Questions

I am going to (again) run a 12-year sim today using the new patch. However, I have some serious questions about online league game play that commissioners everywhere need to consider. Many of the solo game issues reported in various forums don’t impact the online community very much since humans do the trading, waivers, etc. So our list of things that need fixing is probably not too long at this point. But here are my concerns:

(1) How do we handle “dead” time? One big difference between OOTP 6.5 and the current version is that when a season ended, the league fast forwarded to the next big event (draft, free agency, etc.). OOTPB 2006 is more real-time, thus there is the potential for dead time in-between seasons. We will have to come up with sim strategies that allow us to go through pre-season and not mess-up game mechanics.

(2) How do we handle league file compression? I think the days of using the inefficient zip compression algorithm may be coming to a close with OOTPB 2006. The files are too big and there are other options (rar, ace, uha) that might do a better job. This will require owners to adjust their gaming habits developed over many years and use other programs than winzip and the like.

(3) What reports do we really need to upload? There’s been some work done by the online community to figure this out, but this still remains a big issue for us. The days are over when 200 MB server space could handle whatever OOTP could dish out.

(4) Scouts? Coaches? Most online leagues do not use coaches or scouts with OOTP 6.5. This primarily had to do with the html reports showing the real ratings (as opposed to the “scouted” ratings). With OOTPB 2006, scouts are probably a necessity. But how will leagues handle making a bad situation worse for struggling teams who can’t afford the higher priced scouts? Will leagues that use salary caps have to adjust the total amount of the cap to account for this new financial drain? I don’t think we need coaches as much as we need scouts, but what is the case for including coaches in online leagues?

These are the four questions I need to resolve before seriously beginning to move my league to the newest version.

Share

One thought on “Questions”

Leave a Reply