Spring has sprung, and that means a new version of Out of the Park Baseball is hitting the storefronts. This year it’s version 22, launching on March 26. New features in this version include:
3D stadiums for all MLB teams
an improved 3D baseball park construction kit
additional coaches and more coaching options and depth
more situational sliders and more fine-grained control over your team in different situations
more Perfect Team: a new draft tournament mode, more missions, more player variety
It seems like this version offers… what’s that word I’m thinking of… oh yeah, MORE!
List price is $40. You can preorder the game for 10% off on their website here or buy it during launch week on Steam (no Steam preorders though).
If you preorder/purchase during launch week and create a Perfect Team in that first week your team will receive an additional Gold Pack in its initial set of packs. Returning players get a bonus too. If you played PT21, you will receive yet another Gold Pack. PT20 players will get a free Diamond Pack. PT19 players will get a second Diamond pack.
Release trailer:
Promo video hosted by Scott Braun of MLB network:
Description of PT 22 new features run by Kris Jardine, OOTP’s community manager / social butterfly:
If you are interested in playing PT but want to do it without spending infinite dollars purchasing packs, there are a number of informal leagues that prohibit teams from spending money on packs. You receive your additional players and can only evolve your team through the free packs and points you earn from playing the game. This is accomplished by friend-listing other teams in the league so that teams gets placed they end up with other teams in the league. You often end up in a league with many (most/all) teams from the “league.” It’s the closest thing to a custom league that Perfect Team offers. It’s fun, the people are usually nice but the competition is tough because many people playing this mode are baseball junkies You can join these leagues through the OOTP forums. Here’s a link for one of them: BFF-22 Recruitment Thread - OOTP Developments Forums
Whether you play the “classic” version and try to guide a team to the World Series or play online and pit your skills against other live humans doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it’s almost baseball season once again. Play Ball!
I think I read that the 10% discount will also be available on Steam for the first week of sale. They won’t do preorders on Steam as it messes with their launch sales/visibility in some way.
Thanks for the vids, will have a look to see what’s changed.
I preordered last week, even though I’ve only managed to complete a season and a half in last year’s game (still playing), which is my lowest playtime ever.
Does this mean that OOTP is effectively only playable for a year? I was thinking about buying this for a buddy who loves baseball games, but I’d be reluctant to shell out for software that just stops working after a year. I get that the software wouldn’t get roster updates, etc., but does it actually just become unplayable?
Only Perfect Team gets shutdown after a year. The core (offline) game is unaffected. If your friend is mostly interested in fictional or historical leagues, they would be fine (the current season start would become outdated after a year, but that goes without saying).
What happens when a new version comes out depends on which part of the game you’re talking about. There are two components to the game: the base game itself and perfect team which is an online competition feature.
The base game never expires or stops being playable. When OOTP 22 comes out it will be more difficult (but not impossible) to get updated rosters for the prior versions of the game. Plus of course you will not get any of the new features they add in an updated version. But if you have a game you’ve set up and are playing using the traditional game mode, you can keep playing forever with that version and you don’t need to update the version of the game.
Perfect team on the other hand has to have online support to keep working. I believe they keep the PT servers running for A little over two years for each version. So what was said above is that the PT 20 servers will be turned off in a few months. That is the version of perfect team that was playable starting in March 2019. PT 21 from last year (in OOTP 21) is still going and will go for I guess another year plus a few months. If you buy 00TP 22 and play PT 22 you will be able to play for two years until they shut down the servers.
I hope this clarified and did not muddy the waters!
I watched the trailer and about half the PT reveal video. I’m pretty excited about the changes to PT! I think I’ll spend more time with it this year. I mostly skipped it in OOTP21, and stuff like “missions” is new to me. Plus I’ve never entered a tournament; that sounds interesting too. I have a couple questions that the videos have not (so far) answered.
First, what is this new “perfect draft” mode for PT?
Second, is OOTP 22 going to be on PC Game Pass? I don’t see it on the “coming soon” list. I don’t mine buying it, but if I do, I may drop GamePass, as OOTP was the only remaining game I was hoping it would carry.
To answer my first question: the PT reveal video touches on the “Perfect Draft” mode near the end of the video. We’ll be able to draft teams from the entire card pool and enter tournaments against others. More details coming next week.
I’m thinking OOTP22 is not in GamePass. Will ask over in the GamePass thread.
And to answer my second question: the OOTP devs have “no current plans” to put OOTP 22 on Game Pass, according to yesterday’s Twitch Q&A. I interpret that to mean they might add it in summer or fall, but I don’t want to wait that long. I’m jonesing for baseball now! I’m really looking forward to trying this iteration of PT, as well as this new Perfect Draft mode. And the new 3D parks do look nice.
Only really interesting to you if you participate in Perfect Team. Bottom line is, Tuesday thru Thursday is a beta period where you can do stuff. Friday at 2-3 AM everything resets. You can create your Perfect Team but the simulations will not start until 2PM-ish on Friday to give Steam users a chance to get the game and get started.
I would interpret that as meaning ‘we are not going to, but there’s always a chance we could change our minds, especially if Microsoft throws us a shit-ton of money.’
Just spotted a forum post with a list of changes (franchise mode):
OOTP 22 Changes
All new updated 3D Ballparks for all 30 MLB teams
Ballpark Construction Kit
Ability to change fence and foul pole configurations, with elements shifting around them
New stadium elements available to use
Added new coaches: 1B coach and 3B coach
New attribute to coaching staff: cohesion. Some coaches will work better together than others,
and will need to hire coaches that work well together to get most of your staff
Added ability to hire coaches away from other teams for a promotion (ie. can hire a bench
coach to be your new manager)
Expanded coaching teach_defense rating to teach C/IF/OF. Those plus teach_running now
handled between Bench Coach and 1B/3B Coach. 1B/3B coaches also have an in-game running rating that can impact plays
All new updated historical ratings for fielding, for every player in history
New in-game Camera Mode: Dynamic Action Cameras, where the action camera will change
angles during the play
*Ability to set select which cameras can be used as action cameras for the dynamic camera mode
Added option for higher seed to start the first round of the playoffs ahead by one or more games
Added ability for regions to include cities. Improved editing of regions in-game (on the World Page)
Added regional draft option
*Teams can be assigned to draft from specific regions, and there can be one or more rounds at the start of the draft where teams must select from those regions
Adjusted independent FA to only appear in off-season
Players in international complex will not gain pro service time from as young an age (starts age
In older historical setups where SP allowed in relief, AI more likely to assign secondary roles
Rebalanced league player salaries
Added new trade frequency settings for “Almost Never” and “Constantly”
Added new settings available for leagues with Foreigner restrictions
Individual Salary cap and contract length limits may be set
Option to restrict trading of foreigners
Updated AI for handling foreigners in leagues with limits
Adjusted experience gain, fatigue calculations
Updated Gate Share calculations, new league setting to decide where season tickets count
towards gate share. More visibility in team accounting page.
Added standings history graph as widget option (also displays standings through relegations in
Pro/Rel league setups)
Updated trading AI, new finer grain difficulty and preference scales. Leagues with trading frequency set to “Almost Never” will also almost never trade star players, limited mostly to smaller roster moves if they do any trades
MLB 2021 draftees will have the “Redshirt” option so that draft year and HS/CO status should match better
Fixed some stability issues resuming games in progress
Updated Scouting Task List, scouting frequency
Adjusted and Balanced in-game influence of range, player defense impact
Adjusted and Balanced platoon split issues.
Adjusted SB rates
Adjusted position training logic
Adjusted in-game AI logic for PH, LOOGY
New player strategy settings for better individual pinch-hit controls
Split team strategy settings by leading/trailing
Improved AI in finding depth chart subs as backups from other positions
If allowing SP in relief, use them if relief roles set higher in priority chain
Windows 64 bit
full support for the new Apple M1 CPU
In-game 3D:
Added ability to have cameras dynamically change during the play
Adjusted general timing of throws and relays
New player stats: Shutdowns and Meltdowns
Many new player streaks tracked
Many New achievements (more streaks, new Diamond-level achievements, achievements for
milestones)
I kinda want to get this as it sounds like a decent update, but it’s tough knowing the price will go down to $5 or $10 after the current baseball season. Since I don’t follow baseball anymore having the current rosters don’t matter too much to me. I wish there was a mod that had a 1978 setup that was hand crafted like the current rosters are each year, with accurate contract and other info.
If you create a historical league and start in 1978 wouldn’t that have all the accurate information you’re looking for? I think it would unless I’m missing something here.
I think @Charlatan is right, the game can set you up with all the 1978 rosters exactly as they were historically. That would be a great year to revise the disastrous end of the Red Sox season, by making sure you pitch around Bucky Dent!
Even with historical rosters, though, you still have to make decisions about how the season will unfold. Do you use historical injuries and trades and retirement ages, or let things vary? Also, you have to decide whether to import prior league history, which gives you historical records and leaderboards, but takes longer to populate, especially on older PCs. You also have to decide whether to use the historical minor leagues. You can also tinker with how player ratings should be determined. In some eras, left-right split data isn’t available, but I imagine it is available for 1978.
An alternative approach is to have a league draft. I went through that variant in an 1871 league I played in. I’d rather do what you suggest and use historical rosters, personally. It would be sort of jarring to have the Yankees draft Yaz, for example. But I thought I’d mention the draft option in case you’re feeling crazy. :)
It will do the rosters and minor league, but not things like “Ron Guidry makes $xxx and has y years left on his contract”.
I’ve done it both ways. When using historical injuries and such I just focus on managing the games. It’s more of a nostalgia kick for me when I play that way.
I pretty much always import league history as I like to have the record books set up.
I’ve done that a couple times, but usually I like to start with a known starting point, like 1978. Sometimes I’ve done recalc with the ratings to keep things in line with history and sometimes I’ve let the OOTP player development engine take over after the import year to have more of an unknown.
I usually don’t make it too far in my leagues as I tend to manage games. I keep planning on starting in 1978 (or earlier), no recalc and let players develop, import rookies onto historical teams, allow trades, and don’t manage games so I can get through the 1990s when I stopped following baseball.
This is one of the biggest developments, right? Since 32-bit was limited to 4 gigs of RAM (I think), it should run its sims much faster with access to the significantly more RAM a 64-bit program allows.
I just simmed two weeks and they took about 5 & 7 seconds respectively. It’s been a while since I simmed outside the offseason but that seems really good.
