[MKG1734]

I asked what can essentially amount to your question in this thread: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ootp-s-ai.html

The best answer from someone closely associated with the development staff can be found here:

lukasberger: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...05-post82.html

From the above link note this statement:

"...I do disagree with the suggestion to not allow the ai to see the ratings. That will actually hurt the ai, not help it..."

which is further clarified by this statement:

The potential ratings in particular are crucial to the development of prospects in the future. Not being able to see them is a handicap. That's useful as a human wanting to level the playing field, but not useful if you want to improve the ai.

If you tweak the balance so the ai takes into account stats but doesn't ignore ratings, you actually get the optimal performance, ie not hanging onto old guys too long, but also being able to use the ratings to evaluate potential future performance for young players.

Allowing the ai to see ratings also allows it to more quickly see when an older player falls off a cliff, if you will, and the ai will react to that and ditch the player much more quickly with ratings taken into account than otherwise. That creates somewhat unrealistic gameplay in a way since the ai won't hang on to older more declining players as much as rl teams do, but it's unrealistic in the sense of being more efficient than reality, not less.

From a design perspective the ratings are what drives the game (wins games if you will). No matter how much you want to play stats only, the ratings are still used by the game in many ways, to assign correct statistical distributions, to influence the development of young players, and are still the foundation of gameplay. Not allowing the ai to take them into account will only handicap it, at least to some extent.