OOTP 27 suggestions

[jaa36]

This is a list I edit and post every year in hopes of making a few more changes to an already great game...

1. Awards. We should have the ability to enter or change award winners retroactively. There should be an option to only have a player from the winning team win a Player of the Game or postseason series MVP award, and to be able to select or edit these awards. And finally, more than one Custom award.

2. More options for how players enter the league. For example, an international (or all amateur player) draft, or a free market system in which players either enter at a specific time or over the course of the year and you just sign them to whatever contract you want; like the current international amateur system, there could be a spending cap, and ideally cap money could be traded. It would also be great to be have a bit more control over the quality of players from different sources.

3. More All-Star game options. Allowing the ability to select all-stars or an all-pro team after the season would be great, and to have an all-star game for leagues with only a single subleague and single division. Being able to pick teams by “player draft” (a la the NBA all-star game of a few years back) would be fun, or by nationality (US vs the world) in some cases.

4. Better support for amateur baseball. I'd love to have a more true-to-life high school and college system. For colleges, they should have a "prestige" rating that would determine the quality of players that go there. There should be a weekly ranking system, and a College World Series at the end of the year. High school could be more abstracted- perhaps just generating a few hundred players with stats to simulate each class, but then have a recruiting model for the college level based on the college's prestige, and a rating for the player as far as how likely they were to sign with a major league team rather than going to college.

5. Adjustments to the stamina system for pitchers. There should be both a current and a potential rating for stamina- but it should change much more rapidly than other ratings. A starter being shifted from shorter to longer outings would see his stamina increase to his potential max relatively quickly over a few weeks. Additionally, you should be able to set expectations for a pitcher- both generally (by what role you are assigning him in your pitching staff) and specifically to the game in which you're planning to use him. So if your starter gets injured or leaves early in the game, you could bring in the long reliever and instruct him that you’re expecting five innings from him, which you can sort of do in the first three innings currently if you check “follower,” but really should be an option at later points in the game as well. If the pitcher expects to go just one inning, he’d end up with the “standard” bonus to his stuff, but otherwise he’d be treated more as a starter would by the engine.

6. More options for what happens when tied after nine innings. There could be options for modifications to the “zombie runner” rules, like putting the runner on first base, or only starting after a certain inning. Or settling things with a home run derby.

7. A global events simulator! This could be the next phase of “automatic evolution” and incorporate not just expansion and relocation, but also contraction/dissolving franchises, new stadiums, ownership changes, playoff expansion, and worldwide events like pandemics and wars. (Well, maybe those last few are a bridge too far…) Ideally you’d be prompted when one of these is triggered to occur so that you can choose to decline it in favor of the status quo. Expansion option should have a long lead time, so teams might develop their stadiums, farm systems and staff months to years ahead of time.

8. A few changes/additions to stats and sortable views:
-wRC and wRC+ should be in single-season and career records for hitters.
-RA9 (as in runs allowed per 9 innings) should be included for pitchers, and this and rWAR should be in single-season and career records for pitchers.
-The number of games a player has played at each position and their stats at that position should also be viewable as a stat within a custom view, or even just as a split- this really comes in handy for selecting all-stars.
-Times reached on error, pickoffs, and won-lost record during games pitchers appear in would also be helpful to have.
-I’d also like to be able to view a player’s current prospect ranking (up to 500) in the custom views. You can find that info elsewhere, but can't currently put it in a sortable column.
-It would be great if you could view the player's actual rating (on the 1-250 or 1-600 scale) as an option in the standard player views. You can get to these through the editor or by exporting via Settings->Export MLB Rosters, but it would be nice to have an easier way to do this for all players.
-There needs to be a way to view "starter stuff" and "reliever stuff" on the same screen and have both values show up as sortable columns. Very annoying to have to toggle a player's role back and forth to see these.
-There's an issue where if you have a group of more than ~8000 players, that you can't export data efficiently because they're be broken into pages of 30 or so. Even if the default were to break them up, there's gotta be a way to list them all on the same page.
-And finally, it would be great to get some clarity about how some stats are calculated... For example, I know generally how WAR is calculated, but it would be really helpful to have better insight into what constants the equations are using (is it 10 runs per WAR on a fixed basis, or does it change based on the league run environment, etc.)

9. Better interface in the League Totals section. I should be able to see from this section very easily what the estimated statistical output will be for the league, including how (very approximately) the leaderboard will look. As it stands, you can tell what the projected BA, OBP and SLG will be, but not much more than that. It’s difficult to have any sense of how to set the modifiers lower down, like balks or outfield assists, or what the value “should” be in comparison to modern MLB.

10. Clearer calculation of projected park factors. You can currently find an “approximate park factor” in the Team Statistics->Sortable Stats->Park Info section (which is devilishly hard to find), but it’s not clear how this is determined, and it’s not listed on the individual ballpark pages. Also, having a button that would “normalize” all park factors in the league around 1.0 would be helpful- as in, if all the park factors in the league are 1.2, they should be normalized to 1.0.

11. Some more roster options. There should be an option to limit when a player can be called back up to the majors after being sent down- for example, in MLB, a player cannot be recalled within 10 days of being sent down unless replacing someone going onto the IL. And it would be great to have a “taxi squad” roster option, where for example you have 30 players on the active roster, but only 20 are eligible to dress for a given game- this would help to reduce roster shuffling when pitchers are tired or players are injured for just a few days.

12. An easier way to rotate the DH among players that would otherwise start. A lot of teams do this now rather than have a full-time DH. You can sort of do this with daily lineups, but that's a lot of work. Perhaps just having a selection in the DH slot within the lineups page where you can just check "rotate among starters." Or perhaps allowing an option on the player strategy page to select "start at DH when tired." Also, it would be good to have an option to tie the DH to the starting pitcher- so the DH would need to be removed from the game if the starting pitcher were removed.

13. Option for extended spring training- or more broadly, a way to shake off the rust for player you've signed late in the spring or in midseason without immediately adding them to the active roster. Likewise, it would be helpful to be able to do something with the same effect as a rehab assignment even after the minor league seasons are over.

14. Better schedule generator and schedule editing interface. I'd like to be able to suggest how many games per team within the division, outside of the division, in the other league, etc, and have it throw out a schedule. And I'd like to be able to click and drag a game or series from one day to another day. Finally, there should be an option to assign fixed numbers to each team in the scheduler rather than re-sorting based on the previous year’s record- this would allow for more realistic road trips, and possibly down the line a malus for teams that travel long distances.

15. I'd love for the positional distinction between "relievers" and "closers" to be eliminated. I don't think they're treated differently in game, and it's easy to miss a bunch of players when you look for "relievers" rather than "all relievers."

16. In addition to framing, blocking and throwing ratings for catchers, there should be a "game calling" rating. This is admittedly hard to quantify, but seems like a big part of being a catcher is pitch selection.

17. Tuning of minor league team priorities. I'd like to be able to generally tell my minor league team to focus on development, vs play the best guys on the team, and that might vary level by level.

18. The interface for playoff series could use some work. When you run real-time sim during a series, you can see the series' score in games while the games are going on, but weirdly, that goes away after the game is over. The "Playoff Coverage" screen allows you to pick season stats vs that team, or playoff stats vs that team, but not overall season stats or overall playoff stats, either of which would seem much more useful.

That's probably enough for this year

[ChrisG]

#12 would be huge!

[zippykat]

1. I would like to see ballpark construction expanded with more options as well as being able to construct ballparks off of team ballpark factors rather than generating ballpark factors off of construction. Most teams have already created the factors for their ballpark, distance and height of wall, etc. But currently you create a ballpark and then have to constantly edit it to match the ballpark factors and often they ballpark factors don't match up even with the correct distance and wall height.
2. Ability for multiplayer to host a server for live play. This could be to play a game, host a draft, etc.
3. A better explanation of where files should go for multiplayer. Unis, logos, ballparks, etc.
4. Inclusion of uniform and logo maker. These are third party mods that work very well.
5. Roving infield and outfield instructors for the minors as part of front office.
6. Better fan interest increase when you move a team. It is ridiculous that if you move to a new city with a new ballpark that your fan interest does not change.