OOTP 10 Review (by Crewcrazy)

[Brian the Automator]

Out of the Park Baseball is routinely mentioned as one of the best baseball simulation games on the market, and for good reason. There are so many ways to play the game. You could choose to micro-manage every single game Tony LaRussa-style, controlling every pitch -- do you intentionally walk Ryan Howard with first base open, or do you choose to pitch around him and hope he gets himself out? You could choose to set your lineup and watch the results unfold from your comfy General Manager office. Or you could just choose to just let the AI handle everything and sim years at a time while watching your team re-write history.

 

It's all up to the user, which is both amazing and intimidating. New users may load up OOTP 10 and be overwhelmed by all the bells and whistles. Experienced players will be able to jump right in and enjoy the game, since not much has changed from OOTP 9. Luckily for both groups, however, there is good news.

 

For the inexperienced gamer, OOTP 10 is highly customizable -- virtually every feature in the game can be turned off or on. Want to keep a full farm system with multiple rookie league teams, a short-season A ball team, and other low-A clubs, but you don't want to deal with setting lineups and replacing injured players? Let your minor league managers take care of the day-to-day tasks, while keeping the ability to promote or demote players at will. Want to play with the Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays, but don't want to worry about how you're going to afford all that young talent in a few years? You can turn off team budgets, or add in a salary cap to level the playing field.

 

The high level of customization has always been there, however, so it's nothing new to seasoned OOTP players. Veterans will be thrilled to see that there are some major improvements over last year's game, though -- most notably with salary arbitration and free agent compensation, as well as noticeable upgrades in the pitching system.

 

SALARY ARBITRATION

 

One of the biggest -- and most exciting -- changes in OOTP 10 is the addition of a more realistic arbitration system. In past versions of the game, you were seemingly at the mercy of an unseen formula when it came to your arbitration-eligible players, especially when it came to a player's first year of arby eligibility. Those worries are put to bed with the new salary arbitration screen, which becomes available after the conclusion of the playoffs. On this screen you'll see a list of arbitration-eligible players, along with their age, service time, current salary, and relevant stats from the past season. Also included are text boxes for each player, where you enter the dollar amount for your team's offer, as well as buttons to "submit" and "withdraw" your offers. Withdrawing your offer effectively non-tenders a player -- a message pops up telling you that if no offer is made, the player becomes a free agent. I had no qualms about testing this feature on Chris Duffy.

 

The offer text box comes with a salary figure already listed, and the game explains that these values reflect the figures the player will be submitting. You are free (encouraged by the instructions, even) to offer lower amounts if you think the figures are too high. In my game, for example, Carlos Villanueva seemed to think that 85 innings of 5.08 ERA ball out of the bullpen was worth $3.6 million. Of course, that's probably partially due to Villanueva's high greed and low loyalty personality ratings. If the addition of a realistic arbitration process wasn't enough, the game even determines Super 2 eligibility -- if you have a player who is Super 2-eligible, their name will appear on the list with an asterisk.

 

After submitting your offers and simming to the day of the arbitration hearings, you will get alerts in your in-game message box breaking the results to you. While Doug Melvin has never gone into an arbitration hearing as GM of the real-life Brewers, I wasn't so fortunate. With Prince Fielder's extension not entered into the game in my review copy, Scott Boras took me for $12 million at the hearing, and Rickie Weeks also cashed in big after hitting 25 HR in a rare injury-free season.

 

FREE AGENT COMPENSATION

 

Past versions of OOTP tried to mimic the real-life compensation system, but it was so flawed that I often found myself playing without it. Not only is the system re-worked and more accurate in OOTP 10, but you are also provided a list of free agency-eligible players on the Salary Arbitration screen. There, you can see their type classification and choose to offer them arbitration. This is an improvement over the previous system, where there was no possibility of having a free agent return by choosing arbitration or a team not wanting to offer a top-name free agent a deal for fear of not being able to afford him.

 

When someone signs one of your free agents that was offered arby, you receive a message in your inbox informing you of the signing and the compensation received. In past versions of the game, losing a Type A meant gaining a first round pick and losing a Type B meant gaining a second round pick -- it was a good faith effort, but not really how the system works. In OOTP 10, you receive sandwich picks for the loss of Type B players, and the customary first rounder and sandwich pick for the loss of a Type A player.

 

The only problem I witnessed with the new compensation system is that some players are still given unwarranted designations. For example, after reaching the end of the 2009 season, Jason Tyner was listed as one of my pending free agents. Despite compiling just 12 AB in the Major Leagues during the season, Tyner earned Type B classification. Mike Rivera, hitting .182 with 5 HR as my back-up catcher, also earned Type B status. I gladly offered them arbitration in hopes of gaining a pair of cheap sandwich picks. While no one took the bait for those two, I was able to get a cheap draft pick when Arizona signed Jorge Julio (also a Type B) during Spring Training in 2010 following a slew of bullpen injuries. The compensation system has come a long way and is greatly improved, but some more work could be done to make the system more consistent.

 

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

 

While the changes to the arbitration and compensation processes are two huge improvements, OOTP 10 includes a slew of other tweaks and improvements that only enforce the game's reputation as the most in-depth sim on the market.

The game comes with 2009 Major League rosters, and the improved AI does a great job producing realistic results with the roster sets -- when I used the 2009 quick start, the Brewers' starting lineup was nearly identical to the "real" Milwaukee lineup (the only difference was the AI favoring Mike Rivera's offense over Jason Kendall's defense). The Trade AI is also strong -- I had no luck sending Jeff Suppan to Tampa Bay for Evan Longoria, and when I shopped Bill Hall on the trade market, no one wanted to take on his contract.

 

In the past, pitcher ratings and attributes were fairly vague -- you had the stuff, movement, and control ratings, but not much else contributed to a pitchers' success. That has been changed for OOTP 10 -- not only is a pitchers' repertoire no longer purely aesthetic, but every pitcher has individual ratings for every pitch they can throw. Clicking on Cole Hamels' player profile, you can actually see how much better his change-up is compared to his fastball. The individual pitch rating system can also be beneficial in scouting. When you're looking through the draft pool, do you take the guy whose pitch ratings are nearly fully developed but just average, or the guy who has the potential to develop a dominating fastball/change-up combo through years of development? Will your old ace be able to maintain his spot at the top of the rotation once he loses a few miles on his fastball?

 

If you're the type that likes to play out every game, there are some new additions for you as well. In addition to the traditional broadcast and webcast game views, a third tab has been added -- a "widgets" view that not only allows you to control nearly every piece of information available to you, but where that information is displayed on the screen. Do you like the in-depth stat breakdowns available in the "web" view but like seeing the ball-in-play animations in the "broadcast" view? You can now have both with just a few clicks of the mouse. It may be a small change, but the ability to customize the actual layout of the graphics and statistics is just another feather in the cap of the highly-customizable OOTP series.

 

OVERVIEW

 

It didn't seem possible, but OOTP 10 is even more customizable and in-depth than any OOTP game has been before. If you've been away from the OOTP series for a few years but have been waiting to jump back in, OOTP 10 is definitely the game to get. Even if you've kept up with every version of the game, the new features definitely make OOTP 10 worth the $39.99 price tag. With so many different ways to play, the game has an extremely high re-play value that makes every penny worth it.

[Diskono]

I just bought this a few days ago, and I've been pretty impressed so far. I haven't played OOTP since version 6, but it all came back to me fairly quickly, and I didn't have much trouble getting around the newer interface. It seems a lot more realistic overall than v5/6 (though I was able to get the Red Sox to give me Jason Bay for Bill Hall and Mike Rivera).

 

In the past it was always pretty easy to turn just about any team around into a contender fairly quickly. Seems a lot more difficult now - I can't trade crappy vets for 5-star prospects anymore! The scouting system is interesting. You can toggle between a league-wide scouting database, which seems to be overly optimistic about most players; and your scouting director's database, which seems to be more accurate on most guys, but way off on others (for example, Yovani Gallardo is a 1-star player in my current game, and I offloaded Jason Tyner for a 4 1/2-star MR prospect who doesn't appear to be as good as my scouts thought). But we'll see how it goes...hopefully the game doesn't let me become a perennial 100+ game winner for 20 years straight anymore.

[crewcrazy]

One thing that I didn't come across until after I gave the review to Brian was the scouting in the June draft, which is maddeningly inconsistent. It seems that most times, no matter how much money you pour into amateur scouting and how good your scout's ratings are, they'll severely overrate some players which makes hitting on your first round pick nearly impossible if you just go with your scout's recommendation. If you're playing with scouting on, I'd suggest comparing your scout's ratings with the ratings provided by OSA, which acts as the average of every scouting directors' reports. If your scout's ratings are astronomically higher than the ratings provided by OSA, chances are he's the one screwing up the average ratings and the player isn't as good as he thinks he is. Even then, your results will be mixed, but it might be something you want to try if you're picking in the 20's and there aren't many quality players left to begin with. If you're trying to rebuild the Nationals and are constantly picking in the Top 5, though, it can be extremely frustrating and you may end up setting your organization even further back. Nothing sucks more than taking a stud prospect 2nd overall with plus-plus power potential, only to realize once you get to your transactions screen that he'll be lucky to get higher than AA in his career.

 

There's always the option of going into your settings and switching off the scouting system for the June draft, revealing the "real" ratings (with scouting off, the OSA ratings are the player's true ratings) for the purposes of the draft, and turning them back on afterwards, too. Some people feel like that's cheating, so it's completely up to the player.

 

If anyone playing the game has questions/concerns/comments about the game, the community at http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/ is generally very helpful, and sometimes the developer even pops in to answer major questions. I'd recommend using the board's search feature before signing up and posting questions, though, because they do tend to get a lot of repeat questions that could simply be answered by looking at older topics. The mods subforum is also really cool -- plenty of custom add-ons available for free there, including everything from real team logos (in a variety of different styles, just click around) to full photopacks of every player in the game.

[Oldcity]

You can find flaws in any simulation, but this has the least I've seen. It's by far the best one I've played, and I find it to be much more in depth than Baseball Mogul which I played a few years ago. I'm hooked and spend more time on my league's site than I care to admit.

[sbrylski]

I really got to get in a 10 league. I have the game, but I only (attempt) to play solo leagues. I always get to in-depth and struggle to get each league off the ground. TLB and I are in a great OOTP 6.5 league though.

[Nader Raider Tim]

Ugh, you made me want to buy this. Quick someone tell me it sucks...

[kramnoj]

I have really enjoyed this version. There are some mistakes, such as teams signing a Type B player surrender a 2nd round pick, but I have really enjoyed it. I have probably started a 2009 Brewers season half a dozen times as a GM trying to win a WS and playing out 15 years or so to try to get one of the current Brewers into the HOF. I haven't succeeded in either one of those goals yet (well, I have won a couple of WS, but I think it was like in 2016 or something each time).

 

Gallardo starting off as a 20 rated player is annoying, but he will sometimes develop into a 50 or 60 player (on the 80 player rating scale). The game loves Swindle. There have been a few times where he became my closer for a few years.

 

I would definitely recommend the game for anyone who loves playing at GM.

[Diskono]

Gallardo starting off as a 20 rated player is annoying, but he will sometimes develop into a 50 or 60 player (on the 80 player rating scale). The game loves Swindle. There have been a few times where he became my closer for a few years.

For me, its really appears to be just Bruce Seid that doesn't like Gallardo. He pitches like an #1 starter in my game, and other GMs seem to like him.

 

Weird thing I noticed last night: I needed some additional outfielders for my Class A squads, and actually found some really good hitting pitchers (like AAA level, ratings-wise) available late in the draft. I'm experimenting with changing their positions, to see if they can be useful players.

 

edit: wow, this game is awfully realistic. I signed Ben Sheets to a minor league deal. He came back from injury, pitched a couple games in AAA, and I called him up after I had an injury to one of my other starters. He makes 3 very good starts, and asks for a contract extension. Give him 2 years + team option, and the very next day, he gets goes down with bone chips in his elbow. Only out for the rest of the season, but still...

[brewcrewkid14]

Has anybody tried this game out on Mac? I recently just got a MacBook but have played up to OOTP 2007 on Windows; however, it isn't available for Mac. I was just curious before I make my $40 investment into the game.

 

EDIT: I was curious to here what people who have had experience with both OOTP 8 and OOTP 10 say about the difference/improvement in the most recent release over OOTP 8. Going off to college, I am in a bit of a bind financially, and I am considering just buying the $20 version of OOTP 8 instead of shelling out the money for 10. Is there that much of a difference? Would it be worth it to just buy 10? What do you guys think?

[Getpaddled]

I bought OOTP 10 about a month ago. I really like it, I used to use a couple of other sims out there and am now going to use OOTP full time. Id really like to get in a league sometime soon as I have the game pretty much figured out. If anyone needs a fill in or a full time owner in a league they are in let me know http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[brewcrewkid14]

Has anybody been able to figure out how to install the game onto a MacBook Pro? I've downloaded it, but for some reason when I go to open it up, it comes up with an error message. Luckily I haven't bought the game yet...

[1992casey]

If there isn't a Mac version of OOTP, I'd guess that you'd need to install Windows on your Mac to run it. To do that, you need Boot Camp or a program like Parallels.

 

Boot Camp is free, and you may already have it. It requires a separate bootup to run Windows. Parallels and a couple of similar products will run OS X and Windows simultaneously. Boot Camp offers better performance; the products that can be run simultaneously with OS X offer convenience. For a lot of stuff, you don't need the performance benefit that Boot Camp would offer. I couldn't tell you if OOTP would fall into that category or not.

[Diskono]

There is a Mac version, but I'd ask or search on their forums for the error you're getting. Chances are someone else has seen it, so they might have some ideas.

 

FWIW, the linux version works perfectly on my 64-bit Debian system.

[T B0NE 10]

I checked out the site...

 

Theres a full demo available that you can use for 7 days.

 

Demo