@vyshka Thanks for the link. Those participation rewards are really neat. I love that you can buy more seats for your stadium, at a cost of higher maintenance; or build a new stadium and choose a “corporate sell-out” name for it, lol. And, as you point out, you can educate and train your players, always with some trade-off. Smart stuff.
@tylertoo , any idea how many hours a week you spend on your league?
@Telefrog I’ve been playing OOTP for a decade, and I’ve read and re-read the manuals, but there are still things I’m afraid to try, lol. Maybe these tutorials will help me learn the game better. Baseball is complicated!
Okay, now I’m pretty interested to see what Markus has to say at his event on Thursday. Not sure I’ll watch live, but I’m looking forward to a summary. I still don’t see any one big eye-catching new feature, but maybe that’s okay. Unlike some other sports games, OOTP almost always improves with a new edition, even if the improvements are incremental. One tiny example: now we’ll be able to set “bench when fatigued” to a default value for the whole team, instead of having to input a number on every player on the roster. Also, new PT auction house.
Yes, correct, I paid PP to learn his numerical intelligence, because all we see are the descriptors. The guy I inquired about showed this:
He is a former first round pick who I hoped could develop into a starting pitcher. But he was very slow in developing, and I was considering boosting his intelligence by using PP by sending him to night school. This is from the doc that @vyshka linked to above:
College Scholarship (increases a players Intelligence by 10 points on in game 200 point scale, max 70 point increase): 10 PPTS
In other words, a precursor to signing him up for class was checking to see if he was just slow or a complete moron by doing the inquiry. If I saw promise, I could spend up to another 70 PP to boost his intelligence, which theoretically could help speed or ensure his development into a solid starting pitcher. But unfortunately his int was so low – 16 on a 200 point scale – I decided it was not worthwhile. (Even so, he is solid as a starter in AA and will probably be promoted soon to AAA)
Keep in mind – this jiggling with participation points is a) done outside the game, on the forum, then the Commissioner manually makes changes, b) not necessary to enjoy this league (I rarely spend PP), and c) only has very incremental effects on the standings. It’s fun, but skippable.
The top level ratings for each player are not hidden, and are given with 100% accuracy, so it may not be what you want. However, I have seen numerous examples of players with great ratings but who, for unknown reasons, perform like shit. Just like in real life. So the numbers are most definitely not the be-all and end-all. Sometimes the guy just sucks despite good ratings.
Yes and no. I set up my rosters manually, but have the AI do lineups and rotation/bullpen for the minors just cuz I’m lazy. I probably shouldn’t trust the AI.
Yes, and it currently has openings.
We’re not currently in playoff mode, just passed the All-Star Game and heading to the trade deadline. We never sim six times a week. In the World Series, when just two teams are left, they might sim that frequently, but only if both GMs still alive are able. Once in a while we have four sims per week, but usually it is three.
The minimum required is pretty minimal, actually, and pretty easy to meet, particularly if you’re not working 50+ hours a week. I would say I spend ~ten hours a week, but that would include hanging out on Discord. You can get away with less, easily. But the more you get to know your team, the more time you’ll want to spend on it, trust me.
Gotta say, unlike some other types of MP games, the best way to get better at OOTP is actually to join an online league such as this. Owners are more than happy to help newcomers. It is fun, but not cut throat. Tons of guys are there to offer advice and answer questions. Don’t worry about losing or looking like a newb. They want to help, to ensure that teams have GMs.
Hey @vyshka, thanks for following the hapless Black Sox!
Sixto’s story is wonderful but probably won’t end well. Regardless, it is an example of why I consider OOTP to be among the best RPGs of all time. When I wrote the article about his promotion to the bigs, I had no idea how he’d fare in that start. So for Sixto to not only pitch well, but to throw seven scoreless innings, you get an even more amazing story that sprung wholesale out of the sim itself. I know ‘emergent narrative’ is overused, but that is precisely why I love this game, which otherwise would be a only a not very attractive spreadsheet.
So Perfect Team has been delayed for at least a week. Apparently there are “infrastructure” issues. PT has switched to a new server architecture, apparently. I had pretty good performance with PT last year, so I’m a bit surprised they felt a need to change the back end, but that’s what’s going on.
I’m still debating whether to buy this year’s edition. There are many small improvements, which is great, but no one big new feature that really grabs me. I might wait for the All Star break discount, or see if it shows up on Game Pass later. Or I might cave an buy it now. I know @tylertoo is upgrading to continue with his awesome online league. What are the rest of you guys doing?
Hey everyone…I’ve never played OOTP before, as I’ve mainly been a Strat-O-Matic player for season replays (now for almost 40 years). But I’m looking to do something different, and I was wondering if OOTP could do what I have in mind.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
Two 8 Team Leagues. An “Upper” Division and a “Lower” Division. Teams do NOT play across Divisions in the season or post season, but, like some European Soccer Leagues, their is “Promotion” and “Relegation” each season. Was thinking the bottom 2 teams from the “Upper” Division would be relegated to the lower, and the 2 top teams from the “Lower” would be promoted to the “Upper” division each season. Team histories would stay with the team, regardless of division played for a season.
Custom my own rules, from season length to playoffs to DH, etc.
At least 1 level of Minor Leagues for each of the 16 teams.
Players age and retire, as well as career-ending injuries
Custom stadiums that affect play (think the Green Monster at Fenway or the “Bouncy” astro-turf at the old Metrodome)
Would be nice, but not necessary, if the game would elect Hall of Famers
I’m not a big OOTP player, but I usually enjoy playing a historical season or two. Also I like Markus, so I’ll probably get it during the 10% discount week. In reality I’d probably be perfectly OK waiting until the All Star break.
Pretty sure OOTP does all of that, but you might want to wait for some input from someone more knowledgeable since I pretty much only do MLB historical leagues. There are a ton of options in OOTP for setting up your league.
Yep, OOTP does all those things and then some. It even automatically handles pro/rel and HOF election.
The one issue would be the minor leagues in a pro/rel setup as I’m pretty sure the minor league team does not follow a promoted/relegated team (or at least it didn’t last time I played a pro/rel which was about 2 or 3 versions ago). Which is to say, if Boston has a minor affiliate in Hartford and plays in Tier 1 and Boston gets relegated while Atlanta playing in Tier 2 has a minor affiliate in Birmingham gets promoted, Hartford will stay in the minor league for Tier 1 without a major affiliate while Birmingham will stay in minor Tier 2. This can be an issue because, if memory serves, the players will remain on the minor league team so in that scenario Boston loses all of its minor leaguers.
Edit:
I can think of two workarounds for it:
Playing in commissioner mode—which you would most certainly want to do in a fictional universe—and manually moving all of a team’s minor league players to the right team. You also might need to move the minor league team to a new league as well if the idea is to keep all of League B’s minors in a league with the other teams of League B. With only one level of minors, that shouldn’t be too much work.
Alternatively, use the tournament feature to setup a de facto minor league (functionally analogous to the Arizona Fall League but with the ability to set each team to draw players from only a single team). This is the easiest and cleanest way, but it works best during the offseason as I’m pretty sure the players selected to an active tournament team cannot be moved up to the parent team until after the tournament ends (or else cannot be moved back to the tournament team).
I’ve done a pro/rel league before and ended up opting for the second option, but if you’re wanting to move players back and forth between majors and minors you’d probably have to do the first option, which might necessitate a bit of trial and error to get the timing right.
Heck yes it does! I know it has promotion / relegation but I’ve never used that feature. I’ve played every baseball sim there is including apba/stratomatic and OOTP in my opinion blows them all away, especially with league rules and customization. And you don’t need to get the latest version if you play with fictional players (or don’t mind having a previous year’s rosters). So I’d suggest picking up an older version for cheap and give it a shot. The improvements between each version are mostly minor unless you want online play or perfect team.
And as I reflect, I’ve been playing baseball sims for 40 years myself. My first was Microleague Baseball, which looks like it came out in 84. So 38 years, I guess. Sheesh, I’m old!
Actually, and probably what you had in mind initially, a third workaround would simply to be to have two subleagues in one league (like the National and American, with the American as the league where the bottom-placing NL teams go). The issue here would be with record keeping (a Tier 2 guy could get the career HRs record, but you would at least have separate awards for each of the leagues) which would affect HOF inductions (e.g., a career Tier 2 guy could get elected despite nominally playing against inferior competition his whole career). It would make the all-star game potentially messy too, unless you like the idea of Tier 1 vs Tier 2 all stars (you can disable the all-star game if you want, though). But it would solve the minor league problem. Also, you would have to manually move the teams getting promoted/relegated, but this is super easy to do.
I should probably explain that something OOTP allows that I’m pretty sure most older baseball sims do not is for multiple separate leagues to exist in the same universe. Like having MLB, NPB, KBO, etc. all active and running in the same save file with players and coaches able to move between them. So my first workarounds were with that in mind, which maybe you don’t know having never played OOTP. It is by far the most customizable sports sim on the market and there are loads of neat things you can do with fictional leagues.
Argh. I wasn’t going to buy it (I’m in my sixth season in OOTP 21 - I bought last year’s too but didn’t play it much - and have become very attached to my prospects). But I guess it’s good to support the team.
Plus, this will be the last time I’ll be able to trade Eric Hosmer for a bag of balls before his 10/5 rights kick in next year.
Looking forward to playing in the nice parks. Downloading now.
Everyone, thanks for the replies. It DOES sound like OOTP will scratch my itch for this idea. What I had in mind was my own version of Universal Baseball Association, Inc.
I’ve even been toying with the idea that all of my players, at least to start, would be real “fictional” players, like Roy Hobbs or Bingo Long, etc.
I really like the idea of having a Minor League, and I would want the players to stay with their parent organization if that parent team moved up/down. Thanks for the work-arounds. May have to pick this up soon.
Tony, I think you’d enjoy OOTP. I played the heck out of Strat-O-Matic when I was a kid. I still remember the excitement when the game finally arrived in the mail after what seemed like six weeks of waiting. But I latched onto OOTP a decade ago, and for me there’s been no going back. Is there an electronic version of Strat-O-Matic these days? The computer makes tracking stats etc much easier, obviously.
You can absolutely make your league with “real fictional” players like Roy Hobbs. In your fictional league, you can rename players, edit their stats, etc. A few years back, I made an intergalactic league featuring Star Wars and Star Trek sub-leagues, with stars like Emperor Palpatine (lightning-fast fastball), Jim Kirk (big bat, not much of a fielder), and of course Spock, who excelled at everything. I had a couple levels of minors, the whole deal. Though, now that I think about it, I could’ve done more with ballpark dimensions – Enterprise Field and Star Destroyer Stadium could’ve been bigger than Defiant Runabout or X-Wing Park, say.
One of many things I like about OOTP is how well it handles minor leagues. You can have a whole sprawling farm system, with AAA, AA, A, down to rookie and short-season and development leagues. But I don’t know how the minors synchronize with the Promotion/Relegation options; I’ve never used those.
There is, I bought it two years or so ago. I also played Strat when I was a kid. It’s still fun, but the software feels very antiquated. They really need to do a complete overhaul to make it more friendly.
