Almost every player regresses once turning 24 y/o

[NeuroticTruth]

I have a online league file that has been running since OOTP12. We're on our 14th different version of OOTP and on our 162nd year in game.

Several releases ago we noticed our players were developing extremely slowly, to the point where they either wouldn't develop or they would develop at like 27. We tweaked some of the development settings and that number started to come down. However, over the last two releases its become very extreme (despite the settings remaining the same).

It is to the point now where players are developing at 20 or 21 years old. We're mostly fine with this. The kicker, however, is that almost all players regress once they reach the age of 24. At first I thought it might be because we're using relative ratings and you have new talent coming in to the league. But as more time has passed, that doesn't feel like the case. The players regressing are almost always within a month of them turning 24. It could be mid offseason, midseason, opening day, it doesn't matter. I've turned some of the dev speeds and aging settings down in hopes of fixing this but it doesn't seem to be working.

At this point it almost feels like a bug with how consistently its happening. There are probably less than 50 players that are older than 26 and still viable in our league now. It is quickly encroaching on game breaking at this point.

Any chance a dev might be willing to take a look at our file?

[Nersha]

There are several settings you can tweek to adjust this in player development settings. I hope this helps a bit.

[NeuroticTruth]

Like I said in my original post, we've tried changing dev speeds to fix this problem, to no avail. These are our current development settings:



One would assume with our settings that this wouldnt be an issue, perhaps even the opposite. We actually were running .250 and 2.0 up until last offseason when I started raising them back to the median with the hopes that potentially OOTP24 and OOTP25 didn't like the settings that way.

[Rain King]

Yeah, I mean with those settings you essentially have made it so that players get good really early and don't regress until really late...so you are overloading the league with talent.

OOTP makes tweaks to try to balance the default settings as best it can every version. If you continue from one version to the next with extreme settings (without first testing to determine if they remain necessary) IMO you are asking for trouble down the line.

I don't know what to make specifically of the 24-year old thing, but it could be that something changes with Scouting evaluation at that age since players generally stop being considered a prospect at that point. Have you looked under the hood at the actual ratings in any way to investigate or can you provide some specific examples of what you are seeing there?

[luckymann]

Yeah this looks to me like an overload problem. From my experience, those age and dev "sliders" are super-powerful. So to have them at such extremes IMO is always going to be problematic.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, I would tone things right down. Maybe put the targets back to DEFAULT as well for a while. If things aren't moving quickly enough for you then start SLOWLY ticking the sliders up until you are seeing things go how you want.

I'd also tick the TCR up to max 125, but do it incrementally is my advice.

I know these settings probably don't suit what you are trying to achieve but they highlight my point. I have used the following for historical minors saves to stop guys reaching their POT too early, which OOTP tends to make them do, with the results right where I want them to be.



Point being, less is definitely more with this function.

Hope this helps.

G

[Roggie]

Another league member here. The big past issue, as said in the first post, was players taking until 26 or so to finish developing. We thought in the past that this was due to player just becoming gradually overall better over time (as comparing the ratings in the file on the 20-80 scale to a default file showe our league had much higher average ratings), which led to us changing development speed to be faster.

We had TCR at a higher number but lowered it to see if that would counter the crazy regression we'd see early. It hasn't so far but it's only been a few seasons with the lower TCR.

I also agree that trying to tone down the extremes in aging could fix it but it's definitely a huge risk to try as that could cause an even bigger issue. Would need someone with the available time to make an offline copy and run a few years into the future a few times to see how it compares to what we are seeing.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by NeuroticTruth

I have a online league file that has been running since OOTP12. We're on our 14th different version of OOTP and on our 162nd year in game.

Several releases ago we noticed our players were developing extremely slowly, to the point where they either wouldn't develop or they would develop at like 27. We tweaked some of the development settings and that number started to come down. However, over the last two releases its become very extreme (despite the settings remaining the same).

It is to the point now where players are developing at 20 or 21 years old. We're mostly fine with this. The kicker, however, is that almost all players regress once they reach the age of 24. At first I thought it might be because we're using relative ratings and you have new talent coming in to the league. But as more time has passed, that doesn't feel like the case. The players regressing are almost always within a month of them turning 24. It could be mid offseason, midseason, opening day, it doesn't matter. I've turned some of the dev speeds and aging settings down in hopes of fixing this but it doesn't seem to be working.

At this point it almost feels like a bug with how consistently its happening. There are probably less than 50 players that are older than 26 and still viable in our league now. It is quickly encroaching on game breaking at this point.

Any chance a dev might be willing to take a look at our file?

These and similar concerns about development and regression have been raised in one form or another throughout v25’s life cycle. Very disappointing that such obvious departures from reality persist. The board then treats each case like a one-off requiring concierge medicine, reliably advising that you document every setting in your universe as if the appropriate remedy is a bespoke prescription. At some point, the refusal to put the onus on the developers in acknowledgement of the weight and breadth of reports on a particular issue crosses into farce. People are justified in an expectation that default parameters yield a reasonable approximation of real mechanics when applied within similarly reasonable approximations of real universe set-ups.

[Nersha]

Some of this was an OOTP problem in general that was addressed over various patches, most of which are fixed now. For example:

Changelist (25.10.95)
Adjusted some player creation/development modifiers for long term balance

Changelist (25.9.90)
Adjusted some development speeds
Young players should develop to moderate ratings faster
Slightly reduced aggressive talent shifts

Changelist (25.8.87
Adjusted IAFA development

Changelist (25.8.83):
Updated Player Development
Fielding ratings will not age as aggressively when players first start to hit the aging years
Fielding ratings aging will be impacted by other factors, such as speed and player body types (heavier players will lose fielding faster than lighter players)

Changelist (Version 25.7.80)
Slightly adjusted some player creation/player development settings

A lot going on with development over several patches

[jcard]

Originally Posted by Nersha

Some of this was an OOTP problem in general that was addressed over various patches, most of which are fixed now. For example:

Changelist (25.10.95)
Adjusted some player creation/development modifiers for long term balance

Changelist (25.9.90)
Adjusted some development speeds
Young players should develop to moderate ratings faster
Slightly reduced aggressive talent shifts

Changelist (25.8.87
Adjusted IAFA development

Changelist (25.8.83):
Updated Player Development
Fielding ratings will not age as aggressively when players first start to hit the aging years
Fielding ratings aging will be impacted by other factors, such as speed and player body types (heavier players will lose fielding faster than lighter players)

Changelist (Version 25.7.80)
Slightly adjusted some player creation/player development settings

A lot going on with development over several patches

Well, that can be interpreted a couple of ways. Similar to how some people think that getting December patches for an annual product that went on sale before April is a positive reflection of the producer. More to the point, what is the use of giving users all of these setting options—without instructive documentation—if the developers themselves cannot (as the continuing tinkering indicates) seem to find a satisfactory configuration?

[Roggie]

Originally Posted by Nersha

Some of this was an OOTP problem in general that was addressed over various patches, most of which are fixed now. For example:

Changelist (25.10.95)
Adjusted some player creation/development modifiers for long term balance

Changelist (25.9.90)
Adjusted some development speeds
Young players should develop to moderate ratings faster
Slightly reduced aggressive talent shifts

Changelist (25.8.87
Adjusted IAFA development

Changelist (25.8.83):
Updated Player Development
Fielding ratings will not age as aggressively when players first start to hit the aging years
Fielding ratings aging will be impacted by other factors, such as speed and player body types (heavier players will lose fielding faster than lighter players)

Changelist (Version 25.7.80)
Slightly adjusted some player creation/player development settings

A lot going on with development over several patches

Yes. They've been doing a bunch of changes to it. But for us, no matter what we try it's just getting worse and worse. It started as a bit of a meme where it was happening enough to be noticeable, but now it's to the point that it's shocking when someone hits 24 and doesn't lose 5 (20-80 scale) everything within 3 months.

[NeuroticTruth]

I'm not sure I buy the whole "you're overloading the league with talent" argument. If that were the case, with how low we have aging set, you think we'd have a ton of old and good players everywhere. We do not, we have some good "elite" players that all seem to start regressing the moment they hit 24. There is no correlation between their regressing and when other talent enters the league. They don't just start aging when other talent enters the league, they start aging as soon as they hit 24 (or within a month or two of hitting it).

[Rain King]

What specific ratings are you seeing change at 24? Can you post some examples?

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by NeuroticTruth

I'm not sure I buy the whole "you're overloading the league with talent" argument. If that were the case, with how low we have aging set, you think we'd have a ton of old and good players everywhere. We do not, we have some good "elite" players that all seem to start regressing the moment they hit 24. There is no correlation between their regressing and when other talent enters the league. They don't just start aging when other talent enters the league, they start aging as soon as they hit 24 (or within a month or two of hitting it).

One quick question (and apologies if it sounds dumb)- are you sure the players are actually regressing, or is it just that their ratings relative to MLB (or whatever the league name is) are dropping? Like, has the Commish tracked players in the Editor to confirm that the underlying ratings all drop immediately/shortly after turning 24?

[Roggie]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

One quick question (and apologies if it sounds dumb)- are you sure the players are actually regressing, or is it just that their ratings relative to MLB (or whatever the league name is) are dropping? Like, has the Commish tracked players in the Editor to confirm that the underlying ratings all drop immediately/shortly after turning 24?

There's no way relative would adjust that perfectly to so many players at the same age point throughout a full year.

But I did check 3 players on my roster as they turned 24 over the past season and yes, they had actual regression. (neurotic is the commish but I run sims as well)

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Roggie

There's no way relative would adjust that perfectly to so many players at the same age point throughout a full year.

But I did check 3 players on my roster as they turned 24 over the past season and yes, they had actual regression. (neurotic is the commish but I run sims as well)

I didn't think so, but figured I would at least ask. Otherwise I'm pretty perplexed as to how this could happen lol.

[NeuroticTruth]

Originally Posted by Rain King

What specific ratings are you seeing change at 24? Can you post some examples?

Its every major rating (dependent on position). I have a lot of in game examples.

[Roggie]

Originally Posted by Rain King

What specific ratings are you seeing change at 24? Can you post some examples?

These players are all from my team only in the past couple of seasons. This isn't even going throughout the league to find players.

[Rain King]

I think someone above said they had checked the actual under the hood ratings? I guess I would like to see/understand some details on how much these ratings are changing under the hood.

Some other thoughts I have...with the way you have things set up. Players developing really fast, with a young development target...that somehow shifts the Aging timeline also.

I've always kind of wanted more details about how those development settings could potentially affect other things and wondered if there might be some built-in counter-balancing.

If players are "peaking" at 21 instead of 26, maybe that automatically shifts the baseline aging target 5 years earlier also.

Or, maybe the game lowers the chances of a "young" player that has reached their potential within the "who gets hit with a negative TCR" equation...and since a much larger group of your players qualify than most leagues...the TCR gets more heavily shifted to whatever age groups don't qualify for that protection. 24 would make sense as an age where something like that gets lifted.

Basically, your extreme settings could be causing some other thresholds to shift or recalibrate.

I'm also kind of wondering exactly what it is you are wanting out of this league with those settings? What age are you generally seeing players hit full potential? How many players are still around over the age of 30?

[Roggie]

Originally Posted by Rain King

I think someone above said they had checked the actual under the hood ratings? I guess I would like to see/understand some details on how much these ratings are changing under the hood.

Some other thoughts I have...with the way you have things set up. Players developing really fast, with a young development target...that somehow shifts the Aging timeline also.

I've always kind of wanted more details about how those development settings could potentially affect other things and wondered if there might be some built-in counter-balancing.

If players are "peaking" at 21 instead of 26, maybe that automatically shifts the baseline aging target 5 years earlier also.

Or, maybe the game lowers the chances of a "young" player that has reached their potential within the "who gets hit with a negative TCR" equation...and since a much larger group of your players qualify than most leagues...the TCR gets more heavily shifted to whatever age groups don't qualify for that protection. 24 would make sense as an age where something like that gets lifted.

Basically, your extreme settings could be causing some other thresholds to shift or recalibrate.

I'm also kind of wondering exactly what it is you are wanting out of this league with those settings? What age are you generally seeing players hit full potential? How many players are still around over the age of 30?

We changed to these settings due to around 2100 or so, guys just didn't develop til 26 or so. So players weren't hitting FA til 32 or 33 and FA was pretty weak as most players started to decline around that time and then moreso at 35ish.

These settings fixed that (players developing between 21-25 and then a good balance of some flopping out, others having a good peak then declining in their early 30s, and a few lasting til late 30s) up until seeing this a little bit on OOTP 24 (not enough to be an issue) and then rampant within the last 3 or so months of 25 after some updates.

Also, can't remember if it was said, but we have scouting off so ratings are 100% accurate.

[Xenlos]

I'm bumping this post because my league is running into the same problem, we are in the year 2088, and most people start dying at the age of 24, to the point where people are memeing about it and no one is giving out long term contracts anymore.

We have our settings as well:

Batter Aging: .700
Batter Dev: 1.250
Pitcher Aging: .700
Pitcher Dev: 1.250
Dev Target Age: Default
Aging Target Age: Default
TCR: 90

I haven't looked under the hood at ratings because I have a team in the league so that feels incredibly shifty to me, but if anyone has figured out a fix for this, I'd be interested.