Originally Posted by sixto
I tried to make this short, I really did.
I've been playing OOTP long enough to remember the bugs of the OOTP4-6 days, when after 40 years of simming, minor leaguers couldn't hit over .130 because the new pitchers the game generated were too good. Or was that Baseball Mogul 2000? Anyway. Never played college baseball though.
Let's go back to basics: you are a MLB scout, evaluating an amateur player. Traditionally, you do this on the 20-80 scale, but let's use 1-600. In real life, ratings above the midpoint are rare, and reserved for the best prospects, except when rating foot speed and, for pitchers, fastballs, where max ratings are sometimes given. It does not work this way in OOTP, but I'm trying not to digress too much. It's a struggle.
Long story short: the vast majority of players who are candidates for organized ball would have potential ratings of just 200-300 on a 600 scale. That is how you are supposed to account for double-super stars like Babe Ruth and Pedro Martinez and early Mike Trout on a 600 scale: a 550 potential hit tool should almost never happen. You absolutely shouldn't have so many players with ratings over 400 that you now need a double booster from the potential ratings to differentiate.
This has always been a stupendous challenge for OOTP, maybe the central challenge for gameplay: how do you make a video game interesting when most of the players — the key to immersion in a sim — ought to be interchangeable? (We'll come back to that.)
(Worth noting for a sec: if a scouted player can't manage to get at least to an average of 200 in potential ratings, he probably isn't getting into organized ball. That's relevant to the discussion, but will also muddy the waters right now.)
It's absolutely critical to note that these scout ratings — potential ratings — are 100% not data. They are observations. Opinions! I know some will try, but IMO this is not arguable. Bat speed is data. Arm speed, arm angle, home-to-first time, average angle of attack, spin rate, barrel rate: all data. 500 potential power rating? Opinion.
Therefore, at the heart of what we are discussing is this: if minor league baseball players' statistics are influenced by potential ratings, then in fact they are influenced not by data but by somebody's opinions. That is, because Johnny Q. Scout believes that Hubert H. Homerhitter has the potential to hit 40 HR in the majors someday, somehow Johnny Q. Scout's opinion actually manifests in a boost in performance for Hubert in AAA. But not in the majors, where Johnny Q. Scout's opinions suddenly mean nothing. That's what I've gleaned from this discussion.
Rather than thinking of potential ratings and current ratings as two separate ratings, I recommend visualizing them as two circles, one inside the other. Each current ratings (C1, C2, C3 etc for every separate rating) you can think of as being the smaller ball inside the larger ball with the P1, P2, P3 ratings etc. So, a player with a 100 current rating and a 500 potential rating would have a small ball inside a large ball. Room for improvement. A player with a 100 current rating inside a 250 potential rating would have a small ball inside a slightly larger ball. Not much room for improvement — but perhaps, hard to tell a difference in their performances for now.
When we think of two players at AAA, one with a 100 C and 250 P and one with a 100C and 500 P, it's easy to understand why they should perform more or less exactly the same: because they have the same current rating. However, the better player's C ball should fill up more of the P ball as he plays, gains experience, gains skill. As the C balls get larger within the P balls, we can visualize the player living up to his potential, maybe even exceeding it. There is no need to increase the size of the P ball. Because some players do exceed their potential ratings, which again, are opinions and not data. When Justin Turner suddenly became a .300 hitter, nobody said, "His contact potential has gone from a 5 to a 9!" They said, "Holy cow Justin Turner can rake now, guess we were all wrong!"
The problem with OOTP's game engine, and I've thought this for years, isn't one that needs to use opinions to boost facts. The problems could be solved with just two tweaks. Well, three.
1. If a player A has more potential than player B, regardless of current ability, then if the potential rating is accurate, his current ability ratings should go up much, much faster (and more measurably!) than they currently do in OOTP. This would completely eradicate the need to self-hack it with a potential boost.
2. The way players are rated needs to be completely overhauled so that the vast majority of players are in the bottom half of the ratings scale, as they are in real life. Ratings over 400 and especially over 500 need to be reserved for the true superstars. But here's the great thing: this would make it infinitely easier for users to reliably create superstars in their games. As a fictional simmer 4 life, I would be so, so, so happy if I could create a few Jimmie Foxxes who actually play like Jimmie Foxx and not Andy Fox.
That brings us, unfortunately, to the third tweak.
3. Some genius has to figure out how to create a game where the code doesn't just see the vast majority of players as essentially replacement-level players who really could be interchanged one with the other. I have no proof, but I believe this is the problem that probably vexed Markus more than any other ("OOTP only knows numbers not names" IYKYK.) I think he did a truly fine job of faking it — but it's not perfect. And if OOTP were to implement the recommendations above, this problem would come roaring back. I don't have an answer for it.
This is all an even bigger issue, by the way, for players like me who like to simulate earlier times in history. I suspect some or many of the people who see this engine change as negative are historical and fictional simmers, with those not bothered being largely modern day users.
Nowadays, and with MLB awash in data, you can argue that the vast majority of players are kind of treated as fungible. Roster turnover has never been as high as it is today. 80, 100 years ago, you had 15 guys at the start of the season, and chances are you had a good chunk of the same guys at the end of it, even the sucky ones. Without data to guide them, teams relied on managers who did everything on feel and reputation and favoritism. That's also hard gameplay to model — and completely different gameplay from modern times.
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