So what's the consensus on the draft?
 

I'm only in my first season of my first time playing this game, so take this all with a grain of salt. However, I just completed my first draft and noticed a few annoying things such as:

• Very few players with high potential (according to scout)
• Completely differing star ratings between OSA and scout
• Recommended players being worse than other players remaining on the board
• Recommended players are usually the next pick if you don't pick them

After noticing that, and not enjoying the draft a whole lot, I found threads like this and this. It appears many people are upset with the draft, or at least were initially. I also noticed that a lot of these threads haven't seen posts in a while.

So what I want to know is, from people who have played out a lot of seasons, did the drafts pan out? Do enough quality players come out of it? Did the league go to ****? Was there an awkward transition between regen players and existing players until the last real player retired?

I think it was the shock of the new scouting system, speaking just for me, which kinda threw me for a huge loop. I find that players, again speaking just for me, develop just fine post-draft. Granted, I use a mixture of OSA/my scout to decide WHO to draft, and I also pour TONS of money into the player dev budget, and also have a scouting staff payroll in the mid teens (aka finding outstanding/legendary coaches for EVERY level, then keeping them forever).

To your 4 points:

1. Every Scout will have a different opinion of a player.

2. Same as 1.

3. Same as 1.

4. Not understanding what you mean here. Are you saying if you auto pick, the recommendation gets picked by the AI?

Are you saying if you don't pick the player, the next team does?


Big thing is, every Scout will have a different opinion of a player, just like real life. Some will think a guy is a sure thing, others will think he's a maybe guy.

You have to learn to do some "Scouting" of your own. Look at players stats, trends, ratings, personality (if enabled), etc. Your Scout is another tool in your arsenal. You take his information/recommendations along with other info you've gathered and make a decision. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

The other thing, OOTP is designed to keep competitive balance. If your league starts to get too much top end talent over-all, then draft classes will be weaker. Same thing the other way. The game will always try to keep that competitive balance. No league should be over-run with superstars, or over-run with duds.

[QUOTE=Slammer;3597713]

• Recommended players are usually the next pick if you don't pick them

QUOTE]
I have had this happen very often, too. Mainly in the early rounds (top 3-5), less so in the later rounds. That player may not be my personal choice, but the AI obviously thinks highly of him to pick him next. Kinda makes you think "what does the AI see/know that I don't?" Also, the player recommended by my scout is often (almost always) not the highest rated player (potential) remaining in the draft pool.

It was eye-opening at first for me, as well. But now that I'm 4-5 seasons past my first draft like this, I like what I'm seeing. In OOTP13, it seemed like it was always guys in the top 5 rounds who made it to the big leagues. Now it's still fairly rare to see a first- or second-round guy not make it, but now there are random instances of guys drafted in the 10th round or beyond who make it. In previous versions of OOTP (I started playing regularly with OOTP12), I almost never saw guys beyond round 5 make it to the bigs.

To me, the draft now is much more realistic.

There are less top players, and less fluctiation on talent change in players. Ergo, most top players tend to keep their skills, as few player just fall off a cliff potential-wise, and a considerable amount of players come out of nowhere, i.e. mid to late round picks with marginal potential get a talent potential boos in their early twenties and develop into major league players.

No, the league doesn't go to hell. It takes some getting used to, but it still works just fine. I'm saying this on top of my hundred-years plus league.

After a great deal of play, I have concluded that it's more realistic but not nearly as much fun.

That a strange sequence. Can't say I've seen it but will admit to not looking closely. What you are saying is that your scouts are recommending a player that you don't feel is as good as others and after passing on that player most AI teams with presumably different scouts will pick that player.

If so that suggests the players in question are being evaluated outside of the scouting fog ie a bug.

Define "usually" for me. Are we talking 8/10?

After 18-19 pages of being shouted down, I gave up commenting on it. I haven't changed my opinion.


My league did not go to s**t. There was no awkward transition. I still see players coming from later in the draft to be decent prospects, while players drafted early dominate the next-gen stars (as it should be). The difference is that the draft is no longer fun. It's just a grab-bag of 1-star players with no reason to choose one over another. I don't spend any time looking at draft prospects now, and I just let the scout auto-draft. I trade for my prospects now.

Yes, this is what I've seen. And I think 8/10 times at least.

i have also noticed that. From round 3-10 ... when the scout recommends someone, but i like someone else (mainly because they played at great schools) with equivalent or better evaluation, i will shortlist player the player (making him in caps), and most time he will be picked with 5 picks...

twice i have traded for them later... maybe i should listen to my Scout :p

I agree with you completely that the draft isn't as fun as it used to be. But what's more important -- the draft being fun or the draft being realistic? It's not realistic to be able to consistently draft 2-, 3- and even a 4-star prospect after the first couple of rounds. Yet that's what we consider fun.

IMO, we should have a deeper level of immersion when it comes to scouting the draft class. The manual (as out-dated as it is) says that the scout we hire has a team of scouts behind the scenes that we don't see. Those scouts should provide more details than just some ratings and overall and potential star ratings.

Maybe when the scout gives us his recommendation, he can specifically point out that this 1-star prospect has a good fastball and just needs to develop his offspeed stuff. Or the third baseman has tons of raw power potential, but strikes out too much right now. Adding things like that would keep it from feeling like we're just drafting no-name crap players from the third or fourth round on.

I like this idea for about rounds 3-5 or so, but after that wouldnt it become too easy? And too repetitive? Plus you'd need to somehow differentiate between a 4th round "good fastball" and a 18th round "good fastball." I just don't see a way for that to be reasonably done.

And I agree that the draft is more realistic now but was more fun in 13. I've grown to like the realism more though I think.

Both are important.


I am not talking about "after the first couple of rounds". In my current league, there are only 16 players in the entire draft pool rated above 1-star. My idea of realistic would be 25 players at 3 stars or higher, plus another 75 players at 2 stars, plus another 100 players at 1.5 stars.

But how many players are rated one star? And more importantly, how accurate is your scouting set at? Remember, one-star potential is considered a future big league player, just not a stand-out or above-average player. At least that's how I've always viewed it. I've had plenty of one-star players play serviceable bench/bullpen roles and even fill rotation spots for short periods. And on the flip side, I've read lots of draft pick analysis in real life that talks about guys in the top 3 rounds being no more than a fourth outfielder or a utility player. To me, that's the equivalent of a one-star guy in OOTP.

A bigger point is that we shouldn't draft guys based on stars anyway. The individual skill ratings are much more important in the long run. Star ratings are a simple overview.

The realism makes it more fun for me because I have to think a bit more about who I pick.

After a re-scout, the draft pool is:

players > 2.5 stars potential = 0
2.5 stars = 5
2 stars = 8
1.5 stars = 12

So, in a 30-team league, we are not out of round 1 before we get to 1-star players.

1 star = ~500 (rounds 2-15 in a 25-round draft pool of 1050)


Normal


And where is this written?


Oh ok, that's an opinion then. My opinion is that players rated 1.5 stars and above are what you describe as 1-star guys. 1-star players have very limited big-league potential but are long shots, and 0.5 star players have no potential.


In my opinion, the skill ratings are aligned with the star ratings, so moot point.


Back to the pool above... if you want to make the draft fun, give me at least a few guys that my scout thinks will be real stars, maybe one or two that could make the Hall of Fame. Nothing above 2.5 stars is just boring.

Make the draft pool like it used to be. Give me a much better looking pool to choose from, make me agonize over the choices, and then have half of them turn out to be over-rated. Same game result, also realistic, and lots more fun.

I mean, you may think that would be more fun and I'm sure there's many who agree with you, but there's also others that seem to think it's more fun the new way.

By the way, love your dynasties!

Maybe in future version of OOTP there can be an option that you can select in draft settings to decide whether you want the "OOTP 13 and previous versions" draft appearance or the "OOTP 14" one.

I admit that's very poor. I had one season of this happen to me when I imported a league from 13 to 14. But the thing I had to remind myself is that star ratings are relative to the rest of the players at that position. So while a guy may be a 2.5-star potential when he's drafted, when he gets to the big leagues and the talent pool changes, those stars will go up even though his skills are what they were predicted to be when he was drafted.

I tried to find this in the manual, but couldn't find anything specific. There's one reference to a 3-star player being above average, but nothing else definitive. But I still believe that a one-star MLB potential equates to being an average player, or in sabremetric terms, a 0.0 WAR.


This is where I wholeheartedly disagree. One four-star shortstop could be 70s and 80s in defensive ratings (I use 20-80 scale) and only around 50s offensively and speed wise. Another four-star shortstop could be around 50s defensively, 60s offensively and 70-plus in speed and baserunning. They are clearly different types of players.

As I said, the pool above is bad. If I was seeing that every year in my league, I'd be disappointed. That said, I just did the 2022 draft in the league I imported from 13 (imported in year 2016) and each year there are a few more 2-star and above potentials in the draft. So perhaps the game is just balancing itself out? That's just a guess.

As far as the better-looking draft pool, I personally don't want that. I don't want to pick highly rated players who crap out. I want to have to search the draft pool after the first two or three rounds to find a guy with a good skill or two who might be able to develop his lower rated skills and become a solid player. I don't want to get to round three and have my pick of 2.5-star potential guys.