Wish there was a third option "I use them now and am happy with how they work".
I used them the first time they were added to OOTP. After a couple of seasons I turned them off to try with just a draft created class and immediately turned then back of after that season.
They work quite nicely if used as designed IMHO. They are draft creators where the teams play real games and stats\performance can be compared between players even if the stats are not completely realistic compared to real HS and College baseball, IE you don't have prodigies with "superman" stats. Instead what you have is a pool of players that have all generated stats in the same environment so making them comparable within the context of the league. You have the same autocalc
capabilities as any league to at least tailor the stats to be what you want. The bottom line is they do what they were intended to do, produce players for the professional leagues with stats accumulated in real games played that can be used in conjunction with scouting reports.
Some have noted that there are too many HS players and not enough College in the draft and think it needs fixed. I believe the person used the
percentages as 65% C and 35% HS in real life with feeders being more like 50/50. Markus suggested the best fix would be to create a feeder structure with 65% college teams and 35% HS. Makes sense to me but I believe this person rejected that and went with "if it's not fixed I won't buy XX".
My feeders are 4 MLB clone leagues, 2 HS 2 college. So 60 HS and 60 college teams (120 total teams) feed my league with a 25 round draft. I haven't checked the % HS\College but I'm sure more college get drafted than HS as some HS players go onto college. Some undrafted and others that were drafted but did not sign. I play out all of my games, so it will be awhile but in my next season, I will check the %s on my next draft.
Feeders were not designed to be playable, real world, high school and college baseball leagues. I think this is where a lot of the problem started as some users immediately went to a wish list of having this be so. I think some put feeders away because they can't make this work? I think others never try them because they read here how unrealistic they are, are hard to setup, etc.
My feeders were setup many versions ago so not sure how much has changed in how easy they are to create but back when I did mine it wasn't
particularly hard at all. From memory I think the only things I had to think about was player creation ages and how long players played so they would "graduate" at the right age.
I think too many give up on these to easily or never try at all because of posts they read here. If more tried them, keeping in mind how they were designed to be used, they might be surprised and happy with the results. With more users there comes a louder voice when asking Markus to make changes and improvements to the system.
One question while I'm here
..........
Since I never use game generated draft pools.... Do they include prodigies, guys like Joe Mauer that only struck out 2 times in 4 years of varsity high school baseball? Or are they all "normal" stats like a feeder league gives you?