Something not yet mentioned here to make for a challenge is develop a promotion/regulation universe and start low and try to work your way up through two or three "lower division" leagues to the big time.
I just added a second league (fictional players) to my random-era historical league (which needed "juicing up" after sixty seasons) and I just took control of the first MLB team that got regulated: the aim, to get it out of that darn second division fictional player league asap.
Since this is the first time I have used the P-R concept, there does seem to be some major flaws when it comes to financial, mostly with the promoted teams having zero money to spend on FAs until the season has started.
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In general, I play OOTP for enjoyment, and to make it more challenging for myself. I usually pay little attention to the mistakes and dumb decisions the AI GMs do, except that I try not to take undue advantage of them. I realize the game ain't perfect and I do have a sense of honor (not gaming the game, I think is the expression).
One reason I have greatly preferred solo play to online play is that in solo I can control the other GMs more. By this, I mean that even in the best online leagues I've been in, there has been a pattern of the better GMs taking advantage of bad GMs and/or GMs new to the league and absolutely fleecing them in trades. And I cant stand that. Makes for a highly unbalanced universe, worse than any solo universe.
As for solo play, I rarely play with modern teams, as I don't enjoy today's game as much as any era before today's (today's roughly being the 21st century). Anyway, playing with any modern era team, and soon you will end up with a fictional league once you've played enough seasons.
increase TCR sounds like a great idea
I didn't know what it was until I read this thread: this is one of several/many things not described adequately in the manual [if you can even find it]. I used to think it changed the talent level of established players in a random way for each season).
I am not sure turning off the draft and having rookies enter as FAs will do much. It seems to me the draft is the lesser of the evils when it comes to AI incompetence.
One way to minimize the effects of the "AI sucks" is to have the AI draft for your team, and/or have it sign FAs for your team.
The way I play is usually to
not display any numerical ratings except "other", I mean defense, speed, running, etc. I figure this stuff can be discovered by a real manager/scout after 15 minutes of observing a player. And I use a 1-5 rating for those.
I may try turning even that rating off (to not displayed) because...
One of the biggest weaknesses I find in the game is that the AI doesn't give a flip about defense. I mean just make your team strong up the middle and you will add twenty wins to your season.
I have tried "stats only" before but then I don't see how the draft is at all possible: might as well let the AI do that for me.
Someone suggested accepting every trade offer proposed to you. I don't know if that was a serious suggestion or not; my first impression is that I would hate that because, on hard or very hard, the trade offers are usually crap. I usually don't read them. Plus I get attached to my players or at least my team-building strategy and accepting every offer (almost any offer!) would fuk things up fast.
One really experienced OOTPer said to turn OFF everything like scouting, coaches, et to make the game harder, because by using those options you are just making the already dumb AI even dumber. Any comments?
I have just turned on scouting and set it to low accuracy. We'll see how harder or easier it makes the game. Or how pleasanter or unpleasanter.
Oh--and I usually use a salary cap. Hard to sign every available FA that way.
All in all, to a lover of the game, OOTP is fantastic.