For me, the thing I want the most is immersion which means making the game as much like real life as possible. It is definitely interesting to see the draft improvements such as more options from your scouting director. A few questions on the draft though:

- Can I coordinate with my scouting director to give him my organizational philosophy? Often times the scouting director's recommendation is not that useful and they recommend some really strange choices beyond just my desires (very low potential players). Being able to choose certain demographics like HS pitchers, college position, etc to target/avoid would be nice. Then being able to target certain patterns like toolsy up the middle, power over hit, or in general various player archetypes.
- I want a real bonus pool with limits and realistic player demands. The slot is more or less just a number there today that doesn't really mean anything as teams can spend whatever they want, which means large market teams can afford a high draft budget while teams with large bonus pools can't even allocate a full budget for it.
- Is the player pool generated for the fictional drafts still way too talented in terms of potential? The game engine seems to think being young means you should be able to do anything with much higher potential and potential is your 100th percentile output with the average player randomly loses potential as they age. However, the real player draft pools are based off ZIPs and median projections (50th percentile) and most prospects are assumed to have a median projection of being a MLB player with random increases to talent making some of these guys better than they were projected (and equally many worse as well). These are completely differing systems and means the real player draft pools often produce no meaningful players. It is awesome seeing ZIPs being used as an input to the game, but the game needs to be consistent of using median versus 100th percentile outcomes. I would personally much prefer the whole game be based off median projections though as that is what the real baseball world uses and not the 1 time out of 100 approach.

I realize the bonus pool is likely a limitation of the AI. In general, I feel the AI could be the focus of an entire iteration of the game as it could use a lot of improvements (I've had countless problems of putting minors age limits and the AI dropping top prospects over a 20 potential guy). I know the AI rework would be a lot of work though.

my fear is without markus, the focus will continue to shift further away from what i love about this game, and that's the single player experience.
I just don't want to see the gambling side of the game influence what features get added into it.

Agree

I assume you are talking about PT. If so, I agree because PT is a cash cow, i.e. pay to win. That would be why there is minimum concern about historical accuracy options, e.g. on field umpires & coaches, option to change to historical gear like caps before helmets were used, catchers gear, etc. Also, although there are many good historic park mods like SilvaM and others, maybe OOTP could make some with the same software as used for their modern parks so that the old ones would have more detail like shadows. Another way could be a way to import a current historical modded park into the 3D park construction kit so we could make the changes. Anyway, those are my thoughts about the current OOTP situation.

OOTP very likely no longer exists without Perfect Team. Something everyone should keep in mind.

That being said, I think the core game has been getting plenty of attention since Perfect Team was implemented and I am confident it will continue to receive plenty of attention as long as the game is being produced.

I've never played PT and I never will, but I'm glad it's there. Doesn't PT use the same 3d engine to watch their games? If so, wouldn't they also get the rewards of the 3d improvements? If your answer is "nobody actually watches their PT games" that's fine. But wouldn't that mean that the 3d improvements we get every year are a waste of time for a developer that doesn't care? Why do them at all?

They put a ton of effort into historical games over the last two versions. At least the impression I get from posts by historical players the game improved
a lot in that time. The added pBABIP and expanded the whole underlying rating scale to improve historical play. Historical is not the redheaded step child.

Where do you get a license for Metropolitan Stadium that was the home of the Twins in the 60's and 70's, or the dollars to pay for it? For any historical stadiums? What is the cost, how do they recoup the cost? A modder distributing stadiums for free doesn't need a license. A game development company can't just grab whatever it wants and put it into a game. A lesson users here should be well aware of, but seem to forget rather easily.

People act as if all of this coding is done in a vacuum. If PT wasn't there all of those dollars and coding time could have done x,y, and z. When in fact if PT wasn't there those dollars wouldn't exist. This shouldn't be hard to understand. As someone that has played the game every year since v4, in that time saw ecah new version come out? The game progress from v7 to v8, pre PT, is on par with the progress seen from v24 to v25. Push come to shove the game improves more now version to version than it did pre PT.

I know, but... but... but...
There's a whole list of buts and there always will be. Check out the suggestion thread or the nice list in this thread https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=360412
PT dollars will do more to make those things happen than an OOTP company that doesn't have PT. It is what it is.

That is correct; there's a lot of players who watch their PT games using the 3D engine, and that's the backbone for a lot, if not all, of the major tournament streams we do.

Indeed. Silvam's parks mod is as core to my OOTP experience as anything out of the box and the fact that modders have the ability (and talent) to do these things is awesome. I have no clue how they'd go about getting rights to add older parks but am grateful that we still have the ability to use them through the fantastic community here. I imagine once you start charging for things, the calculus changes.

I only play historical and have no doubt that the team has included a bunch of stuff to improve historical play that I won't notice until I start diving in again for a new save.

Would this change only be implemented in a new historical game or would the database also update with ongoing historical leagues?

At the moment, the option only will work on new games. We will look to see if there's an easy option to re-import the splits to be able to apply them in a recalc game.

The modders do fantastic jobs :)

And yeah, there's always a lot more than we can write in a few paragraphs.

WBC Qualifiers were mentioned in road to the WBC - does this mean we're getting custom tournaments that can serve as qualifiers for other custom tournaments, or is this a feature that's only available in Road to the WBC?

I literally just now had this happen. Bottom 8th, 2 outs. I just scored 3 runs in the top half to take a 7-4 lead. Boom! Just like that gone. I don't even know why. That game is lost now and has to be replayed. Frustrating.
This is just the 2nd time this has happened to me. Maybe if it could auto save every half inning or inning. Just the game, not every single thing. You could restart from the previous inning.

Historical Pre Draft AI
 

Anything new in regards to pre-draft free agents in historical saves? Would love to see a better system for finding/bidding on talent in my historical saves or at least better AI when it comes to it. Anyway so excited for OOTP26!!! :)

How is world baseball classic going to work with most of the Int'l leagues being non-existent? Will there be a fictional Japanese league template with fictional players?

Any 3-D upgrades?

Along with Season predictions in spring training can we have rankings of teams as well. Kind of like https://www.fangraphs.com/depthchart...osition=Team./

I'd love to see going into the season what team has the highest ranked pitching staff not just the top guy but the whole 5 or 6 man or whatever rotation.
Same with all positions and team as a whole.

exactly what I'm wondering. I see there are "animated" scoreboards. But aside from that, I hope there are at least SOME 3D enhancements. I don't do perfect team stuff, just the single player, historical replay experience and the previous season of my home team (Mets). I live and die by SIlvam's 3D historical stadium mods. Anyway, hoping there are SOME 3D enhancements for OOTP 26.

I don't play PT either and never will. But for the record any 3d enhancements for OOTP proper are also in PT. Mod stadiums, and maybe you already read this, will not have animated scoreboards unless the modder adds them in. I love Silvam's stadiums too, but am not expecting him to update all, or any, of his creations. If he does some of them, great. If not I totally understand and will continue to thank him for the work he has done. :thumbup1:

My 3d list of hopes would first include batting helmets with logos and different ear flap configurations including none. And the option to play games in soft caps.

We'll know soon enough. :)

I'm a roughly 17 year OOTP player and have never and won't ever play PT. I've been a bitter anti-PT guy--it still kills me rarely the OOTP podcast talked about standard play--and have had some disenchanting experiences with the game the last five years or so, but I was pretty pleasantly surprised how much focus was on franchise/single-player game during the rollout announcement. I don't think standard play is being ignored--if anything some of the biggest innovations in game history have at least been attempted the last few years.