Im using .250 aging and .750 developing right now. I dont have hard data to share but I like what I am seeing just using the eye test.

The suggested settings here (.250, 1.000, etc) was great but I was still annoyed by the accelerated handling of prospects. Too many guys were moving up multiple levels too often in a single season. Many of the top guys even spent an entire year in AAA before hiiting the Majors. Now I am seeing most of the top guys go from AA to the Majors and less accerated calling up during the year but still see (elite) guys make the Majors as early as 2 years while others are successful in the 4 year range with even some late bloomers taking 6. No more late round rookies going from Rookie ball to Advance A in on year.

Im sure my other settings had an effect too but just wanted to share just incase anyone wanted to run another test or not.

It didnt seem like (eye test) the dev setting threw off the age distribution at all as far as making it worst. The suggested setting (the recent one) here was great. Just wanted to fix a little annoyance.

Grain of salt.

Now that this has sat for a month or two since last updated (first post), anyone have any new/final thoughts?

I don't see any problems with the aging and development numbers on the surface, but the talent level change is the one I'm not totally sold on.

If we're trying to get variety, or represent seasons like Adam Dunn and Alex Rios 2011/2012, why would this be lowered?

And where in the heck is the talent change setting located?

GAME --> SETUP & OPTIONS --> PLAYER & PICTURE OPTIONS tab. Talent Change Randomness is on the left side of the screen below the aging and dev speed options.

I'd love to hear some more thoughts on this, especially people who've seen it in use for a few seasons.

I'm pretty much sold on the development/aging settings, but not so much on the talent randomness for the reasons mentioned about bad contracts and the draft being too symmetrical.

Call me crazy but I have TCR at 200 (modern MLB save)

There was a thread or post around here somewhere that had data of the effect of TCR when it came to late round gems and early round bust, I pefer my draft to be non linear (dont want a high percentage of early round picks become All-Stars)

I also dont see a crazy amount (definitly not noticable) TCR from vets.

Someone before said that TCR doesnt have that much of an impact on the game (as far as guys flaming out) as people make it out to be and I am starting to agree with him.


I also agree with him that Dev/aging settings is def a rubber band. I think the reason we had to drop the aging from 1.000 to .250 and even .150 is because we left the developing setting at default.

Guys developed quicker and flamed out sooner because they were reaching their prime years in the 22-26 age range instead of 26-32. We had to drastically lower aging to compensate.

With that said, I since went to .500 for all (test reasons; 20 year sims) and I am seeing the same results as .250/1.000 BUT guys arent developing as early while top vets are still staying relevant past their prime years.

Wish I could give data but I dont know how to do all the graphs lol.


But again, grain of salt since I dont have any data proof.

MJ, I like that. So you're using:

.500
.500
.500
.500
200

??

Yea for now just for testing purposes. Doing another 20 year sim now.

My $0.02, take with a boulder of salt...

I've commented on the Talent Change Randomness setting (0-200) in a previous post. Basically if you want draft crops with more certainty (AKA less dev variance/less realism) then reduce this number. If want more late round surprises then increase it. IMO keeping it at the default 100 setting ensures a good mix of some draft certainty with a fair number of late round surprises.

Batter & Pitcher Aging: I'll keep these pretty close to the default 1.000. I think the reason for lowering them was to reduce the number of age 30-32 performance drop-offs, but with the settings at 1.000 it's not uncommon for stars to retain their elite performance at age 40-42. I'm concerned that reducing these numbers too far below 1.000 will lead to too many age 40 players retaining their talents, which is both unrealistic and a problem for blocking younger players.

Batter & Pitcher Development: I have no strong opinion here, but keeping this close to 1.000 seems to work well. It seems to me this setting would work closely with batter/pitcher aging. If you lower the aging ratings you'll have more older players with retained high ratings, so you might want to reduce Batter/Pitcher Development in an attempt to ease the inevitable logjams in the minor league systems from young players being blocked.

AI Evaluation: I like Ben's idea of a higher focus on current ratings (versus actual performance) so the AI is smarter with it's contracts and lineup construction when doing a solo league. That system does not work particularly well for on-line leagues though. I've done some tests with various extreme settings and they do not appear to have a tremendous impact on AI behavior, which was disappointing.

Sorry to revive a dead thread (okay, no I'm not)...

I use aging of 80/80 and development of 100/100 and then bump up talent randomness to 110. I'm considering pushing it up even higher to 120 but it works pretty well at the level it's at. I do this for a couple reasons:

- I don't think real life models aging quite correctly. Um, what do I mean by that? There was a recent study that showed that roughly half of an NFL QB's age drop-off occurred in his final season. Now, that *could* mean that players are awesome until the second that they aren't but it's just as likely that a 36 year old guy coming off an unlucky-bad year doesn't get another job. Sports execs don't have little green and blue bars next to their guys that say they're done or not (and even if they did they can't rely on them).

- Given two equally talented players to fill a position, the AI *should* choose the younger guy. Not saying it does, but it should. This could maybe be cut into by contending teams preferring players with established major league records but the reality is that the only thing that ought to block a 23 year old with 6/6/6/6 is a 35 year old with 7/7/7/7 (and even then, if the guy's that good, the AI really ought to go out of its way to either figure out how to get both players into the lineup or get good value back from one of them in trade).

- Talent changes should really be more random and not as injury-derived as they are. I know that that was Markus' original plan and he only moved away from it when people complained, but still... this way there are, I'm sure, more injury-based negative hits but also more just-plain-random negative hits.

This has actually worked really well for me, even into 13. I have a 40 year old on one team who just fell off last year but who is still just good enough to hang on as a 4th/5th OFer for his club. IRL I really think that very often the reason a team won't keep a 45 year old on the club isn't because the guy can't compete but because they're afraid he won't be able to. We've seen several guys in recent years compete into their 40s and this wasn't actually that rare of an occurrence in the past either if they were used effectively. See: Satchel Paige, Wilbur Wood, Carlton Fisk, (here I looked up 1930 more or less at random)... Jack Quinn, who played in the majors until he was 49, Grover Alexander, Choo Choo Collins, and Cy Williams at 43 that year, and then the immortal Grover Hartley, Red Faber, Ray "in the HOF because he was the Clean Sox of 1919" Schalk, Wally Schang, Curt Gowdy, Sam Rice, and Dolph Luque. That's 10 +40 players in a 16 team league. Some of those guys were HOFers and all of them were at least in the Hall of Very Good (maybe not Gowdy or Hartley), but you aren't necessarily seeing super-awesome guys decay into merely pretty good ones as much as you're seeing guys hanging on to a pretty decent amount of their talent.

That being said, I present this with one huge caveat: I play my dynasty in God Mode. That is, at least on the ML level I set every lineup, pitching rotation and bullpen, carry out every single trade, release any player I want to release, have fun with the waivers system (basically, I open up bbref's transaction page and approximate each and every one for every single day - I ignore amateur signings but everything else, even deals between major league clubs and indie minor leagues, I do). I used to play out every game too from the 7th inning on but with v13 have decided that the GameCast thingie is cool enough and the AI smart enough that I can step away from this. This is a crap-ton of work and although I enjoy the amount of immersion I get into my league I realize this is definitely not the way everyone or even a lot of people prefer to play.

Really, though, I think the longer-term answer is to continue to improve the transaction and player eval AI while at the same time getting those default aging settings flatter and flatter.

Did you ever finish the sim? If so what did you find?

That was me and I'm pleased you've done some work on it. I think the fast time we take to sim or even playout seasons gives a false impression to the human player. Albert Pujols had a TCR start to the 2012 season.

OK this is a seriously late reply but aging and development modifiers set close to 1.000 do nothing of the sort. I've played in the thousands of seasons over many versions and that doesn't happen. The biggest challenge is to get the age distribution down into the mid twenties (not high twenties) peak where it has been trending the last 2+ seasons. OOTP favors age and ratings retention. Real life baseball values cheap young players so it can overpay declining 30+ players by millions.

My beef with the extreme settings advocated by some here is that the age distribution across the league will not be realistic. You cannot use the top 100 ops or ops+ or vorp age distribution to set development. You need to map directly to the actual, not segregated by cherry picked stats, age distribution of the MLB era you're attempting to replicate. It's never going to be exact and it shouldn't be. The age distribution curve has changed radically in the last 12-15 years. Inside the game you must be prepared to accept some fluctuations that will be the opposite of the trend. A very strong injection of talent may result in a higher pool of thirty somethings in the distribution just as it did in MLB (steroids:rolleyes:) a few years ago.

Yes, I finished it and got good results.

I had some info stored in my phone but deleted it by mistake. I plan on redoing it after I set my league up with feeders and other leagues.

Long story short, I broke down the age groups by 33 & Over, 26-32 and 25 & Under based on PA (innings for Pitchers)

20% of the players who made an MLB appearance in the 2032 season was 33 & Over (oldest was 41 and the amount of 33+ players decreased after the age of 33; there was a hugh drop of from 32 to 33) 4 over 33 batters were listed in the Top 10 batters (based on an AI Eval of 25/25/25/25) 6 over 33 players were on the Top Pitcher list.

60% of the players who made an appearance in the 2032 MLB season were between the ages of 26-32 (high peak of 28 year olds; 26 seemed to be the age of established MLBers) a total of 26 players were listed on the Top Batter/Pitcher list (12 batters, 14 Pitchers)

20% of the players who made an appearance in the 2032 MLB season were under 25. 22 seemed to be the number where the best prospects reach the majors for the first time and 25 gave the impression of when most players will seem to "get it". A total of 4 under 25 players were on the Top Batter/Pitcher list (2 pitchers, 2 batters) the youngest player was a 23 year old SS.

For a light comparison, the QuickStart roster (based on 2011 stats) had similar numbers:

20% Over 33

58% 26-32

22% Under 25

I had detailed numbers for all ages but lost the info. These are just the numbers I remembered, It may not be accurate.

Starting a new 2012 MLB game. What should I use for the Aging and development speeds?

Just curious, what settings do you yourself use for ageing/development/tcr?

So you had .500 across the board + 200 TCR?

Yes for that test.

Again but the charts and data on here shown by us HAVE shown that the age distribution of competitive players are very well off using default settings, and using some different ranges with the age/dev settings CAN help correct it. I would not call VORP, OPS, etc "cherry picked stats", it's simply a measurement of trying to get the top percentage of players in OOTP to mirror a modern mlb setting. Eiskrap used PA appearances and IP to show the entire age distribution was very well off regardless so I really do not know what else to really to tell you, but to each their own I guess.

It doesn't matter if you get the top players in any particular category right. If the rest of the players in the league don't match the raw real life age distribution of the year or series of years desired then the league will not be right. I'm not being sarcastic but I don't know how to explain it more clearly. Once you get the raw age distribution right then if category leaders don't match real life results you have a legitimate beef about the talent distribution and modifiers. It is a chicken and egg situation.

It's also important to note that real life baseball age distribution is undergoing a massive shift due to an injection of cheap high end talent and the end of rampant steroid use. We could see the peak age for players move from almost 27 to 24-25 by the end of next year. That is a huge change.