Which is why it's an absolute shame that OOTP refuses to include "generic international leagues" with the appropriate player creation and stat modifiers for japan, cuba, etc, just with fictional players and cities/teams different from the real-life ones. Now you have to rely on this very lax system. I get you can't use the real teams and players because licensing, but nobody can copyright the entire country of Japan, or Cuba, or Italy.

I think the developers would, but I get the impression that they were under direct orders from the parent company and its legal team to eliminate everything that was even remotely a representation of a league for which it did not own an official license.

Some investors and organizations have an extremely low tolerance for risk, especially once they receive a cease-and-desist letter or something that triggers a review of their risk profile. But we don't need to get into that discussion here. Threads tend to get locked down if they do, probably due to legal concerns and strict orders not to allow discussions or references to unlicensed leagues here.

The other thing I just realized (in doing my minors re-organization in an online league) is that if the game does switch to a "Can't scout players unless they are actively playing" model then there would need to be a way to turn that off completely so that it doesn't completely break online leagues- at least as it involves HS/College players. The amateur draft wouldn't work if we couldn't continue to get better and more updated scouting reports on players in the Jan-Mar window when the draft pool scouting is being finalized.

So I have looked at several posts in this thread (thank you everyone for your input! It means you care and even if you did not agree with my first post, you still tried to help me; therefore, thank you) and would like to know, What is the best most realistic settings to use in OOTP 24? I want the game to feel like real life. I want to feel like an actual GM. And since several of you saw what I first post, maybe you can tell me what settings to best use to make the game feel as realistic as possible. Thank you all again for your time.

That is a BIG question with answers that will vary based on your definition or "realistic" and which parts of the game you're considering. There should be entire threads of this topic on these forums, so you might want to use the search and see if you can find those threads. Make sure that you're including all the OOTP forums in your search, and not just the OOTP 24 discussions.

Personally, I'm not much of an expert in settings for modern MLB games, especially since I mostly play historical or fictional games. But I know there have been discussions of everything from AI talent evaluation to talent change randomness, trading difficulty, ratings scales, scouting and many other settings when it comes to "realism" for modern MLB games.

But I'll give you a couple of quick suggestions based on my own settings for the games that I play.

I set the AI talent evaluation to be 65% based on ratings, 25% based on current year stats, 10% based on the previous season's stats, and 0% based on stats from two years ago. This makes the AI much more competitive with the human manager, who has the benefit of knowing that player ratings drive performance in OOTP, and not the player's individual stats. This makes the experience more realistic because it puts the AI and human user on more level footing.

When you also set your trading difficulty two or three ticks harder than the default, it makes it a real challenge to complete trades with the AI. The default OOTP trading difficulty has been made harder than it once was because I used to move the slider all the way to the right. But now it seems like you can be between the middle and maximum, and that generates a real challenge without trades being outright impossible.

Thank you for the advice. I very much appreciate it! I will use this information. What about hit and missing with players. For example, I sign a guy to a minor league contract but he turns out to be a great player for me.

For example, the Indians at the time, 2016, signed Mike Napoli to a 1 year deal and he had an amazing season. On the other hand, this past off season, the Padres signed a lot of players but they still finished out of the playoff picture and some of their stars did not put up great stats.

Bellinger was a MVP for the Dodgers but then fell apart. The Cubs sign him and in 2023, he had a really good year. I want that not knowing what you are going to get from a player. The scout misses on a player by telling you that he will not amount to anything in the majors. I love how a team like the Guardians can hit on Napoli or when the Nationals lost Bryce Harper to the Phillies, in 2019, they were still able to win a championship. I want a 3 star player have a down season and maybe a 2 star player has an incredible season.

I want hiring a staff to make a difference in the game. Guardians (my favorite team) sucked until Tito got there and in his first, they made the playoffs.

I want realistic trading and signings. Guardians would never sign Bogoarts. However, they did in OOTP 24. I want to spend hours looking for the right players and be rewarded with my efforts. Those are the main things I am looking for.

Shots fired. :thumbup1:

Players hitting and missing will naturally happen to some extent with the randomness of the development engine. It can also happen based on coaching, personalities, and other factors, depending on whether you've allowed them in your game. Those things are already built into OOTP, so there is already some uncertainty.

Beyond that, though, I think your only real option is to look at scouting accuracy. You can set that all the way down to very low if you want. I would imagine that this would create all sorts of uncertainty, but it would also create headaches for evaluating players, even on your own team. Your scouts already give you a more accurate view of your own players vs. others, but very low accuracy might really complicate things. I've never used that setting, though.

Of course, if your scouts are really good, I would assume that this would minimize a bit of the accuracy issues, but, as far as I know, they would still be working from a weaker baseline. I'm not an expert on OOTP scouting, though.

I would advocate keeping accuracy on very low and having reports update rarely. You can still use your scouts to update reports when needed…but this will cut back on the “scouting by magic” for every player in the game.

I might also change your AI evaluation to something more like 55/30//10/5 if you do something like this.

I’d put TCR at 125

Trade difficulty hardest setting along with GM reputation and hard mode.

Make sure to enable minor league service limits as well as roster size limits.

I would also add in that basing lineups on saber metrics vs traditional would make a lot of sense in today's environment.

Thank you all for all this information. I will try these settings but I do not know how to change them all or what some of them mean. I guess I still am a huge rookie at this game lol. If you could possibly tell how to do each of those things, that would be great. I will try these settings the next time I play. I do not know how to do AI evaluation or what those numbers mean, I do know what TCR is, you are saying put trade difficulty on hardest, do not know what GM reputation and hard mode is. Help lol?

I’l respectfully disagree on the issue of scouting. When I was a newbie, I was glad to have scouting on high accuracy, as it gave me some realistic insight into young players, including amateurs coming into the draft. With low accuracy, drafting and developing players is much harder, and more random.

I would not put trade difficulty on hardest. Better to start out with the slider in the middle. I usually have the Ai prefer veterans, so that I can get some younger players. But I usually take on weak teams and try to improve them with player development. Avoid hard mode, as ti draws out the trade transactions and will just confuse you at first. You can always try it later if you want. I personally don’t like it. I don’t think it’s realistic, and it’s a pain.

With relataively high TCR (over 100), you will get some unpredictable results; but so will everybody else. Remember that means the guys you recognize as future stars may not develop as in real life. Which I think is cool.

Finally I use Ai evaluation settings of 40/30/20/10, which seems balanced. But there is no “right way” to do that, and there are as many different formulas as there are posters.

My advice would be to try settings that make sense to you, and go ahead and create your sim. Make sure to save and back it up. The first time seems monumental, but soon you will have multiple sims, and will begin to try new combinations and approaches. The true magic of the game is the ability to customize and play it your way.

And the inevitable counter argument ;)

Hard trading mode along with trade reputation is one of the best additions to the game in years. I'd go as far as saying it's up there with autocalcing LTM's on the all time list of great additions.

It's added immersion and fun to building my team up during the off-season and trying to adjust/fill holes due to injury and performance in-season. IMHO it is much more realistic than the old "work it 'til it works" method, obviously your mileage varies :)

I'm sure we could both write pages explaining our differing opinions on this mode without either of us changing. That's cool, the strength of OOTP is it allows us to "play our way". :thumbup1:

I am still getting advice from people but I do not understand where these setting are or what they mean. Can someone explain all this for me?

Same thing happened with the Football Manager series. Once they began to focus on “realistic” graphics instead of the actual simulation of being a football manager, the game franchise went down hill. I predicted this before and it’s no wonder it’s coming home to roost already. People who love ootp and have been playing it since the beginning did so because not becuase they wanted flashy graphics. It had the deep simulation of running a MLB franchise. However, since the original makers sold their product to a foreign cell phone company, I doubt we will ever see ootp return to its roots.

You need to go to your Lg > Settings. That is, click on your league's name in the menu, then select Settings. Then, in those screens, I'd spend a lot of time just looking through the screens selecting whatever you think makes sense for you. If you come across something that sounds interesting, but you don't know what it means, look in the manual to see if it's explained there and if it's not then google it or come back here and ask.

Instead of soliciting myriad opinions, some of which aren't going to be right for you, I'd recommend just going through all the settings, selecting what you want, and playing the game. No one gets it right the first time. I've been playing the game 21 years now, played it countless different ways, and I'm still not sure if I'm playing it the way that is "right" for me. But it doesn't matter, you still get enjoyment out of it, and if you come across a reason to change it up by changing settings or leagues, then great.

a lot of these settings are actually global settings however. But yes, do what makes you happy by all means.

Trade reputation and hard mode are found right under the difficulty settings (AI settings). You will also find the AI evaluation under "AI settings". Scouting settings should be the first option you encounter under global settings.

:thumbup1: Viva la difference!

And to the OP, the best advice you’ve received is to plunge in and muddle through. We’ve all been there. I’m still there, really, in many ways. These forums are great for ideas and debate; but at some point you need to start playing. We’ll be eager for your feedback. Don’t forget to save.

I would agree with this also. Trading now requires some thought and some planning. It forces you to seriously think about putting good/reasonable packages together. It eliminates the "make this work now" and consequently denies the player the opportunity to continue to "nickel & dime" the AI to death. Most all proposals receive an answer within a day of submission, so I think that's very reasonable in terms of time. It's not as though the human player is getting responses 3,4, or even 5 days after submitting a trade.

I have found trading to be far more realistic and fun as a result. I don't want to be able to "game" the system, and the AI is a smarter more competetive opponent for it.

I feel a sense of accomplishment now when I complete trades rather than a feeling like I just robbed my opponent without him (it) knowing I picked his pocket.