Predetermined Outcomes

[Durfio]

When I searched for any reference to predetermined outcomes on OOTP, I found a thread for OOTP 17 which talked about it.

I responded to the thread with the following:

Originally Posted by Durfio

I know this is regarding an older version of the game, and I have doubts that after all this time anyone will even see this post, but I just have to say, I have been curious about this for some time now. I'm playing a fictional historical game on OOTP 23. I like to play out my games and sometimes it feels like the AI has simply decided enough is enough and the AI time is going to pile on some runs. Recently I loaded up a game where the situation was 2 on and 2 out in the 3rd inning with my ace on the mound. Decent hitter up, first pitch, hit into next week. And it just felt like a bunch of bull crap. I can't explain way, but I decided to test the predetermined outcome theory. I killed the game without saving, and reloaded the game. Homerun. Could just be a hot batter who was likely to hit one, reloaded, homerun, reloaded homerun. Each time there were different pitches, different locations and different counts but I tried this 28 times before giving up. There were 25 balls hit out of the park and 3 inside the park home runs. Now technically the algorithm could randomly select home run as the outcome for the at-bat 28 times in a row, but it doesn't seem likely. Seems like the code has decided my ace needs to be taken down a notch and 11 games over .500 is enough for the middle of May. To be fair..... my team has had plenty of success, and some of that success felt a little outlandish too and now it feels all too likely that the AI threw me a few bones in that success too, but the illusion of "realistic results" is now shattered for me. I don't know if it's just the next at bat that is pre determined or a string of them or what. But I have to come to believe that no matter how many times I load that save in that situation I will always see the AI hit a home run if I "Pitch to Batter". I know I could intentionally walk the guy, pull my pitcher, visit the mound, try other things but I wanted to know if this predetermined outcome thing was real and it sure feels that way to me after this experiment. Sadly, it kinda shatters the illusion of not seeing predetermined outcomes. I'm not saying the game has decided who is going to win or how many games or any nonsense like that. I'm just sharing what I found by experiment and it seems this next at-bat has already been determined. I'm going to test it more times before I continue this game but I'll probably give up soon since it's getting boring and the only variance in result is where the home run lands.

Since I don't want to spend the rest of my life watching the same at bat over and over again, I did decide to finish the game. But before I did, I continued my experiment a few more times. After 51 consecutive home runs, I decided to see what would happen if I "pitched around" the batter and on the 52 time, finally I got a different result! In the next half inning, my batters starting getting silly hits which felt dirty so I scrubbed the game, went back to the home run at bat, confirmed that if I "pitch to batter" he still hit a home run, so I scrubbed the game again, and "pitched around" to get the out. The next half inning I played extremely conservative so I wouldn't get the same rally again. I ended up finishing the game and taking a loss (which after all the shenanigans felt like the correct result) but I am sadly, absolutely convinced there is some form of predetermined outcome in this game.

You cannot tell me that even a video game batter is capable of 51 homeruns on 51 consecutive at bats. I'm not saying the games are fixed against human players or even that game outcomes are predetermined but on some level individual outcomes like this particular at bat are absolutely predetermined! And it leaves me to wonder how much is already decided when you press the button to pitch, swing, steal, etc....

A few games later, I found myself in a similar situation, this time on offense. My leadoff batter gets on base in extra innings. I saved the game and attempted to steal with a decent (not great) base stealer against a catcher with a 65 arm. I was successful, but it just felt off. So I decided to test my theory again. I scrubbed the play and reloaded the game, attempted to steal 2nd.... I succeeded 11 times in a row before I got bored of the experiment and continued the game. Sadly the runner never scored and I eventually gave up a home run that should land any day now. I would really love to know more about how all this works. If anyone has any input on this I'd be grateful for any insights.

[Vezna31]

At any time during the 51 consecutive HRs did you try changing the pitcher and get the same result? There have been a number of times when stuff goes sideways and I can see the grand slam coming and then it does and it is like....W...T...F??

[kq76]

I find it hard to believe anyone would test this 51 times. Besides, the way you're testing this by "killing the game" is just asking for your file to get corrupted. There's clearly a safer, albeit more time-intensive, way to test it. I mean, how many times would it take most of us to be like, "okay, this is BS", 10? Maaaaaybe 20. No one is going past 30. 51 is, well, you pick the word.

That said, there was a game a while ago I was playing where my game crashed at the end because all the space on my HDD was full (I wasn't paying attention). Thankfully, I had backed it up just before that game and so I just replayed that game. Funny thing was though, the same guy batting 3rd for the opposition hit a HR in the 1st of both games. Now, he was probably the best HR hitter in the league and in the first game it was a 3-run HR while in the replay it was a solo shot, but I still thought, "huh, that's interesting".

Even if it's true, I wouldn't be too bothered if the way it goes about it is, as soon as the player comes up to bat, if the user doesn't interact in any way with the game, then it instantly figures out what the play will be. And if the circumstances aren't different then should the result? I get it, I'd prefer some random die roll aspect to it too, but I also believe in circumstances lead to results.

It could also just be the game having something in its code like, "oh, you think you're going to cheat by just shutting down the game, eh? well, we'll see about it." It wouldn't be the first time a video game did something like that.

Regardless, it shouldn't be too difficult for any of us to test this ourselves.

[kq76]

Okay, so I felt a little bad for calling you out on this so I decided to test it myself. I even recorded it just in case I did see the same results.

First I tried playing an exhibition game (Yankees vs Orioles b/c the two are leading the league in HRs). It took awhile but finally Santander hit a HR. I then turned off the game by going to task manager, selecting the game and selected end task. Now when I reloaded the game it loaded fine, but I couldn't resume the exhibition game.

So I decided I'd try a regular season game (it's a test league so I don't care). I took control of the Angels as they played the Orioles to start the season. Again, it took awhile to get a HR, but Henderson finally hit. And this time instead of trying to be safe by shutting it down via task manager, I just exited out of the game via the top right x in windowed mode. And this time, instead of it loading fine, it, as expected, threw up some warnings about an incident and that the file might be corrupted. Again, I didn't care as it's a test league, and I tried to resume the game, but again I couldn't. It started be back off at the first day and I sim to OD again.

So I thought, well, maybe it has something to do with opening day that I couldn't resume it, so I simmed OD and tried again in game 2. This time Rutschman hit a HR. I thought, "how else can I shut down the game trying for it not to save the HR?" and I figured I'd just shut it down from pinned shortcut on the taskbar. I loaded it back up and it loaded fine and I was able to resume the game, but it was onto the next batter, Henderson, the HR was already in the books.

Anyway, unless you can tell us exactly how you were able to resume the game at that exact point and we can reproduce and confirm that this happens, I'm going to remain skeptical. I'll admit, maybe something has changed since OOTP23 with regard to this.

[Vezna31]

Originally Posted by kq76

Okay, so I felt a little bad for calling you out on this so I decided to test it myself. I even recorded it just in case I did see the same results.

First I tried playing an exhibition game (Yankees vs Orioles b/c the two are leading the league in HRs). It took awhile but finally Santander hit a HR. I then turned off the game by going to task manager, selecting the game and selected end task. Now when I reloaded the game it loaded fine, but I couldn't resume the exhibition game.

So I decided I'd try a regular season game (it's a test league so I don't care). I took control of the Angels as they played the Orioles to start the season. Again, it took awhile to get a HR, but Henderson finally hit. And this time instead of trying to be safe by shutting it down via task manager, I just exited out of the game via the top right x in windowed mode. And this time, instead of it loading fine, it, as expected, threw up some warnings about an incident and that the file might be corrupted. Again, I didn't care as it's a test league, and I tried to resume the game, but again I couldn't. It started be back off at the first day and I sim to OD again.

So I thought, well, maybe it has something to do with opening day that I couldn't resume it, so I simmed OD and tried again in game 2. This time Rutschman hit a HR. I thought, "how else can I shut down the game trying for it not to save the HR?" and I figured I'd just shut it down from pinned shortcut on the taskbar. I loaded it back up and it loaded fine and I was able to resume the game, but it was onto the next batter, Henderson, the HR was already in the books.

Anyway, unless you can tell us exactly how you were able to resume the game at that exact point and we can reproduce and confirm that this happens, I'm going to remain skeptical. I'll admit, maybe something has changed since OOTP23 with regard to this.

From what I read of his post, I believe he first saved and quit a game. Then when he resumed, the next batter hit a HR against him. So, he End Tasked the game and restarted it and did that 51 times straight because the resumed game batter kept hitting a HR until it finally didn't on the 52nd try. Thus the reason he thinks there is a predetermined outcome. I understand where you are in that in any game situation, you don't know when a guy is about to hit one in order to save, quit and resume.