To: The Beta Guys

[Clay]

So, can you guys give impressions now? How much can you say? What can you say? Are any of you writing a piece for "The Road To Release" that they are running?

I know they are releasing the 100 limited versions on Monday, so the muzzle must be somewhat loosened, right?

[Andrew]

Yah we can talk about pretty much anything. I don't think any of us wrote a blog for TRTR though.

Any specific questions?

[Clay]

I'm just wondering your overall opinion. What's better? Is anything missing? What's the best new feature for single player? What's the best for leagues? How will the change impact the BLB? I'd just love to get your opinions.

[Andrew]

Overall, I think it was better than 2006 since the first version of beta, however there are still problems. Some bigger than others.

Good stuff:
- Performance: sim speed and interface responsiveness are vastly improved
- Return of many good reports and features. (% based evaluation, 7 day linupes, etc)
- Development now makes sense. Rather than every rating developing on a curve, they now follow real life patterns. For example, a players "eye" rating (patience at the plate) will start low and rise as he ages. A player's "Speed" rating will start high and will drop off as he ages.

Bad stuff:
- Financials still haven't gotten enough attention, although they're still working on it
- Still no true arbitration process which makes draft pick compensation pointless
- Mac version hasn't gotten enough attention. I'm not a Mac user so don't know much about it, but I know robster has been pretty frustrated with this.

[Andrew]

For single players leagues, it really depends how you like to play. Historical players will be very happy since things like expansion and financial changes can now be automated. The game also mirrors real life stats very well, with the new feature that re-calculates their ratings after each year. If you read Tiger Fan's blog (i think TRTR #3) you can see some examples of how well OOTP can mirror real life.

For fictional players, facegen is by far the biggest addition. It's just an awesome feature that really adds to the game.

[Andrew]

For online leagues, there's going to be a lot of changes. I'll probably start a thread in the near future discussing these. We'll have quite a few minor rule changes. An example of what might affect us, in no particular order.

- Commish portal makes my life 10x easier
- Draft pool can now be created up until 75 days before the draft
- Expansion
- Owners can delete their messages and they wont come back
- Waivers now has a "revoke if claimed" option so we can change waivers from 15 days to 14 days and do away with that annoying extra day
- Can set stats based evaluation for AI
- Merchandising revenue is re-done and market and loyalty drift now works correctly, so we can do away with some of our financial rules and let the game handle most of it.
- Articles and Game Recaps can be entered in the game (by commish only)
- Tons of new news stories (injuries, trades, etc)
- facegen for obvious reasons
- Add/delete leagues and feeder leagues give us some options to add onto the minors or create a winter league

I know I'm missing a lot of stuff, but this is just a start of what will change.

[Clay]

Do you think it's realistic that we could move to '07 for the '81 season or do you think we'll still be working through the kinks and running '81 in 2006?

More:

- What's your FAVORITE part of 07?

- What do you wish was in there that didn't make it?

[Andrew]

Do you think it's realistic that we could move to '07 for the '81 season or do you think we'll still be working through the kinks and running '81 in 2006?

More:

- What's your FAVORITE part of 07?

- What do you wish was in there that didn't make it?

I think it's realistic that we can move to 07, but it will probably mean taking a week or two off. We'll be entering the off-season when 07 comes out so will need to give people some time to purchase and check out the new game first. I also need some time to test some of the changes to see how they'll work with the BLB.

- My favorite feature: Facegen. Although in a couple weeks, I might be saying the new Commish Portal. :D

- What didn't make it in: A lot of lesser known MLB rules. Arbitration, correct waiver periods, etc.

I would say the financial changes here, but this is something that is still being tweaked. Markus put in a new formula to calculate merchandising revenue which has solved a lot of the problems. He also fixed the issues with market drift which caused cash to greatly increase. In 2006 the market size would go up a lot but rarely go down so eventually all markets were huge. In 2007 they'll fluctuate with an average around 5-6 out of 10.

[Squint]

- Owners can delete their messages and they wont come back.

Thank F#%*ING God!

[robster1225]

Sorry, I missed this thread. I'll jump in and try to answer some questions as well. Let me sift through this thread so I don't repeat anything Andrew said.

[Sully]

I'm really concerned about the financial system. As it stands now, it's a complete joke.

[robster1225]

Which part of the financial system are you concerned with?

[Sully]

Which part of the financial system are you concerned with?

Well, the fact that in online leagues there is entirely too much money floating around. I'm supposed to be a small market team, yet I've never seen a contract that I couldn't somehow work into my payroll. It's also a major reason we're not seeing any big name free agents available during the offseason.

[robster1225]

Oh, ok. yeah I agree that that is a problem. Honestly I haven't tested this in 2007, but I will ask around.

[Sully]

Oh, ok. yeah I agree that that is a problem. Honestly I haven't tested this in 2007, but I will ask around.

Thanks. It's something I hope is tweaked quite a bit. In all honesty, it's taking the enjoyment out of roster management.