Fixing the earned runs legacy bug should be OOTP's number one priority!
 

Yes, this is another thread on this legacy bug which remains unfixed. Yes, I am still hopping mad about it.

The earned runs legacy bug, which was *promised* to be fixed in version 11, is still unfixed after the last major version 11 patch. This bug runs the statistical accuracy of the game. I cannot express how angry it makes me feel to be playing out a game and to watch an earned run counted as an unearned run, or vice versa.

THIS HAS TO BE FIXED. IT NEEDS TO BE OOTP'S #1 PRIORITY.

Not facegen. Not pbp. Not recalc. Not baseball cards. These and other things are all worthy goals, but they must be low priority items while the game's basis - the stats - remain screwed up because the game can't tell an earned run from an unearned one!

Markus, Andreas, Battists: FIX THIS DAMNED BUG!

I think MD is worked up :p

I've started a central thread to collect examples: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ring-bugs.html

I agree this is pretty fundamental to the game and should be addressed as much as possible.

We've been patient enough. This should have been fixed twice by now. It's now officially time to get worked up over this legacy bug.

There are three threads on this, which I suppose shows it's importance.

I've totally lost patience on this issue. There may be ten threads.

Just make sure you don't get banned for spamming over it!

That's only going to make the problem worse. If it's that big an issue and it's occurring in so many different ways (which is the impression I'm getting), someone needs to consolidate every unique instance they can find.

Posting multiple threads wouldn't be Divide and Conquer so much as Divide and Confuse. And the more confusion over the issue, the less likely it will get fixed to anyone's satisfaction.

I could clearly use an emoticon for "Hey, I'm being facetious here."

I obviously co-sign that this issue HAS to be #1 priority. Dont get me wrong I understand other people have other legitimate concerns associated with the game, but this is a major bug that goes to the heart of what a stat based sim is.

The stats can't be wrong.

I've logged a bug report for people not getting your facetiousness. It will be fixed when everyone is upgraded to humourspotting v3.1.4 - until then there will always be occasions when earned humour will be regarded as unearned humour...

Earned humour regarded as unearned humour! Argh! Another bug!

Well written. Thank you. The stats truly cannot be wrong.

George Peppard is never facetious. You'd need to change your avatar to Bobcat Goldthwait. :D

Please do not forward the Hate-PMs from all your fans demanding your old avatar back though.

It's more like Weep-PMs.

Don't make me flare my nostrils!

Don't parody threads belong in OT?!?

Amen Brother!

That begs the question of what you are doing out of OT. :laugh:

Plus this isn't a parody thread. I am mad as Hell about the bug. The only part I was facetious about was starting ten more threads.

Sign me up General MD. This is a war worth fighting. ;)

I'm starting my campaign for head to head again. Mr Kuffrey assured me it would be in OOTP 3 and I'm still waiting... patiently.

As to the topic of this thread, I agree, but am not stark raving mad about it.

:eek: MD has disciples.

I'm still waiting for OOTP online :)

Sign me up too.

Alright, the man with the blood spattered circular saw avatar has joined our army. :D We're invincible now!

And I shall send them to crush you! :)

It's not a bug. It is a matter of getting every weird scoring rule handled correctly, and 99% are handled correctly. The other 1% is very hard to reproduce and frankly I haven't succeeded yet. By the way, the scoring engine was completely rewritten in OOTP 11 and it is much better than before.

Well, that's honesty.

Markus, I hate to say it, but you need to do some serious work on that last 1%.

In a stats-based game the stats need to correct and reliable.

I'm aware that this wont placate you, but I always rationalise that the MLB rules is overly complex and OOTP's makes more sense.

Placate me? No. Face it, if Diamond Mind can get it right, then OOTP can get it right. It's just a function of focus and effort.

If the game needs to characterize a run as either earned or unearned the moment it is scored, then you're never going to get that 1% done.

Many instances of earned vs unearned remain open until the end of the inning. It seems (although I haven't paid as close attention to this in OOTP11 so maybe it's different), but it seems as though the game insists on characterizing a run as earned or unearned when it is scored.

I'm not Markus, but that's my understanding is that the game does indeed need to characterize a run as earned or unearned as soon as it is scored. This is probably due to the way the database is written to.

For Markus to say that this is a 1% problem is to insult the the brains of people on this board. The example below, which comes from another post is a
common problem in the game. And it should not be hard to fix no matter what some may think.

True, there are 1% or so of the scoring rules that are hard to make work. So forget them. They don't cause such mistakes enough to matter. Fix they simple things and no one will expect perfection.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Top of the inning - no outs

Batter Abel hits a triple - man on third, no outs

Batter Baker hits a single to center, centerfielder misplays the ball allowing Baker to reach second, runner Abel scores - scored 1b, RBI + E8 - man on second, no outs

Batter Charlie hits a home run, Baker and Charlie scores - bases empty, no outs

Batters Dog, Echo and Foxtrot make outs - end of inning

Official scorer charges the pitcher with 3 runs, 0 earned.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

And I have no doubt the ER computation was rewritten in OOTP11.
It is now a complete mess....and it was not previously.

Common OOTP, give the people complaining some credit. Adimit it is FUBAR and fix the d*mn thing right now so the game is playable as a simulation.

Notice what Markus actually said:

He didn't say he wasn't going to fix it. He said that he hadn't identified the problem yet.

Elmerlee, it's not Abel, it's Able.

Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog...

Trust me on this, I was both Able Three and Baker Five.

That was my fault, not Elmer's. He just copied and pasted.

I blame lack of sleep or possibly insufficient blood caffeine levels. :o

malleus (no caps was on purpose) :

Try not being such a smart mouth.

Ok, time to get back to the topic before this slides any lower.

Thanks

shhhhhhhhhhh,

they are busy with new features for the game.

Important stats stuff is secondary, it doesn't sell the game.


In all seriousness, we shouldn't even bring this up. Should have been priority #1 from the get go.

So, folks, if you are able to reproduce these incorrect scoring incidents, keep a copy of your league files handy so you can send them to Markus for analysis if requested. :)

This would be eminently more sensible than creating 5 threads about and posting things which border on breaking the rules.

But if, as it seems, the game characterizes a run as earned or unearned when scored, it is impossible for it to be done correctly. There is no need to reproduce it, as it's impossible.

Example: Leadoff batter gets a triple. Next batter hits a comebacker to the pitcher, who looks the runner back at third, then throws the ball 5 feet over the first baseman's head. Batter safe, runner scores.

There is no way possible to determine if that is an earned run or an unearned run until more of the inning gets played. If the next two batters strike out, it is an unearned run. If a batter later in the inning gets a base hit, the run is earned. There are other possibilities as well.

As long as the game insists on characterizing it as earned or unearned at the moment it is scored, then it will never be 100% correct. It can't be.

This doesn't stop people campaigning for it to be changed though. If the game does indeed work like that (and I personally believe it does) then it would probably require a rewrite of the whole stats storing part of the database to work correctly. Is that possible? Of course, but it's not something that can be fixed overnight. It's probably something to aim for in OOTP 12 at best.

Yeah, folks will still campaign for it. And I don't really blame them, after all, it would be nice to be correct. But I just wanted to point out that all the effort in the world isn't going to get it 100% right as long as the game insists on characterizing it the moment it scores.

But I'm ok with it. Heck, I've never seen a computer game yet that gets it 100% right. And it's the same for everybody in my league. So even though it gets some wrong, it does so for all the teams. So comparing my (perhaps incorrect) ERA to the other teams/players (perhaps incorrect) ERA is still a valid comparison.

The game also seems to have a problem with an error that technically "gets erased" and seems to keep the error intact. For example, a batter pops up in foul territory, and the 3rd baseman drops the ball. Ruled an error, the batter gets new life. He strikes out. For all intents and purposes for the rest of that inning, that error is now completely meaningless. But I've seen examples where that batter went ahead and made an out (thus "erasing" that error) and then later in the inning the team scores and the run(s) be incorrectly marked as unearned. Perhaps those types of things could be fixed without a total rewrite.

+1

That's why the game doesn't need to be 100% right. Of course, ideally it should be 100% right. There are also people who demand that the game is 100% right before anything else is done.

Hopefully the example you give is fixable. Some of the other examples in this thread may require a re-write though.

Did you read what Markus wrote? He has been diligently working on this and has not found a solution and still hopes to get the game to reproduce real life. He just has not succeeded yet.

1. That means this did not have to be brought up for the devs to know about it. They knew about and are in the process of working on it.

2. From the sound of Markus' post it is a high priority. Just because a high priority or even #1 priority does not mean it gets fixed quickly. Somethings like imposing human judgment on computer coding are hard to do. Some problems are going to take more time to design a fix and still end up trial and error when your idea does not work.

3. Markus' posts indicates the situation is not we are too busy with our things to deal with the problem. This is not the only issue in the game and not the only thing people are requesting and IMO it is likely the hardest request to fix.

4.Devs work as teams so the fact someone is working on baseball cards does not mean the fact ER rules do not replicate real life has been dropped. You, I, nor Markus has seen a satisfactory result yet. So patch that do fix other problems that can be solved more quickly get released rather than waiting for the bigger problem to be solved.

I would like to see this perfect too but we have to realize in an engine as complex as OOTP this is not easy and it may take some time. Honestly, OOTP has responded to more request than other game I have played. OOTP and Paradox seem to be the two best companies I know at fixing problems and updating their games. Although, I wonder if paradox would do this if the very active mod community was not often fixing their problems and getting involved in beta testing. No game is error free but OOTP has made sure the errors do not make the game unplayable for most people. Some companies don't care that you bought the product and found it lacking. They might make it more realistic in an expansion, a certain company I have some games from, or next year. OOTP has not taken the route of well you thought our game sucked? For only $10.00 or $20.00 more you can get your complaints fixed in the new expansion that fixes all the bugs and issues with playability the original had and introduces 100 more that we will address in the next $20 expansion.

I do think this should be a priority. I haven't noticed the problem because I don't keep close watch on earned/unearned. I assume they are done correctly and it doesn't bother me too terribly much if they aren't.

But until it gets fixed, I offer an imaginative, and not so easy to swallow workaround. I think the situation people are griping about is:

The play-by-play describes an inning where some run(s) should have been scored as earned or un-earned. But the actual scorekeeping shows an opposite record in the box score and player stats, etc...

Now, it is entirely possible that an inning could have been played that matched the earned/unearned results in the box-score and stats. Even though the text didn't describe that inning, I'm assuming that in this universe it was possible that an inning could have existed that matched the box score results.

So, look at this problem from a different angle and imagine that the play that occurred on the field matched the results reflected in the box score and player stats. Then imagine just a little bit further that the play-by-play announcer got things wrong. He was busy worrying about ordering a beer and turned around when the play happened. Then he faced back around to the diamond and made up a play for announcing that didn't match what happened on the field.

I know that doesn't fix the problem and probably won't placate most of those up in arms. But it might help some think of it as a bad play-by-play text issue instead of a can't keep score properly issue.

When I see a lead-off batter make an out and the announcer says there are two down, it gripes me a bit. But I just realize for a second that it's only a game and somehow an error has gotten into the game play-by-play text. That doesn't really bother me too much and I get right back into the game.

PBP announcer? All I have to do is imagining the official scorer calling something a routine play that was not or just flubbing the call! I think this happens sufficiently enough in the real world. Don't the league actually review the official scorer's decisions and sometimes over turn errors or earned runs. I know they have called some no hitters from the early years of baseball not to be no hitters.

Just be a fan or manager when you are convinced that your favorite player or anyone on the team got a hit and the scorer suddenly calls it a routine play and takes that hit away.

:)

If they don't then they damn well should.


/is still miffed about Sabathia's no-hitter that wasn't.

//Is a Sabathia fan rather than a Yankees fan.