OOTP XI for preorder!

[Syt]

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/newsletters/nl0062/

OOTP 11: The Grand Slam of Baseball Simulation Games!
Preorder now for just $24.99!

Spring Training is just around the corner, and what would a new baseball season be without a new iteration of the best baseball management simulation on the market? Out of the Park Baseball 11 will be released in April 2010, and is now available for preorder!! Better still, this year, we're offering an extra-special discount! From now through the end of Sunday, you can purchase OOTP 11 for just $24.99, $15 off the list price! That's just three days at nearly 40% off! Preorder customers will also receive the game two days before the public release of the game.

    * From now through Feb. 21st: $24.99
    * From Feb. 22nd until the day before release: $29.99
    * From game release on: $39.99

OOTP 11 New Features and Improvements

The OOTP series wins major awards every year, including Operation Sports' "Text Sim of the Year" for 2009, and OOTP 11 will be even better! As we do every year, we have improved on the core game and added a range of new features that will knock your socks off! Here are some of the highlights!

Overall Interface and Engine Improvements

We've added some new screens and redesigned the user interface this year, making the game more accessible and more fun to use! Some of the more important UI improvements include:

    * The ability to mass-select players, making it easy to perform mass transactions like demoting several players simultaneously
    * An improved League Standings screen, introducing three additional views (expanded view, view by sub-league, and wild-card view) and clinch indicators
    * A completely redesigned Manager Home screen, with a dynamic season timeline, that acts as a portal to your most critical management tasks
    * An improved Simulation screen, that shows standings, league leaders, and league news while you sim
    * A Team Stats screen that shows team statistics and rankings, as well as team records by various splits (record vs RHP, home/away records, etc.)
    * A new Manager Notes section, featuring editable text notes and custom reminders
    * A Player Comparison screen, in which you can compare two players side-by-side
    * More customizable news subscriptions, so you can get just the news you want in your inbox
    * A new record book feature introducing single-game records broken up by game type ("Who hit the most doubles in an extra-inning playoff game in your league?")
    * The game ships with three different skins



Changes to Historical Play

Why pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for "season disks" when you can get a better historical replay experience for just $24.99? OOTP's historical simulation capabilities continue to grow in leaps and bounds, and this year we've added a new historical replay mode that automatically optimizes player ratings and league rules for single-season replays, resulting in incredible statistical accuracy! For the price of less than one season disk, you get access to ALL historical seasons from 1871 through 2009!
These other new features help make OOTP the most realistic and enjoyable historical play experience ever:

    * Improved historical career simulation, including recoded part-time player rating routines, new fielding ratings calculator, and more!
    * A handy comparison tab, where you can compare your simulated results with the actual real-world results from that season



2010 Major League Rosters

The game will ship with the best roster set we have ever produced, with thousands of individually rated real players, updated statistics, and realistic contract data! All of last year's top draft picks will be in the game as well. So, want to take Stephen Strasburg and see if you can get the Nationals to the playoffs? Have at it!


In-Game and Core Engine Changes

We continue to enhance play-by-play AI and our core game engine! This year, we brought back an old favorite feature, and added some more to boot!

    * In-game control over base runners; will you try to have your runner score from first on a double in the gap?
    * Recoded fielding engine, making defense more realistic while introducing new fielding stats like Zone Rating, Individual Fielding Efficiency, and Team Defense Efficiency.
    * More advanced statistics like wOBA (weighted on-base average), OPS+, ERA+ and FIP (fielding independent pitching)
    * Hundreds of new lines of play-by-play text, for more variety in your games



New Draft and Player Development Features

OOTP 11 offers some huge improvements in the amateur draft and player development!

    * A totally re-coded amateur draft with optional signing bonuses, player demands, a slotting system, post-draft contract & bonus negotiations, and compensation picks for unsigned picks (who will re-enter the draft a year later). Also, when feeder leagues are used, undrafted/unsigned high school players may go to college and continue playing!
    * Re-coded player creation engine that now supports two-way players. Draft-eligible players are also now created with higher overall ratings, resulting in realistic simulation results even at the lowest minor league levels
    * Automatically generated high school/college stats, helping you to evaluate potential picks in the amateur draft.
    * Re-coded layer development system, resulting in even more realistic career curves, and also supporting two-way players and pitcher batting (pitchers no longer start out with fully developed hitting ratings)



But wait, there's more!

Of course, there are plenty of other features to consider, too! Check out some of these neat additions:

    * Team owners with distinct personalities, providing constant feedback about your performance
    * Dynamically evolving fictional leagues, an optional mode that breathes life into your league - imagine the league automatically introducing rule changes or league expansion randomly in a realistic fashion!
    * Improved immersion factor, including better modeled player personalities and a brand new "storyline engine" - imagine unfolding stories which can influence your players in a variety of ways and which drawn you further into your virtual baseball universe! The stories are completely customizable via XML.
    * Improved contract negotiations, including counter-offers from players.
    * More varied news stories
    * Create and print baseball cards of your favorite players on customizable templates, including historical player cards
    * Import Facegen files from Facegen Modeler, allowing you to put your own face into the game!
    * Game licenses can now be transferred between Windows and Mac machines with no additional purchase required

[Syt]

(Pre-ordered, btw  )

[The Minsky Moment]

Ich auch.

[Syt]

The random rule changes/expansions for leagues alone is a major selling point for me.

Curious how they'll pull of the "narrative mode". I'm guessing Heinsohn may take a page out of old German soccer manager "On the ball" that occasionally featured event chains for players, or had random events based on the players' personalities and hobbies (breaking a leg while skiing, writing a slanderous book about the behind the scenes stuff of your club etc.), but I'm not sure.

[Camerus]

Is this series any better than Baseball Mogul?  I enjoyed playing that a few years ago.

[Syt]

Is this series any better than Baseball Mogul?  I enjoyed playing that a few years ago.

It's definitely more detailed and has IMO a better modding community. Accessibility might be an issue, but if you look at what every menu/screen does you get to handle it pretty soon.

Take a look at the features:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/joomla/thegame-ootp/features-ootp.html

Screenies:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=81

Or the online manual:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/documentation/ootp10/

The beauty is that the game is so damn flexible. Want to reply the 1932 season? No problem - the game comes with historical database from the 1870s on, and there's mod packs with almost all player pictures/logos since then.

Want to replay a club from any time till today? Or create a fictional world with the rules/contract/league system you want? Want to do just the play calling? Or just meddle with the contracts? Or just the line ups? It's all there.

[The Minsky Moment]

I recently started to use Action PC baseball for single season historical replays.  Its a little more fiddly then Diamond Mind, but the latter is basically very pricey abandonware at this point.

PP, OOTP has been the premier management sim since version 6.5 and has significant improved since then.  Definitley better than Mogul.

[Syt]

I looked at Action PC Football a while back. Looked interesting, but the prices for the "data disks" scared me off.

[The Minsky Moment]

I looked at Action PC Football a while back. Looked interesting, but the prices for the "data disks" scared me off.

They have lots of sales - inlcuding "one day sales" where season disks go for $5 and a Christmas special disk where you pay $12 for a lot of content.  They also have half-off sales every now and then.

The season disks are expensive objectively, but reasonably priced compared to the competition (strat-o-matic, replay, apba, Diamond Mind)

[Camerus]

Looks promising and astoundingly detailed.  Thanks for the info.   

[Syt]

I looked at Action PC Football a while back. Looked interesting, but the prices for the "data disks" scared me off.

They have lots of sales - inlcuding "one day sales" where season disks go for $5 and a Christmas special disk where you pay $12 for a lot of content.  They also have half-off sales every now and then.

The season disks are expensive objectively, but reasonably priced compared to the competition (strat-o-matic, replay, apba, Diamond Mind)

Yeah, but it seems they focus on historical replay/comparisons etc., something I rarely do; normally I set up a fantasy league and take it from there.

[sbr]

I got last year's version and enjoyed the bit of time I spent with it.  I like the look of the improvements but I don't think I can justify getting it again this year.  Might have to turn into a every two years thing like Madden was before I quit playing it completely.

I am very easily swayed though, so I would be very interested in hearing opinions on the game when it comes out.

[Syt]

Well, they had a 25$ pre-order window for three days which I exploited. I find paying that once a year is totally ok.

[Syt]

Release date for preorders: 12th April, anyone else: 14th April.

The road to release features:

The Interface Tutorial

Player Comparison, Manager Notes, and Single Game Records

Drafting Realism Like You've Never Seen Before!

Making history - What you can do with OOTP 11!

New Skin, Operation Sports Preview, and a Few More Tidbits

A Trip into History (details the changes to historical [re-]play)

A Cornucopia of New Features, which includes my favorite bits (together with the improved drafting, player comparison and manager notes):

Dynamically Evolving Leagues
Those who play historic OOTP leagues are used to one of the game's great features (at least in my mind) - the ability to expand and evolve your league based on the information in the historical database. Run an OOTP historic league and you'll see it expand in '61 and again in '62 and every year thereafter. For those who may have run historic leagues in the past and had to make these changes manually, it was a big leap forward. Fictional league owners, however, were forced to make changes like expansion, rosters, schedules, and rule changes manually. That is, until now!

With version 11, OOTP introduces Dynamically Evolving Leagues. When you start a league with this option selected and run your baseball world, the game will dynamically make changes to the league over the course of its history. Some of the changes you can elect for the game to implement in your game include:

    * Team Expansions
    * Schedule Length
    * Roster Size
    * DL Length
    * Free Agency
    * Option Years
    * Nickname Changes
    * Relocations
    * Waiver Length
    * DH Rule
    * Increase/Decrease Offense
    * Increase/Decrease Pitching
    * Min service lengths
    * And more...

Player Immersion Features
Next up are two new exciting player improvements coming to OOTP 11. The first is two-way players. What the heck does that mean? Will OOTP now create scenarios like this one? YouTube: Switch hitter vs Switch Pitcher. Well, luckily, no. Imagine if you will, a player being drafted as a starting pitcher but slowly developing into a position player instead. Or a reliever, who hits well, entering a game as a pinch hitter and then staying in the game as a substitute fielder. Or a backup catcher entering the game as a reliever in a late-inning marathon game when the entire bullpen has been exhausted. The scenarios are endless.

In other words, players are now created and drafted that can have both strong pitching AND hitting abilities. Which way will they develop? Only time will tell. You'll have to trust your scouts (and more importantly, your instincts) to select your players and see where and how they develop over time. Could one of your top starting pitching prospects actually be the sharp-eyed singles hitting machine lacking from the top of your line-up?

OOTP 11 also gives you the option to clone players. Click the "Clone Player" button and an exact copy of that player, minus their stats and history, will be instantly created and added to the free agent pool. We'll leave the moral, ethical, and competitive arguments for and against cloning players to the OOTP community!

Additional player enhancements include:

   1. Player popularity has been tweaked to be recalculated less often and/or when major events occur
   2. Player personality rating have been changed from numeric to written, scouting report-style assessments
   3. Pitchers' batting ratings now develop as their career progresses
   4. Injury history ratings have been added to the players profile. Want to know if that star CF is a fragile injury risk? Now you'll know.

New Statistics
Everybody loves stats. Well people who play OOTP do at least. With version 11, you now have even more stats to choose from.

First up, ERA+ and OPS+ have both been added. These stats help to neutralize the standard OPS and ERA stats allowing for an easier comparison between different types of players. Because these stats take into account players' competition, they allow for a much more meaningful comparison between players. With 100 being the league average, an OPS+ or ERA+ of 120 would indicate a better than average player and and OPS+ and ERA+ under 100 would be a below average player. On the offensive side of the ball, wOBA (weighted on-base average) has been added. wOBA is a linear weighting statistic created by Tom Tango. You can find out more about wOBA here. Meanwhile, the pitching side of things now benefits from FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching). FIP helps you understand how effectively your pitcher pitched, regardless of how his fielders played behind him.

Also added in OOTP 11 is ZR or Zone Rating. This stat is an important one to help gauge a players value in the field by measuring their effectiveness in turning plays within their zone of play in games. ZR will help you know if your super slugging middle of the lineup OF is actually neutralizing his offensive contributions by giving up more runs than he's adding with poor play in the field. Another fielding stat, EFF (individual defensive efficiency), has been introduced as well. This stat measures how many plays the fielder makes compared to league average, where 1.100 means 10% more plays than average.

You may have also heard about this next feature, but we'll reiterate here as well. OOTP now generates High School and College stats for draft-eligible players in games that do not include feeder leagues. This is helpful in scouting and gauging a player's past performance and does not penalize you for not using the feeder leagues in your world. The OOTP beta team is also working hard to provide a regionally coded database of college and high school names to give accurate city names to these stats! Never let it be said that OOTP does not focus on the details!

Hall of Fame and Retirement Changes
When a player's career is over, OOTP now allows you to set a user-defined waiting period until a player is elected to the Hall of Fame. This can be between one and ten years, or none at all, which would be immediate entry. Players inducted into the Hall of Fame now also wear the jersey from the team where they had their greatest success.

Markus has also tweaked the code so that more retired players will now return to the games as coaches and managers than before. You might even see the son (or sons) of a retired major leaguer appearing in successive years after they retire as well. So yes, there is indeed life after retirement in OOTP!

Baseball Cards
The same way you collected your favorite players cards back when you were a kid, you can now create and save cards for your players in OOTP 11. This exciting new features allows you to create cards for each player yearly and even create and import your own custom designs! How creative can you get? And you can export your cards to the OOTP mod community to come up with some great card ideas and templates as well. Create and browse through an entire collection of cards, then share them in your online league or the OOTP forums! Who will be your favorite?

Will the Team Owner Please Stand up?
No longer a nameless, faceless entity hiding in the OOTP nether-regions limiting your payroll and denying your latest mega-million dollar offer, the Team Owner is now a real part of OOTP 11. Visible on the Front Office screen, team owners now have names, ages, Facegen photos, and more importantly, a fiscal personality (ranging from Generous to Penny Pincher) and a patience level (ranging from Understanding to Demanding). You can also access the owner's expectation all season long and get a grasp on his current mood as well. If a team owner dies, another family member can also replace them.


Additional Enhancements
In addition to the exciting new features above, some of the other great new additions and improvements for managers in OOTP 11 include:

    * A revised transactions screen, allowing for players full names to be seen as well as integration of the new Mass Player Selection feature
    * Addition of new controls over base running when playing out games

OOTP 11 puts a host of new tools, a redesigned and improved user interface, and countless functional improvements all under your control so that you get the most out of your franchise, whether it's a mega-million dollar major league franchise or a small-market independent start-up. The game is truly yours for the taking!

Take the Online Challenge!

Putting the "Fantasy" in "Fantasy Baseball"!

[sbr]

They are selling OOTP XI on GamersGate this year.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-OPB11/out-of-the-park-baseball-11