It changes to the more generic-looking options once the game is created.

What you want is something that OOTP Developments is never going to change because it doesn't happen in real life. In real life, you don't get to decide that a player's skills won't decline during a certain period or from one month to the next, so I highly doubt that Markus and the team are going to code the game to enable that. If you don't want player ratings to change in your game, then turn off development during certain times of the year, and then turn it back on when you want to use it again. Another thing you can do to reduce player rating changes is to lower your talent change randomness. That won't reduce the frequency of changes or control when they occur, but player ratings will change by a lesser amount when they do change.

Please do yourself a favor and create a new game with ratings turned on. Then play for a while and exit out of the game and come back in a few times. I can virtually guarantee you that you're not going to see player ratings change. I have never seen that happen, and others are reporting that they haven't seen it either. Now, that doesn't mean that you haven't seen it, but if you haven't played a game in multiple versions of OOTP, or you haven't played a game with player ratings visible, then you need to test this under current conditions. So, load up a game in OOTP 24 and see it for yourself. I suspect that everything is going to work just fine.

Decision by the developer to give us the ratings in a simple way?

The scout, as is, is not an individual, rather he is the head of a scouting department. Why? Because the first version from SI had a team of scouts and users complained about the complexity of having to deal with 5 scouts.


I suppose they could separate the organization players, MLB and MiLB, from the rest of the world and attribute organization reports to managers and coaches from all levels. While the rest of the players in the world would be reported on by the scouting staff. How would that make the game any different then it is now? You'd still be getting the same information.

IE.. If changes were made,
Here are the head scouts reports from players across all leagues.

Here are the reports, from the coaches and managers, for all of the players in our organization.

Or just keep it the way it is now..
Here are your player updates from your scout.

Same destination, different paths.

I know we've made many changes over the last few years to try to avoid player ratings changing from simply opening and closing the file, and even from changing between scouting reports. However especially with how the relative ratings work, there's always a part of the system that is dynamic and may shift.

Otherwise, players don't tend to change much in the off-season. If you sign a player and get an updated scouting report shortly afterwards that shows a big change, odds are that the previous scouting report was much older, or was at a lower accuracy, and the scout is "catching up" on changes. If the previous report was in August, maybe there's some late season decline in September that wasn't reflected in the previous report. In real life, before you sign a guy, you would probably make sure to double-check with your scout before signing them. Probably some of that we can look in the future at improving the default behavior (so that if you have an offer out on a guy, he moves up higher in your scout's under the cover priority list), but it could be a case where if the scout got in an updated scouting report on them through the scouting task list you might have noticed those issues before finalizing the deal.

Players from your own organization are scouted at a higher level than the general league. Yes, it's still the "scout" reporting, but that's meant to bring in other discussion among coaches and so on.

To me this is exactly why players' should actually have to be playing in order for scouting updates to occur. There is just no way a scout is going to say that between December and January a. player went from a 55 to a 45.

I realize the routing reports are NOT scheduled during this time also...so you might say well see, it's only updating when they ARE in fact playing (although if it's in season how does this work with multiple leagues since it's a global setting??)...but the problem is (and I have been on this issue for a very long time) the profile page overall rating appears to always change in real-time. It's impossible not to notice this. If that is NOT what is happening, what is? It just seems the game is constantly trying to keep up with the real ratings (which it must I get it) while not always doing a very good of balancing the facade that is scouting. Scouting is a facade because it is misinformation intended to not always be correct...it seems it's an independent system in itself.

I feel the only ratings the user should ever be seeing (when it comes to using the scouting system) are the ones that are reported every XX. (pick your dates) So if it shows up in the scouting report...that's the scouting report...NOT whatever is on the profile page. I am not saying they don't match up most the time because they do...but I am also saying there are enough instances that they don't that it's very noticeable. Why can't this rating be removed? I don't know the answer to that question, but I have a gut feeling it's because the entire system is based on that overall rating. Everything from sorting overall & potentials, to AI behavior to anything else you can think of. I don't know for sure, but that is my guess...perhaps Matt can enlighten us?

The bottom line for me I guess is that the system is just messy. It's not tied up with a nice bow on it the way I feel it should be at this point.

I appreciate the effort all of you put forth. I might just wait till 25 to try ratings again and see what happens. Though, I really enjoyed no ratings and just looking at stats and scouting reports from my scout. It felt more like real life where you do not know how your players are going to play. But putting the ratings back on will most likely help me put together a better team. What do you think?

Also, just curious, what are the main things you are focusing on for 25?

Right, that is how I've always looked at it. My response was to another user that questioned why we get reports on our team from our scouts when they "should" come from the managers and coaches.

As you note here, those "team reports" are based on more than just the scout. They include "discussion among coaches and so on". Hence my comment that changing the system to separate "team scouting" vs. "world scouting" and who writes each report wouldn't make any difference. It's simply two paths to the same place. :)

I don't disagree with that you say (except I can't imagine not using scouting and just playing blind, but it's a YMMV issue...); but it should be pointed out that Boone's sudden "fall" can be traced to testing for (and thus stopping the use of) steroids and other PED's. Not that a scout or a GM should have foreseen that. I recall at the time being suspicious of the sudden bulge in power stats for Boone. (Some would call this the "Brady Anderson Effect".)

But it's a side issue. Ordinarily, I agree, predicting or anticipating a sudden collapse is too much to ask of a scout or GM. They are not astrologers. The best one can do is to be aware of age-related risks for those on the wrong side of thirty - particularly those with a lot of miles on the odometer and/or an injury history. It is "caveat emptor" with those kinds of guys. If you overpay free agents past 30 with long-term contracts, you had better get maximum value in the first few years, because you are not going to get it in the last few years. If you pay a guy $210 Million for seven years at age 32, you are more likely to get three years of $70M value than seven years of $30M value.

Matt, this is admittedly a tangent; but I've always wondered whether/how the allocation of scout resources, between majors, minors, amateurs, international, affects the quality of reports.

I allocate most of the money to amateurs, a fair amount to minors, less to majors, little to international. I figure my MLB staff will know MLB players, without dispatching scouts. With minor league guys, outside our system, we have stats, but it helps to see them. With amateurs, basic stats are useless, and we need the scouts to see them and personally measure mph (in and out) and launch angle and foot speed. Probably should devote more to international amateurs (as opposed to "posted" players from pro leagues); but that is such a crapshoot because they are so young.

Is the quality or quantity (or frequency) of scouting reports from the various levels going to change, based on the allocation of money? Can I override those choices through assignments on the scouting task list? Just curious how that works.

Sounds similar to how I do mine. Out of curiosity how do you allocate your money?

I go with

MLB 20%
MiLB 20%
Amat. 40%
International 20%

I think it's a good mix, but I'm guessing my 20% to MLB is higher than yours?

I also thinking for next season, with the new IFA invites, I should lower my current international percentage, perhaps 10 or 15% and route the saved money to amateurs? The way it works now is I don't think I'm getting much of a ROI as the scouting discoveries are usually pretty weak. With the new invites I pick and stick with the same 10 players. These 10 are added to the scout task list, and once getting a report are readded and scouted again and again until the signing period arrives.

This is a valid point, but if you change scouting to prevent any updates during the off-season, I suspect that a lot of OOTP gamers would be very unhappy. I don't think they would want to be blindsided by those updates later, with a lot less time to make trades, sign free agents, or otherwise address negative development issues. But it would certainly be more realistic, unless the player is playing winter ball or participates in some kind of off-season workouts where a scout actually has a chance to watch them.

You're right that scouting is a cosmetic interaction built onto the actual ratings changes that are underlying everything. That's a symptom of it being a simulation where players have ratings. Even in Football Manager, which has arguably the most sophisticated scouting system among sports sims, scouts are still able to provide evaluations and updates, even when some players aren't truly playing matches. Ultimately, I don't know if there's a way to ever make it all realistic, and it would probably be a huge undertaking to do so. But I can see why people want something better.

Exactly right. I think I'm typically at 10% for MLB (higher for historical sims, where I don't know all the MLB players; lower for current season, where I basically know everybody already, and have my favorites and non-favorites). Maybe 25% for minors, because I typically have teams that suck and could actually use the Rule 5 draft. At least 40% and have been as high as 50% for amateurs. (I like to focus on guys with at least some juco or college, since they can more reliably be projected, and are closer to the majors.)

Agree with you on the IFA invites. I've been through it once, with very cool results, proceeding as you suggest with scouting. Of course you need reliable information to figure out who to invite to camp. I tend to fall back on the consensus names, with some thought to organizational needs (usually catchers, pitchers, middle infielders).

Currently I have:

MLB 15%
MiLB. 25%
Amatuer 35%
International 25%

I am GM of the Phillies...and currently don't really need a lot of MLB scouting. It's pretty clear what the roster is. Drafting and signing for the future is my monetary priority.

I generally go with the following:

MLB 15%
MiLB. 20%
Amateur 30%
International 35%

I favour International a bit because to me it's such a crap shoot to find good players there. I don't use the IAFA system though, just Scouting Discoveries turned up to "A lot (16 per year)".

Of course Amateur is a no brainer to me - scout, scout, scout and then it's still a crap shoot. :)

Majors and minors I can get a good feel by stats usually, so less spent there.

I'm with Pelican - would be nice to know how this allocation affects reports and their accuracy. Though I'm thinking accuracy would be determined by frequency.

The signing fees and salaries demanded by drafted players and established international free agents are determined by their ability under the hood, not by OSA or team scouts. The same is true for the prospect pipeline. (When I edited one guy in the international complex to the same ability as Wander Franco, he was suddenly ranked higher.)

I find it odd that his agent and pipeline editors know his true ability, which should only be known to God.

Salaries at least are determined by a lot more then just ratings. I have a league where two players are rated similar, one is demanding 10x what the other player is asking. Under the hood ratings has the player asking for less rated better then the one asking for more.
They have the exact same Personality rating.

When playing in MLB-only universes, "Established International" free agents have no statistics. Their demands are determined by their ratings under the hood (including Greed or age).

The players I mentioned were user created so they also have no stats. The player with the better ratings is demanding less then the player with lower ratings.

Same age, same greed, every personality setting the same. Age as in same year, not same month or date. That may have a role in the demands.

Yes…which if you read the proposal I re-posted it’s one of the author’s (Ian) big issues. It’s so easy to pick out the best talent simply by looking at salary demands. If you see any amateur or international with high ratings and a low salary demand…guess what? He’s probably not a good pick. If you see the opposite you know your scout is wrong also.

It’s way too easy to read busts & booms via salary demands.

I know people don’t want to hear this, but it might be time to re-boot the system.