Announcement: Wilson Andrade and Storyline Retirements

[RonCo]

So how far back does the statute of limitations go? I had a big time reliever prospect retire on me to play "professional golf". Ramon Suarez was a 12/7/7/ closer prospect when I had him, my #7 at the time. See thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=25624&p=144300&hil ... ez#p144300

Bringing it to Matt's attention.

[Bumstead]

Side note: if Andrade has potentials of 2's across the board, then Boise would like to add him to our collection!

[indiansfan]

Great decision.

[bschr682]

cool little bonus for whoever is in Vancouver. Eric Oliver wishes you well. I already have a sorta plan in the works for a tn/feature involving Oliver if I ever land back in the BBA.

[JimBob2232]

Peter Fuller says hello. Play basketball. Come'on Man. You JUST got called up!

https://statspl.us/brewster/reports/new ... 12265.html

[ae37jr]

While I really felt for Brandon and others who have lost quality prospects due to unlucky games rolls... I kinda liked them. Stuff like that really does happen in real life. Some players can't deal with the professional life, being away from home, heck some even die.

Not trying to fight or lobby for a rule change. It's not that big of a deal either way. Just sad to see it go.

And yes, I have had a prospect suffer a career ending injury....one month after the draft. Nowhere near as good as Andrade, but still. I know it sucks just like any other bad game roll.

[RonCo]

While I really felt for Brandon and others who have lost quality prospects due to unlucky games rolls... I kinda liked them. Stuff like that really does happen in real life. Some players can't deal with the professional life, being away from home, heck some even die.

Not trying to fight or lobby for a rule change. It's not that big of a deal either way. Just sad to see it go.

And yes, I have had a prospect suffer a career ending injury....one month after the draft. Nowhere near as good as Andrade, but still. I know it sucks just like any other bad game roll.

I agree with you, and I think the rest of the board does to a greater degree, too. The deciding issue was that the feature is not properly designed right now for both frequency and pure logic reasons. If/when OOTP fixes the base issue, I'm pretty sure we'll turn it back on.

[Ted]

While I really felt for Brandon and others who have lost quality prospects due to unlucky games rolls... I kinda liked them. Stuff like that really does happen in real life. Some players can't deal with the professional life, being away from home, heck some even die.

Not trying to fight or lobby for a rule change. It's not that big of a deal either way. Just sad to see it go.

And yes, I have had a prospect suffer a career ending injury....one month after the draft. Nowhere near as good as Andrade, but still. I know it sucks just like any other bad game roll.

I agree with you, and I think the rest of the board does to a greater degree, too. The deciding issue was that the feature is not properly designed right now for both frequency and pure logic reasons. If/when OOTP fixes the base issue, I'm pretty sure we'll turn it back on.

It's odd how people can differ so much on this. I'm not saying anyone is wrong or crazy, but to me, we play this game to match baseball wits. While injuries and life altering events are "part of the game", there's not a real athlete alive playing the actual game who wouldn't choose to make them not happen if possible. So to me, wanting to mimic the detrimental parts of reality and taking away from the pure competition just doesn't make sense. I realize I'm in the vast minority here, but I'd have no problem playing in an environment with injuries turned off. It would be weird from a depth standpoint, and probably require some roster size and player creation/depth adjustment, but I'd love it.

To look at it another way. Let's say you're a racing enthusiast and there's a racing simulator. Would you really want to simulate manufacturer defects or part failures? To me, injuries aren't "part of" any game. They are an unavoidable sidecar to athletic performance. In real life, we don't mimic poor training methods from earlier decades to make the game more "Authentic". We don't not perform new surgeries to rehab athletes simply because they weren't available in the past. Someday in the future, we'll be able to simply swap out a bad part and have a player back in weeks, instead of months to a year. Maybe even better. And we'll do it. Because to get the best competition we want the best players playing.

I get that injuries and player retirements and random stuff like that make it "harder" or more complex, but it's not the type of complex I want.
I'm not advocating a change here. Just commenting on how it's interesting that people can enjoy different things to such an extreme degree.

[RonCo]

Yes, I've raced simulations, and yes, part of it is realistic mechanical failure and what car you drive. That's part of the fun. Nothing is more heart-wrenching than trying to keep from over-revving a 1969 Lotus as you're trying to haul ass around the Nurburgring, nothing is more fun than making it happen with a Ferrari breathing down your neck.

I agree we're matching wits. But we're not merely playing chess here, to me the bigger part of the fun is the fictional history (that I admit like to be "realistic" in that comic-bookish way I've mentioned before). For me these things are great fun ... even when they happen to me.

[RonCo]

This may sound odd coming from me, but to me the times when I'm having the most fun is when the game is its furthest away from chess. I want as much "reasonable" randomness I can get because then the game theory in making decisions is so much more baseball-like from the GMs seat.

[RonCo]

So, carrying on...things like the IC and scouting finds are great fun because they simulate real things. Not perfectly, but semi-close. And, really, from a competitive standpoint, if I were a building team, I would want the game to be providing a lot more of these than a lot less. I'd much, much, much prefer more IC guys than the deep drafts approach, anyway. But, like you're thing there...that's just my own viewpoint and I figure I'm in the vast minority on that one.

[Bumstead]

This situation happens too frequently in OOTP. It emulates nothing in real life because the frequency is whack. It's things like this that OOTP "engineers" into the game improperly that make the game more irritating than fun. I don't care about real life baseball; I don't even watch it anymore. I love the statistics and the competition. Things that take away from those 2 things make the game less fun for me. Playing a dynasty on my own is a whole different animal than competing against live humans on-line. The playing field should be kept cleaner on-line IMHO. It's not, but it should be. This decision was a pure no-brainer.

[StormZ_23]

Great decision guys and its always nice to get a free draft pick. Just curious, how was Vancouver affected by storylines in the past?

[Lane]

This situation happens too frequently in OOTP. It emulates nothing in real life because the frequency is whack.

Yup, that's what we decided and what Ron's communicating to the dev team.

[Ted]

Yes, I've raced simulations, and yes, part of it is realistic mechanical failure and what car you drive. That's part of the fun. Nothing is more heart-wrenching than trying to keep from over-revving a 1969 Lotus as you're trying to haul ass around the Nurburgring, nothing is more fun than making it happen with a Ferrari breathing down your neck.

I agree we're matching wits. But we're not merely playing chess here, to me the bigger part of the fun is the fictional history (that I admit like to be "realistic" in that comic-bookish way I've mentioned before). For me these things are great fun ... even when they happen to me.

Plus 1 million for the Nurbugring and '69 Lotus references. That track is the ultimate shit and god damn if I don't love me an old Lotus.

[Ted]

Yes, I've raced simulations, and yes, part of it is realistic mechanical failure and what car you drive. That's part of the fun. Nothing is more heart-wrenching than trying to keep from over-revving a 1969 Lotus as you're trying to haul ass around the Nurburgring, nothing is more fun than making it happen with a Ferrari breathing down your neck.

I agree we're matching wits. But we're not merely playing chess here, to me the bigger part of the fun is the fictional history (that I admit like to be "realistic" in that comic-bookish way I've mentioned before). For me these things are great fun ... even when they happen to me.

Plus 1 million for the Nurbugring and '69 Lotus references. That track is the ultimate shit and god damn if I don't love me an old Lotus.

But what I will say is that I'd rather fail because I'm not a good enough driver, than because someone put my car together poorly. That's really my point.

[GoldenOne]

Yes, I've raced simulations, and yes, part of it is realistic mechanical failure and what car you drive. That's part of the fun. Nothing is more heart-wrenching than trying to keep from over-revving a 1969 Lotus as you're trying to haul ass around the Nurburgring, nothing is more fun than making it happen with a Ferrari breathing down your neck.

I agree we're matching wits. But we're not merely playing chess here, to me the bigger part of the fun is the fictional history (that I admit like to be "realistic" in that comic-bookish way I've mentioned before). For me these things are great fun ... even when they happen to me.

Plus 1 million for the Nurbugring and '69 Lotus references. That track is the ultimate shit and god damn if I don't love me an old Lotus.

But what I will say is that I'd rather fail because I'm not a good enough driver, than because someone put my car together poorly. That's really my point.

And in this case Ted, you get both.

[ae37jr]

I think it all boils down to the preference of realism vs arcade styles. The thing that draws me to OOTP is that it is the realest game I can find. I feel like I really am the gm of a team with all the decisions and layers of immersion. It comes to life even more in a fictitious league like this with fake players that we can build into real life characters.

Ultimately I care less about winning, or at least dominating. I want it to be hard. I want things to not go my way sometimes because that happens in real life too. The struggle makes me scramble to try to find a better way to make things work. To work with what I have rather then a formulated system that's on auto pilot. I feel like it's a lot more fun and gratifying to over achieve then to under achieve.

But I do love that I'm in a diverse league that doesn't all feel the same way I do. If everyone played with my mindset, the Landis wouldn't mean as much. Here, I know I have to swim through the sharks to win one. That creates another brick wall that I feel like I need to break through just to do it. If it were easy, I probably wouldn't care.

[RonCo]

But what I will say is that I'd rather fail because I'm not a good enough driver, than because someone put my car together poorly. That's really my point.

I do understand that point.

At some point, though, the two ideas are inextricably tangled. I can influence if my car breaks or not. And since I know my car is fragile, I know I have to be my best to keep it together. On the other hand, if I really want to race in an environment where we can pretend everything is equal, I'll go race in a spec league. I say "pretend" because in the real world just because the cars are prepared the same, the are not equal. Life has too many intolerances to let us make that actually happen.

[RonCo]

I think it all boils down to the preference of realism vs arcade styles. The thing that draws me to OOTP is that it is the realest game I can find. I feel like I really am the gm of a team with all the decisions and layers of immersion. It comes to life even more in a fictitious league like this with fake players that we can build into real life characters.

Ultimately I care less about winning, or at least dominating. I want it to be hard. I want things to not go my way sometimes because that happens in real life too. The struggle makes me scramble to try to find a better way to make things work. To work with what I have rather then a formulated system that's on auto pilot. I feel like it's a lot more fun and gratifying to over achieve then to under achieve.

But I do love that I'm in a diverse league that doesn't all feel the same way I do. If everyone played with my mindset, the Landis wouldn't mean as much. Here, I know I have to swim through the sharks to win one. That creates another brick wall that I feel like I need to break through just to do it. If it were easy, I probably wouldn't care.

Yes.

Ted and Jeff are two who often refer to this as a video game, and I respect that viewpoint ... but to me this is not a video game (which carries--for me-an image of guys punching joysticks and shoving hot-wing bar-b-que chips in their mouths!). To me, this is a deeply complex board game that requires strategy, intelligence, diplomacy, and a lot of luck to win...but that pays off by letting me create a glorious comic-book level reality inside my head that I find pleasing beyond measure.

There are a lots of spec leagues out there (that turn off a bunch of OOTO stuff just because they don't like it). But this isn't that league, and it hasn't been that league at least in the time that I've been here. It is this aspect that separates the BBA from most others I've looked at.

I've often said that my goal is not to find a league that's worth winning, but to find one that's worth losing. For me, this is that league.