select a manually entered date.

Reason

Allows you to sim games without concern for missing your desired scout date... and without having to cycle a tasklist. Maybe I only want a scout to review the MLB and then spend his remaining days idle.

Priority

Lowish-Medium, since I think having a Scouting Director sort of option would be helpful to reduce the tedious aspects of scouting. But this would still be helpful in conjunction with it.

[Stu]

Suggestion

Add an option to Scout the Free Agent list and Upcoming Free Agent list. The time it takes would depend on how many players are there.

Reason

It's way too tedious to scout these guys individually.

Priority
Medium