One Year In...

[Gomer]

So just some thoughts about the league after 1 year.


I like it so far. Interesting structure. Seems to be a pretty active GM base as far as communication goes.

The commish seems to be consistent and involved. He's also flexible and  doesn't seem to be a tyrant. I'd say that's the league's biggest strength.

Financial system is interesting. I've played with custom financials before. I  see them as an interesting feature. I'm not sure how much better than in-game financials they are, and I'm still not too sure about how to actually value cash in this league yet, but overall not bad.

I think the dynamic prospect list is a huge improvement over the static one. It adds another point of interest for teams who aren't in win-now mode.

Some tweaks that would make the league better (this is my opinion only, not really trying to debate here):

- Player dev should be improved. I'm not sure if the changes need to come at the player creation level, or the dev speed or the random talent change... but I've never seen a league with more un- and under- developed players than this one. And I've been in a lot of them.

- Speaking of random talent change, I've been a big opponent of this feature in all of my leagues. There have been studies that have shown that a HUGE majority of random talent change in ootp is NEGATIVE. In my opinion, the vast amount of disappointment from negative dev far outweighs the rare 10th rounder who becomes a passable ML'er. The random talent change also adds more to the luck factor and acts as a field leveler between good and bad GMs. Which I am never in favor of.

- Injuries. I've voiced this before, but I'm also a big anti-injury guy. I like having some, but "LOW" is still too high in OOTP. I wouldn't mind as much if injuries just caused you to lose your guy for a while. But the effect on injury proneness (which NEVER improves) and the effect on talent and dev can be infuriating. One compromise between the pro and anti injury camps would be to use a custom injury file (like that used in the FOBL) which wouldn't effect the frequency of injuries, but would minimize or eliminate their effect on talent/dev.

- League set-up. I like having 2 leagues that don't play each other, but I wish they were integrated a little more. I'd like to see them both draft from the same draft pool (making it truly international), and I'd also like to see them all on the same HTML page. I find myself as an IBL guy NEVER caring what's on the ABL page, and therefore I never even look at it. If they were combined, I'd probably pay attention and care a little more.

- I like the internationality (is that a word?) of the league, but the names leave me feeling a bit disconnected from these players. I find it harder to immerse in a league filled with guys whose names I can't pronounce. I like the ability to rename players, and I think that feature/rule should be relaxed in order to let us rename more of our guys.

- Ratings - I like that we don't have super inflated ratings here. They'll probably inflate some eventually, but ultimately it doesn't really matter too much. I think having good AND bad draft classes is good for the league.  I do think we could cut down on the number of rounds though. I also think by integrating the ABL and IBL drafts, it would help cut down on the feel that we ALL have lottery picks.

- Trading - with how much the guys in this league seem to stay in touch, it doesn't feel like there are a ton of trades. I don't know what would facilitate this. Possibly if we felt more confident about the stability of ratings and the injury proneness of top prospects, we'd be more inclined to trade them and trade for them. Just a thought.


Anyway, I'm enjoying the league after 1 full fake year. These were all just opinions, not proposals.

I'll check in again after a few more seasons.

[Coop]

Enjoyed reading this.  I also tend to agree with many of the points, but I'm coming at the topic from a completely different point of view, since this is the first and only OOTP league I've ever been in.  So I have nothing to compare it to except real life baseball.  But yeah, injuries are no fun, and drafting kids with 5-star potential who are behind the counter at McDonald's three years later is DEFINITELY no fun.  I just try to tell myself that it's all part of the game and that everyone else is having the same problems.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

- I like the internationality (is that a word?) of the league, but the names leave me feeling a bit disconnected from these players. I find it harder to immerse in a league filled with guys whose names I can't pronounce. I like the ability to rename players, and I think that feature/rule should be relaxed in order to let us rename more of our guys.

Or you could learn to pronounce their names instead of minimizing the internationality you claim to enjoy? If you can't connect to someone because their name doesn't conform to white/Eurocentric norms then I don't know what to tell you.

[APMP]

Next year everybody on Mumbai is gonna have at least one Westernized first name. Andy Subbarayudu at first, Blake Dwijen in right field, Yancy Fen at shortstop, Samuel Karpat on the mound. Don't want to change the last names though, this is an international baseball league after all. Plus keeping the last name lets me avoid the weirdness of having to ask Huck to change the photos of my players so their faces match their names...

[Gomer]

Or you could learn to pronounce their names instead of minimizing the internationality you claim to enjoy? If you can't connect to someone because their name doesn't conform to white/Eurocentric norms then I don't know what to tell you.

that might be the funniest post i've read. ever.

fwiw, i can't connect with people who name themselves after shitty former baseball players either. comme ci comme ca

[APMP]

I remember Huck saying that the proportion of player nationalities was tied not only to the country populations but also to where the franchises were located. So if the Manila franchise moves to New Zealand, we should get more normal names! Hell, the IBL team could be based out of Auckland. Cool fact about Auckland - being situated at the intersection of so many waterways, there are tons of swimming holes. Auckland Holes has a nice ring to it. And it's easy to pronounce.

[Gomer]

I remember Huck saying that the proportion of player nationalities was tied not only to the country populations but also to where the franchises were located. So if the Manila franchise moves to New Zealand, we should get more normal names! Hell, the IBL team could be based out of Auckland. Cool fact about Auckland - being situated at the intersection of so many waterways, there are tons of swimming holes. Auckland Holes has a nice ring to it. And it's easy to pronounce.

holy crap, that's aweome!  can the nickname for the Auckland Holes be the "A Holes" ?  Love it!

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

that might be the funniest post i've read. ever.

Glad you got a kick out of acknowledging the prejudice in your statement!

[Gomer]

Glad you got a kick out of acknowledging the prejudice in your statement!

that one was almost as funny as your last.


your lefty ideals and elitist condescension are hilarious to me.

thanks for the continued entertainment.

[Huckleberry]

What the hell is going on in here? 

League is going to stay international and the names thing is still limited to changing your first round picks only. I don't really want to mess with the names.txt file or whatever controls it these days because then my solo games would get jacked up.

I'm going to try to address the interplay between leagues thing with the cup proposal but that all depends on how good OOTP 19 is at handling them. I'm on the beta team and focused on tournaments so I'm trying to get it looked at. The Scott Vibert guy also appears to be looking at them closely so there's hope but we'll see.

Regarding the two leagues not being on the same HTML page, yeah that sucks. Stats+ has everyone together and the guy who writes that is an association guy so there are other improvements coming as that develops. He intends to have an association-wide leaderboard (current and historical) as well as association-wide HoF voting, etc.

Dev and talent change is always an issue and I've definitely noticed the prospect issues, especially for infielders. But that one is a tough one to handle because of OOTP limitations. I can only change dev and aging rates for batters and pitchers, can't break it out by field positions. And I've considered talent change randomness discussions but I'm just not quite sure it's worth changing at this point. That's why I posted the data on players in the Top 100 by draft round. The distribution seems pretty solid at this point. I certainly don't want every first rounder to be better than every second rounder and so forth.

[Claybor]

If you mess with development this will become an 'all star' league. I think it borders on that already since my team is considered a 4th place team in my division yet they would be a top if not the top team in any other league I have ever been in. I have an 8-7-7 3.5 star SP in the # 5 slot and my team isn't even considered to be good. Now I could see it being done if the quality of the drafts were lowered significantly, then more guys from the top making it would not be as major a change as they would not be quite as good. The WBA has far and away the deepest draft of any league I have ever been in.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

your lefty ideals and elitist condescension are hilarious to me.

The stance you’ve elected to take is that I’m elitist for asking that you learn to pronounce names from other countries?

[Bob_Meteors]

Wtf is happening? I can't even tell if gomer and casey are serious. Can we please try not to accuse each other of being prejudiced/elitist/whatever?

[claphamsa]

i was gonna comment on how its strange that gomer can go from full dick, to thoughtful well spoken individual...and then today, hes back to full trumper!

that being said, I find the huge over perponderance of indian names off putting as well, but its getting better so whatever.

[Echo127]

Here's my thoughts:

• I'd like to see more direct interaction between the IBL and ABL, and so would appreciate a tournament of some sort between the two leagues. Format TBD, of course.
• I don't trade often because it makes me nervous. I'm good for like 1 deal per season, lol.
• I have no issue with dev speed, talent change, injuries. But then again, i haven't been screwed by injury as some of you guys have. And this is the only league I've ever been in.

[Huckleberry]

Hopefully this helps just a little bit to view things as one league:

WBA Main Standings Page

Has a link to this forum as well as the OOTP reports. People who want to check status of the whole league could use that as the front page to the website.

[Gomer]

Nice work, Huck.

Looks great!