I appreciate that in this video, you share your thoughts, opinions, and preferences, while also making sure to be like “but hey this is a game. You do you, bro”
These comments are awesome and I've learned a lot of new things as a beginner. Originally I just came here to ask a question but after reading all these comments I'm excited to watch the entire video!
Always interesting. Your settings have probably influenced the way I set up the last 3 years more than anyone. First and foremost, the draft must move. What I have struggled with more is preferring an influx of fictional talent. I like seeing more surprises and it has never unbalanced my league. Adding to that, I'm frustrated right now because the draft seems so bad in 25 a couple seasons in, nothing like 24. Great stuff!
The devs adjusted the 20-80 rating scale for OOTP 25. Its now supposed to more closely match the actual scale used in real life (with each 10 points being a standard deviation). 50 should be average major leaguer. But one overall result of the change is that there should be fewer players rated 55+ Overall . . . and very few 65+.
@@pfholden It was mentioned in the forums. Some people were getting confused (me included!) because we weren't seeing as many highly rated players. The overall effect is subtle but I've found you need to look more closely at stats and 45 to 55 players to find good ones. Harder to just hunt for 60+ players.
One aspect of the game which I love is Associations. Hardly anyone uses them, but it’s a way to get around the two sub-league limit. I’m a schedule geek, and I like scheduling games between teams in different leagues using Associations.
@@jessielakes8118In your OOTP game you have the option of adding a league to your game. For argument’s sake, let’s say you add the KBO and a fictional league to your MLB game. You can then go to the Game menu and select Create League Association, which will enable you to put MLB, KBO and your fictional league under one umbrella. Then you can have a single draft for all three leagues, and a playoff system where the three leagues play each other to determine one grand Association champion.
Our settings are pretty much the same. A few differences: 1) I don't allow the trading of injured >7 players; 2) I use the 1-100 ratings, but have been tinkering with the 20-80; 3) I don't allow hiring coaches from other teams; 4) I use much higher trade settings but not hard mode. I don't mind HM, but I hate that they always demand another player. It would be one thing if I had unlimited minor league rosters, but I put limits on each level; 5) I allow established international free agents at default level; 6) I also leave IAFA's on default, but I like your idea there. I may revisit that; 7) I allow a default number of scouting discoveries. Most are bums anyway; 8) I allow league evolution except for nickname changes. Those are so cheesy; 9) I use .75 aging and 1.25 development for both pitchers and hitter. My idea is to allow long careers and chase all time records; and 10) I use 1.25 TCR just to mix things up.
@@patrickdebonis6493I am very interested in your house rules. But I'm confused as to what some of the things mean. I'm new to the game. What is injured greater than sign 7 players? What is HM? What is limits on each level? What is default level 6 for international free agents? I'll stop there and maybe ask the other questions later. Don't want to overload you. But I did want to ask what you meant about hiring coaches. I play in a fantasy league, or fictional characters so maybe that is what it is but I don't see anything about having other coaches. I also haven't been able to find anything about hiring scouts or having different types of scouts or anything to do with scouts at all so from what I can tell scouts are only for historical leagues maybe? Oh couple more things. What is TCR? I love the idea of house rules. I'm new to OOTP but I usually play Zen sports and I have a list of rules for trading in Zen that the AI can't handle. The thing I have found frustrating with OOTP is lack of company/ designer support. With Zen Jeremy will personally answer my emails and usually within 4 or 5 hours or less. He designed all the Zen games and does everything himself. He does not believe in anything having to be paid for. So anything Zen is completely free. But OOTP is a steal for 10 bucks! I think it looks so cool! I can't wait to establish my house rules, work out the kinks that bother me and start into my career!
Old School Sports just released a tutorial on trade difficulty settings. He tried making trades on the default settings, the easiest with favoring prospect the most, easiest favoring veterans the most, hardest favoring prospects the most, and hardest favoring veterans the most. He would do a shop and get virtually the same offers. He would try to trade for a player, and got virtually the same demands for each setting. He tried it with superstars. He tried it with journeymen. And he tried it with prospects. The differences were negligable. It was a "disheartening &$@#?!* situation." Only fitting since he conducted the experiment on Lee Elia Day. After watching your tutorial. I'm inspired to try the same thing, but alter the AI Evaluation Settings. That might very well be what drives the bus here.
@@patrickdebonis6493 I can't figure out the "favoring" buttons. I can't even push them. Not sure if I don't have some other option on or what that makes me not able.
@@jessielakes8118 Open your league. Go to the top toolbar. Click on MLB. Click on League Settings. Click on AI settings. There you can adjust trade difficulty and favor prospect sliders.
There was a small bug where High School draft players had slightly too low current ratings so they tended to get overwhelmed in A ball. But this was patched and its working fine now (from what I can tell).
I'm an Englishman trying to get into OOTP baseball, but the language you're using is totally alien to me! I thought moving from FM to OOTP would be easy. Can you recommend a Baseball for Dummies video?
Not sure I have one I recommend, but there are definitely a lot of good ones out there. Can you give me a few examples of questions you have? I can try to recommend or create one based off that.
I can say for sure that the trade reputation system works well with trades not on hard mode. I play this game more for fun than challenge (I'm a speedrunner, so that's my challenge - in other games, obviously), so I use normal mode for trades. Otherwise I use a lot of similar settings, and a lot of the different ones are just defaults that I'm fine with, like showing ratings over 80 being fine by me. I'd also be fine if the 100pt scale was default because numbers don't scare me. The two things I do like doing differently that are of any real significance are: upping TCR, which is basically my way of injecting a bit of chaos into the mix, and blunting some of the edges I give myself compared to you since player development becomes a bit more of a crapshoot - one I can rig a bit in my favor with staff, but still a crapshoot; and keeping scout discoveries around, just for fun. Sometimes I even manage to trade for a cracked scouting discovery, though it's usually after their development has turned out mid.
Oh cool, that's good to know on the reputation when not in hard mode. I think all of those settings sound reasonable, thanks for sharing! I lol'd at "because numbers don't scare me."
@@pfholdenYeah, I wish I could offer more info on hard mode, but I only used the system on hard back when it was still broken. And between the fact that my college roommate is now a doctor of physics, and double-majored in mathematics and the fact that I was already good enough to lose countles points in my math classes by doing math in my head and not writing every single minute step down, plus almost 20 years of DnD... I can handle numbers.
@@AlecK47 what did you mean exactly by being a speed runner, so that's my challenge- in other games obviously-. .I just didn't follow what you meant but I'm very curious..lol
@@jessielakes8118 Just that I play OoTP for fun more than challenge. Speedrunning is beating games as fast as possible, and that's my favorite way to seek challenge in games.
Player Evaluation settings. I found it best to just leave the default. Increasing the Ratings weighting will make trading harder . . . IF the AI has accurate ratings (or you are not using scouts)! But if their scout sucks and the ratings are off than they will do better using the actual stats, assuming of course that actual stats are close to actual underlying ratings. In my current game I have a rookie catcher come up and play full time over three seasons and has an OPS of .825 (never finishing under .800). But checking him in the Editor and he's rated for just a .680 OPS! I have no idea how he's been so lucky for the past three years! 🤔Perhaps I need to trade him now before reality sets in!
Ha! That's a whole can of worms I opened up. Two hours in the forums and I'm only slightly less confused. 1) It does look like from tests that AI uses real ratings, although there are still people (like me) thinking otherwise. 2) The AI, even with 100 true knowledge of the ratings . . doesn't necessary evaluate them correctly . . . especially for pitchers or different eras. I've noticed the pitcher issue, when you look in the editor the expected stats show for pitchers don't seem to accurately represent how they actually perform, as opposed to batters which are very accurate. And for things like the deadball era the AI will overvalue Power not realizing that the players aren't going to be able to hit home runs. So having some weight on Stats can help the AI in situations where the ratings could be hard to interpret. 3) There is a strong indication that the AI struggles with evaluating Stats between different leagues . . . especially with players from foreign leagues. 4) Much of the evaluation adjustments people make is to alter AI behavior to match real world actions, not necessarily to try to get good/bad AI. My brain hurts now. 🤣@@pfholden
this year i started playing with long term injuries set to low. i left short term on high so that depth is still important. losing a star player for the season is such a bummer though.
Draft pick trading is always on for me. I don't ever sign international free agents anymore because it feels like they never pan out. Trading the cap money almost always results in high draft picks. Those guys pan out a lot.
the mlb draft in june makes more sense for me. too much going on in july as it is when i play ootp. i'm gonna add a short draft league in my universe this season. this should give me a better idea about the high school player potential.
I'm surprised you've had an issue with International Scouting Discoveries . . . I honestly can't remember my scout EVER making a good discovery! (and I use scouts with Outstanding or Legendary international scouting). Literally every 'discovery' is a 2 star potential guy. Perhaps sone develop and I've just never noticed. The International Amateur Free Agent pool on the other hand . . . I use the default size and I feel like it consistently produces TOO many star players. There are some players with extreme ratings coming out of it. I shudder to think what happens doubling the size of it? Or perhaps its not a problem because there isn't enough draft money to hire more players anyway? Do unhired international free agents just disappear? I don't feel the International Established free agents are such a problem in 25? They are a little lower valued than established stars so you can get some deals but the AI is paying good ones pretty solid money. My smaller league has 5 or 6 each season and half the time there aren't even any worth hiring. I kind of like that it might throw out some bargains every so often. I suspect that if you were playing with Trade setting lowering 'based on ratings' that could have an impact on what the AI will pay the international free agents that don't have any stats history? Perhaps that was making your AI under value them?
Eh, my preference is more about just what I find most fun, not necessarily issues with AI. I feel like the IFA signing is the most challenging of the 3 to develop talent from, and it's not just the luck of who your scout finds.
The scout is regularly pulling 40 or 45 potential guys this year, maybe 3 or 4 times a season, although my scouting budget is cranked. IAFA pretty much always bust even if they're 80 in the FA process so it's kind of whatever. I did notice a stud established FA and went to sign him to a cheeseball contract only to see him asking for $35M for 12 years, so I guess they've fixed that as well
I'm sure by now. You know that changing the draft day to June 1st is pointless. I'm torn between just leaving it alone completely or force starting my rookie league seasons to date in early to mid June. I hate change.
@@pfholden I know. I wish they left it alone. The whole point of moving the draft to the beginning of June was to give them a full season of rookie ball. I hate wasting service time - even if it is minor league professional service time.
@@pfholden I'm a permanent Reddit ban. IP address... What I'm saying is that I can't find any kind of options for scouts or any way to change them or hire them or anything like that. The tutorial online where they show the page where you do it, it looks different from my version even though it says it's the same year.
Thanks for what u doing for all of us bro! U the goat! (And also u the only reason I decided to play that game) I have a problem tho, ops+ of my players always 100 except for mlb stats, ops shows correctly everywhere, but ops+ only at the major league level. What do i do bro? Thanks again!
I appreciate that in this video, you share your thoughts, opinions, and preferences, while also making sure to be like “but hey this is a game. You do you, bro”
These comments are awesome and I've learned a lot of new things as a beginner. Originally I just came here to ask a question but after reading all these comments I'm excited to watch the entire video!
Love seeing all the settings people use. It's so fun to see all the different ways to play.
Hit me with some of your differences, Mr. Bandit!
Always interesting. Your settings have probably influenced the way I set up the last 3 years more than anyone. First and foremost, the draft must move. What I have struggled with more is preferring an influx of fictional talent. I like seeing more surprises and it has never unbalanced my league. Adding to that, I'm frustrated right now because the draft seems so bad in 25 a couple seasons in, nothing like 24. Great stuff!
Thanks for watching! Re: the draft...yeah something still seems off with draft and prospect development, to me.
@@guthrien what do you mean by the draft must move?
@@jessielakes8118 he moves the draft 1 month earlier into June to give draftees more time in rookie ball.
The devs adjusted the 20-80 rating scale for OOTP 25. Its now supposed to more closely match the actual scale used in real life (with each 10 points being a standard deviation). 50 should be average major leaguer.
But one overall result of the change is that there should be fewer players rated 55+ Overall . . . and very few 65+.
Woah, really? That's super cool to know, thank you. Did they say that on a livestream, or where'd you pick that up?
@@pfholden It was mentioned in the forums. Some people were getting confused (me included!) because we weren't seeing as many highly rated players.
The overall effect is subtle but I've found you need to look more closely at stats and 45 to 55 players to find good ones. Harder to just hunt for 60+ players.
@@trengilly01 What do you mean by real life ratings?
One aspect of the game which I love is Associations. Hardly anyone uses them, but it’s a way to get around the two sub-league limit. I’m a schedule geek, and I like scheduling games between teams in different leagues using Associations.
This is cool, I haven't done anything with associations before.
@@luvmuppets what is associations?
@@jessielakes8118In your OOTP game you have the option of adding a league to your game. For argument’s sake, let’s say you add the KBO and a fictional league to your MLB game. You can then go to the Game menu and select Create League Association, which will enable you to put MLB, KBO and your fictional league under one umbrella. Then you can have a single draft for all three leagues, and a playoff system where the three leagues play each other to determine one grand Association champion.
Our settings are pretty much the same. A few differences: 1) I don't allow the trading of injured >7 players; 2) I use the 1-100 ratings, but have been tinkering with the 20-80; 3) I don't allow hiring coaches from other teams; 4) I use much higher trade settings but not hard mode. I don't mind HM, but I hate that they always demand another player. It would be one thing if I had unlimited minor league rosters, but I put limits on each level; 5) I allow established international free agents at default level; 6) I also leave IAFA's on default, but I like your idea there. I may revisit that; 7) I allow a default number of scouting discoveries. Most are bums anyway; 8) I allow league evolution except for nickname changes. Those are so cheesy; 9) I use .75 aging and 1.25 development for both pitchers and hitter. My idea is to allow long careers and chase all time records; and 10) I use 1.25 TCR just to mix things up.
These are cool, thanks! Do you have a ton of old dudes playing with the .75 aging?
@@patrickdebonis6493I am very interested in your house rules. But I'm confused as to what some of the things mean. I'm new to the game. What is injured greater than sign 7 players? What is HM? What is limits on each level? What is default level 6 for international free agents? I'll stop there and maybe ask the other questions later. Don't want to overload you. But I did want to ask what you meant about hiring coaches. I play in a fantasy league, or fictional characters so maybe that is what it is but I don't see anything about having other coaches. I also haven't been able to find anything about hiring scouts or having different types of scouts or anything to do with scouts at all so from what I can tell scouts are only for historical leagues maybe? Oh couple more things. What is TCR? I love the idea of house rules.
I'm new to OOTP but I usually play Zen sports and I have a list of rules for trading in Zen that the AI can't handle. The thing I have found frustrating with OOTP is lack of company/ designer support. With Zen Jeremy will personally answer my emails and usually within 4 or 5 hours or less. He designed all the Zen games and does everything himself. He does not believe in anything having to be paid for. So anything Zen is completely free. But OOTP is a steal for 10 bucks! I think it looks so cool! I can't wait to establish my house rules, work out the kinks that bother me and start into my career!
Old School Sports just released a tutorial on trade difficulty settings. He tried making trades on the default settings, the easiest with favoring prospect the most, easiest favoring veterans the most, hardest favoring prospects the most, and hardest favoring veterans the most. He would do a shop and get virtually the same offers. He would try to trade for a player, and got virtually the same demands for each setting. He tried it with superstars. He tried it with journeymen. And he tried it with prospects. The differences were negligable. It was a "disheartening &$@#?!* situation." Only fitting since he conducted the experiment on Lee Elia Day. After watching your tutorial. I'm inspired to try the same thing, but alter the AI Evaluation Settings. That might very well be what drives the bus here.
oh wow, this is interesting! Thanks for sharing
@@patrickdebonis6493 I can't figure out the "favoring" buttons. I can't even push them. Not sure if I don't have some other option on or what that makes me not able.
@@jessielakes8118 Open your league. Go to the top toolbar. Click on MLB. Click on League Settings. Click on AI settings. There you can adjust trade difficulty and favor prospect sliders.
Loved this. Informative and funny. Thanks for making it.
Glad you enjoyed it!
There was a small bug where High School draft players had slightly too low current ratings so they tended to get overwhelmed in A ball. But this was patched and its working fine now (from what I can tell).
I'm an Englishman trying to get into OOTP baseball, but the language you're using is totally alien to me!
I thought moving from FM to OOTP would be easy. Can you recommend a Baseball for Dummies video?
Not sure I have one I recommend, but there are definitely a lot of good ones out there. Can you give me a few examples of questions you have? I can try to recommend or create one based off that.
Was looking forward to this one! Thx ❤. Any thoughts on minor and rookie league team sizes?
I normally limit minor league teams to like 35-40ish. I leave one rookie ball team without limits so recently signed players have a spot to go to.
I would rather have control of drafting and signing free agents and the promotion/demotion of top prospects on my squad
LA Knight? YEAH!!
I can say for sure that the trade reputation system works well with trades not on hard mode. I play this game more for fun than challenge (I'm a speedrunner, so that's my challenge - in other games, obviously), so I use normal mode for trades.
Otherwise I use a lot of similar settings, and a lot of the different ones are just defaults that I'm fine with, like showing ratings over 80 being fine by me. I'd also be fine if the 100pt scale was default because numbers don't scare me. The two things I do like doing differently that are of any real significance are: upping TCR, which is basically my way of injecting a bit of chaos into the mix, and blunting some of the edges I give myself compared to you since player development becomes a bit more of a crapshoot - one I can rig a bit in my favor with staff, but still a crapshoot; and keeping scout discoveries around, just for fun. Sometimes I even manage to trade for a cracked scouting discovery, though it's usually after their development has turned out mid.
Oh cool, that's good to know on the reputation when not in hard mode. I think all of those settings sound reasonable, thanks for sharing! I lol'd at "because numbers don't scare me."
@@pfholdenYeah, I wish I could offer more info on hard mode, but I only used the system on hard back when it was still broken. And between the fact that my college roommate is now a doctor of physics, and double-majored in mathematics and the fact that I was already good enough to lose countles points in my math classes by doing math in my head and not writing every single minute step down, plus almost 20 years of DnD... I can handle numbers.
@@AlecK47 what did you mean exactly by being a speed runner, so that's my challenge- in other games obviously-. .I just didn't follow what you meant but I'm very curious..lol
@@jessielakes8118 Just that I play OoTP for fun more than challenge. Speedrunning is beating games as fast as possible, and that's my favorite way to seek challenge in games.
Player Evaluation settings. I found it best to just leave the default. Increasing the Ratings weighting will make trading harder . . . IF the AI has accurate ratings (or you are not using scouts)! But if their scout sucks and the ratings are off than they will do better using the actual stats, assuming of course that actual stats are close to actual underlying ratings.
In my current game I have a rookie catcher come up and play full time over three seasons and has an OPS of .825 (never finishing under .800). But checking him in the Editor and he's rated for just a .680 OPS! I have no idea how he's been so lucky for the past three years! 🤔Perhaps I need to trade him now before reality sets in!
I thought the AI used ratings under the hood for player evaluation, not their scouts ratings. No?
Ha! That's a whole can of worms I opened up. Two hours in the forums and I'm only slightly less confused.
1) It does look like from tests that AI uses real ratings, although there are still people (like me) thinking otherwise.
2) The AI, even with 100 true knowledge of the ratings . . doesn't necessary evaluate them correctly . . . especially for pitchers or different eras. I've noticed the pitcher issue, when you look in the editor the expected stats show for pitchers don't seem to accurately represent how they actually perform, as opposed to batters which are very accurate. And for things like the deadball era the AI will overvalue Power not realizing that the players aren't going to be able to hit home runs.
So having some weight on Stats can help the AI in situations where the ratings could be hard to interpret.
3) There is a strong indication that the AI struggles with evaluating Stats between different leagues . . . especially with players from foreign leagues.
4) Much of the evaluation adjustments people make is to alter AI behavior to match real world actions, not necessarily to try to get good/bad AI.
My brain hurts now. 🤣@@pfholden
This is all really helpful, thank you!
this year i started playing with long term injuries set to low. i left short term on high so that depth is still important. losing a star player for the season is such a bummer though.
Yeah, totally get that!
interesting take on the settings
thanks for watching!
I am going with 10 on Development Lab for now, just to have room for some of my younger prospects
Seems reasonable! I'll probably go with more than 6 at some point.
Draft pick trading is always on for me. I don't ever sign international free agents anymore because it feels like they never pan out. Trading the cap money almost always results in high draft picks. Those guys pan out a lot.
Fair! Yeah, the draft pick trading is interesting, but doesn't seem like it makes the game harder, so I haven't played with it on much.
I always use your AI settings and change the month of the draft to June like you suggested.
That is cool! Anything you play drastically different than me?
@@pfholden I keep the hilights and other settings for human leagues.
the mlb draft in june makes more sense for me. too much going on in july as it is when i play ootp. i'm gonna add a short draft league in my universe this season. this should give me a better idea about the high school player potential.
Oh nice, I've never set up a draft league but I like that idea a lot.
I'm surprised you've had an issue with International Scouting Discoveries . . . I honestly can't remember my scout EVER making a good discovery! (and I use scouts with Outstanding or Legendary international scouting). Literally every 'discovery' is a 2 star potential guy. Perhaps sone develop and I've just never noticed.
The International Amateur Free Agent pool on the other hand . . . I use the default size and I feel like it consistently produces TOO many star players. There are some players with extreme ratings coming out of it. I shudder to think what happens doubling the size of it? Or perhaps its not a problem because there isn't enough draft money to hire more players anyway? Do unhired international free agents just disappear?
I don't feel the International Established free agents are such a problem in 25? They are a little lower valued than established stars so you can get some deals but the AI is paying good ones pretty solid money. My smaller league has 5 or 6 each season and half the time there aren't even any worth hiring. I kind of like that it might throw out some bargains every so often. I suspect that if you were playing with Trade setting lowering 'based on ratings' that could have an impact on what the AI will pay the international free agents that don't have any stats history? Perhaps that was making your AI under value them?
Eh, my preference is more about just what I find most fun, not necessarily issues with AI. I feel like the IFA signing is the most challenging of the 3 to develop talent from, and it's not just the luck of who your scout finds.
The scout is regularly pulling 40 or 45 potential guys this year, maybe 3 or 4 times a season, although my scouting budget is cranked. IAFA pretty much always bust even if they're 80 in the FA process so it's kind of whatever. I did notice a stud established FA and went to sign him to a cheeseball contract only to see him asking for $35M for 12 years, so I guess they've fixed that as well
@@PeachesYesThis is all good to know, thank you!
hey, looking for a game view video, do you have one out at the moment?
How many series do you sim before you start making adjustments or do you particularly do a comb over after each?
No set amount of sims, really. It's more of trial and error as I notice things during sims.
I'm sure by now. You know that changing the draft day to June 1st is pointless. I'm torn between just leaving it alone completely or force starting my rookie league seasons to date in early to mid June. I hate change.
The Florida complex league runs through early July, so they get a month of time there. And some college guys play longer in A-ball
@@pfholden I know. I wish they left it alone. The whole point of moving the draft to the beginning of June was to give them a full season of rookie ball. I hate wasting service time - even if it is minor league professional service time.
you can always change the complex league to start later
If they get drafted after their season is already over, do they still credit for a year of professional service?
Good q, not sure about this
Im using version 25. I cant find the scouting options for the life of me. The company won't email me back either.
what do you mean by scouting options? If you don't get email response, try the forums or the reddit.
@@pfholden I'm a permanent Reddit ban. IP address... What I'm saying is that I can't find any kind of options for scouts or any way to change them or hire them or anything like that. The tutorial online where they show the page where you do it, it looks different from my version even though it says it's the same year.
if you're looking for scouts to hire, look under the league personnel page where you hire other staff and filter for scouts.
@@pfholden I am not even sure where that is! I've looked.
click on the league menu up to, probably says "MLB" if you're playing in MLB, then transactions > personnel
do you still set minor league age limits?
I do for all levels except AAA but tbh, I don't have exact limits I am happy with
Thomas Mary Moore Shirley Lopez Anthony
Thanks for what u doing for all of us bro! U the goat! (And also u the only reason I decided to play that game)
I have a problem tho, ops+ of my players always 100 except for mlb stats, ops shows correctly everywhere, but ops+ only at the major league level. What do i do bro? Thanks again!
is this for minor league players or college/high school player in the draft? It's normal for the college/high school guys.
@@pfholden no, its for every player in the game. For example Bobby Witt Jr has .813 ops and 121 ops+ in 2023 but has .933 ops and 100 ops+ in 2021