Do you use realtime sim? What's your playstyle?

[jarmenia]

I've been looking for ways to slow down my OOTP experience. Currently I sim a week at a time, make any roster adjustments I need to, and then continue on. This usually results in me simming seasons in only a few hours of play time. This also means I don't really get to know my league so to speak.

I'm thinking about using the real time sim option to slow down the experience and "force" me to read more of the news and brows players. Do any of you have any suggestions for how to get a better real time experience?

[ForeverRoyalKC]

This might be TOO real for you, but I am going right along with the real offseason. It is Saturday, December 26 in real life and it is Sat. Dec 26 on my OOTP 16 too. I play and interact with it in actual, real time. I want the full experience with signings, Winter Meetings, etc. Some people breeze thru it and keep playing seasons. I like the real time experience by actually being in REAL time.

[actionjackson]

How about continuing to sim the games, but just doing it one day at a time? That gives you a chance to get to know your league. That way you can also make sure you send out the lineups you want whenever injuries/illness/suspensions crop up.

[BKL]

I "play out" each game in a modified format. I sim innings 1 - 3, then sim until RISP innings 1 - 6 (if a runner ends up in scoring position, I'll play out bat-by-bat until there no longer is a runner in scoring position), then innings 7+ I play out. This is a lot of fun, results in simming about 50% of the time, and I can complete about three games in 20 minutes. I'm able to get through an entire season in about a month's time (of course that depends how often you play, etc.). I'm on my 5th season in the last six months and have gotten to know my players well, as well as the league player.

[ConStar]

Told this story before, but I've been playing computer sim baseball since I was 14 years old. I'm 42 now. I've played exactly 28 seasons in 28 years.

I play a season a year, a game a day.

There are some days when I can't make the time for it, so I'll have to double up. Or, if I know I'm going to be out of town on business, I'll get ahead a few days before I leave. But it's rare that there's ever a week's difference between real life and game life.

I made the switch to OOTP from Diamond Mind's products three years ago. I've used five different platforms over the years, starting with PureSTAT on the Commodore 64.

This is the only kind of sports game with which I maintain such a relationship. I sim football through Grey Dog's Bowl Bound College Football and I'll play a season every few weeks. I guess the difference with baseball is the sheer number of games in a season makes it hard to play them in rapid-fire succession.

I just won my first WS as a OOTP manager this year and it probably the most enjoyable of any I've won over the years. Comparing it to my football experience, the connection with baseball is far deeper because of the way I constrain myself to one game, one day.

[Vulkan]

Originally Posted by ConStar

Told this story before, but I've been playing computer sim baseball since I was 14 years old. I'm 42 now. I've played exactly 28 seasons in 28 years.

I play a season a year, a game a day.

There are some days when I can't make the time for it, so I'll have to double up. Or, if I know I'm going to be out of town on business, I'll get ahead a few days before I leave. But it's rare that there's ever a week's difference between real life and game life.

I made the switch to OOTP from Diamond Mind's products three years ago. I've used five different platforms over the years, starting with PureSTAT on the Commodore 64.

This is the only kind of sports game with which I maintain such a relationship. I sim football through Grey Dog's Bowl Bound College Football and I'll play a season every few weeks. I guess the difference with baseball is the sheer number of games in a season makes it hard to play them in rapid-fire succession.

I just won my first WS as a OOTP manager this year and it probably the most enjoyable of any I've won over the years. Comparing it to my football experience, the connection with baseball is far deeper because of the way I constrain myself to one game, one day.

That's really cool! Are you in the same baseball world or have you restarted from scratch a few times?

I did what you do a few years ago, but I couldn't keep up since my life is really hectic at times.

I have found the most enjoyable way for me to play is to not limit myself to just one day for each real day. Instead I play out each game and I keep score on a paper. After the game I write a recap in my imaginary local newspaper that I then keep in a binder. In that imaginary newspaper I also cover the baseball world around me with big results, transactions and other stuff.

At the end of the season I do a deep organizational report were I go through every player in the organization with a short scouting report and the players stats. I keep that in a separate binder. My annual report usually goes up to 600-700 pages. It takes a while, but it makes the immersion so much better since I really get to know my baseball world.

[jarmenia]

So I played for a few hours yesterday. I set real-time sim to 120 which meant one week game time took about 1 real hour. I enjoyed it a ton because I was browsing the newspaper, looking at stas ect, then jumped into my game to watch. I even had time during the sim to get some chores done for the wife. I'm going to try more of this playstyle this week and see how it goes.

[Saul Goodman]

I watch every game of the season (but let the manager actually manage the games). Takes a bit longer, but I enjoy watching out all the games and cursing at my manager for being such an idiot

It's sort of a modified GM only. Mainly as I'm also in charge of lineups but that's only to make 1 or 2 line up tweaks to what the manager chooses as he tends to put a couple of players in positions in the line up that I disagree with.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

How about continuing to sim the games, but just doing it one day at a time? That gives you a chance to get to know your league. That way you can also make sure you send out the lineups you want whenever injuries/illness/suspensions crop up.

This is what I do. I don't use real-time sim, though. I just hit the quick play button on the scores screen. Once I finish that day, I look at all of my minor league box scores from that day and make any moves that are needed at any level. I don't feel like I know my league inside and out, but I know my organization from top to bottom, which is what I'm going for.

[ConStar]

Originally Posted by Vulkan

That's really cool! Are you in the same baseball world or have you restarted from scratch a few times?

I did what you do a few years ago, but I couldn't keep up since my life is really hectic at times.

I have found the most enjoyable way for me to play is to not limit myself to just one day for each real day. Instead I play out each game and I keep score on a paper. After the game I write a recap in my imaginary local newspaper that I then keep in a binder. In that imaginary newspaper I also cover the baseball world around me with big results, transactions and other stuff.

At the end of the season I do a deep organizational report were I go through every player in the organization with a short scouting report and the players stats. I keep that in a separate binder. My annual report usually goes up to 600-700 pages. It takes a while, but it makes the immersion so much better since I really get to know my baseball world.

I'm in the same universe as I was day one. It's sort of a weird universe now: I started just playing (as the Seattle Mariners) in real-life MLB on the PureSTAT platform. But what started to happen is in real life, guys would retire, but in my universe, they were still playing well. I had to make a choice: Retire guys when they did in real life, or expand my league so I'd have a place to put these guys.

So I created teams in Denver and St. Petersburg. This was in 1988, so I somewhat foretold the Rockies/Marlins expansion by a couple of years. In about 1991 or 1992, I added four more teams (Salt Lake City, Buffalo, Birmingham, Washington DC). I also made up a handful of fictional players to fill out the rosters.

Once the Rockies and Marlins came on in real life, I played a couple of years where I had both the Rockies and my Denver team going at the same time. Then the Rays came in and that put two teams in the Tampa-St. Pete area. I finally decided that wasn't realistic, so roughly in 1998, I realigned my six expansion teams thusly: I kept Salt Lake City, Washington, Birmingham and Buffalo, and I moved St. Petersburg to San Antonio and moved Denver to Brooklyn. When MLB added the Nationals in real life, I simply moved my Washington team up to Montreal. I have since moved Buffalo to New Orleans.

The reason for all the swapping is simply geographical: I have a home-grown expansion team in each of the six divisions. So really, what I've been doing is my own version of playing with league evolution turned on, except I'm in control of the evolution.

Once I moved from Diamond Mind to OOTP, I suddenly had access to an AI engine to handle free agent signings and trades for teams I don't control (I now manage Birmingham rather than Seattle). The draft became a thing, too.

I never got as deep into the record keeping as you did, but back in the C64 days, I used to have to keep my own standings and stats in an old GEOS word processor file, so I guess that was a bit similar. What I'm doing now, though, is not only do I play out Birmingham's games in real time, I sim all of Birmingham's minor league games every day, too, although I let the computer manage (since, if this were "real life," the Major League manager wouldn't be managing minor league games).

The big negative I'm facing at this point, though, is since I started my current game in OOTP14, I don't have access to real draft lists anymore. Virtually everyone who has been drafted into my game the last two years was made up by the AI. So unless the devs provide a way to download/purchase real draft lists and import them without having to start a league over, I'm faced with the prospect one day of having to manually input hundreds of players into the system.

It wouldn't be the first time I had to do that: When I switched over to Diamond Mind, I manually created minor leagues, got a Baseball America Almanac out and manually inputted every single professional baseball player in America -- every year. But that was before I had a family. So I really hope the guys at OOTP will change the way roster sets are done in the future.

The only time I break into my universe anymore is when a player dies in real life. I immediately retire him from my game when that happens. Otherwise I let the game run its course.

[pete3]

Originally Posted by ConStar

The big negative I'm facing at this point, though, is since I started my current game in OOTP14, I don't have access to real draft lists anymore. Virtually everyone who has been drafted into my game the last two years was made up by the AI. So unless the devs provide a way to download/purchase real draft lists and import them without having to start a league over, I'm faced with the prospect one day of having to manually input hundreds of players into the system.

Yet another call to figure out a way to let us import draft classes. I sim in real time as well and am getting ready to start my 4th season (I graduated from rookie league to A ball to AAA Buffalo, and just got "the call" to be the manager and GM of the Minnesota Twins).

Yet, the last two draft classes are purely fictional. I really would like to import real life players.

One thing I am doing is looking at the MLB Top prospects for those two draft classes and changing the name of the players to match real life players who are also MLB Top Prospects. It's better than nothing.