The official OOTP 19 first impressions thread!

[swoboda]

As many of my esteemed colleagues have already stated, A Grand Salami for the OOTP Team.

Visuals in 3D , Primo! (Check Swing K nice !)
Dark Skin, very sharp look
The Stadia are great

Definitely need to mess around with camera settings if you want to see more detailed look for the players on the field, but not very difficult to do.

[wallewalls]

One thing i've gathered early on here. Trading for pitching is going to be extremely tough this year (as it should be). On hard trading difficulty, Pirates want legit pieces for Trevor Williams, a lowly rated guy, but has a ton of team control left.

Drafting and development will be even more of a focus in this years version, looking forward to the challenge

[waittilnextyear]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I think your general comments on movement are true, but that isn't the biggest reason a lot of pitchers in the set have lower movement ratings now.

What controls league wide HR totals really has nothing to do with how the the individual movement ratings, or any of the other for the players in the roster set are set.

As I know you know, movement, like all the other ratings for MLB level guys in the roster set, comes from the ZIPS projections and ZIPS is generated based on player's performances in recent years.

Since individual pitchers are allowing more HR's they import from the ZIPS projections with lower movement ratings. The ratings simply reflect the real life performances of the players. It's why Kershaw f.e. has a much lower movement rating this year, because he allowed a lot of HR's last year.

Now that's not to say that the adjustments Matt made to the ratings doesn't also affect things, but the league wide trend of pitchers giving up more HR's is a factor in the lower movement ratings this year.

At any rate the ZIPS import specifically resulted in lower movement ratings this year. It was pretty noticeable if you looked at the ratings both before and after we did the import and it was more noticeable the more HR's a pitcher gave up recently.

1. Dan Szymborski doesn't have a "movement" value in his ZiPS projections (that I can recall) so do you guys use K/9, HR/9, H/9 (or some combination) as a proxy for movement? True movement data would need to be taken from a site like Brooks Baseball, and processed in a painstaking way, for the "movement" attribute to symbolize literal pitch movement, rather than to provide a statistical parameter for the sim engine.

2. Have you guys ever considered Steamer projections? I think they are pretty comparable to ZiPS, but I've also seen that Steamer is slightly more accurate. I tend to use Steamer when re-rating players for MLB The Show. Again, difference is slight, but I'm wondering if there's a particular reason you like ZiPS (availablity, accuracy, think Dan's a nice guy etc..). The nice thing about Steamer is they don't hesitate to provide projections for EVERYONE in MLB and MiLB. Even if projecting the lower minors guys is a fool's errand, it is an actual system.

[wallewalls]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

EDIT: Accidentally deleted this while trying to edit it So it's posted out of order here...

The overall stats are controlled by the LTM's and League Totals, not the individual player ratings. The individual ratings are determined by ZIPS, and they should work out pretty well.

I don't think control is down, it should be pretty static.

Movement is down a bit and stuff may be slightly as well.

There may be an issue where some SP's need to have their stuff boosted a bit to match their ZIPS projections for K's. Teheran might be one of those guys. We're looking into that that now. But overall things should be pretty accurate.

There will be a lot of HR's though because there are in real life now (the most ever last year).

I was wondering this last year and now knowing this I will ask it,

Will this effect things as a save gets further into the years? Yes, home runs were up big time last year and in the past, but it is unlikely to stay that way some 20-40 years in the future, so will players generated randomly in the future have less stuff/movement because thats what the game thinks it will be going forward?

basically, i'm wondering more about how the game generates fictional players, is it all random? while the players in the base rosters have lower stuff/movement does that effect how players are generated going forward?

[mgom27]

I could give what's missing but won't but good Game. Play by Play is good but some live Commentary would be good. Trading my Team will attact a Top Prospect like Corey Seager to just Trade a person even with Trades at very Hard.

[Baebae32]

I am loving OOTP 19 thus far. 3D and the new modern look are both amazing. I only have one suggestion. Is it possible to darken the font on the player card that indicates that a guy led the league in a statistical category. Admittedly I have deficiencies when it comes to seeing certain colors, but I was able to see it just fine in last year's version. Please and thank you. Splendid work as always OOTP team.

[ashantewarrier]

It's awesome! Love the graphics! Best OOTP Ever!

[nichimanen]

Soooooo glad I preorderd this!!!!

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I think your general comments on movement are true, but that isn't the biggest reason a lot of pitchers in the set have lower movement ratings now.

I think it is - the map was changed from the internal rating to the displayed rating, so that you'd see more spread among pitchers. It's true in fictional leagues too - you see much lower Movement ratings than you ever did before. That will also affect the displayed ratings in the roster set, regardless of small changes to the ZIPs import.

These are good changes, but experienced users will need to get used seeing a wider range of Movement ratings, especially on the low end.

[5-4-3]

I never thought I would like OOTP in 3D. Surprisingly it turns out that I do like OOTP in 3D.

Well done, Team OOTP.

[timmermac]

Originally Posted by mcssports1

There's some bug with the ratings. I have my scouting as 100% accurate and, for instance, in the editor it says Giancarlo Stanton's contact rating vs. LHP is 164 and vs. RHP it's 129. Yet, when you look in the Ratings tab or in the game, it says his contact rating vs. LHP is 45/80 and vs. RHP its 65/80. This doesn't add up

The ratings in the editor are unfiltered and are based on either a 200 or 250 scale. What you see outside of the editor is the translation of what's in the editor as shown using the ratings scale you've selected.

[imnotsammysosa]

Downloaded the game as soon as I got the email, couldn't stop playing for six hours, and now I'm at work and rather than longing to add on to the half hour of sleep I got, I'm longing to play more OTTP. Amazing job as usual.

A couple things I noticed:

1) Very few prospects have any Facegens. Even some vets like Lincecum don't. I tried searching for their files, but it was unresponsive. I know in the past everyone had one, but this is my first time getting the game at launch. Perhaps I got all the minor league Facegens in the all-in-one add-on pack?

2) While the player profile looks super clean, I have to admit that I miss the awards icons at the top. Is there any way to toggle them on? I know I can see it in their history, but I love the icons.

3) I have a brand new laptop, but my hard drive is just a 128 SSD. I saw the minimum requirement was a 256 HDD, and I'm barely computer literate. Will I be able to run 3D with no issues? I'm very wary to even try, as my last laptop was destroyed by trying to move into a bigger house on Sims4, so I'm understandably gun shy about possibly pushing graphics limits.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by imnotsammysosa

Downloaded the game as soon as I got the email, couldn't stop playing for six hours, and now I'm at work and rather than longing to add on to the half hour of sleep I got, I'm longing to play more OTTP. Amazing job as usual.

A couple things I noticed:

1) Very few prospects have any Facegens. Even some vets like Lincecum don't. I tried searching for their files, but it was unresponsive. I know in the past everyone had one, but this is my first time getting the game at launch. Perhaps I got all the minor league Facegens in the all-in-one add-on pack?

2) While the player profile looks super clean, I have to admit that I miss the awards icons at the top. Is there any way to toggle them on? I know I can see it in their history, but I love the icons.

3) I have a brand new laptop, but my hard drive is just a 128 SSD. I saw the minimum requirement was a 256 HDD, and I'm barely computer literate. Will I be able to run 3D with no issues? I'm very wary to even try, as my last laptop was destroyed by trying to move into a bigger house on Sims4, so I'm understandably gun shy about possibly pushing graphics limits.

1) The game ships only with facegens of players on the 40-man rosters because of the MLBPA license. We never shipped prospect facegens unless they were on the 40-man.
2) The awards show up fine here next to the player picture.
3) No worries, it will work fine, it needs 256 MB RAM GPU, this has nothing to do with your SSD HD.

[gamefan1978]

Love the look of the 3d stadiums and seeing the players run around the bases and do what they are suppose to do great to watch. I will never go back to the old view again. Great work Markus and team!

[Peregrine]

Really sharp new modern look - I love the in-game look, it's converted me to playing in 3D for the first time! I love the little stuff, like during a game on the active batter info it will show stuff like how he was acquired, or how he's hitting on the road. Nice touch.

[Ormondbeachdan]

Doing cartwheels!. Had a LOOOOONG day yesterday and could not get to dl game til last night.. Looked around a bit and wanted to stay up and play play play.. the mind was willing but the flesh was week... So I woke up at 3am and started playing reading forums..etc.. Figured I would try out my fav match up 1986 World Series!.. WOW!!!.
And Lenny Dykstra does a headlong slide into home!.. Totally Dykstra totally realistic!
Question.. I noticed players on both teams are in their last team uni's, until you click on them and go back to game action? Is this a normal thing or will that be addressed?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by injury log

I think it is - the map was changed from the internal rating to the displayed rating, so that you'd see more spread among pitchers. It's true in fictional leagues too - you see much lower Movement ratings than you ever did before. That will also affect the displayed ratings in the roster set, regardless of small changes to the ZIPs import.

These are good changes, but experienced users will need to get used seeing a wider range of Movement ratings, especially on the low end.

Ok, makes sense and you're surely right. Let's put it that that's the biggest reason movement dropped but the increase in HR's allowed for a lot of pitchers reflected by ZIPS also caused the movement rating to fall a bit for a lot of guys in the roster set. So between both things, it's definitely noticeable that movement ratings are quite a bit lower this year. Not a problem, in fact it's a good thing but just something for everyone to get used to.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by wallewalls

I was wondering this last year and now knowing this I will ask it,

Will this effect things as a save gets further into the years? Yes, home runs were up big time last year and in the past, but it is unlikely to stay that way some 20-40 years in the future, so will players generated randomly in the future have less stuff/movement because thats what the game thinks it will be going forward?

basically, i'm wondering more about how the game generates fictional players, is it all random? while the players in the base rosters have lower stuff/movement does that effect how players are generated going forward?

The ratings of the players in the set currently don't determine the ratings of the players the game generates going forward. That's determined by the PCM's. And the amount of HR's K's etc in a league is actually determined by the League Total's and league total modifiers. The individual player ratings determine the distribution of the league wide stats.

So lower ratings in the current roster set won't change either the league totals or the ratings of game generated players going forward. However you will likely see lower movement ratings than you're used to even for game generated players (even in fictional) because of the changes made to the map from the internal ratings to the displayed ratings that injury log mentions. As he mentions it's actually a good change, but just one that will take a little getting used to.

[Sweed]

Well, this is the latest I have ever had to wait to post my first impressions. Was caught up in v18 with my current game playing a marathon session to finish the 2032 World Series. My Cubs won 4 games to 2 over the crosstown Sox

Importing my game took a while because of transactions. Only have had time to look around a bit. Looked at highlights from my just completed WS in the new modern 3d view. Stunning stadiums, new players are awesome.

GUI is sharp and clean, I'm using the classic view with solid backgrounds.

Just moving into off season so have only scratched the surface.

Congrats to the whole team on raising the bar once again!

[BravesChop15]

The action needed messages are freaking amazing! Nice addition!!!!