OOTP 15 Road to Release #2

Revamping Ratings, the Interface, and Historical League Creation

Today's installment of the 2014 Road to Release for Out of the Park Baseball 15 focuses on three new features: A new way to look at player ratings, a new look for the interface, and a revamp of the historical league creation wizard.

Ratings, Ratings Everywhere

Ratings are the spark plugs that make a simulation engine run, but how OOTP produces them for each player has always been a bit of a mystery for most armchair GMs. The truth is, past versions of the game have featured player ratings based on hidden internal ratings, so if you were looking at a free agent with a 60/100 power rating, you couldn't tell if that was above or below league average.

Since there was no way to see how many players were above or below 60/100 (besides manually counting them), you couldn't gauge where the player in question fell in the spectrum of power ratings in your league. Was he a guy with moderate power who might slug 20-25 home runs a year? Was he a player with a little more pop in his bat who could be counted on for over 30 dingers per season? Or was he a brute who was going to annually pound 40 or more balls over the fence?

Now you can turn on a new optional rating system that crunches average player ratings for all positions at the beginning of the season and displays player ratings relative to those averages. You turn it on in Game Settings. The dropdown lets you select which league you want it relative to. (This option was added to the standard League Creation Wizard too.)

When you do so, you'll notice ratings change for players all over your league. For example, let's look at Phillies slugger Ryan Howard before enabling this setting:

And after the box is clicked:

Notice how his current Contact, Gap Power, and Eye/Discipline ratings dropped a bit from before, which means he actually has room to improve in those areas, relative to the rest of the league. If you want to see a player's ratings relative to another league, simply click the dropdown in the upper right corner of his profile page, rather than go back to Game Settings. For fun, look at all your players' ratings relative to an A-ball league and pretend your team will go 162-0 this year. (Okay, 155-7.)

And that aforementioned free agent with a 60/100 power rating? Now you'll know he's a little better than average in that category.

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A Spiffy New Look

For 14 years, OOTP was designed for displays with 4:3 aspect ratios by default, but now we've stepped into the widescreen world and made those 16:9 or 16:10 resolutions the default when creating a new game. As you can see in the screenshots above, that results in a cleaner look with more room for stats and other information.

When you click the menus across the top of the screen, you'll also notice that they've been simplified and streamlined, so it's much easier to find what you need. And we've added tooltips to the menu icons along the right side of the screen, so you know what something is before you click it.

We've also redesigned many screens, such as the Manager's Office, which now offers more useful information.

In addition, many screens have been modified so they take into account the seven real international leagues added to OOTP 15. For example, the Game Home screen:

Improving on History

The ability to go as far back as 1871 and play forward through baseball history - with players, teams, and rule changes appearing when they really did - is a popular feature in OOTP. This year we've improved historical league creation process, starting with a wizard that uses five steps rather than the previous six; it also streamlines some of the steps.

If you decide to use the "random players from all eras instead of real rosters" feature when setting up an historical league, you can now specify minimum and maximum years for the player pool. That lets you only use players from a specific era, if you want.

Finally, we've made it much simpler to create custom leagues with teams from various eras, so you can put all the World Series winners of your favorite club into one league if you want. To do that, begin the fictional league creation wizard and decide how you want it set up in step one. In step two, click the "Switch to Historical Team Selection" button, as shown:

Now you can use the dropdowns to choose the years you want to draw from and the teams you want to use. (Steve Carlton pitching to Richie Ashburn, anyone?) Then continue the creation wizard and play ball!

Thanks for reading the second installment of Road to Release. Look for more entries as we get ready for the release of OOTP 15, the greatest version of our best-selling, award-winning baseball management game yet!

The OOTP Developments Team

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