Star Ratings Discussion

[Huckleberry]

Okay, a comment squaredrive made on the season thread made me want to discuss this with the league.

There are some strange star ratings that are showing up because I currently do not have the option to display ratings relative to a league enabled.  One of the reasons I chose not to do that is because we have two different major leagues in our universe.  I would have to choose one of them (likely the ABL because that's the one I'm in and, hey, I'm the commissioner) which would then be the basis for the star ratings you see on the HTML reports, etc.  That would kind of suck for IBL teams (although I would argue that right now it sucks because they're not relative to anything).

However, it appears that once I enable that option that there is then an option on your Manager Settings page to change the league to which the ratings are relative when you're in-game.  So the question is, would a majority of owners like me to enable that setting?  The HTML reports would probably all be relative to the ABL, at least that's my guess.  But then in-game you could change the league they're relative to.  Here are a few player examples before and after:

John Pottle, Santo Domingo before:



after:



Lyonya Darchiev, Mumbai before:



after:



Clifford Mitchell, Buenos Aires before:



after:



Serhat Karpat, Black Forest before:



after:



Rafael Gallegos, Mexico City before:



after:



Thoughts?  This obviously affects individual ratings, not just the star rating.

[Claybor]

Thoughts?  This obviously affects individual ratings, not just the star rating.

That's just...... wrong.

[Huckleberry]

Do you mean that it shouldn't or it doesn't? It affects pitching and batting ratings but not fielding or running ratings from what I can tell.

[claphamsa]

I personally would like the star ratings to mean more...but thats just me.

[Coop]

I'm usually an advocate for change --- I was strongly in favor of making changes to get batting averages more in line with the real major leagues, and I'm very pleased so far with the results --- but in this case I think I'd vote to leave things as they are.  I believe we've all gotten accustomed to our current ratings system, and it seems like a logical enough system, so it's not like it's broken or anything.

One thing I'll add (even though this might mean spinning the discussion off into another direction) is that I've noticed a pattern when comparing the WBA star ratings to the in-game OOTP star ratings.  (This is for hitters only, not pitchers.)  The WBA star ratings are definitely based more on hitting --- the more you hit, the higher your star rating --- while the OOTP star ratings seem to consider speed and defense to be just as important as hitting.  An example from my team is Rookie League leftfielder Asrat Kifimbo.  He's very fast and a terrific defensive player, but just okay as a hitter.  The WBA thus gives him a potential rating of only 3.5 stars, while OOTP gives him 4.5 stars.  In Kifimbo's case, I think the WBA rating is more accurate in terms of his true value; I consider left field a hitter's position, and my feeling is, if you're a leftfielder, to deserve a 4.5 star rating, you need to be a heck of a hitter.  But at other positions, like shortstop, defense is more important, yet I've noticed that the WBA ratings, since they are tilted heavily in favor of hitting, tend to underrate good-fielding shortstops.  There are shortstops who are great fielders and very good (but not great) hitters who in my opinion have 5-star value, and in OOTP they are getting 5-star ratings, but the WBA is grading them as 4-star players because as hitters they're a notch below the top leftfielders and first basemen.  A perfect ratings system would factor in the position of the player and recognize that a good-fielding leftfielder or first baseman needs to also be an excellent hitter to deserve a 5-star rating, while a good-fielding shortstop doesn't need to hit quite as much in order to deserve 5 stars.  But it's a minor imperfection, really, and I'm not necessarily advocating a change; I'm just making an observation.

[Karachi_GM]

What Coop appears to be referring to is the fact that stars assigned to players on the html reports is different than the star ratings a manager sees in game (at least for IBL teams).  I have no idea why this is true.  The rating itself seesm the same, but the stars assigned differs. Perhaps it indicates that the html star ratings are created by the commish who is in the ABL and does not reflect IBL influence.  But that would indicate that, in-game at least, league is already taken into account for star ratings. 


Also. I don't see a manager page setting for relative league for ratings.  Maybe it only appears if the commish enables the change he discusses in the OP.


I am definitely not in favor of anything that would result in changing the actual ratings.

[Huckleberry]

Right, nothing would change the actual ratings, it would only be the displayed ratings.  Messing with the guts is a no-no.

But you're right and I'd never thought about the fact that having more than one major league seems to mess with what y'all are seeing in the IBL.

[Karachi_GM]

Right, nothing would change the actual ratings, it would only be the displayed ratings.  Messing with the guts is a no-no.

To me what I have been seeing are the actual ratings since it is all I can ever see.  Now it seems they aren't actual, they are adjusted relative to league.  I'm not sure what I want or what the right to go forward is.

[Coop]

I wasn't aware that the star ratings seen on the HTML pages for IBL players were different than those on the HTML pages of ABL players.  It was obvious that many of the star ratings shown on my players' HTML pages were different than the star ratings that were given to those same players in-game, but I figured it was the same situation for ABL players.

I personally don't mind the discrepancy.  I look on the situation as one in which I've got two different scouts, each of whom files a report about every player.  The HTML scout gives each player a star rating, and the in-game scout also gives each player a star rating.  Sometimes those ratings are the same; sometimes they're not.  They're essentially two different opinions about a player, which is the sort of thing you also encounter in real life when evaluating players.

[Havana_Jake]

I would prefer to stick with our current ratings system if only because we are all pretty familiar right now with what it takes to be a major leaguer and what it takes to be a good/great player. Changing it would make us all have to re-learn some of those benchmarks, which would not be a big deal, but I'm not sure we'd be getting anything of value in exchange.