Suggestions: New Features / Grab Bag

[battists]

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

New Features / Grab Bag

NOTE: This thread should only be used for suggestions that don't obviously fit into another already posted category!

Includes
- Any features that didn't previously exist in 2007 and don't fit obviously into another category, such as sound, 2D, etc.

Excludes
- Features that have an obvious fit in another category. This should be the "category of last resort"!

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
Add sound to the game (as an option), including ambient sound during play-by-play.

Reason
Some people feel it really adds to the immersion factor.

Priority
Medium (people's opinion on this runs the whole range, so I'm settling in the middle)

[battists]

Suggestion
Add 2D graphics to the in-game engine

Reason
Some people feel it really adds to the immersion factor.

Priority
Medium (people's opinion on this runs the whole range, so I'm settling in the middle)

[Muzamba]

Expanding on sound over the next few posts...

Suggestion
Broadcast Mode: Build a text reader into OOTP to allow Play-by-Play and news stories to be read aloud. This would require the need for pronunciation keys to be added for all players/personnel, as well as team and stadium names, and anything else within the game that uses proper names. (Of course, these would also have to be built into the names files to accomodate the international names that are generated.) Additionally, there could be an option to tweak the text reader voices to allow for the creation of customized "announcers", which could be assigned to specific teams.

Reason
As stated previously, it would greatly add to the immersion factor. It's one thing to see the name of a fictional player displayed in the game, but imagine actually hearing his name announced in the PbP! This would really "bring the player to life", in my opinion.

Priority
MEDIUM, but MAN would that be cool!

[Muzamba]

Suggestion
An in-game Sound Editor that would allow us to easily assign wav files for a variety of events.

Reason
Sound is good! (And for those who disagree, it could easily be turned off. Plus, detractors needn't worry about it increasing the file size or slowing down the game, as they would have complete control over how many or how few files to use.)

Priority
MEDIUM. Again, not an absolute necessity, but fun nonetheless.

[Muzamba]

Suggestion
Allow intro music to be assigned for individual players and unique rally tunes for specific teams. Just go to the Player Profile Editor (or Team Editor) and point to an .mp3 file on your computer. When the player comes up to bat, or the home team has a rally going, the first 10 seconds are played along with the ambient in-game sounds.

Reason
Same as above... fun and immersive!

Priority
LOW, but talk about a tasty little morsel of ear candy!

[JerryArr]

Suggestion
Attendance goes up when someone who is very close to a milestone/the #1 spot all-time in something/a single season record/a future Hall-of-Famer is on one of the teams playing that game.

Reason
Gives incentive for GMs to sign otherwise useless, formerly great players, boosting fan interest. Or if Bonds comes to down, whatever stadium will be packed. If Roger Clemens has a AA assignment, the AA stadium will be filled.

Priority
Medium Low

[JerryArr]

Suggestion
Allow the changing of years in the stats equivalent of ratings (Like, instead of showing what a 100/100/100 pitcher stats would be now, it could show, like, what it would be in 1963 or something)

Reason
If you're not playing a modern game and you want to create or edit a player, this would be very helpful.

Priority
Medium

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

Teams to have more than one stadium. One for regular games and one for spring training for example.

Reason

It looks really odd in Spring Training to see teams playing in their home park one day and then playing the other side of the country the following.

Priority

Medium

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

Ballparks to record history.

Reason

Teams and leagues already have yearly history saved against them with regards to batting, pitching, fielding and records. Ballparks should have that ability too.

Priority

Medium-High

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

Name changes to be recorded for all entities through history

Reason

The team history record contains the name of the team for every year. The league history contains the sub-league and division names and playoff round names for every year in history, but not the overall league name. Players and coaches could theoretically change name but there is no mechanism for recording this.

Priority

Medium

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

The nations record to have an accurate population figure.

Reason

The population of a nation is currently calculated by adding up all the populations of all the cities in that nation. This means that only places with > 1000 people are counted towards the total. The population of China is listed as around 750,000,000 (IIRC) in OOTP2007 which is a good 300 million short of what it actually is!

Priority

Medium-Low

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

Lineup Position, Number of Fouled Balls, Details of Ball Location, etc to be recorded in the player at bat record.

Reason

I tend to play with box scores / game logs off as it speeds the game up, but it would be nice to be able to recreate a box score at a later date.

Priority

Medium

[redsoxford]

Suggestion

Remove the Round 1 - Round 50 hardcodedness from the database

Reason

It uses up disk space for no reason, and to have a 50 round playoff structure is highly unlikely. You could have a ranked tournament where each day the winner plays the next highest rank and have it for the top 51 ranked teams in which case you would get 50 rounds.

Every time the playoff structure appears in the game it takes up around 681 bytes (not much in a singularity, but it gets saved for every league for every year). Using a variable length could save over 500 bytes per league per year (assuming a 4 round playoff system)

Priority

Low

[injury log]

Don't know if there's a better thread for this...

Suggestion

Greater sophistication in the Player Popularity feature. It's an interesting feature now, but has the potential to be better. Perhaps some of these ideas are already implemented in-game, but in particular, I would like to see:

-the possibility for popularity to be negative (for players fans do not like);
-player popularity linked with player personality; the team leaders and hard workers should often be popular, for example;
-Local Popularity linked with continuous service time with a team (players probably shouldn't be 'Unknown' after spending 15 years with one team, even if they aren't very good);
-Popularity linked with past performance, more than current performance (players with Hall of Fame career statistics should have popularity which is strongly positive or negative, but should not be unknown, even if they are no longer good).
-stretching things a bit, I'd like to see popularity affected by certain off-field injuries. Players injured in bar brawls, or 'running away from the police', i.e. players whom parents wouldn't consider good role models, should probably become unpopular.

I do like that some players are popular even if they do not perform well, and indeed I think there should be a few more such players in the game.

Reason

This would produce a more realistic model of player popularity. Negative popularity would produce an incentive to trade players, even when they perform well. Player personality would be more compelling if it more obviously influenced some of the 'intangible' features of the game (morale, popularity, etc). At present, while the feature is interesting, it seems too simplistic.

Priority

Medium.

[Comedian2004]

Suggestion
A record book for game record books. Most hits in 9 inning game, most walks in 9 inning game, most hits by a team. Like 6.x use to do, well, still does.

Reason
Because it is not there.

Priority
High

[Comedian2004]

Suggestion
Allow sub-folders in the format of YYYY in the photo folder that the game pulls photos from when new players are brought in for historical leagues. The program would also have to check for photos in said year when the new year arrives and overwrite the existing photo in there. If no sub folders exist, it does not check.

Photos/1901
photos/1902

Reason
This would allow you to have a different photo for each player each year. So you can see Nolan Ryan getting older each year, if the photos were there. It also will take care of the issues where there are two players with the same name, like Frank Thomas or Bob Gibson

Priority
Medium

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by injury log

Don't know if there's a better thread for this...

Suggestion

Greater sophistication in the Player Popularity feature. It's an interesting feature now, but has the potential to be better. Perhaps some of these ideas are already implemented in-game, but in particular, I would like to see:

-the possibility for popularity to be negative (for players fans do not like);
-player popularity linked with player personality; the team leaders and hard workers should often be popular, for example;
-Local Popularity linked with continuous service time with a team (players probably shouldn't be 'Unknown' after spending 15 years with one team, even if they aren't very good);
-Popularity linked with past performance, more than current performance (players with Hall of Fame career statistics should have popularity which is strongly positive or negative, but should not be unknown, even if they are no longer good).
-stretching things a bit, I'd like to see popularity affected by certain off-field injuries. Players injured in bar brawls, or 'running away from the police', i.e. players whom parents wouldn't consider good role models, should probably become unpopular.

I do like that some players are popular even if they do not perform well, and indeed I think there should be a few more such players in the game.

Reason

This would produce a more realistic model of player popularity. Negative popularity would produce an incentive to trade players, even when they perform well. Player personality would be more compelling if it more obviously influenced some of the 'intangible' features of the game (morale, popularity, etc). At present, while the feature is interesting, it seems too simplistic.

Priority

Medium.

To go along with this:

Suggestion

Much more complicated (realistic?) player personality modelling, eg, have ratings for how likely players are to fight, take drugs, fall out with team mates, etc. Maybe have it as three ratings, eg. Temperment, Off the Field self control (Couldn't think of a better name lol), team spirit. This would let me represent people like this guy I went to school with who could run the 100m in <12 secs but is a lier, takes drugs and all sorts of other negative things.

Reason

It give more realism and variety in players.

Priority

Medium-high.

[cnield]

Suggestion
Some sort of 'LOOGY' field on the pitching screen so we could designate a pitcher that we want the AI manager to go to when a critical out against a lefty in the game. I want to be able to have a pitcher who is mainly used against lefties.

Reason
Trying to get a manager to do this by using team strategy is tedious and very time consuming.


Priority
High

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

To go along with this:

Suggestion

Much more complicated (realistic?) player personality modelling, eg, have ratings for how likely players are to fight, take drugs, fall out with team mates, etc. Maybe have it as three ratings, eg. Temperment, Off the Field self control (Couldn't think of a better name lol), team spirit. This would let me represent people like this guy I went to school with who could run the 100m in <12 secs but is a lier, takes drugs and all sorts of other negative things.

We're on the same page, Cryomaniac- I was about to post a similar suggestion. It's my understanding from other threads that we'll never see things like narcotics suspensions or fatalities in the game, as it runs counter to company philosophy, which is fine with me as long as injuries can be made fully customizable. In any case, if I can suggest a simpler modification of your proposal, which doesn't make use of new personality ratings:

Suggestion

Introduce a 'Personality' boolean in the off-field injuries database. Injuries with this boolean 'on' would be more likely to occur to players with bad personalities (low leadership, intelligence, work ethic). Off-field injuries like 'was injured running away from the police', 'was injured in a bar brawl', etc, could then be connected with player personalities.

Reason

I'd find the game more immersive if players had more developed personalities, but at the moment, player personality ratings only have a mysterious 'behind-the-scenes' effect (besides the occasional news message describing a player as a 'clubhouse cancer'). Linking certain off-field injuries with personality is one small way players could have more character. I also find it a bit absurd when in my custom database, my team leader turns out to be the team's lone drug addict- not likely- or find that he has been injured running from the police (and for what?). With customized injury databases, this option would be even more interesting.

Priority

Medium.