The Blog for the Sports Gamer

As I continue digging into PureSim I’m ready to make a few more blanket observations:

• I enjoy managing the individual games in PS more than I do OOTP and the reason is mainly cosmetic. I like the PS sound effects and animated ball. I also love the fact that when you set the game speed to Very Fast you can zip through a game in 10-15 minutes. OOTP’s new forced pitch by pitch mode is uneccessary and drags out games for those that want a true 1-pitch game.

• That said, I wish PureSim showed more player info on-screen during a game, stuff like defensive range and arm stregnth should be on the screen at all times (for players in the field).
• Just like OOTP, there are things that happen on the field that make no sense, and the obtuse play by play doesn’t provide any answers. How does a CF with a weak arm throw out a fast runner tagging up to score on a “deep” fly ball? I guess he slipped. The PbP in all of these text games really need to be as detailed as humanly possible and I think both games fail here. We either need simple real time graphics or better text.
• The base simulation engine in PureSim reflects MLB a bit more accurately than OOTP — at least with fictional leagues. I ran a few test sims based on fantasy drafts and the general statistics looked surprisingly good. A sprinkling of starters with sub 3.00 ERAs, 40 to 50 hitters with .300+ averages, team stats, when compared to real baseball, all looked very beliveable. Sometimes OOTP can suffer a bit here. I know you have all of the modifier tools to tweak it but I like that the base PS stats loked this good. Granted, I dunno how well it holds up after, say, 10 years. (If you want to do your own tests for this stuff I’d check out Baseball Reference to get an idea.)
• PureSim has built-in Lahman support. Fire it up and play with the 1975 Reds as easy as pie.
• The CPU-CPU trade AI in PS is not QUITE as weird as OOTP but there are still trades that will make you look sideways. Now, the cut-player gaffe is not in PS so guys don’t do the sign and cut thing, but some of the trades I think are odd at best. If anyone tells you that PureSim’s trade AI is vastly better than OOTP — they are lying. It’s just that the cut player bug in OOTP makes a huge dent in that game.
• OOTP has a HUGE advantage in terms of interface. Take or leave the new OOTP look, and I know a lot of you are still getting used to it, but OOTP presents information, particularly player stats, MUCH better than PS. There are a lot of pop up windows and expandable screens in PS and even then, OOTP tracks more stats.
• In PS you do get some cool tools, though, like ratings and stats graphs and the Bill James “toy.” I still want SOMEONE to include WIN SHARES. Damn it.
• There are no scouts or coaches in PS.
• One of the biggest beefs in past editions of PS is sim speed. Well, it’s still not “fast” unless you do an “Unattended Sim” but that turns over control of all human teams to the CPU, doesn’t track game logs, etc. If you do a regular sim, this is still a fairly slow sim game. Faster than before, but slower than OOTP and MUCH slower than Baseball Mogul which still has, by far, the fastest sim engine on the planet. Clay, please redo that game’s interface. Please. Mogul has so many cool features but the aging interface is killing that game, man.
• There is no front office worries in PS — no ticket prices, etc. The only money stuff you deal with is player contracts.
• PS is also not nearly as deep as OOTP in terms of league and world scope. I still contend that OOTP has more potential if SI can fix its AI issues. But I am having a lot of fun with PureSim and if SI fumbles the patching process I’ll have no problem playing it long-term.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 8:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.