Trading Changes / Trading Block

OK, I see I'm losing handily on the DH issue, but I do have another topic I want to address in 2015. That is the trading. I want to: (1) Encourage trading, and (2) In-game features that encourage trading, and (3)
Decrease commish time necessary to trade.

re: in-game Trading Block & Untouchable list
I see that many of you don't use this. And to be honest, I don't either. Here's the thing -- the whole player morale switch to me, is annoying. You put someone in these lists in OOTP and waaaah-waaah-waaah... they get upset.

What gives? In real life, some players demand trades without getting upset, or they are perpetually on the trade block and none the worse.

That being said, unless there is some major grievance with this, I would like to shut down player morale AND leave "on" player personalities. I think player morale, as it stands, is unhelpful to many of us. The league will be better off, if we use the trade block. In many cases, this might mean that everyone is for sale, at any time.

A counter-point on this, might mean that players demand no trades. So what? you're going to let your talent rot on the bench, when you can more easily swap someone? that's my rebuttal in advance.

re: commish time in trading activities
I was finding it hard to make pre-sim trades - meaning that the commish makes all the roster changes prior to sims. Given that some people do not email me consent for the pre-game changes, and sometimes it involved 5-6 roster changes - I recommend abolishment of this, even if we don't make the trade-block change, with the exception of the trade deadline... (we'll have to think that one out)...

Hope everyone is ok with these changes, as I feel they are necessary to encourage healthy market activity.

As far as cutting down commish work goes -- it is always good not to burn out your commish.

I think it might be good to expect that outgoing players are already in DFA and arrive in DFA-- if you are going to turn off morale.

But I would like to see morale on-- anything that creates challenge in the game gives a fuller, better experience. In that case we still should try to keep trading work for the commish as simple as possible.

If I was god, I would create OOTP with a switch to have morale impacted by trading block, as a yes or no option, so it's used just like in real life. Not that OOTP isn't real life... although my spouse calls it, condescendingly, "cartoons"

Agree with in-coming players on DFA. But don't think outgoing players should be, so they don't sit out 7 days for a sim.

EdmontonGM wrote:As far as cutting down commish work goes -- it is always good not to burn out your commish.

I think it might be good to expect that outgoing players are already in DFA and arrive in DFA-- if you are going to turn off morale.

But I would like to see morale on-- anything that creates challenge in the game gives a fuller, better experience. In that case we still should try to keep trading work for the commish as simple as possible.

Shutting morale off or keep in on does not make any difference to me I'll go with what the league wants.

If you do trading after you sim it would make your life so much easier. Then player movement falls back on the owner

Morale is important. I'd like to see it remain in place.

Completely agree

DWK wrote:Shutting morale off or keep in on does not make any difference to me I'll go with what the league wants.

If you do trading after you sim it would make your life so much easier. Then player movement falls back on the owner

Arthur wrote:Morale is important. I'd like to see it remain in place.

Why? (Honest question)

As for reducing commish workload: sounds good!

bholmes4 wrote:

Arthur wrote:Morale is important. I'd like to see it remain in place.

Why? (Honest question)

As for reducing commish workload: sounds good!

More challenge, better experience. Start turning things off, like this, or injuries, etc. there is no reason to be in this league. It would be nice to turn on scouting and coaches.

EdmontonGM wrote:
More challenge, better experience. Start turning things off, like this, or injuries, etc. there is no reason to be in this league. It would be nice to turn on scouting and coaches.

Funny you mention scouting and coaching. I did want to implement scouting, but I don't think it's possible with our format.
It seems to turn off the overall and potential talent rating, which defeats the purpose of a talent-only format league. I wanted to turn it on, so teams can sign/discover international talent -- more like real life.

re: Coaching, I'm totally up for implementing this if others will agree to it. Might be something for 2016, so everyone has plenty of notice.

re: Morale. A compromise might be turning off from Free Agency to trade deadline, so it doesn't impact the trading block useage - which is underutilized, compared to real life baseball. Would prefer to have it fully on or off, but that's one potential compromise. OOTP needs to fix how morale works.

Fully admit there is room for improvement in how some of these features work in OOTP.

EdmontonGM wrote:Fully admit there is room for improvement in how some of these features work in OOTP.

They do a fairly good job with the product, but need more customization options. It would also be beneficial - worst case scenario - if some settings could be turned on/off/edited at the text level. By that, I mean so I can edit .dat files by hand if necessary.

One challenge I'm currently having, is that FCB is sending update emails (from in-game) to a GM who is no longer with the league. And by no longer with the league, I mean that I've deleted his in-game GM profile, etc. If that isn't a serious coding issue, I don't know what is. OOTP to their credit, is downloading our league file and inspecting as we speak.

Saw your post about it-- there are some really weird bugs that turn up with OOTP, judging by some of the postings on their forum. Some computer bugs are not surprising- like not getting earned run scoring right - just because of logic complexity ( although even this one should not be too bad if the underlying data is set up properly), but some, like your problem, seem likely to have occurred because the programmer forgot to handle some aspect of a program feature. The program should have more internal condition checking throughout. It would catch some of these oversights and incorrect assumptions. I guess, though, the explanation might be: overworked programmer.

I agree about OOTP- overall it is nice, quite an (nearly solo I think) accomplishment-- it is just that getting to this point actually raises expectations about what should be possible.

Yeah, expectations are high, given the yearly release cycle. Funny thing is, I don't really want them to focus on a GUI or anything else they ran by people a few months back, for OOTP 12. I just want perfection and transparency in what's there.

I don't know if you ever played with Earl Weaver Baseball, but to this day, I'm just amazed at what they accomplished in 2 release cycles. I'm surprised OOTP hasn't picked up that programmer - he's still around.

No, OOTP 4.0 was first for me. Didn't play others.

I wish they would do a release that just tightened up and improved AI and other internal type things, like refining setting choices, not new features.

But I guess they figure they need new features to get new customers.

EdmontonGM wrote:I wish they would do a release that just tightened up and improved AI and other internal type things, like refining setting choices, not new features.

I agree with you on doing a release to improve what they have now.

EdmontonGM wrote:But I guess they figure they need new features to get new customers.

If they just fix what they have and make a better polished game they will get new customers

Yes, no new features please!

That being said the GUI was horrid and needed an overhaul. I'd like to see this area looked at again as I still think v. 6.5 had the best interface yet. This is close to it, if not as good though.

As for coaches/scouts please leave them off. Yes it adds more challenges to some but for others it's just a chance to manipulate the "game engine" and get an advantage over others. And yes, I'd probably be one of those people that played the "game engine" and not the "game". My .300 win percentage may not scare you yet but watch out!!!

my coupla' cents...

just do trades after the SIMs. most of my leagues do it that way, with the exception being when the trade deadline passes during a SIM.
i'm not really 'up' for any other changes.
if coaches or scouting is turned on, i'll have to opt out.

[quote="hbomb"]

EdmontonGM wrote:
re: Coaching, I'm totally up for implementing this if others will agree to it. Might be something for 2016, so everyone has plenty of notice.

Coaches for a online league works OK the only issue is Coaches don't tell you that their contract is up so you just have to keep a eye on that. I have it in my league and in my option I think it helps player development in your minor leagues but thats just me.

Scouts just doesn't work that well for a online league and for a Talent only league like this it will not work at all.
I wouldn't have a problem with Coaches being turn on

Please no coaches or scouts.