When are you going to fix this game?
 

Dear OOTP,

I have almost every OOTP since 17. I see that since then, you have put a lot of effort towards the graphics. This is a huge mistake. The coaching staff and players should be the main focus. You see, I use to play this game with overall ratings. But those would change just by logging out and logging back in. This is a huge bug that you have never fixed. So now I play with no ratings shown at all. I look at player stats and scouting. However, when one day, a my scout tells me that this guy is a starter and a day later, tells me that he is on the bubble for a bench spot, I get extremely annoyed. Also, you have ratings for coaches but those do not seem to matter either, which is also extremely annoying. To add to that, the Guardians, who never spend money, go out and get Xander Bogaerts! What?!?!

I do not want you to turn into MLB the Show. They have great graphics and animations, but is not realistic at all. They also focus so much on presentation that they have so many bugs that they just ignore.

The most realistic game that I have played is Madden 11 and NCAA Football 11 and on that game, Mark Sanchez was a NFL MVP. It has gotten worse since.

Why can we not get realistic games. We have the AI so what is the problem? Stop focusing on making MLB the Show and make a realistic, statistical game. PLEASE!

Thank you for your time!
Nathan

I concur. There are plenty of "action" sports games out there already. This game is positioned to be a premier GM/coach simulation game -- all it needs is some focus on AI and team/player management, not prettier graphics.

I can tell from some of what you're claiming that you probably don't have enough familiarity with the game to understand how it works, how scouting works, and how to use the right settings to get the results you want. You definitely don't know how the game's finances work and how the AI makes transaction decisions accordingly, otherwise you could have already made some adjustments to teams or settings to fix some of the issues you're having.

If you want to have a mature conversion and talk about specific issues you're having, so you can get advice on how to get the experience you want, then feel free to do that. Otherwise, you're wasting your time with rants.

The developers have focused almost entirely on the management aspects of the game for years. Very little has changed with the 3D graphics for several versions, and for most of this game's history, there were no 3D graphics at all. I have no idea where you're getting this notion that there is a focus on graphics at the expense of the rest of the game. That simply isn't true. So maybe try learning more about the sim and do something constructive before trying to blame your experiences on graphics.

Maybe some players would rather spend more time playing in their league rather than the endless setting up of their league, testing their league, and setting house rules for their league.

I have played this series for over two decades. I do know what I am doing.
And this series still has so many half-baked features and poor AI that has to be covered up

I have given constructive and detailed criticism for almost 5 years now and for the most part, it has been warmly accepted
But the sycophants do come out from time to time and they cannot endure to hear any criticism of the series.

They would rather blame it on the user or explain how if this and this and this is not checked off then of course there will be a problem.

How about an out-of-the-box product that just works?
I have been doing this for a long time. And the hours spent customizing a baseball universe is awesome.

But it has also become a bandaid to cover up a lot of lazy development, poor pre-release testing, and milking the power users of PT for every dime they can get.

So many times have I set up a complex league only to have it fall apart because no one in resting thought to test how leagues look in 5-10-20 seasons.
Or worse yet, they bring it up and are ignored.

Or even just a simple quick start can go wrong due to poor development and a lack of testing.

So feel free to tell me I don't know what I am doing or don't understand how the game works.

I am just one user and I don't spend any money on PT do I doubt they care. But I have been playing since version 5.
I will give OOTP 25 a chance. If I do not see a significant improvement.
Then I feel like it will finally be time for me to move on.

I am not intending this to be one of those "look at me" types of posts or "if I don't get my way I am leaving"

I want this series to succeed and become a better GM simulation.
I would like nothing better.
My criticisms are more out of frustration than anger at this point.

The anger comes from users who excuse lazy development practices by letting them get away with the least improvement possible and then shout down anyone who does not feel like each release is mana from heaven.

There are fair ways to criticize this game, absolutely.

However, fear of OOTP turning into MLB The Show is hyperbole at best.

Also, going to places like "sycophants" and calling the developers lazy aren't it either.

If you have to result to insulting the fans of the game and/or the developers then you are not likely doing much in the way of actually providing constructive criticism...at least not in that particular post.

From the bold it sounds like you think they play "nerf basketball" everyday at the office and just code when they get around to it. I'd call it a backhanded insult to their work ethic except it's pretty much "in their face". If that's what you think I'm not sure why you've waited for v25 to draw the line?

The game has succeeded and become a better GM simulation. It just hasn't gone down the road you'd like it to.

If there are sycophants coming out from time to time that cannot endure to hear any criticism of the series, then there are also the "perma-whiners" that will complain no matter what the developers add or do not add to the game. Nothing will ever be good enough. It goes both ways.

Then there are the users that believe it is, at the end of the day, a computer baseball game that does a pretty good job of what it sets out to do. I've played since v4 and over the years they've added many things I think are a waste of time and that I will never use. They have also added many things that I totally support and have made the game better for me. I concentrate on the good and pretty much don't comment on the added features I'll never use. If someone out there has produced a better baseball game I haven't seen it.

They'll lose some users with the decisions they make, and they'll gain new users from those same decisions. At the end of the day they have to do what's right for them in both regard to their vision for their game and the compensation they get for the work they do. We as consumers will either buy
or we won't.

"Then there are the users that believe it is, at the end of the day, a computer baseball game that does a pretty good job of what it sets out to do. I've played since [OOTP v21] and over the years they've added many things I think are a waste of time and that I will never use. They have also added many things that I totally support and have made the game better for me. I concentrate on the good and pretty much don't comment on the added features I'll never use. If someone out there has produced a better baseball game I haven't seen it."

I agree with this. That doesn't make me a "psychophant". I too look forward to Version 25.

Maybe if we could move from rants to specifics, we could find solutions. I would suggest that the OP provide some screen shots of "half-baked features and poor AI" or "set up a complex league only to have it fall apart because no one in resting thought to test how leagues look in 5-10-20 seasons" or "a simple quick start can go wrong". I play the game in a similar way (no Perfect Team!), and would not characterize my experience in such terms. Not that I haven't had issues. They have been resolved, in my case. Incidentally, I take OP at his word and do not doubt he has had problems. Let's explore how that happened.

I am not one who reacts poorly to the game being criticized. After all, that is how things get improved. I do, however, react poorly to vague attacks and personal insults and cheap shots. So lets move on to examples and real problems, shall we?

Look, a lot of you are right. The game is the best statistical game out there, but should that mean that I should just be fine with that. I have been playing since 17 and have put in tickets and asked on the forum for help. If I did not believe in OOTP, I would not have started this thread. I know they have the intelligent to figure out how to correct the errors. Instead, they keep adding to Perfect Team or improve the presentations. I just ask that they fix issues before moving on to new things. It is like building a house. Do not add another bathroom to the house when the kitchen still has issues to fix. I would be happy to game test.

Also, I put the problems in this thread that bother me so do not call me vague.

I appreciate that Thegman0492 tried to be more sensible about voicing frustrations in the follow-up reply. That's a step in the right direction, because it's certainly not going to help to post rants or allege problems or falsehoods with no context or constructive attempts to seek help or get answers.

For decades, people have been asking software developers not to work on anything but their preferred fixes or improvements before anything else. For decades, they have also claimed that their complaints, bug reports, or feature requests are being ignored. But that's not the way the world works, and that's not what's happening inside development teams.

Users aren't the ones running the business, facing the competing requests and priorities, confronted with crucial business decisions to be made, confronted with problems or features that can take years to address---all with their livelihoods depending on it. I've run a business and have advised businesses as a professional for decades, including software companies, and I've been a beta tester for a number of game developers. So I understand the reality from the inside. It's not being a sycophant to acknowledge it. It's called being a pragmatist. When you're a pragmatist, you look for ways to work within that reality and find constructive ways to help improve it.

Toward that end, maybe the conversation can shift toward what Pelican suggested, so something constructive can come out of this for those who are frustrated.

I've been playing OOTP since version 3. For 15 years all I wanted was OOTP with some Micro League level graphics. OOTP24 is a better computer baseball game than I ever hoped of having.

concur 1000%

any be the premier top notch reporting and stats, please?

and the people still can't get how the recalc works....3 = 1 past, just played, 1 future.... still no in game pop ups. no quick start examples (see hockey for excellent challenges)

Fred, I realize that you just recently came to understand how recalc works but that doesn't mean people in general don't understand it.

I Agree
 

I have been playing since OOTP14. I play all my games out PBP. I enjoyed the addition of graphics. I really don't think I would have stuck with OOTP if graphics weren't added.I have yet to purchase any hockey management game because of lack of graphics. For me, I have no interest in reading results. Reminds me of work.

This is an actual issue, and it needs to get fixed because overall ratings appear to be what determines player contract demands. If you're in an online league and one GM is seeing one OVR and another gm is seeing a different OVR for a player in FA, they're getting different contract demands from the players.


Tying contract demands to OVR is also a really bad idea in the first place because OVR is a very bad metric of overall player value to begin with.

Well, I know that you would love MLB the Show. Graphics are amazing.

I am glad that a lot of people love this game. I like it too. However, I do not like signing a player for big money because my scout said that he was an everyday starter, in January. Then February comes along and now my same scout is telling me that he is on the bubble for a bench role. WHAT?!?! He has not even played a game yet. Scouting, ratings, the importance of a coaching staff. None of these have been improved. Like I said, I would be happy to game test! :)

That's part of the get a closer look routine. I think ratings shouldn't change until a couple weeks into spring training. I also don't like getting ratings changes on players on the injured list. But I expect there's a possibility ratings will change after I trade for a player.

Truthfully, Ratings probably should change only a couple (handful) of times a year. I think it needs to be based on playing time and not tie sensitive. After all, every league is different and plays a different schedule and at different times of the year. I would prefer a system where players might only to be able to be scouted every 150 (roughly...some scouts might be better or worse) plate appearances & maybe roughly every 50 innings (again give or take based on scouts and money invested).

The problem with a lot of these ideas every year is that by the time we start talking about them it's already way too late and forgotten by the next development cycle...so I mean that's why I try to brainstorm all year long, but others seem to see it as complaining...but really I am just trying at times to keep things in the forefront.

If the developers are very serious about hearing a lot of different ideas in time for development cycles, they should hold a forum just for something like this. I am not saying they don't take in ideas over the course of time because they do....but threads that are creative in nature often falsely get peoples' hopes up when in reality they don't have a great chance of being in the current development cycle.


Here is an example of one that I thought was so well thought out that I tried to keep bringing it to the developers' attention year after year. I finally quit after realizing none of this was ever going to be implemented. Things such as graphics and PT killed any great ideas such as this.

I'm not sure what's being argued here. Should scouting only update a small number of times per year? I'm for that; it's already (more or less) monthly except when you ask for it. Should scouts have a much harder time disclosing that a player has "lost it" than they do in the game? There I think the answer is "yes, absolutely, 100%", and if that's what OP was getting at then I agree: if you've got some 40 year old guy who's completely fallen off a cliff, your scout should probably be the last person to be able to tell you that (and this is in part why I play with ratings off altogether).

I am going to *guess* that that's not it though, that the OP is complaining that they signed someone and they turned into a pumpkin. As a Mariners fan I'd like to introduce you to Kolten Wong. I'm sorry, did I say Kolten Wong? I meant to say Chone Figgins. Wait. Did I say Chone? Sorry, I was thinking about how Bret Boone suddenly fell off a cliff the one offseason. This happens *all the time* in real life. Sure, most players don't do this in any one contract situation but a lot of the time the end does in fact arrive all at once. I suspect OP will hate my answer, which is that it's much more realistic for you to cut the guy because he's hitting .180 but your scout insists he's got a couple miles left in the tank.

I also think it's a good idea that development occurs more or less year round. Having set days that you can go and look at player ratings probably makes things a lot easier but it's not anywhere close to realistic.

Here are some great ideas that InjuryLog had about scouting at one time. I still believe they hold true today even more so now that the international leagues are NOT included in OOTP. As far as I am concerned this was a "masterpiece".


Pathways

Scouting and player acquisition are inextricably linked. In real life, players join MLB organizations for the first time through a few conduits:

* Amateur Draft
* as international amateur free agents (big bonus)
* as international "discoveries" (small bonus)
* as established international free agents (Japan/Mexico/Taiwan/Korea)
* through the posting system (Japan/Korea)
* as Cuban defectors
* from Independent leagues

The more comprehensively we model these, the more strategy options we offer a GM. And by correctly modeling the important features of each pathway, the more interesting team-building strategy becomes.


Countries

Real life countries funnel talent to MLB organizations in different ways. A few examples:

* USA+ Canada: Amateur Draft; independent leagues
* Japan+Korea: established international FAs, posting system
* Mexico: established FAs, international teenage FAs and 'discoveries'
* Cuba: defectors
* DR+Venezuela: international teenage FAs and 'discoveries'

A team scouting Venezuela is doing so for different reasons than a team scouting Japan - they will acquire different types of players. Players from Japan might help immediately, while players from Venezuela will not. One feature of an improved scouting model should be choice: a choice of which countries to scout. A rebuilding team would naturally make different choices from a win-now team.


Strategy

It is obvious looking at the behaviour of real life teams that MLB teams use very different team-building strategies. These decisions are Scouting decisions:

* International teenage FAs: in 2014, NYY spent $17.8m, while OAK and BAL spent $827k and $980k respectively.

* Independent League signings: in 2014, ARI signed 21 guys out of indie ball, and ATL signed 14. Five teams signed 0 players.

* Cuba: LAD has invested a total of $163m in five Cuban defectors since 2012, and BOS has spent north of $100m on Cubans in the same time period. Most teams have spent $0.

* Japan: several teams have never signed a player directly from Japan (CIN, MIA, etc), while some have signed several, eg SEA has signed five.

The choice about where to acquire new talent is one of the major decisions real life GMs make. Modeling these choices properly is, I think, the biggest thing left for OOTP to do in order to make GM strategy more interesting.



Outline of a Model

Instead of making Scouting about spending (how much to spend on different areas), which is not very interesting since you can't really notice a difference, we should make it about choices - deciding what strategy you want to use to build your team.

So in outline, I think Scouting should work as follows:

* teams automatically get complete scouting of the Majors and minors, and of (most of) the Amateur Draft pool.

* when spending the default, teams could choose, from a list of options (see next post), what types of 'assignment scouting' to perform. GMs should make that choice once a year only, just as we do with budgets now. Teams should probably be able to choose ~4 scouting assignments when spending the default.

* teams could choose to add a fifth option (or more) by spending additional money. But that should be very expensive - it's not a choice at all if you can reasonably afford to do everything. Of course teams could save money by cutting options too.

If a default scout budget is $10m, I think adding an additional assignment should probably cost $5m (on the theory that $5m = 1 win), and cutting an assignment should save $2.5m.

* the options would not all be "equal", nor should they be. Some strategies will be better for rebuilding teams, others for contending teams. And if we want to implement things in a sophisticated way, we could make the value of certain strategies change in different situations. And these strategies will be most interesting if there's a lot of variety, so GMs can, by changing scouting strategies, feel they're playing the game in a whole new way.


The Options

The below is just a tentative list of the kinds of 'assignment scouting' options we could offer the GM. Most require further explanation, which I'll do a bit later. We don't need to implement all of these to make a working model (some could be saved for later versions, and others might be bad ideas) and the world can be divided up in a blocky way or a granular way, so it's easy to change the below to reduce or extend the number of options if we want to.

Assignment Scouting Options

* Amateur Draft: Area Scouting
* Amateur Draft: signability scouting
* Advance scouting (on upcoming opponents)
* MLB scouting: intensive
* Minor league scouting: intensive
* US/Canada Independent Leagues
* Japan
* Korea
* Taiwan
* Cuba
* Mexico
* DR
* Venezuela
* rest of South America
* rest of Central America
* Europe
* Africa
* Middle East and South Asia
* rest of Southeast Asia and Australiasia


Amateur Draft: Area Scouting

I've read the occasional scouting report on a draft pick who fell in the draft because he wasn't heavily scouted, and one team 'discovered' him and liked him. I think it would make the draft more interesting if there were about one round worth of players, maybe a bit less, in a standard 25 round draft who would go unscouted except by teams that specifically chose to do Area Scouting for the draft. These guys could just be chosen randomly, so there'd normally only be one first round talent, one second round talent and so on. Since it's likely a few teams would scout these guys, if you found one you liked, you'd have an interesting decision to make about how long to let them slide in the draft. Naturally these guys shouldn't have OSA reports, and we'd need to work out what to do about their HS/COL stats so their talent isn't obvious to teams who didn't bother to scout them.


Amateur Draft: Signability Scouting

I'm not sure this is a great idea, especially not if we leave the signing bonus model unchanged, but part of real life draft scouting is assessing signability. Some OOTP draftees now have 'Impossible' signability, with no info at all about what kind of bonus would be needed to sign them. If Signability Scouting were a scouting option, teams electing to scout signability could learn fairly precise bonus estimates for a good fraction (maybe 1/2) of those players, while other teams would be in the dark about their demands.

Advance Scouting

I could see Advance Scouting working as an option in several different ways, some easy to implement, some not. Teams could get up-to-the-minute scouting reports on upcoming opponents' 40-man rosters. And as a simple advantage, teams could get minuscule (1 point, probably) BABIP improvements in game, because advance scouting presumably allows them to use better defensive positioning or pitch selection. In a more complicated model, an advance scout could provide a Manager in-game advice about how to shift a defense against each batter, for example, but that's probably too complicated to be worth doing.

MLB Scouting: Intensive

I think OOTP scouts too frequently now. It's clear observing real life teams that they behave with more uncertainty than do OOTP teams - for example, real life teams call prospects up to the Majors without having a completely clear picture of whether those prospects are ready. That doesn't happen in OOTP now if you scout every 2 months, but it would happen if you got just one scouting report in January, and had to guess in June if your prospect's current ratings had improved enough to make him a viable big leaguer.

So I think we should reduce the frequency of reports - on default, teams should either scout MLB once or twice each year (I think once is best). But by choosing to scout intensively, we could provide teams an additional complete scouting report during the year, in early July (just before the Trade Deadline). So contending teams intent on trading for help at the deadline might want this option to make better decisions for the stretch run.

Minor League Scouting: Intensive

Similarly teams could get an extra scouting report on minor leaguers at midseason if they choose to scout the minors - so teams intent on trading for prospects at the deadline could have more info to work with.

The remaining options all have to do with player acquisition from different sources. For these options to work well, we need to model each player funnel properly. We'd also need to extend the World DB a bit to accommodate the various player pipelines - that seems easy to do to me, but it's a bit technical.

The Special Countries

US/Canada: Independent Leagues

Indie ball players share certain characteristics in real life - usually in their 20s, position players are rarely toolsy but sometimes skilled, and the pitchers with any shot are almost always relievers. Teams would scout indie ball if they were hoping to find some very inexpensive ready-now big league bench pieces, and some relievers. Only very rarely should teams find truly good players outside of the occasional John Axford closer type.

This could work much as it does now (scout signs indie ball guys on the GM's behalf, always to minor league deals) though it should happen at a fixed time of year (end of season).

Japan: Established FAs, Posted Players

The current Posting system only works if you operate a league in Japan. It would be great to extend that to one-nation leagues (just generate posted players from scratch, as the established FAs are now).

Teams that do not scout Japan should not receive scouting reports on posted players or on established FAs from Japan. They should have only OSA to work with. Teams that do scout Japan should receive complete scouting reports on these players. So that scouting Japan is truly useful, we'd need to do two other things:

- disguise player value better when determining a player's contract demands. Right now I don't need to scout to know if I should sign a guy to a contract;

- make it so a decent proportion of players will only sign with teams that have scouted them. This seems to be true in real life (even more so for teenagers) - players develop relationships with certain organizations, and become much more likely to sign with those orgs. If we make it so that 1/2 of all players from Japan will only sign with you if you've scouted them, scouting becomes more relevant. As an elegant solution, players with above average Loyalty could be those who only sign if scouted.

We also need to overhaul the Player Creation system for established international FAs, because it's not right at the moment - ages are wrong, and player ability is wrong.

Korea: Established FAs, Posted Players

South Korea is similar to Japan except it provides a lot fewer players. At first that might make it seem stupid to scout Korea instead of Japan. But if we model scouting choices (not the actual scouting reports, just the decisions) for AI teams as well, then there could still be a reason to scout South Korea: if no one else does, you'd have a huge advantage whenever a Korean player is posted, or becomes an FA.

Taiwan

We might want to group Taiwan and Korea together, even if that makes no geographical sense.

Cuba

Cuba is unique in the world in that players defect to MLB. So they can join MLB at any time of year, and they can be absolutely any age. The only way to get a Yasiel Puig is to sign him out of Cuba.

I think we should model defections. They should be a bit of a lottery - some years should be very good, and some years should be fallow. But it should be the only international pipeline that might let you sign a superstar near-ready prospect age player.

Again, Cuban players should often only sign with teams that have scouted them. I think there's also an argument for not providing OSA reports on defectors, since it wasn't always the easiest place to scout (though obviously things are changing).

Mexico

Mexico is unique in that it provides MLB with some established veteran FAs, but also with some teenage prospects, though not a big supply of either. The established FAs should work just as those from Japan do. The teenagers should work as do those from the countries in the next post.


Hidden Players, International Amateur FAs

The rest of the world only provides talent to MLB organizations as teenage international players. We have two separate teenage pipelines:

* 'hidden players'
* international amateur free agents, the big-bonus guys available July 2 each year



Hidden Players

There are quite a few issues with hidden players now - there are way too many of them for one thing (my FA pools are insanely huge on defaults after five years) and there are way too many bad ones for another. I know our MLB percentages of international/domestic players look good right now, but those really bad hidden players aren't having any meaningful effect on those numbers. They almost never make MLB - the pitchers in particular very possibly never make it.

So:

* there is a rule in MLB we should borrow: when signing international teenagers, teams get six "exemptions" for players signed for under $75k (those bonuses don't count against the 'cap'). We should use that: teams should be able to sign six 'hidden players' for free. After that, if they want to sign more, it should count eat into their spending cap (and cost money).

* so teams should be making choices of which 'hidden players' will actually join their org. The scout should provide a list of 'discovered' players, and the GM should choose up to six, or more if he wants to pay.

* there are two ways this could work. Either things could work as now, with the scout 'discovering' players throughout the year, forcing the GM to decide 'sign this guy or wait to see if someone better pops up later'. Then any bonus penalties would apply to the upcoming July 2 pool. Preferable I think is a system where the scout contacts you on July 2 with a complete list of players he has found, and the GM decides then which players to add.

* we'd have to do a bit of math to work out how players should be distributed; this is where things could get complicated. Obviously on defaults, DR provides way more players than anyone else. But if lots of teams scout the DR, that competition over players should make players commensurately harder to find. We could permit players to be discovered by more than one team, or we could reduce the number of discoveries according to the number of teams scouting a country. That way there might be some reason to scout Australasia or Europe, rather than the DR, if they were not saturated with teams. Of course Africa or Middle East/South Asia would rarely be worth scouting, except in a custom setup.

* if the number of teams scouting a region affects the number of players available, that could make the 'Explore World' option more interesting to look at. It could report how many teams were active in each region in the previous year, and if AI teams don't radically adjust their strategies too often, the human GM could use that as a basis for his own strategizing.

* I'd also love to see international origin %s subject to League Evolution, as an option. If sometimes new countries instituted baseball programs and the number of players from each place could change, then it might make sense to one day scout a country you wouldn't contemplate on modern-day defaults.

I can specify the mathematical details of this kind of system - how to use the international origin %s - a bit later, I think it's a bit tricky but very possible.


International Amateur FAs

* As with other FAs, teams should not get scouting reports unless they scout an FA's country.

* and again, many players should only sign if they've actually been scouted by a team

* OSA should not scout these players either. GMs get way too much info right now with human scouting reports, OSA reports, and bonus demands. I don't even need my human scout to know which players are good.

* we really need to redo the bonus demand system, and the contract negotiation system, for these prospects:

-- the bonus demand reveals way too much information about ability.

-- the players all use idiotic negotiation tactics. Because of scouting error, there's always a chance a 16 year old will be viewed as a potential 5-star guy by one team. That team might pay $2m for him, but not if he demands $40k.

-- when a player is 'in demand', he obviously should not raise his demands incrementally by tiny amounts. He then guarantees himself the minimum possible bonus. If teams will meet his demand, he probably should shoot for a lot more, then come down if he overshoots.

-- it can be really annoying for the user when you 'meet demand' eleven times over three game weeks, adding $200k to your offer each time, and still don't sign a guy. It can take far too many offers.

* just as importantly, the distribution of bonus amounts is completely off from real life. If you look at the top 30 bonuses in real life, they'll all exceed $500k. In OOTP, the majority of the top 30 bonuses are less than $200k, and lots of them are less than $100k. If we're modeling the top 30 international teenage FAs, they all need to sign for way more, and they only will if they change their demands, and if we let scouting error govern what teams will pay. Teams will only overpay if they can't reference OSA or bonus demands for additional ability info.

* player creation is a bit weird, when you compare with real life. In real life, there's almost no such thing as a superstar SP prospect among international teenagers, with very few exceptions. Most of the big bonuses go to hitters. There are lots of successful pitchers eventually, but it's not very clear who they'll be when they're 16. OOTP creation seems the opposite - lots of amazing looking pitchers, few good looking bats. Really the pitchers shouldn't look as good, but more should benefit from talent boosts a bit later.

* we could very easily at least implement one of the provisions of the 'new' CBA: the spending cap teams observe when signing international amateur FAs is variable, based on a team's performance the previous year. Bad teams are allowed to spend more. So we could make the spending cap different for different teams, allowing rebuilding teams a bit more of an opportunity to sign these prospects.
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Going to be honest, I started reading that and my eyes glazed over and I started scrolling before I even finished "Outline of a Model". I would be stunned if even 1% of the playerbase read a full tutorial/setup for that system, let alone understood or meaningfully interacted with it.

No, I love when players do not work out. I hundred percent agree. It is just one week he is an all start to my scout and then less than a month later, he is not even good enough for the bench. There should be like a in between where the scout notices a slight downgrade (This guy strikeouts are up or he seems to be declining)

I want this game as realistic as possible. I want to bring in a guy on a minor league contract thinking he could be a good bench player and he turns into a all star. Just want more accurate and consistent scouting and if someone wants to use ratings, the ratings only change monthly or longer.

Seriously, a player would be a 55 with a 75 potential. I would not play a game at all but just save and exit. When I returned to the game, he was a 53 with a 74 overall. Like it changed just from me leaving the game.

The point is you should actually have to scout players, and even then for a given period of time. Sample size is obviously a large part of scouting. I have never been a fan of scouting by magic as I feel it's an unrealistic and zero strategy/fun system. The current system is the very reason a player can be rated a 55 one day and three weeks later a 45.

If you actually have to scout players (in other words the players need to be playing) for reasonable amounts of time, I think you would find things to be much more realistic. It would prevent the new 60 FA you signed in March from suddenly becoming a 50 in April. Maybe not under the hood so much...but the scouting would look realistic.

Its not a huge thing to me and in fact is sometimes helpful although not realistic. However I'd prefer a one time rating between the end of the season and the beginning of spring training. That is the scout's projection of the player's skill for the coming season. There's no reason to change that after it projection is made until spring training scouting is available.

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Now that you mention this again, how often are your scouting reports set to update, and did you notice the player's ratings before and after your scout made this recommendation? What scouting accuracy are you using? Also, was the original recommendation made when the player was on another team or a free agent, and then it was updated after you had signed the player and added him to your roster?

Scouting inaccuracy is always a potential factor, unless you're using 100% accurate scouting. It's possible that a scout's opinion of a player might change, and it might not be entirely accurate, even if the players' ratings have not changed. But I tend to play games with 100% scouting accuracy, so I'm not an expert on everything that can happen with inaccuracy enabled.

However, there is one common factor across all games, regardless of scouting accuracy. Players' ratings and potential ratings change immediately with the development engine, and they're visible right away in their profiles. But scouting updates only take place at certain intervals, so it's entirely possible that your player's ratings decreased between January and February, but since your scouting reports are not instantaneous, your scout's evaluation did not change until February.

Alternatively, even if the player's ratings didn't change, if he was evaluated relative to another team or MLB overall, but you have a strong team, I suppose it's possible that the scout now sees him as a bubble player within your organization, rather than an everyday starter elsewhere. However, I don't lean on scouting reports much, and I don't use them to decide player roles. I focus entirely on player ratings, since those are what truly drive player performance in OOTP.

Many times, scouts recommend roles or evaluate players in ways that I reject. That's how it works in real life. Scouts don't make the roster or lineup decisions. The GM and the field manager do that, and, while they take scouting reports into account, they make the final decisions and might use players in different ways than the scouts suggest. Sometimes the GM or manager turns out to be right, and sometimes they're completely wrong. But a scout's assessment of a player isn't necessarily reality.

One small thing that can be done (currently) is the ability to limit scouting report updates to "rare".

This is what I do. I also never ask my scout for a report. I deal with what I get which means often I deal with reports that are old and have low accuracy. Forces me to look at stats a bit more.

Well I see nothing wrong with asking scouts for reports...it's the whole "scouting by magic" aspect of the system I am not a big fan of.


It's too much Magic...just too much magic.

Was it a pitcher? There is a bug related to their ratings being slightly off when you quit and restart.

Well I play with all the ratings off because I feel there is a bug involved with ratings so I go by normal scouting and stats. I know that it is not 100 percent accurate but I usually get a pretty good scout. I would prefer less drastic scouting reports, if that is possible. So I had Cody Bellinger, scout said everyday player. When the next month hit, Bellinger was considered a possible bench role. Basically, I just want like a gradual change like the scout saying I have seen a decline in Bellinger or maybe just seasonal scouting reports. With ratings, it effects everyone, including pitchers. It is bug I reported on OOTP 17 and still happens now. If there ratings changed every scouting report, that would be one thing. I also do not understand coaching staff ratings. I hired a manager who good at teaching pitching and hitting and excellent at development but it did not seem to affect my players.

First off, you have control over how frequently scouting reports are generated. You can have OOTP update them seasonally if you want, and you don't have to use monthly or bi-monthly reports. Keep in mind that this will make you blind and unaware of many changes that might be happening with players throughout a season.

The development engine works throughout the season and not just between seasons. Players go through temporary ratings changes, such as their contact dropping off slightly for a month or two, or their control dipping for a while. But often they come back to their usual ratings. However, over time, they can go through long-term or permanent ratings changes. Their contact or control might decrease permanently, or it might drop for a season or two, and then suddenly they might get some of it back, although players who start declining usually keep declining.

This is why your scouts are updating their player evaluations, changing those evaluations, and giving you updated reports. When your scouts suddenly change their evaluation, they're essentially telling you what you already want to know. In your example, your scout is saying that Bellinger is not as valuable as he was previously, and right now he is only suited for a lesser role in the scout's opinion. In OOTP terms, this means that one or more of Bellinger's ratings have probably declined, at least temporarily, and the decrease may have been in a rating or in multiple ratings that are essential to his position, role, value within the organization, etc.

Scouting reports are just a reflection of what's happening with player ratings and how accurate your scouts are. If player ratings or potential change, it can significantly alter a scout's evaluation of them. If you're seeing drastic changes in scouting reports, it's likely that your players are going through drastic changes in their ratings or potential. Again, accuracy is a potential factor, and OOTP scouts are not perfect, so sometimes they overreact to temporary changes. But what they're trying to tell you is that things have changed with a player's ratings, development and/or potential, and in how they compare within your organization or the league overall.

Since you are playing stats-only, you aren't able to see those ratings changes, so maybe you should try playing a game with ratings and scouting turned on. Make sure to play in commissioner mode too. That way, you can get a better sense of how things work and even see a player's detailed ratings and potential in the editor, to see why your scouts are changing their evaluations. Once you have a better idea of how things work, then that can help you decide which settings to use, and it might ease your frustration because you'll know why your scouts are telling you what they are.

One important thing to keep in mind is that your talent change randomness setting impacts the frequency and significance of talent changes. If you use the default setting, player development is typically pretty minor and gradual, unless they're quite young or they're really getting old. At the younger and older ends of the spectrum, changes will often be more rapid and sometimes quite sudden. In between, it's usually subtle, with minor gains or losses in one or two ratings here and there.

But this is another important insight into understanding how things actually work, which is based on real-life player development.


Think of this in real-life terms: being good at teaching players doesn't automatically make those players better. Their potential, their physical capabilities, their work ethic, their playing time and performance, their attitude, their morale, and many other factors come into play. Otherwise, the best coaches and managers in sports would always get young players and even veterans to develop and improve. But it doesn't work that way in real life, and it doesn't work that way in OOTP either. That's by design.

The OOTP development engine tries to simulate this same complexity, so, if you have players who just don't have much potential to improve, or their work ethic is low, or they don't get enough playing time, or they don't perform well or get influenced negatively by teammates, a good teacher might not be able to get them to develop.

I would recommend reading the OOTP 24 manual and searching the forums and looking for threads that have covered player development, coaching, player personalities, and other relevant aspects of the game. The manual alone will enlighten you as to how the game works and what factors can influence certain things in the game. But the community has vast knowledge and experience that goes way beyond the manual.

This is why I said at the outset that your issues seem to be stemming more from a lack of understanding about the sim rather than bugs or problems with how the sim is coded and developed. I would suggest that it's time to set aside your past experiences and the way you started playing the game as a result of things that you thought were bugs, and it's time to learn more about the game and start playing it with settings that will allow you to understand it better, get more of the experience you want, and ultimately have fun.

Hopefully, with some better understanding, the right settings, and some help from the community, you'll get there.

There are no more months, bi-monthly or annual reports. It's now frequent, normal and rarely. I don't know if that means the same things or not, but it does appear to be a little different than it was in the past. It sounds like people here may want "rarely" though.

Why do you have to rely on scouts for your own teams ratings?

That seems insane, shouldn't your coaching staff be able to see these players day to day and be able to keep you updated on any changes?

I can see scouts coming into play for players not on your own team. But players in your organization should be 'scouted' to a pretty high level by a by a combo of your organizations coaching staff and scouting department.


Sorry if I am missing the point here. I usually play with scouting off since scouting has been broken since it was introduced. But for those who play with it on, your own organizations players should always be scouted.
That just makes intuitive sense.

So I get this; however, players should not be signed in December and by January, already have a decline. If a scout wants to tell me every month that a player has declined or gotten better, that is fine. But their ratings were changing when I exited or entered the game. They would change every day even if my scouting report was every two months. I like realism and one game does not dictate a player's skills. It can take a month or so for a player to be properly scouted but he has to be playing or injured. Stats change based on performance, age, wanting to play, etc, like you said. But me exiting the game and then reenter it the next day, should not affect their ratings. Trust me, I have had this problem for a long time and I put in several tickets. That is why I turned ratings off.

And why are my players always mad at their performance even if they have not played a game yet. Once they are mad, there is no option to talk to them to make them feel better. There are no practice reports, which would affect mood and ratings. I have been a statistical guy in every sports game I have played. Madden, NBA 2K, NBA live, etc. I do not play the games, I simulate them because they are more accurate. I understand a lot of things. I have not learned how to win in OOTP yet but that is because I create Expansion teams where it only gives me two days to put a team together. I might not have a manager until the 2nd week of the season. I want players that no one wants, to maybe have a great season, which happens, and I want players who cost a lot of money, have maybe have a bad year. Point is, I have a good amount of experience under my belt and I know a bug when I see one.

Also, I am not saying OOTP is awful. It is the best and if these problems could be fixed, I would not be able to stop playing lol

I've certainly never experienced ratings changing on a weekly/monthly basis like that, nor have I seen ratings change from opening/closing the game.

Are you using 20-80?

Yes, both single digit changes and changes by 5

When creating a new game in OOTP 24, my options still show bi-monthly, monthly, or season start and end. See the screenshot. Am I missing something?

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.