Board 8 > very pre-emptive interest gauge: some sort of baseball sim project

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have found myself very tempted to pick up History Maker Baseball from Plaay (the same folks who did the game used in the Wrasslin' League) and I don't think I'd start a project here until early next year when I have survived December and the contest season is past. But I thought I'd spitball some ideas and see if B8 cared before getting too excited or committing to a particular set of cards:

-A fictional league with teams from different stuff I like (ie, a Mario team, a WWE team, stuff like that) where B8 doesn't really interact
-A league of "blank" players that would probably play a season offscreen and get re-rated based on their performance. B8 could help me name and/or draft the players and maybe even GM the teams.
-A league based on when I was actually into real baseball- looks like it'd be 1998. Probably I'd let B8 draft and GM teams.
-A league based on "all-franchise" teams- B8 would just observe. The set I'd want would be Atlanta(N), Baltimore(A), Chicago(A), Chicago(N) , Cincinnati(N), Minnesota(A), Oakland(A), Philadelphia(N).
-Inserting a team of B8ers into any of the above scenarios and focusing on them (I think it has rules to manage a team directly instead of AI?)

Any of those sound like they'd be fun to follow and/or participate in? Keep in mind that it will be super slow.
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for it's one
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I would enjoy GMing something but I have tried to play Out of the Park (An extremely in-depth and realistic managing sim) in the past and it's just too much for me. The farm system and how baseball prospecting in general is something I'm not a fan of.
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I like baseball.
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Emeraldegg posted...

I would enjoy GMing something but I have tried to play Out of the Park (An extremely in-depth and realistic managing sim) in the past and it's just too much for me.

it will not be neeeeeearly that complicated if I have y'all GM stuff- probably just trades and maybe drafting and mayyyybe some depth/playstyle input
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I also like baseball.

Emeraldegg posted...

I would enjoy GMing something but I have tried to play Out of the Park (An extremely in-depth and realistic managing sim) in the past and it's just too much for me. The farm system and how baseball prospecting in general is something I'm not a fan of.

I think OOTP lets you automate almost everything that you don't care about in recent versions but I agree it's just overkill for most people. Baseball Mogul is a good alternative if you don't want to have to mess around with 40 man roster rules, hiring AA managers, and the like.
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Well another thing I didn't like about ootp and it was really a big one for me, was how drastic the player ratings seemed to change. I played as Seattle in the 17 version, and Robinson Cano started out as like a highly rated player, but over the course of maybe a month in game dropped to the lowest rating possible. I just couldn't get invested knowing that even highly rated players could go through a cold stretch and just go down so much.
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I'm not sure how OOTP handles decline phases because I haven't really looked under the simulator's hood. I know Baseball Mogul has a variable for each player for how steep their decline will be. Players falling off a cliff is rare but possible. OOTP probably uses something like that. If players similar to Cano historically had bad declines then the game might ding him.

It could also be that your scouting was bad and your scouts were overreacting to a cold stretch, and his underlying stats within the game engine were still fine. Both games have a "perfect scouting" option so you always know what numbers the simulator is using. Not that this makes players falling apart any better, but at least you'll know whether it's real or not.
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I'd be interested
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Does anybody have preference between the scenarios listed and your roles therein? The game should be shipping today so soon I'll be able to more intelligently assess what it can do >_>
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I would also be very interested.

I love baseball and simulations.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

A league of "blank" players that would probably play a season offscreen and get re-rated based on their performance. B8 could help me name and/or draft the players and maybe even GM the teams.
-A league based on when I was actually into real baseball- looks like it'd be 1998. Probably I'd let B8 draft and GM teams.

Both of these appeal most to me. Even if the b8 GMing is limited to fairly minor decisions.
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I remember Sim League
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-A fictional league with teams from different stuff I like (ie, a Mario team, a WWE team, stuff like that) where B8 doesn't really interact
-A league based on "all-franchise" teams- B8 would just observe. The set I'd want would be Atlanta(N), Baltimore(A), Chicago(A), Chicago(N) , Cincinnati(N), Minnesota(A), Oakland(A), Philadelphia(N).
-Inserting a team of B8ers into any of the above scenarios and focusing on them (I think it has rules to manage a team directly instead of AI?)

These are most interesting to me.
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way to vote for everything one time :P

I am leaning towards the crossover league if there's not a big push for the others, and there currently isn't. The All-Franchise and 1998 scenarios would require more money on my part. (and not give me an excuse to homebrew stuff :P) Blank players would take a while to get rolling- they'd play a season, then get actual attributes based on their performance. I wouldn't think many of you would want to just sit there watching clones play for what could easily be a year real-time and THEN having a setup ready to play, but I could be wrong? That leaves the crossover league, possibly with B8 insert players or GMs.

I guess there's also the default generic teams that come with it, too?
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For the blank players thing, if it takes a year of game time to get everything set up, why not just sim an entire year and then make things available to b8ers?
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That's how I envision it working if I go that route, but will people still be interested a year later, with what might as well be generic players from your perspective? (unless of course you share my interest in seeing what a league of blank slate dudes would do, in which case I could post the "setup" season as well)
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Game came in today! >:D Running out of time to sell me on any particular iteration but soon I will have a better idea of what this can do well/easily
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I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be, assuming you aren't talking about a year later in real life. Fantasy sports are a thing and those guys aren't blank slates at all. IMO it'd be even better having a year so people know what they're getting, rather than the initial run be completely luck based. Better chance for balance right out of the gate that way.
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Emeraldegg posted...

assuming you aren't talking about a year later in real life

>_> <_< >_>
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Test game IN THE BOOKS- '55 Brooklyn held off a late surge by the '55 Yankees to win 5-4. Good game. I'mma have fun with this thing :D

Still going back and forth on what to do between crossover silliness and blank slates! It doesn't seem there's a good way to have tons of reader interaction beyond drafting and trading (and naming blank slates, I guess) if that affects anybody's opinion.

Also ruminating format ideas. I want a decent number of teams playing a decent number of games, but that accumulates rapidly if I'm only gonna play one or two games a week like I am guessing >_>
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After sleeping on it, I think I'm going with the BLANK SLATE LEAGUE.

-I'm already doing a "big weird chaotic fiction mashup" thing for TEW >_>
-I bet I can run a season faster than I think, especially a blank slate pre-season where nobody really has any attributes to check. That way I'll be able to ease into the system a bit and be super comfortable by the time I try to do it as a big fancy project
-I could start playing games TONIGHT instead of having to do a bunch of planning and figuring out how to get appropriately sized bits of cardstock
-I'll have a better idea of balance and stuff once we get to theoretical b8 participation, rather than trying to stat hundreds of dudes who probably don't fit the universe into a game I've played a couple times.

Remaining questions:
-Will B8 want to manage teams? I'll probably run a draft once "season 0" ends and I think I can handle trades and general approaches to strategy and rotations and stuff. Or I can just write up games and you can cheer on your faves.
-Would anybody want to follow season 0, or should I just do it all on my own time? If so, what kinda detail would you want? Box score? pdf scoresheets? Short narrative writeups?
-Bigger, slower project (more teams and games) or smaller and faster? Currently thinking 10 teams, 8 games per team plus a short postseason, but that might take me close to a year in the worst case.
-I'll make a topic to name all the players in a sec, and link it here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/77111947
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Sorry, I worded that poorly, I didn't mean people wouldn't want to manage a real life year later. I think I have greatly misunderstood what it is you're trying to do. I thought this was a video game, not a board game (the wrasslin league I have no idea so I didn't know). What I thought you meant by blank slate was:

"Take the video game's database of players, make them all have 0 stats with the VIDEO game software. Make a league of these players with 0 stats and hit a 'simulate season' button without having to watch the games actually being played, they are assigned values based on their performance. B8 then takes these players in order most likely from highest to lowest valued like a MLB the Show style draft. This marks 'season 1.'"

What it sounds like you're actually doing is:
"Manually creating every player in the entire league by hand and manually statting them by hand and manually playing each of these games BY HAND."

NOW I understand why this will be such a time consuming project, and Lord help you. As for your questions:
I would want to manage
I wouldn't really care much about season 0. If you do, I would be very wary in general in terms of the level of writeups you are doing, depending on how many games a season there are. That stuff can get very draining very quickly.
Smaller and faster is probably better because of the amount of physical work you're having to put into this.
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oh yeah I realized overnight that I didn't actually mention it was a tabletop game and then our conversation made a lot more sense lol
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Season 0 is now UNDERWAY WOO

I am planning to more or less go dark until it's time to bring B8 into it, but I wanted to share that in the second inning of the first ever game, "Wigs TBQH" took a foul tip to the head and will be out for 12 games (ie, until halfway through the world series) without making a plate appearance. @WiggumFan267

Was a fun game! Both the test game and this one were kinda intense. (here the visitors came back from 5-4 with runs in the 8th and 9th) It's gonna be kinda weird managing because I'm gonna have every team platooned to heck in a vain attempt to get half-decent exposure for everybody. I also don't have much motivation to pinch hit ever, since everybody is equally capable! (It occurs to me that we are going to wind up with a league of pitchers that can hit just fine. At least the DH lovers will enjoy the offense, I guess!)
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RIPppppppppp :(
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