Quick question about non-recalc player ratings

[highandoutside]

Hello all,

I did a lot of searching and haven't found a clear answer to this and I was hoping you all could help.

If I start a season, say 1968, with:
Development = On
Recalc = Off
Potential = Remaining career

Will Denny McClain's initial/creation ratings reflect his career up to 1968 only, and his real life 1968 won't affect his ratings at his creation in the game; or will his '68 real life season be baked into his initial/creation ratings via "potential- remaining career"?


I hope this is clear. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Rain King]

If your create a historical season starting in 1968 the ratings are going to be based on the players' 1968 stats (or 3-year, 5-year stats if you have those options chosen).

Recalc doesn't ever get involved until the change from one season to the next. So, disabling it is telling the game that as you roll over to 1969 you do not want to apply the real stats to existing players (rookies would still be generated initially using their real stats).

[Garlon]

For those who do use recalc, you should make sure development is off. You can turn both on but it defeats the purpose of recalc. If you have them both turned on players will get recalculated at the beginning if each season but their ratings will change throughout the season as they develop. This is generally not what you can’t when you use recalc. With recalc on and development off the players rating will only change once per season.

[thehef]

In your scenario...

In all cases, Denny McClain will import based upon his 1968 performance...

Development on & recalc on: Development ON will mean that his ratings could change during the season. In the offseason (after '68 season), recalc ON will bring his ratings in line with his 1969 performance.
Development on & recalc off: Ratings could change at any time with development ON. With recalc OFF, there will never be any connection between his 1969 (and subsequent years') performance and his ratings. His entire career will be based upon his 1968 ratings and then whatever path that development ON takes him...
Development off & recalc on: This is the way to play if one is into the most-accurate historical replays. Denny's '68 ratings will be based upon his 1968 stats and they generally will not change during the year; his '69 ratings will be based on his 1969 stats. And so forth...
Development off & recalc off; His ratings will generally stay the same each year, based upon his 1968 performance. There will probably be some downgrade to his ratings as he ages, but it will be pretty slow. (Not 100% sure on this one, but except for the overall concept )

Keep in mind that Development is not merely and ON or OFF proposition. It's a sliding scale from 0 to 200. So, using Development on & recalc off scenario as an example...

With development set to 1, his ratings will barely vary from his initial (1968) ratings. With development set to 200, however, his ratings are likely to vary widely over the course of his career. Retire According to History, if on, will have Denny retire after the '72 season. But if you were to have RAH off, recalc off, and development set to 200, by the mid- or late-70's you might see him as an ace reliever, a mop-up guy, solid starter, 2nd coming of Cy Young, complete washout after the 1969 season... there's no telling. In fact, he might be an ace starter one year and a mop-up guy the next...

Pretty sure all of the above is accurate. Others might add their own slightly different interpretations. Hope it's helpful! And good luck!

[highandoutside]

Thanks a bunch for the info!

One additional question, with Dev - On / Recalc- Off, and “base potential ratings on rest of career”, is a player’s development Likely to follow the arc of his real career, but with more variability than straight-up recalc? Or will the potential ratings fluctuate with whatever random path the development engine takes him on?

Thanks in advance.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Garlon

For those who do use recalc, you should make sure development is off. You can turn both on but it defeats the purpose of recalc. If you have them both turned on players will get recalculated at the beginning if each season but their ratings will change throughout the season as they develop. This is generally not what you can’t when you use recalc. With recalc on and development off the players rating will only change once per season.

If you turn development off and use only recalc, wouldn't you also have to have retire according to history turned on?

[thehef]

Originally Posted by highandoutside

One additional question, with Dev - On / Recalc- Off, and “base potential ratings on rest of career”, is a player’s development Likely to follow the arc of his real career, but with more variability than straight-up recalc? Or will the potential ratings fluctuate with whatever random path the development engine takes him on?

Potential ratings have always been a bit murky to me... From the manual:

"A potential rating (such as Contact Potential) is your scouting director's assessment of how good this player could possibly become at this ability over time. (If you have scouting turned off, you still see potential ratings. It's just your coaching staff providing the information instead.)"

I assume - but am far from certain - that the assessment is garnered primarily - but probably not exclusively - from the player's future historical stats.

Based upon that assumption, plus how Dev ON and Recalc OFF work, I would say that potential ratings would be very much a crapshoot. Kind of like the equivalent of a scout saying "I saw this guy workout once and he looked great. But I have no idea what position he plays, what age he is, and what is intellect and work ethic. But based only upon that one workout, if I had to rate his potential I rate it as pretty high..." I mean, I wouldn't think that the scout's assessment would take into to account the random whims of future player development, especially if Development is set to a high number.

Maybe OOTP knows when recalc is off and ignores the player's historical stats other than the current year, and bases a sort of wild guess off of only the player's current-season stats.

If someone could clarify this, that'd be cool

[thehef]

Originally Posted by David Watts

If you turn development off and use only recalc, wouldn't you also have to have retire according to history turned on?

I haven't tested this in 23 so I don't know about that version specifically... However...

Up until several versions ago (I want to say v17 but not sure), if you have Devel off, Recalc on and RAH off, once a player's stats history ran out, then OOTP would apply some sort of reasonable development to the player. For a couple Sandy Koufax examples, I remember in one game after his real life 1966 retirement, he remained a dominant starting pitcher for about 4 or 5 years, then was a solid one for a couple more, then retired around 1975. In another one, he remained dominant for a few years, then turned into a great, then decent, reliever until roughly age 42 in 1978...

However, with or after v 17, something changed to where it was pretty difficult to play with Devel off, Recalc on and RAH off and still have Koufax develop (or "age" would be the better description) as a normal person would. First, something was inserted into the code that forced-retired guys when their stats ran out, and the RAH option no longer had any effect on these guys. And second, if you manually unretired Koufax, his age wouldn't really factor in: In a couple of test sims he remained his dominant 1966 self until like age 46 or 48 (which to me is unrealistic).

I seem to recall having some success when test-playing with Devel on but set at 1 (which is almost like having it off), Recalc on and RAH off, and also manually unretiring Koufax each year (a PITA...), I think that was with v22 but it might've been with a beta version of 23. Not sure.

I know the request was submitted (because I was the one who put it in) to restore full RAH functionality. Just not sure if it ever happened. I hope to test that soon...

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Garlon

For those who do use recalc, you should make sure development is off. You can turn both on but it defeats the purpose of recalc. If you have them both turned on players will get recalculated at the beginning if each season but their ratings will change throughout the season as they develop. This is generally not what you can’t when you use recalc. With recalc on and development off the players rating will only change once per season.

I see what you are saying here but I don't necessarily like the philosophy behind it. IRL a player doesn't just go to a certain level on the day after the season ends and stay there for a year, then find his next level and so on until retirement. There are ups and downs, form slumps and surges, all of which add a variability to the player's performance. However, I understand what you mean - for the game to replicate the IRL historical with the utmost accuracy, recalc was designed not to have said variability. I just like having this variance creep into the game, which is why I personally prefer having recalc with dev on.

Thing is, my Bucs save operates under those settings and my career stats still strike me as being acceptably accurate. Even with the league integrating in 1909, which has had some dampening effect on HR totals despite my making some adjustments (Gehrig is the all-time leader with 571 with the save currently in the early 1950s; 2 ahead of Ruth), I have Cobb as the hit leader with 4125 - ridiculously accurate v the historical.

As far as RAH is concerned, in v22 I'm finding with it off that the historical players behave well within reason. However, some of the "fictional" NeL players did threaten to play forever - which is no fault of the RAH function of course, their ratings remained good for longer, so they kept playing. I did encounter some issues with it in v23 and know others have as well. Not sure if that's been addressed as yet.

[thehef]

Regarding playing with recalc on and whether you should play with development on or off...

Personally, I'm a recalc on guy, with development either off or set at 1 (the very lowest while still having it on). I can't see the logic in using recalc and also having development set high. But then I also don't see the harm in having the option to do so...

What I can totally get would be playing with recalc on and having devel set to something that's not too high, like maybe 100 or less. Why? Well maybe you want to have each year have the potential to be similar to real life, but you do want and expect a certain amount of variance. Those settings would accomplish that... (So would having development off and using, 5-year recalc instead of 1-year recalc, although in a somewhat less-predictable way.)

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by thehef

Regarding playing with recalc on and whether you should play with development on or off...

Personally, I'm a recalc on guy, with development either off or set at 1 (the very lowest while still having it on). I can't see the logic in using recalc and also having development set high. But then I also don't see the harm in having the option to do so...

What I can totally get would be playing with recalc on and having devel set to something that's not too high, like maybe 100 or less. Why? Well maybe you want to have each year have the potential to be similar to real life, but you do want and expect a certain amount of variance. Those settings would accomplish that... (So would having development off and using, 5-year recalc instead of 1-year recalc, although in a somewhat less-predictable way.)

Yeah, my default is 3-year, dev ON, TCR 25. Which kind of sits nicely in the middle of the reality-randomness continuum.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Yeah, my default is 3-year, dev ON, TCR 25. Which kind of sits nicely in the middle of the reality-randomness continuum.

Nice. That seems like a good way to get the flavor of any particular mini-era or three-to-five year span, but to also get some serious variation from real life.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by thehef

Nice. That seems like a good way to get the flavor of any particular mini-era or three-to-five year span, but to also get some serious variation from real life.

One of the many beauties of this great game is that you can micromanage it to your fancy. As Garlon suggests, you can keep dev out of it and run 1-year recalc for that really tight historical verisimilitude. For full randomness, you can go dev only with TCR at 200. Or you can move the sliders and toggle the switches a myriad ways between the two. Not to mention play with PCMs and LTMs and a bunch other settings like development and ageing speed.

I punch up the TCR and use 5-year with dev ON for my RD save and am using dev only / TCR 80 and hand-curating some of the players in my quasi-NeL replication.

The possibilities are, quite literally, endless.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by luckymann

One of the many beauties of this great game is that you can micromanage it to your fancy...The possibilities are, quite literally, endless.

Agree!

Originally Posted by luckymann

For full randomness, you can go dev only with TCR at 200... Not to mention play with PCMs and LTMs and a bunch other settings like development and ageing speed.

I refer to this method as playing fictional, only using real team and player names

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by thehef

I refer to this method as playing fictional, only using real team and player names

Let's face it, every save is fictional if you're being 100% literal. But I get your drift.

[highandoutside]

This conversation is really interesting.

If you'll indulge me one more time, I just want to quickly clarify something that Rain King wrote in his first response: \

Originally Posted by Rain King

If your create a historical season starting in 1968 the ratings are going to be based on the players' 1968 stats (or 3-year, 5-year stats if you have those options chosen).

Recalc doesn't ever get involved until the change from one season to the next.

Ok, so when I create my world and the CPU generates my first set of players for my first season (say, 1968), no matter what options I have selected (recalc, dev. and TCR), those players initial ratings will reflect their 1968 statistics, right?

Every player has a 1968 rating that he starts with every time I create a 1968 season, no matter what. And that rating is based purely on his 1968 performance.

Now, if I have development on, the moment I advance to the next day, some ratings might start changing (manager effects, personality and randomness, etc). If I have development off, nothing changes and they remain as created..

With both Development and Recalc on, no matter what kind of development happened during the course of the season, when the season is over, each player receives a brand new set of ratings purely on Recalc, correct?

Or does Recalc nudge his ratings one way or the other, but the effect of the previous season's development is still present in the ratings?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by highandoutside

This conversation is really interesting.

If you'll indulge me one more time, I just want to quickly clarify something that Rain King wrote in his first response: \



Ok, so when I create my world and the CPU generates my first set of players for my first season (say, 1968), no matter what options I have selected (recalc, dev. and TCR), those players initial ratings will reflect their 1968 statistics, right?

Every player has a 1968 rating that he starts with every time I create a 1968 season, no matter what. And that rating is based purely on his 1968 performance.

Now, if I have development on, the moment I advance to the next day, some ratings might start changing (manager effects, personality and randomness, etc). If I have development off, nothing changes and they remain as created..

With both Development and Recalc on, no matter what kind of development happened during the course of the season, when the season is over, each player receives a brand new set of ratings purely on Recalc, correct?

Or does Recalc nudge his ratings one way or the other, but the effect of the previous season's development is still present in the ratings?

In a nutshell, 1 year recalc with dev OFF and TCR at 0 or 1 will give you the purest version of those 1968 ratings. But, in effect, there will always be just the slightest bit of variance to the ratings - both initially and moving forward. There are just too many variables at play for it to be any other way. If you then go and sim 100 seasons and check the results, the various McLain avatars will all resemble the OG fairly closely, but you'll be incredibly lucky if one lands right on 31-6 / 1.96 with 336 IP etc. Even if you run a single-season save with historical lineups and txns, it will be more fluke than anything if this ever happens.

EDIT one way I like to look at this is that recalc is the autopilot and dev the beacon waypoints along the route, if that makes sense.

One thing few people realise is just how big a part in all this the settings you chose at the outset of the save play in it from that point on. Even if you change some settings along the way, those initial settings remain the overarching ones for the save. This is mostly the case because these are the settings applied to all new draftees imported automatically by the game each year - and that can never be changed. So if you've applied 120/100 and 25/18 as your make bad settings, you're stuck with them for all automatically imported players thereafter.

For mine, the best way to learn about all this is to just allocate a few hours to a test environment and try out all the different things on offer. Seeing them in action is always a much more effective learning tool than hearing about them second-hand.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by luckymann

In a nutshell, 1 year recalc with dev OFF and TCR at 0 or 1 will give you the purest version of those 1968 ratings. But, in effect, there will always be just the slightest bit of variance to the ratings - both initially and moving forward. There are just too many variables at play for it to be any other way. If you then go and sim 100 seasons and check the results, the various McLain avatars will all resemble the OG fairly closely, but you'll be incredibly lucky if one lands right on 31-6 / 1.96 with 336 IP etc. Even if you run a single-season save with historical lineups and txns, it will be more fluke than anything if this ever happens.

EDIT one way I like to look at this is that recalc is the autopilot and dev the beacon waypoints along the route, if that makes sense.

One thing few people realise is just how big a part in all this the settings you chose at the outset of the save play in it from that point on. Even if you change some settings along the way, those initial settings remain the overarching ones for the save. This is mostly the case because these are the settings applied to all new draftees imported automatically by the game each year - and that can never be changed. So if you've applied 120/100 and 25/18 as your make bad settings, you're stuck with them for all automatically imported players thereafter.

For mine, the best way to learn about all this is to just allocate a few hours to a test environment and try out all the different things on offer. Seeing them in action is always a much more effective learning tool than hearing about them second-hand.

Not trying to be Johnny Smartypants here, but if you turn development off TCR gets turned off as well.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Not trying to be Johnny Smartypants here, but if you turn development off TCR gets turned off as well.

Yep. And while I understand that, it's a good point of clarification, as I often refer to (and did in this thread) TCR (talent change randomness) interchangeably with level of development, when that's not quite accurate.

With player development ON (Disable Player Development unchecked), then the gamer can tweak the following fields:

- Batter Aging Speed
- Batter Dev. Speed
- Pitcher Aging Speed
- Pitcher Dev. Speed
- Talent Change Randomness

With player development OFF, none of those fields are available.

And - just as another point of clarification - when I (and others in this thread and elsewhere) have referred to, for example, "Development set to 100," what we really mean is:

- Player development ON (Disable Player Development unchecked), and...
- Talent Change Randomness set to 100

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Not trying to be Johnny Smartypants here, but if you turn development off TCR gets turned off as well.

Yep, sorry - this is of course correct.