Questionable AI decisions

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

That was Matt, not Markus, and I have grown tired of seeing all of your complaints.

LOL @ "all of my complaints". Yeah, threads started by me complaining about the game just dominate the forums over the past five years, or even this year for that matter...

[Lou Gehrig]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

First you complain about the game being buggy and then you complain about filing bug reports? /facepalm

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I have grown tired of seeing all of your complaints.

Dyz complains about everything. Even asking where is the all-in-one mod he has to complain there is no sticky.

He's very difficult to please. I'm glad he's not in my clubhouse causing discontent.
He may have a good point from time to time but some of us have just tuned him out.

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by Lou Gehrig

Dyz complains about everything. Even asking where is the all-in-one mod he has to complain there is no sticky.

He's very difficult to please. I'm glad he's not in my clubhouse causing discontent.
He may have a good point from time to time but some of us have just tuned him out.

Hey... my thread title on that did admit to me feeling like an idiot...

Wolf is just upset because I "schooled" him in the "reliever lead off walks" thread.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

Hey... my thread title on that did admit to me feeling like an idiot...

Wolf is just upset because I "schooled" him in the "reliever lead off walks" thread.

LOL. You have never "schooled" anyone on anything.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Lou Gehrig

Dyz complains about everything. Even asking where is the all-in-one mod he has to complain there is no sticky.

He's very difficult to please. I'm glad he's not in my clubhouse causing discontent.
He may have a good point from time to time but some of us have just tuned him out.

You convinced me. Tuning him out forever now.

[Dyzalot]

I love how the response from supposedly enlightened individuals is to effectively stick their fingers in their ears while yelling "la la la" when confronted with opposing views on things.

[Dr.K]

Dyzalot, you ever hear of the Cassandra Complex?

[Toast]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

You convinced me. Tuning him out forever now.

Typical response throughout for Wolf and his lackey followers ... to the OP, don't question the game's mechanics' or else they will make it personal with descriptors like troll, conspirator, liar, complainer etc. Then the tread gets locked and the person named called is threatened with a ban by the moderator for pointing it out.

I've followed this tread from the beginning and watched it ramp up in typical fashion.

Toast

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by Dr.K

Dyzalot, you ever hear of the Cassandra Complex?

No. Had to look that one up Not sure I'm experiencing any emotional discomfort though.

[Dr.K]

It's a metaphor for seeing things but not being believed a bit like "crying wolf" (scuse the pun)

[Dyzalot]

Originally Posted by Dr.K

It's a metaphor for seeing things but not being believed a bit like "crying wolf" (scuse the pun)

Yeah I almost feel like some are upset that I offered proof of some of the AI decisions that I had complained about every once in a while with previous versions. The responses before were stuff like "well I play out thousands of games and never saw that...". And now that I offer up screenshots they pivot to trying to find obscure reasons for the AI behaving in such a manner.

[Lukas Berger]

Ok, we're really close to locking this thread as well.

Can everyone here please act like adults and show other posters some respect even if you disagree with their viewpoint and/or how how they express themselves?

[MKG1734]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Some weird AI decisions have a justification, but some, like the above pitcher hitting and then being replaced anyways without the score changing, is a bug that should be avoided. Our managers may be indecisive at times, but not that indecisive.

Yay! At least this confirms that the AI is, indeed, not supposed to act like this

Progress : )

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Toast

Typical response throughout for Wolf and his lackey followers ... to the OP, don't question the game's mechanics' or else they will make it personal with descriptors like troll, conspirator, liar, complainer etc. Then the tread gets locked and the person named called is threatened with a ban by the moderator for pointing it out.

Unfortunately, this post is absolutely true. Don't forget the part about the complaint being invalid due to small sample size. Maybe people should stop blindly defending the game against all criticism and instead listen carefully to what other players are saying. I see Matt Arnold doing that here and it gives me some hope. But it is hard to hear him among all of the bickering.

[MKG1734]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Unfortunately, this post is absolutely true. Don't forget the part about the complaint being invalid due to small sample size. Maybe people should stop blindly defending the game against all criticism and instead listen carefully to what other players are saying. I see Matt Arnold doing that here and it gives me some hope. But it is hard to hear him among all of the bickering.

+1 Orcin

Not to mention that Matt Arnold sifting thru all this and then recommending a bug report be filed may (likely will) lead to the game AI / sim engine being improved

[Dr.K]

Originally Posted by MKG1734

+1 Orcin

Not to mention that Matt Arnold sifting thru all this and then recommending a bug report be filed may (likely will) lead to the game AI / sim engine being improved

Then we all win

[ravinhood]

I want the AI to be different and pattern itself after the manager it's suppose to be but I don't see that. I see every team seemingly do the same things at the same times in every game. You know I have yet to see an ai manager call a "squeeze" play in any inning.

I still feel the AI never picks some of the best managers and coaches that it could for it's minor league teams as everyone that I've taken over always has decent or fair maybe a few good and nothing better on any minor league staff.

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by RchW

I checked the top 4 starting SS in my league in August of the current season so around 120 games played. The top 3 had not been pinch hit for once ie never. The fourth was PH for several times but further checking showed that the AI manager was bunt happy. I wasn't in agreement with all the PH decisions but it was not enough to bother me. My conclusion. This issue may exist in only certain types of leagues. For fictional leagues like I play it has never been an observable problem and further checking seems to confirm that.

FWIW the team with the bunt happy AI manager is almost a cinch for the WC and has 13 more wins than me.

I looked into this too with my fictional league and like you I couldn't find any issue. Some teams bunt way more then others. Some hardly at all and some in nearly every late game. As for pinch bunting. Seems to depend on how much better the pinch hitters bunt rating is. If the AI manager wants to call a bunt he's going to put in the best bunter available as far as I can tell.

[ondemonitors]

Originally Posted by MKG1734

Not to mention that Matt Arnold sifting thru all this and then recommending a bug report be filed may (likely will) lead to the game AI / sim engine being improved

I don't want to turn this in to a Matt Arnold Rocks thread...

but Matt Arnold ROCKS!

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by ravinhood

I want the AI to be different and pattern itself after the manager it's suppose to be but I don't see that. I see every team seemingly do the same things at the same times in every game. You know I have yet to see an ai manager call a "squeeze" play in any inning.

I still feel the AI never picks some of the best managers and coaches that it could for it's minor league teams as everyone that I've taken over always has decent or fair maybe a few good and nothing better on any minor league staff.

Originally Posted by ravinhood

I want the AI to be different and pattern itself after the manager it's suppose to be but I don't see that. I see every team seemingly do the same things at the same times in every game. You know I have yet to see an ai manager call a "squeeze" play in any inning.

I still feel the AI never picks some of the best managers and coaches that it could for it's minor league teams as everyone that I've taken over always has decent or fair maybe a few good and nothing better on any minor league staff.

I've seen squeeze plays. They are very rare. On the same point not a single squeeze I've ever seen has worked.

A lot of managers in game won't take minor league deals right away when signing comes around. What happens is that the AI takes the best available at the time because it has to fill the position. So as a human player if you wait you'll be able to pick up better left over managers because later in the off season they will take lesser jobs. Just like players will take less later in the off season or after the season starts. As much as I'd like to see it change trades, FA, and hiring and firing are some of the hardest things to program in a sports game. Heck look at EA and madden it still sucks there and they've had 25 years and umpteen hundreds of programmers working on Madden. I hardly place blame on a small group of 6-7 who are making a stats only baseball game.

Basically you're stuck programming one of three ways for the AI to sign both players and coaches.

1. have AI go after and sign players immediately with the best available they can get at the end of the season. (this is the setting most sports games use, not just OOTP)
Pros- AI has a good chance of getting some good players before the human player can sign them all (under normal circumstances), Quality players spread around the league.
Cons- AI will routinely outspend itself because player demands are highest at the end of seasons. Easy for human player to exploit because human player can go after players the AI won't even look at since the AI is stuck on best available player and doesn't look at the FA pool as a whole nor looks at what type of secondary needs the team has.

2. Have all AI teams wait till the end of the off season to sign players and personnel
Pros- AI is less likely to overspend to get players which makes the overall financial structure of the game more stable.
Cons- Much much easier for the human player to take advantage of. One or two high budget AI teams will sign a significantly higher amount of quality players leading to a insurmountable deficit in quality from the top of a league to the bottom. Basically bottom tier team will never be able to make it back to the top.

3. Sign fully on a as need basis based on current rooster.
Pros - AI will never go after players it doesn't need. Harder for human player to exploit because AI will typically have more money. AI team will usually always have a good spread of players among all positions.
Cons- AI still goes after best available. AI will still overpay. AI rarely signs upgrades or futures for older players. High amount of quality players left in FA pool after signings are over (could potentially be a good thing if you have more than one lead fed from the same pool of players as more quality players will trickle down to lower leagues)

Those are the three main ways sports games cover signings. As you can see each has pros and cons. The same is true for all AI decisions each way of programing the AI has pros and cons. And we as players WILL ALWAYS latch onto the cons and run with them. Sometimes the cons can be minimized or even eliminated but sometimes they can't. Again look at all the problems games like Madden still have. Many of the same things that plagued Madden 10 years ago still have issues today and again they have 10xs the programmers and 1000000x the budget.

If the devs wanted to they could program the AI to make it so elite a human player would barely stand a chance.

Back on the signing players and coaches thing. IMO the best way for OOTP or any sports game to sign FAs would be to try an mimic real life. Obviously the best players go first and usually the top contracts are considered to be overblown but contracts quickly fall back to reasonable levels after the top 1% of players are signed. (OOTP tries to do this, I think, but it runs into trouble because every AI team is going after every player at the same time not spread out like IRL). Player demands wouldn't be the starting point for contracts. Player demands would be pretty close to the signing point or close to the point where a contract becomes toxic. Contracts wouldn't be able to be backloaded to extremes. In past madden games they curbed the backloaded contract exploit by coding into the game no more then a ?22%? (I think) raise from year to year. (I vaguely remember it being a sliding scale based on the first years salary but 22% was I think the largest year to year margin you could have). The FA signing period would be more drawn out. As it is in the game the first week-two weeks is a mad dash and then signing is down to nothing. If signing was more drawn out it wouldn't really help the AI any but it would be a bit more realistic. AI would take more consideration into what it actually needed. If a team (minors included) had a glut of quality players at a position they shouldn't be going after high priced FAs. The same goes for if a team has an aging high end player they should be going after reasonable younger players of that position for the future. If the team has a 5 star player at a position locked into a long contract they shouldn't be going after another high end player as a backup. They should be looking at 2.5-3 star guys as backups. Or properly evaluating their minors and bringing someone up. Then replacing that guy lower down the FA list. Overall the AI in normal conditions should want to play moneyball (i.e. best value not best available) with modifiers based on budget, current payroll, short term needs, long term needs, etc moving the scale up or down as to how free wheeling the AI is with money.

I could go on but this post is already way to long. Anyway OOTP isn't perfect but it isn't horrible either. It's actually pretty good. their are flaws here and there but that's with all games. And I can say from personal knowledge the devs here are WAY WAY more receptive to comments and criticism then most.

Again (I'm almost done really), the financial aspects of a game are hardest to program. I'm sure the devs could completely rework the financials to make them work better BUT all that time would come at a overall cost. Would you buy OOTP17 if it was the exact same as OOTP16 but with better financials? Remember everything else is the same and oh yeah they didn't have time to update rosters either.

In the end no game is perfect and the way some people are acting currently on the forums it's either pile of garbage or rose tinted glasses. This game is neither it's right where it should be for a game of it's type. It's the best baseball sim on the market by a long shot and we even as players should want nothing more then to keep it that way. Petty back and forth does nothing to further the game.