I appreciate that in this video, you share your thoughts, opinions, and preferences, while also making sure to be like “but hey this is a game. You do you, bro”

Love seeing all the settings people use. It's so fun to see all the different ways to play.

Old School Sports just released a tutorial on trade difficulty settings. He tried making trades on the default settings, the easiest with favoring prospect the most, easiest favoring veterans the most, hardest favoring prospects the most, and hardest favoring veterans the most. He would do a shop and get virtually the same offers. He would try to trade for a player, and got virtually the same demands for each setting. He tried it with superstars. He tried it with journeymen. And he tried it with prospects. The differences were negligable. It was a "disheartening &$@#?!* situation." Only fitting since he conducted the experiment on Lee Elia Day. After watching your tutorial. I'm inspired to try the same thing, but alter the AI Evaluation Settings. That might very well be what drives the bus here.

Always interesting. Your settings have probably influenced the way I set up the last 3 years more than anyone. First and foremost, the draft must move. What I have struggled with more is preferring an influx of fictional talent. I like seeing more surprises and it has never unbalanced my league. Adding to that, I'm frustrated right now because the draft seems so bad in 25 a couple seasons in, nothing like 24. Great stuff!

One aspect of the game which I love is Associations. Hardly anyone uses them, but it’s a way to get around the two sub-league limit. I’m a schedule geek, and I like scheduling games between teams in different leagues using Associations.

Our settings are pretty much the same. A few differences: 1) I don't allow the trading of injured >7 players; 2) I use the 1-100 ratings, but have been tinkering with the 20-80; 3) I don't allow hiring coaches from other teams; 4) I use much higher trade settings but not hard mode. I don't mind HM, but I hate that they always demand another player. It would be one thing if I had unlimited minor league rosters, but I put limits on each level; 5) I allow established international free agents at default level; 6) I also leave IAFA's on default, but I like your idea there. I may revisit that; 7) I allow a default number of scouting discoveries. Most are bums anyway; 8) I allow league evolution except for nickname changes. Those are so cheesy; 9) I use .75 aging and 1.25 development for both pitchers and hitter. My idea is to allow long careers and chase all time records; and 10) I use 1.25 TCR just to mix things up.

The devs adjusted the 20-80 rating scale for OOTP 25. Its now supposed to more closely match the actual scale used in real life (with each 10 points being a standard deviation). 50 should be average major leaguer. But one overall result of the change is that there should be fewer players rated 55+ Overall . . . and very few 65+.

LA Knight? YEAH!!

There was a small bug where High School draft players had slightly too low current ratings so they tended to get overwhelmed in A ball. But this was patched and its working fine now (from what I can tell).

I'm an Englishman trying to get into OOTP baseball, but the language you're using is totally alien to me! I thought moving from FM to OOTP would be easy. Can you recommend a Baseball for Dummies video?

I would rather have control of drafting and signing free agents and the promotion/demotion of top prospects on my squad

I can say for sure that the trade reputation system works well with trades not on hard mode. I play this game more for fun than challenge (I'm a speedrunner, so that's my challenge - in other games, obviously), so I use normal mode for trades. Otherwise I use a lot of similar settings, and a lot of the different ones are just defaults that I'm fine with, like showing ratings over 80 being fine by me. I'd also be fine if the 100pt scale was default because numbers don't scare me. The two things I do like doing differently that are of any real significance are: upping TCR, which is basically my way of injecting a bit of chaos into the mix, and blunting some of the edges I give myself compared to you since player development becomes a bit more of a crapshoot - one I can rig a bit in my favor with staff, but still a crapshoot; and keeping scout discoveries around, just for fun. Sometimes I even manage to trade for a cracked scouting discovery, though it's usually after their development has turned out mid.

interesting take on the settings

Was looking forward to this one! Thx ❤. Any thoughts on minor and rookie league team sizes?

Player Evaluation settings. I found it best to just leave the default. Increasing the Ratings weighting will make trading harder . . . IF the AI has accurate ratings (or you are not using scouts)! But if their scout sucks and the ratings are off than they will do better using the actual stats, assuming of course that actual stats are close to actual underlying ratings. In my current game I have a rookie catcher come up and play full time over three seasons and has an OPS of .825 (never finishing under .800). But checking him in the Editor and he's rated for just a .680 OPS! I have no idea how he's been so lucky for the past three years! 🤔Perhaps I need to trade him now before reality sets in!

hey, looking for a game view video, do you have one out at the moment?

this year i started playing with long term injuries set to low. i left short term on high so that depth is still important. losing a star player for the season is such a bummer though.

the mlb draft in june makes more sense for me. too much going on in july as it is when i play ootp. i'm gonna add a short draft league in my universe this season. this should give me a better idea about the high school player potential.

I am going with 10 on Development Lab for now, just to have room for some of my younger prospects

I always use your AI settings and change the month of the draft to June like you suggested.

Draft pick trading is always on for me. I don't ever sign international free agents anymore because it feels like they never pan out. Trading the cap money almost always results in high draft picks. Those guys pan out a lot.

How many series do you sim before you start making adjustments or do you particularly do a comb over after each?

I'm sure by now. You know that changing the draft day to June 1st is pointless. I'm torn between just leaving it alone completely or force starting my rookie league seasons to date in early to mid June. I hate change.

I'm surprised you've had an issue with International Scouting Discoveries . . . I honestly can't remember my scout EVER making a good discovery! (and I use scouts with Outstanding or Legendary international scouting). Literally every 'discovery' is a 2 star potential guy. Perhaps sone develop and I've just never noticed. The International Amateur Free Agent pool on the other hand . . . I use the default size and I feel like it consistently produces TOO many star players. There are some players with extreme ratings coming out of it. I shudder to think what happens doubling the size of it? Or perhaps its not a problem because there isn't enough draft money to hire more players anyway? Do unhired international free agents just disappear? I don't feel the International Established free agents are such a problem in 25? They are a little lower valued than established stars so you can get some deals but the AI is paying good ones pretty solid money. My smaller league has 5 or 6 each season and half the time there aren't even any worth hiring. I kind of like that it might throw out some bargains every so often. I suspect that if you were playing with Trade setting lowering 'based on ratings' that could have an impact on what the AI will pay the international free agents that don't have any stats history? Perhaps that was making your AI under value them?

If they get drafted after their season is already over, do they still credit for a year of professional service?

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do you still set minor league age limits?

Thanks for what u doing for all of us bro! U the goat! (And also u the only reason I decided to play that game) I have a problem tho, ops+ of my players always 100 except for mlb stats, ops shows correctly everywhere, but ops+ only at the major league level. What do i do bro? Thanks again!