Someone else who recently had a chance to take OOTP 14 for a spin was long-time OOTPer John Comey, who has served up a banquet of features for this installment of The Road to Release. (PR and Marketing Manager Brad Cook wrote the part about online features.)

As always with a new version of Out of the Park Baseball, there are plenty of smaller features added to enhance the overall coaching and GM experience. OOTP 14 is no different, as it offers several exciting new features beyond the ones we've already talked about in The Road to Release. Here are some of them:

New Depth Chart

The graphical depth chart is set to debut with OOTP14. This is a new way to organize your team, akin to what you see in various TV and web media. Here you still have all the options you had with the old screens (which you can still access, of course), but if you tend to be more visually oriented, this is a great way to easily view your team.

Revamped Trade Log Screen

The Trade Log screen has been completely revamped, giving players a more visual, and more informative, view. As before, the players and dates are shown, but even the basic information has been redesigned, giving a cleaner, more spread-out look that allows the user an easier way of seeing transaction history.

If you click on the "+ More Info" button, you are given a summary of each trade. This includes the players traded, their age, professional level, statistics, salary, service time, and any other notes the player may have on them. In this case, the Alleghenys of Pittsburgh are going for broke, trading for ace Bernardo Ramirez from the St. Louis Perfectos. Will their gamble pay off? Time will tell, but even a casual observer will be able to see that the Alleghenys are making a major move for the pennant, while St. Louis is building for their future.

Updated Player Development Tracker

It appears the Philadelphia Grays have more problems than just their record, as two of their young stars may be slipping, at least in the eyes of their scouts. This is easy to see from the new Player Development Tracker, which, while appearing to be a simple reorganization of the information you could always find throughout past OOTP versions, may completely change how you parse and analyze the information. You still have the ability to look back at past reports (up to three years), and now you have a filter for all reports, or just those that are important to your franchise (as deemed by your head scout). Also, all the information is grouped by player, rather than on a line-by-line basis.

One of OOTP's goals was to make information intake easier. With items like the visual depth chart, Trade Log screen, and updated Player Development Tracker, the game has gone a long way toward achieving those aims.

Additional Player Creation Options

A more subtle addition to Out of the Park 14 is the addition of options for player creation. Previous versions of OOTP did the job, but it always felt a little bare-boned. Not so in OOTP14. Now you have the following options:

Position: All, including pitching roles
Player Type: Default, Amateur, International Amateur, International Established FA, Independent Leaguer
Player Age: Default, Teen (16-17), Very Young (18-21), Young (22-25), Average (26-29), Veteran (30-33), Old (34+) (Author's Note: As a 33-year-old myself, I resent being almost old.)
Player Quality: Random, Legend, Star, Good, Average, Bench, Scrub
Development Stage: Raw, Half Way (50%), Above Average (75%), Fully Developed
Draft Eligibility: Yes or No
Destination League: Parent or Sub League
Number of Players

The number of options you now have is seemingly endless, and the number of stories you can write in the dynasty forum, as well as in the online league community, can rise exponentially. Will you create Roy Hobbs? Crash Davis? Willie Mays Hayes? Steve Nebraska? Or will you try your own concoction? Out of the Park Baseball 14 has the tools and the ingredients, so channel your inner mad scientist and see what comes out!

Achievements

For those who play pretty much any game these days, you have a plethora of personal achievements that you can attain. Now you can do the same in Out of the Park Baseball 14. While Mr. McCoy has not done a great job so far, you can unlock dozens of achievements throughout the course of your career. Achievements are broken into three categories: Gold, Silver, and Bronze. What will you uncover during your journey?

Free Agent Draft

The Free Agent Draft looks a lot like the amateur and initial drafts because, well, you don't fix what ain't broke. The FA Draft is simple: players picked in the draft are assigned adequate one-year contracts, and your rosters are not cleared. Does your online league prefer to run such a draft, but found it cumbersome? Now it's seamless. Are you going through contraction? Here's your solution. Are you playing a hybrid league that brings historical players into the free agent pool? Here's the opportunity to spread the wealth and build new stories.

It's a wrinkle on a time-tested axiom of OOTP (and of baseball since 1965): Drafts are always a lot of fun. Out of the Park Baseball 14 offers you one more way to enjoy this method of player dispersion.

More to Love About Online Leagues

Online leagues are OOTP's backbone. They're the place where players come together to share a unique experience, so we're always trying to improve on that. The biggest impact on online leagues in OOTP 14 is the expanded Real-Time Simulation Report (RTS), which was added to online leagues in an OOTP 13 update. RTS is perfect for all-star and playoff games, and now when you broadcast a Real-Time Sim to your online league, you and your league GMs will see an expanded view of the game in progress, including the current batter-pitcher matchup, past plays, win probability, and more.

OOTP 14 offers even more for online leagues:

• Easy one-click joining of online leagues
• Different file names for online league uploads, so GMs don't start downloading during uploads
• The ability to create league notes that the GMs see as tasks
• Three fields added to human manager profiles - forum user name, contact info, and profile notes
• The ability to retire human GMs - they still show up in reports and in Add/Edit Managers, but they're removed from the Select Manager dialog

...And Even More New Features

Almost every aspect of the game was tweaked and countless small improvements have been added as well, for example:

• New Real Time Simulation Game Highlight & Webcast screen
• Minor league contracts may now include signing bonuses
• Right-click menu offers the option to easily (mass-)offer minor league contracts & extensions to players
• Added the option to increase the font size (preferences dialog), which is very useful for higher screen resolutions
• Added the option to set the number of relievers & position players carried by the AI for DH/non-DH subleagues in the league strategy settings
• Spring Training games are now automatically played in a spring ballpark with proper climate settings
• Player height is now a factor in determining first base defense rating

The Grand Championship League

If you've been around the OOTP online league scene for a while, you've probably heard about the Grand Championship League, a best-of-the-best online league in which participants from 26 OOTP online leagues are currently competing. The winner will be crowned Grand Champion and will have online bragging rights … at least until next year's GCL.

You can read the latest blog posts about the GCL on the site, or check out the latest GCL standings, stats, and more. This is shaping up to be a fierce competition, and it's the foundation for what will be an annual event, so if you didn't get a chance to join this year, there's always next year.

Play it Your Way!

OOTP 14 puts a plethora of new player management, creation, and drafting features under your control so you can mold your mega-million-dollar major league franchise or shape your small market independent start-up to its maximum potential. And when you head online, OOTP 14 offers improvements that make joining and running online leagues even easier and more. The game is truly yours for the taking, so play it your way!

Out of the Park Baseball 14 - The Grand Slam of Baseball Sims! Available for PC, Mac, and Linux. Pre-order your copy today and download it this Friday, April 12, 2013, three days before the official release on April 15!

The OOTP Developments Team

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