If It Seems That I am Always Complaining About Change ...

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If It Seems That I am Always Complaining About Change ...

Post by Ted » Fri May 17, 2019 2:37 pm

Perhaps it is because we can't ever seem to leave the league alone long enough to figure out what is going on. I'll admit, I am conservative by nature, and prefer slow, incremental change that gives time to see how it affects the league dynamic. Since the middle of the 20's, the following things have happened, every one either dramatically changing the structure of the league, how talent is evaluated, or how talent comes into the league.

Mid to late 20's - draft pool become dramatically deeper
Somewhere between late 20's and early 30's, newly drafted players are much younger, with high school kids around 16-17 and college 18-19 (down from 18 and 20-21 respectively)
2029 - EBA Disappears - no more Rule 6, changes how players enter and leave the league, makes more vets available
2029 - First Expansion - four more teams added, realignment
Around 2030 - Steal rates explode
2034-2035 - Scout finds go insane, multiple teams add 2-3 60+ grade players
2035 - Second Expansion - two more teams added, realignment
Around 2036 - steal rates turned down
2036 - Scout finds decreased, IFA classes go nuts for a couple seasons
2037 - UMEBA established. AAAA FA's siphoned off (more in 2038 than in 2037)
Mid 2037 - change to relative ratings
2038 - IFA classes back to normal, draft continues to deepen.
2040 - Planned Third Expansion - two more teams, realignment

Starting at 2029, we are averaging more than one major change every season. If you tell me that this doesn't make it harder for GMs who don't have or care to spend as much time on the league to compete, I will have a tough time believing you. If you want to tell me that those GMs having a harder time keeping up with those of us who were either A) already very good at the game, or B) have a LOT of time to put into adjusting are not at a disadvantage, I think you are mistaken. If you tell me that none of this will adversely affect parity, I do not believe you. As we have continued to make change after change, I have been the obnoxious squeaky wheel, taking about how we should give things time to normalize and work to get better parity before making more changes. I have been repeatedly ignored. And here we are, with three division races over by July, and all but one over August, and a whopping three or so teams competing for the final wild card spot.

This not even counting tweaks to the injury rate settings, and the adjustment to a new version of OOTP every 3 or so seasons (which admittedly is usually rather slight.)

Given that it takes 4-5 season for a new player to get into the league after being drafted our found or bought in IFA, and that the cycle of a generation of players is about a decade, this rate of change is incredibly alarming and very dangerous to the competitive environment of the league.
Last edited by Ted on Sat May 18, 2019 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: If It Seems That I am Always Complaining About Change ...

Post by bschr682 » Fri May 17, 2019 3:25 pm

Unless I’m mistaken and please correct me if I am, but I don’t think parity is the goal of the league. We’ve never had it and never will.
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Re: If It Seems That I am Always Complaining About Change ...

Post by RonCo » Fri May 17, 2019 3:39 pm

It's not complete parity we're after, true. We do want the environment to be one that a build from scratch can be done, however, and I think that's what we've got.

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I'll just note that several of the changes Ted's noting are things he (and me, and others) were aggressively advocating for in order to steady things or make them stronger for the league, so including them on this kind of list seems to mostly serve to make the list look longer.

As an example: when steal rates went bonkers, many people discussed how "unrealistic" they were, and Matt adjusted them down. Same for the IC finds. So there's two changes in your list that we both wanted. I'm also not sure I'd include the 2037 "IFA classes were back to normal draft classes continue to deepen" as a specific instance of change," but that's just arguing for arguing.

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That said, we are certainly in a period of not insignificant change, and that change will cause people who adapt to it to gain advantages over time. I'm sympathetic to Ted's point of view even if I think he's stretching too hard in places. The BBA does change things on occasion. :)
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Re: If It Seems That I am Always Complaining About Change ...

Post by RonCo » Fri May 17, 2019 4:01 pm

To maybe be too pedantic regarding the IFA thing, fluctuations and variability in the Scouting Finds and IFA class quality are at least partially inherent inside OOTP (regardless of version). The only way we can remove variability from year to year is to just turn everything off, but--at least to me--that's no fun. You can kind of say that about pretty much everything in OOTP, and it's the variability and random nature of outcomes that makes the game theory of the world interesting. :)

Ultimately, though, the global changes we've actually made and continue to make are:

- Expansion
- Deletion/Creation of extra leagues
- Altering PCMs for draft classes (which I think we will begin reducing through a controlled process as noted in the announcement we made a few weeks ago)
- Adjusting to the 20/80 relative ratings
- Changing the Injury environment (which was done when people--driven by Ted--complained that all their minor leaguers were getting hurt)
- Adjusting league totals (the steal rate thing)

It's my opinion that we may also want to eventually do some things with the financial structure of the game to even things up on budgets, but to Ted's point about stability, I'd suspect we'll want to wait on them even though they'd probably be the strongest things we could do for the sake of true parity.

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"Changes" and other uncertainties that the game makes itself are considerable, also, including:

- Ratings fluctuation over time
- "Random" finding of IC
- "Random" nature of injuries and recovery
- "Random" big years, "random" McNeill years
- Draft picks who go play basketball
- Draft picks who turn down $9M one year and sign for $300K the next
- I can go on and on ... (as can Ted and many others of us)

All these things require a GM to be able to diagnose situations on the fly and make changes to plans. So communication and planning of league initiated changes are really important, but GMs also need to be able to adjust to how the game changes.
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