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It is time to get ready to cut down the nets and DDS: College Basketball 2018 is bringing you the biggest and best version ever to let you fulfill your dreams of taking your favorite school to the top. So get ready to hop on the recruiting trail, coach – here’s a look at ten of the newest additions to the number one college basketball franchise on the market.
This press release is written and courtesy of the Wolverine Studios development company with slight modifications:
1) 2017 League Conversions
Right out of the gate we’ve got some big news – those dynasties you’ve been building with CB:2017….well keep on building them! For the first time ever you’ll be able to upgrade your league files to the new version!
2) Coach Rating Tracking and Improved Increases
We’ve put work into making the increase in ratings over time better distributed for the coaches with this version and have added a new feature to the coach card that will let you track the improvements in the ratings of a coach over time.
3) Rating Progression Tracking for Players
We didn’t just leave the progression tracking for the coaches either – the player card will have the same progression tracking for player ratings to see how your fabulous freshmen turn out over their careers.
4) Coach Lineage Information
Lineage is back but in a new and improved way. Now you will be able to track every coach that worked for every team and find out what happened to them over their careers. You wil be able to sort by team or by active head coach to see which legend of your association has the best coaching tree!
5) Improvements to AI in Recruiting and Tutoring
Recruiting is the key to any great college game and our recruiting AI has been honed over many years but each year we make it better and better. This year is no exception as we have worked with the AI to do an even better job of managing their resources and targeting players to up the challenge for you. The AI also does a better job of keeping poor students eligible and if you turn on the option for the AI to manage your operations it will handle tutoring of players as well.
6) UI Improvements and New Information
One of our goals is always to add new and useful information to the game. We’ve added an Assn. Info screen that will give you info about each conference and team so that you can see more information at a glance without having to hunt. The search option also remains if you have something in particular you know you’re looking for. We’ve also added a small drop box to the left window news tab to sort different news types and a few other touches here and there to make navigation easier and the screens to look even better than before!
7) Improvements to Walk-On and Recruit Generation
One additional area of improvement this season is in the generation of new recruits and walk-ons. With the recruiting improvements teams are doing a better job of filling their scholarships so the overall number of walk-ons has decreased and those that are generated are done so with a better stature for the kind of player they should be. We’ve also tweaked the recruit generation code to improve stats for players especially at smaller schools and to see that there are fewer outlier players.
8) New Asst. Coach Poaching and Job Offer Improvements
The coaching job search page now gives you more information about all of the jobs available including showing you if a team is on probation for unethical behavior. An even bigger new addition to the coaching feature is the ability to hire assistant coaches from other programs while they are employed – and it can happen to you as well! Assistant coaches who are entering their final contract year can now be lured away in the offseason for a better position. That’s great news if you like to play as the high powered schools…and you better keep some resumes handy if you’re coaching at a lower level school now.
9) Improvements in Relationship Feature
We’ve made a couple of changes here to make this feature even more interesting. The first is that your response options to the players are now changed a bit when you make a phone call to discuss their actions and secondly you’re going to get a response in the phone call to tell you how your relationship was impacted by the actions you took and the impacts vary based on the player themselves so you can never be quite sure what the reaction will be. The other change here is that we have built in some very rare incidents that you might experience to add a little bit more variety to what you deal with as coach.
10) New End Game Improvements
The last of our new items we are highlighting here has to do with end-game scenarios. We have made players try to react quicker as you can see from the screenshot above – down five with only 11 seconds left the player raced down the floor and launched a quick three. We have also worked to see that players have the ability to attempt a long range heave if possible so you never know what the closing seconds of the game will bring and nothing will be more exciting than watching your player drain one from half court to win at the buzzer!
So coach, what are you waiting for? Your destiny awaits at the top of that ladder. Take your school to the top of the basketball world, cut down the nets and build your dynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018!
The post It’s Tournament Time! DDS: College Basketball 2018 is now available appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games.
View the full article -
The third big change slated for early 2018 is all about defense. I wanted to talk about it now, because it’s likely going to roll out with the player rank change discussed in my last blog post.As everyone knows, Range Factor is currently the stat used on Pennant Chase to add a defensive element to the game (beside Fielding Percentage, which simply determines the likelihood of a player making an error).Range Factor was not an element that PC launched with back in 2008. The only defensive element was Fielding Percentage. Range Factor came in later, once users started requesting a feature to add defensive strategy to the game. It was an easy stat to use, because we already had what we needed in the database: Putouts, Assists and Games Played. Range Factor is a simple stat. It’s just (PO+A) / GP. Another version of Range Factor breaks it down into PO+A per nine innings, which is a better version, but one that we didn’t have access to. The idea behind Range Factor is that a player who is involved in a lot of plays must be able to cover a wider portion of the field. Not surprisingly, this stat no longer has any value (if it ever did) in a world where many other attempts to measure defense have cropped up.Anyone who has watched a lot of baseball knows that a fielder involved in a lot of plays doesn’t necessarily have good range. Maybe he’s an infielder playing behind a lot of ground-ball pitchers. Maybe he’s an outfielder playing in a large ballpark. There are so many reasons why one player might accumulate more opportunities than his peers. Nonetheless, the Pennant Chase community embraced Range Factor with very few complaints. Sure, people would comment once in a while on its inaccuracy, but everyone seemed to accept it was the only way to measure defense in the sim. Most people seemed grateful there was some measure of defense involved, even if it was an imperfect one. Defense continues to be an incredibly challenging thing to measure. Newer technology has led to stats like “Ultimate Zone Rating” where statisticians analyze tracking data to determine if players made exceptional plays, but defensive shifts and other factors can result in inaccuracies. Data scientists try to get as accurate as possible by comparing historical data, but there’s a level of subjectivity that’s inherently baked into the entire formula.That said, there’s not much choice but to use a slightly subjective statistic if we want to make defense a part of the game. Defensive Runs Saved is now a popular measure, which attempts to figure out how many runs a fielder saved by quantifying his entire defensive performance. Defensive WAR uses both UZR and DRS to figure out how many wins a player contributed to his team with his defensive.By now, any baseball fan has heard about WAR. The concept of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is to try to figure out how much value a player has over the average “replacement” player. WAR is far too complex to get into in this blog post, but it’s important to note that it’s relative to the player’s league and the position he plays. A second baseman who clubs 50 homers is likely to have a huge WAR because most second basemen don’t produce that kind of offense. WAR is also very subjective - so much so that there is no one universal WAR formula. Two major websites, Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, have completely different formulas (although they have aligned closer recently).So what are we going to use and what’s happening to Range Factor?Range Factor is going to be removed from the sim, but not right away. Since so many people have built teams around RF, I’m not going to yank it immediately. At the same time, I’m going to rollout the stat we’re going to use, which is Defensive WAR. We’ll be using the Baseball Reference calculation as of January 2018. It’s important to note, websites like Baseball Reference are constantly adjusting their WAR formulas, but I’m not going to be re-importing WAR for every player on a regular basis. So what you see on PC may not match any other website.The historical range of dWAR is basically somewhere around -5.0 to 5.0. Elite players tend to be over 2.0. If your dWAR is zero, that means you are a perfectly average player - your defense adds no extra value, but it doesn’t hurt your team either. If your dWAR is negative, it means you’re usually a liability in the field and not an asset. If your dWAR is positive, your defense can contribute to your team winning games that you may not have otherwise won. Okay, so how is dWAR going to work? It’s important to note that unlike Range Factor, dWAR is going to work on an individual basis and not a team basis. (Because of the flaws in Range Factor, it was added up and used at a team level in the sim. If your team RF was high, you could benefit.) But dWAR will come into play when the fielder is in action. Here’s the best way to figure out what the number means in PC: multiply it by 10 and then divide it by 3. That number is (roughly) the odds your player will make a positive or negative play any time a ball is hit to him. For example, if someone’s dWAR is 1.2, you’d get the number 4 (if you multiply it by 10 and then divided by 3). That means there’s a 4% chance your player will rob a hit any time the ball is hit to him. The opposite is true for a negative number. A negative dWAR means there’s a 4% chance your player will allow a hit that should have been fielded. (This is completely different than an error.) Yes, a player with a negative dWAR can sometimes make a good play, and vice versa, but that’s rare. Much like Range Factor, these impacts don’t show up in the box score, but they can have a very real effect. You can see how 4% odds add up when you consider how many times a player has a ball hit in his zone over the course of a game. In my trial runs, dWAR was impacting up to 5 or 6 hits a game, although the norm was between 2 - 4. And some games it never comes into play. What about WAR or oWAR?I chose to use dWAR because it’s one of the better options available to measure defense. But there is no great way to use overall WAR or Offensive WAR in the sim. When you start looking at overall WAR, it’s very dependent on the league and position played. It’s a measure of how valuable a player was at his position, not a measure of how great he was in the history of baseball or even if he was the best overall player that year, although people do tend to use WAR in that way. The other problematic thing is that there’s very little difference in WAR of great players. Adrian Beltre in 2004 and Mookie Betts in 2016 are just 1.5 WAR points away from Mickey Mantle’s 1956 season. I don’t think anyone feels those are remotely equal comparisons. But since dWAR is only impacting defense, and it does a good job of telling us if someone was a valuable defender, it’s much easier to use and get realistic results. We can all get behind Ozzie Smith or Andrelton Simmons robbing more hits than Manny Ramirez, and we can also agree that placing Manny in your outfield should come with a defensive risk.I’m really excited for this change. I think it’s going to keep a very important defensive strategy in PC, but it’s going to create value for the truly exceptional defenders. It’s also going to do something that Range Factor never did - create liabilities in the field, which creates tough lineup decisions for managers. Much like we saw people create entire strategies around Range Factor, I think we’re going to see something similar with dWAR.As usual, drop a note on the boards with any questions or comments.
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OOTP 19 is available for pre-order now. Save 10% and get the game 3 days early! Like any good network, the OOTP Developments Twitch channel has steadily expanded its programming options during the past few years. It currently offers this lineup of streaming hosts: Jeff Riddolls (Franchise Hockey Manager Producer): Jeff is currently running the […]
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There are three significant changes I had planned for early this year, and the first one already launched (the catcher’s arm rating changes). The next one I want to discuss is called “Rank”. As most of you know, Pennant Chase is a 100% stats-driven sim. The “ratings” we do use, such as “arm” or “speed” are calculated based on real stats (and thus are NOT intended to be a reflection of the player’s real-life athletic ability, but rather another statistic to drive sim results).So why would I be introducing a new stat called “Rank”? Well, here are the main problems I’m hoping this will solve:
- New players to PC often struggle to understand which players perform well and which don’t in various leagues. (Note - this is not designed to replace good ol’ research, because that will always be the best way to understand the game.)
- Commissioners forget to set their stat-adjustment levels. Leagues are able to use what is called “stat adjust” if they are finding the sim is creating too much or too little offensive. This can happen when a league’s player pool isn’t producing realistic results. The problem is, many custom leagues forget to properly adjust this. Also, the current formula uses batting average and something nonsensical for pitchers which is their IP minus their HA (IP-HA).
- Leagues that span a wide range of eras (like the All-Time Greats Auto Leagues) can disproportionately value some stats. It’s hard for someone like Clayton Kershaw, who is clearly one of the All-Time Greats and arguably top-ten from a statistical standpoint, to stand apart from the likes of Walter Johnson, Ed Walsh, Christy Mathewson, etc. in an ATG league.
- The logic to determine the Supplemental Draft order in Auto Leagues, which everyone complains about now.
- The logic in balancing the players offered to each team in the Auto Draft to begin with.
- The logic when the CPU has to draft a player for a user, such as in the draft room or Daily Drafts.
- The logic in determining the No Drop list.
- The logic for player contract demands.
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Here’s What To Look For In Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018
Sports fans we are closely approaching March and you know what that means! It is time to get ready to cut down the nets and DDS: College Basketball 2018 is bringing you the biggest and best version ever to let you fulfill your dreams of taking your favorite school to the top. So get ready to hop on the recruiting trail, coach – here’s a look at ten of the newest additions to the number one college basketball franchise on the market.
1) 2017 League Conversions
Right out of the gate we’ve got some big news – those dynasties you’ve been building with CB:2017….well keep on building them! For the first time ever you’ll be able to upgrade your league files to the new version!
2) Coach Rating Tracking and Improved Increases
We’ve put work into making the increase in ratings over time better distributed for the coaches with this version and have added a new feature to the coach card that will let you track the improvements in the ratings of a coach over time.
3) Rating Progression Tracking for Players
We didn’t just leave the progression tracking for the coaches either – the player card will have the same progression tracking for player ratings to see how your fabulous freshmen turn out over their careers.
4) Coach Lineage Information
Lineage is back but in a new and improved way. Now you will be able to track every coach that worked for every team and find out what happened to them over their careers. You wil be able to sort by team or by active head coach to see which legend of your association has the best coaching tree!
5) Improvements to AI in Recruiting and Tutoring
Recruiting is the key to any great college game and our recruiting AI has been honed over many years but each year we make it better and better. This year is no exception as we have worked with the AI to do an even better job of managing their resources and targeting players to up the challenge for you. The AI also does a better job of keeping poor students eligible and if you turn on the option for the AI to manage your operations it will handle tutoring of players as well.
6) UI Improvements and New Information
One of our goals is always to add new and useful information to the game. We’ve added an Assn. Info screen that will give you info about each conference and team so that you can see more information at a glance without having to hunt. The search option also remains if you have something in particular you know you’re looking for. We’ve also added a small drop box to the left window news tab to sort different news types and a few other touches here and there to make navigation easier and the screens to look even better than before!
7) Improvements to Walk-On and Recruit Generation
One additional area of improvement this season is in the generation of new recruits and walk-ons. With the recruiting improvements teams are doing a better job of filling their scholarships so the overall number of walk-ons has decreased and those that are generated are done so with a better stature for the kind of player they should be. We’ve also tweaked the recruit generation code to improve stats for players especially at smaller schools and to see that there are fewer outlier players.
8) New Asst. Coach Poaching and Job Offer Improvements
The coaching job search page now gives you more information about all of the jobs available including showing you if a team is on probation for unethical behavior. An even bigger new addition to the coaching feature is the ability to hire assistant coaches from other programs while they are employed – and it can happen to you as well! Assistant coaches who are entering their final contract year can now be lured away in the offseason for a better position. That’s great news if you like to play as the high powered schools…and you better keep some resumes handy if you’re coaching at a lower level school now.
9) Improvements in Relationship Feature
We’ve made a couple of changes here to make this feature even more interesting. The first is that your response options to the players are now changed a bit when you make a phone call to discuss their actions and secondly you’re going to get a response in the phone call to tell you how your relationship was impacted by the actions you took and the impacts vary based on the player themselves so you can never be quite sure what the reaction will be. The other change here is that we have built in some very rare incidents that you might experience to add a little bit more variety to what you deal with as coach.
10) New End Game Improvements
The last of our new items we are highlighting here has to do with end-game scenarios. We have made players try to react quicker as you can see from the screenshot above – down five with only 11 seconds left the player raced down the floor and launched a quick three. We have also worked to see that players have the ability to attempt a long range heave if possible so you never know what the closing seconds of the game will bring and nothing will be more exciting than watching your player drain one from half court to win at the buzzer!
We hope you’re as excited for DDS: College Basketball 2018 as we are and because we’re so fired up we’ve got a special pre-order. DDS:CB 2018 is going to be available from wolverinestudios.com on February 27, 2018 but why wait? Pre-order today and you’ll lock in these great bonuses!
- Go to the webstore, add CB18 to your cart and use coupon code CB18PRE and you will save 10%. Did you buy DDS:CB17 at wolverinestudios.com? Well thank you very much for doing so! We’re offering you 15% savings – just be sure that after you add the game to your cart that you put in your personal information including the same email address you used last time BEFORE entering the coupon and you use coupon code CB18UPGRADE. If you have any problem just contact support and we will be happy to help.
- Everyone who pre-orders will get a free key for the game on Steam when it is released there
- Everyone who pre-orders will also get access to a pre-release version of the game typically a couple of days before the official release.
So coach, what are you waiting for? Your destiny awaits at the top of that ladder. Take your school to the top of the basketball world, cut down the nets and build your dynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018!
The post Get The Scoop On Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018 appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
View the full article -
Here’s What To Look For In Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018
Sports fans we are closely approaching March and you know what that means! It is time to get ready to cut down the nets and DDS: College Basketball 2018 is bringing you the biggest and best version ever to let you fulfill your dreams of taking your favorite school to the top. So get ready to hop on the recruiting trail, coach – here’s a look at ten of the newest additions to the number one college basketball franchise on the market.
1) 2017 League Conversions
Right out of the gate we’ve got some big news – those dynasties you’ve been building with CB:2017….well keep on building them! For the first time ever you’ll be able to upgrade your league files to the new version!
2) Coach Rating Tracking and Improved Increases
We’ve put work into making the increase in ratings over time better distributed for the coaches with this version and have added a new feature to the coach card that will let you track the improvements in the ratings of a coach over time.
3) Rating Progression Tracking for Players
We didn’t just leave the progression tracking for the coaches either – the player card will have the same progression tracking for player ratings to see how your fabulous freshmen turn out over their careers.
4) Coach Lineage Information
Lineage is back but in a new and improved way. Now you will be able to track every coach that worked for every team and find out what happened to them over their careers. You wil be able to sort by team or by active head coach to see which legend of your association has the best coaching tree!
5) Improvements to AI in Recruiting and Tutoring
Recruiting is the key to any great college game and our recruiting AI has been honed over many years but each year we make it better and better. This year is no exception as we have worked with the AI to do an even better job of managing their resources and targeting players to up the challenge for you. The AI also does a better job of keeping poor students eligible and if you turn on the option for the AI to manage your operations it will handle tutoring of players as well.
6) UI Improvements and New Information
One of our goals is always to add new and useful information to the game. We’ve added an Assn. Info screen that will give you info about each conference and team so that you can see more information at a glance without having to hunt. The search option also remains if you have something in particular you know you’re looking for. We’ve also added a small drop box to the left window news tab to sort different news types and a few other touches here and there to make navigation easier and the screens to look even better than before!
7) Improvements to Walk-On and Recruit Generation
One additional area of improvement this season is in the generation of new recruits and walk-ons. With the recruiting improvements teams are doing a better job of filling their scholarships so the overall number of walk-ons has decreased and those that are generated are done so with a better stature for the kind of player they should be. We’ve also tweaked the recruit generation code to improve stats for players especially at smaller schools and to see that there are fewer outlier players.
8) New Asst. Coach Poaching and Job Offer Improvements
The coaching job search page now gives you more information about all of the jobs available including showing you if a team is on probation for unethical behavior. An even bigger new addition to the coaching feature is the ability to hire assistant coaches from other programs while they are employed – and it can happen to you as well! Assistant coaches who are entering their final contract year can now be lured away in the offseason for a better position. That’s great news if you like to play as the high powered schools…and you better keep some resumes handy if you’re coaching at a lower level school now.
9) Improvements in Relationship Feature
We’ve made a couple of changes here to make this feature even more interesting. The first is that your response options to the players are now changed a bit when you make a phone call to discuss their actions and secondly you’re going to get a response in the phone call to tell you how your relationship was impacted by the actions you took and the impacts vary based on the player themselves so you can never be quite sure what the reaction will be. The other change here is that we have built in some very rare incidents that you might experience to add a little bit more variety to what you deal with as coach.
10) New End Game Improvements
The last of our new items we are highlighting here has to do with end-game scenarios. We have made players try to react quicker as you can see from the screenshot above – down five with only 11 seconds left the player raced down the floor and launched a quick three. We have also worked to see that players have the ability to attempt a long range heave if possible so you never know what the closing seconds of the game will bring and nothing will be more exciting than watching your player drain one from half court to win at the buzzer!
We hope you’re as excited for DDS: College Basketball 2018 as we are and because we’re so fired up we’ve got a special pre-order. DDS:CB 2018 is going to be available from wolverinestudios.com on February 27, 2018 but why wait? Pre-order today and you’ll lock in these great bonuses!
- Go to the webstore, add CB18 to your cart and use coupon code CB18PRE and you will save 10%. Did you buy DDS:CB17 at wolverinestudios.com? Well thank you very much for doing so! We’re offering you 15% savings – just be sure that after you add the game to your cart that you put in your personal information including the same email address you used last time BEFORE entering the coupon and you use coupon code CB18UPGRADE. If you have any problem just contact support and we will be happy to help.
- Everyone who pre-orders will get a free key for the game on Steam when it is released there
- Everyone who pre-orders will also get access to a pre-release version of the game typically a couple of days before the official release.
So coach, what are you waiting for? Your destiny awaits at the top of that ladder. Take your school to the top of the basketball world, cut down the nets and build your dynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018!
The post Get The Scoop On Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018 appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
View the full article -
Arm rating. One of the most despised and questioned aspects of Pennant Chase. Let’s quickly dive into the history: The arm rating applies only to catchers and outfielders. It was a way to determine which players would be more likely to 1) throw out base stealers or 2) throw out a runner on the bases from the outfield. Infielders do not have an arm rating, because the intent of the sim is that the ball in play is either an out or it’s not. (More to come next time when we dive into Range Factor.)When PC originally launched, we didn’t have any stats to determine the arm rating, thus it was mainly available for custom leagues who wanted to manually distinguish certain players. The arm rating is binary: it’s either a normal arm, or a plus arm. Plus arms at the catcher position are particularly valuable because they can have a true impact on the opposing team’s running game. So much so that users suggested I implement a manager’s option to shut down the run game when facing a plus-arm catcher. That was put into place in the early years of the website.As a quick-and-dirty solution, we used a player’s assist totals to determine his arm rating. (As most of you know, all aspects of PC are driven by real-life stats. There are legal reasons for this, but it’s also the tenant of the website to not have any arbitrary “ratings”.) For outfielders, that works okay. If you had a lot of assists in the outfield that season, you deserve a plus arm so that it can be reflected in the sim. It’s not perfect. Every strong-armed outfielder has had seasons in which he didn’t throw many people out. In fact, he may even get fewer opportunities because of his strong arm. But that’s okay, because this is a stats-driven sim. If he didn’t throw many people out in real life, why should he throw people out in the sim just because he has a reputation for having a strong arm? The issue is that people who don’t understand this get confused by the arm rating.The other small problem is that players who split time in the outfield and infield have a boatload of assists and thus automatically get the plus arm. But again, this is a minor problem. For one, if they are an infielder they probably deserve the plus arm in the outfield. Secondly, if outfield is their secondary position, the risks far outweigh the benefit of the plus arm.But for catchers, it’s been massively problematic. In the past, we didn’t have caught-stealing stats in the database. After a lot of grueling work, we now do!! So let’s analyze how this could impact arm rating.Let’s look at Buster Posey in the 2017 Auto Leagues. He has a plus arm because he had 52 assists as a catcher and 25 assists as a first baseman. But his caught stealing percentage in 2017 was 38%. That’s basically average in baseball history. If you look only at catchers with at least 30 attempts, the median in baseball history is 37%. Posey was perfectly average at throwing out base runners. But his plus arm is leading to a 47% rate across 2017 Auto Leagues.The best catcher in 2017 was Wellington Castillo of the Orioles, who threw out almost 50% of attempts against him in 50 tries. But he does not have a plus arm in Pennant Chase. As a result, he’s throwing out just 39% of baserunners in 2017 leagues. It’s pretty clear this should be exactly reversed. Posey should have an average arm, Castillo should have a plus arm. Let’s take a look at one more fascinating example. Wilson Contreras of the Chicago Cubs is an athletic catcher who is known for having an arm. Sure enough, he has a plus arm in 2017 leagues. But that’s only because he had 86 assists in 2017. Yes, 86!! And get this - 36 of those assists were due to dropped third strikes resulting in the batter being thrown out at first. Holy moly, either Contreras sucks at catching the ball, or his pitchers love throwing the ball in the dirt. Would you be surprised to know Contreras only threw out 27% of base stealers? In the context of throwing out base runners, Contreras should definitely not be a plus arm. Now, there are counter arguments: 1) His pitchers could have been terrible at holding on runners. True, but unfortunately, we’re never going to know that, we have to go with the stats we have. 2) His high assist total does demonstrate that he has a good arm. He obviously threw a lot of runners out in various situations even if they were not stolen base attempts. Also true, but that benefit can be covered by the sim in a different way (as I said, stay tuned for the Range Factor discussion). If we are only looking at stealing bases, Wilson Contreras wasn’t that good at throwing out base stealers in 2017.Now the big announcementSo what is the plan? Well, I feel the arm rating works pretty well in the sim. I thought long and hard about switching to a hard-line caught-stealing percentage, but that doesn’t make a ton of sense. First off, the sample size is really small for a lot of players. If a catcher threw out two of three base stealers, should he really get credited for a 67% success rate? That would destroy the sim. Also, if we were to use percentages, we would need to balance the catcher’s rate with the base runner’s success rate. At this time, I don’t have baserunning stats in the database, so that’s not an option.What I think works the best is changing catcher’s arm to be based on their success rate. If a catcher had at least 30 attempts and threw out at least 40% of base runners, that would put him in the top 40% of catchers in MLB history. That feels like a good number to consider a plus arm. (We can always tweak it.)As an example, what would this do for a player like Ivan Rodriguez, who we know had one of the best arms in history? Well, 12 of his 20 qualifying seasons would result in a plus arm - that’s four more plus-arm seasons than the current formula, which is based on assists. In addition, 10 of his first 11 seasons would be plus-arm, which makes sense considering a younger I-Rod would have a better arm than an older I-Rod. So - this change is something that has to happen across all leagues Auto Leagues at once. (The date is TBD, but I’ll announce when it happens on the Public Boards.) That’s always hard because it impacts seasons in-flight. People who had a plus-arm catcher suddenly are not going to have one. I know that sucks, but changes like this that are good for the long-term accuracy of the site, people tend to be okay with. Custom leagues are a little different since they could have used progression or fictional players. I don’t want to impact custom leagues, so I’m going to request commissioners reach out to me if they want me to make the change in their league. Moving forward, any player imports from the historical database will reflect this change.
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On Jan. 29th we released Top Eleven version 6.5 on all platforms: iOS, Android and web-browser.
We bring great news and improvements to our Managers and below you can find the full change-log:
NEW
– Your Assistant Manager will help you to prepare even better for your upcoming matches! Through the brand new time-limited feature, every day he will show you specific offers for new players that can be a good fit for your squad and can help you increase your chances of success.
Note: Managers who have iOS devices with OS version older than iOS 8 won’t see this update. Managers who have Top Eleven version 6.4 on their devices will be able to continue playing with it indefinitely For more info please read full note HERE.
The post Top Eleven v. 6.5 – List of new features appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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OOTP 19 is available for pre-order now. Save 10% and get the game 3 days early! Creating a deep baseball management game and releasing a new version of it annually for 19 years is a pretty impressive achievement. Doing so while living in Hamburg, Germany is even more impressive, considering the fact that Major League […]
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The Out of the Park Developments games roster expanded in 2011 with the release of iOOTP Baseball, now known as MLB Manager for iOS and Android. Developer Sebastian Palkowski was responsible for that game, and he used that experience as the foundation for a more ambitious project, Franchise Hockey Manager, which simulates not just the […]
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Hi Managers,
With the release of Top Eleven version 6.5 we will unfortunately stop supporting iOS versions below 8. This is necessary in order to improve the gameplay, stability and to add new features, all of which are not supported by older OS versions.
The minimal iOS version that we are going to support from now on is iOS 8.
Managers who have iOS versions lower than 8 will be able continue playing Top Eleven with the current version they have installed (they won’t be able to update it anymore) indefinitely. We will timely communicate to the affected Managers when we stop supporting these devices for good so everyone has a chance to safeguard their clubs.
In order to safeguard your club for good and continue playing Top Eleven regardless of the iOS version supported, please mind these notes:
If you are “Playing as Guest”: All Managers playing on devices with lower iOS versions than 8 are “playing as Guest” should urgently connect their teams to Facebook or Game Center in order to continue playing with their clubs on any other mobile device or through our the browser version of the game. Please remember that connecting your team to Facebook will grant you some extra tokens for free and will assure you to play on any supported platform.
If you are playing through Facebook or Game Center: Managers using devices with lower OS version than 8 and who already have their teams connected to Facebook or Game Center are safe but they need to use a mobile device matching the minimum requirement or they can play on the browser version of the game.
In all cases remember that only clubs connected to a Facebook account are able to be accessed on web-browsers.
You can always reach out Top Eleven Support for further questions. Thanks for your understanding!
The post Announcement: Attention Managers who have devices with iOS version lower than 8 won’t be able to update Top Eleven app! appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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Happy 2018! On Jan. 9th we released Top Eleven version 6.4 on all platforms: iOS, Android and web-browser. In the first update of the year we bring news to our Managers, which you can see in the change-log below:
NEW
– It’s time to hit the road again with your Squad, This time you will visit Germany! In this release, we’ve added support for a new challenge in which you face new opponents in different cities around Germany. In each of them you can win exclusive rewards and unlock special offers. Stay tuned for more info in the game soon.
The post Top Eleven v. 6.4 – List of new features appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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Wow - it’s 2018. How did that happen? I guess that’s not a surprising statement from someone who hasn’t blogged on Pennant Chase since last April, and didn’t manage to podcast at all in the second half of 2017. For one, I sincerely apologize for those few fans who look forward to my updates. One of my resolutions is to find more time for PC in 2018.Not that it will be easy, but it can be done, and frankly it’s something I miss. Last year was an incredibly challenging year. I feel like I’ve said that in past years, but I had no idea how challenging life can really be when you have a new baby and a demanding job. We also moved into a new home in 2017, just a couple months after Avery was born, and I don’t recommend moving into a new home after having a new baby, in case anyone was curious!On top of the absolute insanity of caring for a new human under a year old (without any family in the area to help) I was dealing with one of the most challenging years of my professional career. All of this added up to a lot less focus on Pennant Chase last year.I was still able to get a few important things done - the site is now 100% secure, I did a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare for future growth, started the podcast, and got a pretty decent amount of new users thanks to better ratings on the app stores and things like GM Games.Speaking of Users…The annual update of users is going to sound a lot like last year. At the end of 2017 we had just over 12,000 users. After purging anyone who has not logged in for over four years, we are down to about 9,500. That’s actually better than last year when, after the purge, we ended up with 9,000. It also means we gained over 3,000 new registrations in 2018, which is pretty solid.I see a lot of potential avenues to bring in more users, but I feel the features of the site need to grow a little bit before we can really attract large numbers of people. We continue to lose a lot of good users, so evolving to keep more of the good people around is always a good thing. I know Ads were a huge topic this year, so let’s discuss that briefly. I hate Ads as much as everyone else, but we can’t survive without them. Most of our users are here because this site is free. When I run polls asking if people would consider a paid site, around 80% say no. Therefore, I have to continue to explore various ways Ads can support us. We tried a few things and you all responded with what worked and what didn’t. The pop-over banner ads at the bottom of the page were not well received, so we dumped those. Mostly now we have the one silent video on the right side. This really is not much compared to most sites on the web these days. We had some really generous holiday donors, who I gave a shout out to on the Public Boards (not by name, because donating is a private decision). Thanks to everyone who donated, even if it was only $2. It all goes back into the website. Any savings I have from this site remains in that account so that I can grow and expand as more people join. What’s coming next?I know there have not been many new features recently - most of my focus has been on rewriting the code base so the site can be built on modern technology in the future. But I do want to make some changes in 2018. One thing that has been on the list for a while is more control over individual players in regards to who can surprise bunt, steal, etc. I hate the catcher’s arm rating and want to import true caught-stealing stats for catchers. I’m also not a big fan of range factor (RF) and thinking of ways to make defense better. Finally, I’ve noticed stat levels have gotten out of whack in some custom leagues where commissioners haven’t adjusted their levels on a regular basis. I think there’s a better way to adjust the levels for individual leagues, so more to come soon. And then of course there is the coming arrival of Mr. Ohtani, which will present an interesting challenge if he is an effective two-way player. I have not yet decided how we’ll handle that. But that will be a future topic of discussion.As always, you guys make the site - your feedback, your reporting of issues, your ideas and your suggestions are really the heart of this site. Even if I don’t respond to your feedback, please know I read every single one and add it to the backlog or “wishlist”.Thank you for a great 2017 and here’s to an even better 2018.
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On Dec. 15th we released Top Eleven version 6.3 on all platforms: iOS, Android and web-browser. We brought some improvements and bug fixes to our Managers Below you can find the full change-log:IMPROVEMENTS– We’ve added a “Save” button to Live Match. Your changes during the match will only take place after tapping the save button.– In Set Piece Takers we’ve added the option to select five penalty takers.– When watching Live Match in commentary mode, the button for toggling the view will change between Commentaries, My Team and Opponent’s Team. - We’ve added support for some New Year surprises.FIXED BUGS– We’ve added the numerical indication for number of trainings in the Training menu in the main navigation.– We’ve fixed the issue with scrolling functionality in Tactic screen on web-browsers.– We’ve fixed a visual issue with player condition representation in Lineup.The post Top Eleven v. 6.3 – List of improvements and fixed bugs appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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Out of the Park Baseball is closing out its 18th year in 2017. OOTP has plenty of long-time players, as well as several long-running online leagues, but few have been around as long as SDMB. The online league was founded by Michael Weintraub and Zev Steinhardt 15 years ago and has embarked on its 30th […]
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It’s almost bowl season and Wolverine Studios has you covered with a brand new version of DDS: College Football on the way. DDS: College Football 2018 will be released on December 22, 2017!
Prepare to lead your favorite school to championship glory as you experience all of the new additions to DDS:CF. New to the game this year are coaching staffs, weather impacts, new game planning with twice as many defensive plays and play diagrams for most offensive plays, new traits, personality and player ratings for players, expanded scouting, recruiting and training logic, more in game interactions in newspaper articles and emails, easier integration for rookies with DDS: Pro Football 2018 and so much more!
On top of that we’re going to offer special upgrade pricing for anyone who purchased DDS: College Football 2017 to show our appreciation for our awesome customers! More details will be available when the game is released.
It will only be a short wait and then every day can be Saturday as you #BuildYourDynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Football 2018!
The post Wolverine Studios Announces Draft Day Sports: College Football 2018 appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
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It’s almost bowl season and Wolverine Studios has you covered with a brand new version of DDS: College Football on the way. DDS: College Football 2018 will be released on December 22, 2017!
Prepare to lead your favorite school to championship glory as you experience all of the new additions to DDS:CF. New to the game this year are coaching staffs, weather impacts, new game planning with twice as many defensive plays and play diagrams for most offensive plays, new traits, personality and player ratings for players, expanded scouting, recruiting and training logic, more in game interactions in newspaper articles and emails, easier integration for rookies with DDS: Pro Football 2018 and so much more!
On top of that we’re going to offer special upgrade pricing for anyone who purchased DDS: College Football 2017 to show our appreciation for our awesome customers! More details will be available when the game is released.
It will only be a short wait and then every day can be Saturday as you #BuildYourDynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Football 2018!
The post Wolverine Studios Announces Draft Day Sports: College Football 2018 appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
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The much anticipated Tournament of Champions being simulated with the new Tournament Maker feature of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018 is underway. If you missed out on the opening games, click here and you’ll see all the action in the blog.
Before we do though have you checked out what is new for DDS: Pro Basketball 2018? What about
? Ready to start your own classic tournament? Well then hit up the webstore and order!(15) ’82-83 Philadelphia vs (3) ’85-86 Boston
The finals are now set. Philly has taken down the 2 and 3 seeds – will they be able to take out the #1 team in the tournament? Love to hear your thoughts on the tournament on our forum, Facebook or Twitter and don’t forget to grab yourself a copy of DDS:PB18 so head over to the webstore pronto!
The post The Tournament of Champions – Semifinal Showdown appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
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The much anticipated Tournament of Champions being simulated with the new Tournament Maker feature of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018 is underway. If you missed out on the opening games, click here and you’ll see all the action in the blog.
Before we do though have you checked out what is new for DDS: Pro Basketball 2018? What about
? Ready to start your own classic tournament? Well then hit up the webstore and order!(15) ’82-83 Philadelphia vs (3) ’85-86 Boston
The finals are now set. Philly has taken down the 2 and 3 seeds – will they be able to take out the #1 team in the tournament? Love to hear your thoughts on the tournament on our forum, Facebook or Twitter and don’t forget to grab yourself a copy of DDS:PB18 so head over to the webstore pronto!
The post The Tournament of Champions – Semifinal Showdown appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
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On Dec. 11th we released Top Eleven version 6.2 on all platforms: iOS, Android and web-browser. We bring great news to our Managers and below you can find the full change-log:NEW– Celebrate Top Eleven’s 100th season with us! In this release we’ve added support for a new challenge which will take place during this historic season. Prepare your Squad because each goal scored in League, Cup, Champions League and Super League matches will help you to earn exclusive rewards. More info in the game soon.– Keep a look out for special New Year surprises throughout the month!FIXED BUGS– We have fixed the resolution truncation issues on iPhones 4 and 5 with iOS 7.0.The post Top Eleven v. 6.2 – List of new features, improvements and fixed bugs appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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The much anticipated Tournament of Champions being simulated with the new Tournament Maker feature of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018 is underway. If you missed out on the opening games, click here and you’ll see all the action in the blog.
Before we do though have you checked out what is new for DDS: Pro Basketball 2018? What about
? Ready to start your own classic tournament? Well then hit up the webstore and order!(1) ’95-96 Chicago vs (5) ’98-99 San Antonio
This game was so amazing it deserved its own update. The other half of the bracket will be finished up in the next post and then its on to the finals. Love to hear your thoughts on the tournament on our forum, Facebook or Twitter and don’t forget to grab yourself a copy of DDS:PB18 so head over to the webstore pronto!
The post The Tournament of Champions – The Semis Begin With A Classic appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
View the full article -
The much anticipated Tournament of Champions being simulated with the new Tournament Maker feature of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018 is underway. If you missed out on the opening games, click here and you’ll see all the action in the blog.
Before we do though have you checked out what is new for DDS: Pro Basketball 2018? What about
? Ready to start your own classic tournament? Well then hit up the webstore and order!(1) ’95-96 Chicago vs (5) ’98-99 San Antonio
This game was so amazing it deserved its own update. The other half of the bracket will be finished up in the next post and then its on to the finals. Love to hear your thoughts on the tournament on our forum, Facebook or Twitter and don’t forget to grab yourself a copy of DDS:PB18 so head over to the webstore pronto!
The post The Tournament of Champions – The Semis Begin With A Classic appeared first on Wolverine Studios.
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Hoop fans – the season is here and with another season of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018. The included screenshots are from the default version of the game. Customers will be able to download real players and team logos from the contributors on the Wolverine Studios forums. But enough with the intro – lets get to the goods.
[Press Release details are courtesy of the Wolverine Studios blog & media]
UI Changes
DDS:PB 2018 gets some added functionality for the user by adding options for depth chart, rotation and trading players right to the team menu so they can be accessed from many screens instead of just the roster one. Buttons have been added to travel right to your d-league affiliate team and some screens have gotten a makeover to make them more visually appealing – none more so than the draft as the draft presentation and war room have been totally redone to give you an even more immersive and exciting experience.
Historical/Statistical Additions
Player rating changes are now tracked in a database so that you can see how they have progressed over time, coach and GM hiring history has been added to the team history tracking and the array of defensive stats from prior versions of the game has made its way back – we had no idea so many people found them so interesting and useful! New scheduling has been added as well to match real life and spread out the playoff games a little bit.
Summer League Tournament
In the past the summer league games were largely meaningless – just some exhibitions run to simulate your new rookies for a couple games as well as anyone you might be scouting out for the future but that’s all changed now. Now the teams will compete in 5 or 6 matchups with the 8 best teams record wise competing in a single elimination tournament to crown a champion of the summer league.
Two-way Contracts
We’ve added our own version of two-way contracts into DDS:PB 2018. Each team will have the opportunity to sign two players to their roster on these contracts and it will allow them to stash those players exclusively in the d-league so that much like in real life you can expand the number of players your team controls. These players will be able to be called up to the normal 15 man roster and converted to league minimum contracts as well if you wish to do so.
D-League Control
Speaking of the d-league, we have added an option to give you control over your affiliate and treat them like a true extension of your team. You can leave it up to the fine folks running the team if you want or grab control of everything from the d-league draft to in-season pickups or setting the depth chart and player rotations to make sure the players you have sent there from the pro club or are stashed there on two-way contracts are getting all the minutes you want.
Free Agency Improvements
With all of the information available today teams formulate a gameplan early in the summer for their free agent strategy. Now prior to the draft you will get an email detailing the top free agents available as well as some detailed information about what they are looking for. This way if a player might be interested in you if you had the money or had another star player you have the time and opportunity to try and make some moves prior to free agency to go for it. You might even learn that the free agent you want is close with one of the players on your team and then you’ll definitely know not to trade that player away if you want a shot at bringing his buddy to town!
New Injury System
The old system of players having an injury % has been removed for a more modern day take on injuries. Players are either healthy, probable or listed as out for a number of days. The AI will act more more conservatively as in real life resting players who have injuries for meaningless regular season games but being more willing to use them if possible in the playoffs. Player ability while injured is also changed now so you will have to weigh the risk and reward of playing a “probable” player – is it worth risking a bad performance or prolonging a sickness if a player is not feeling well with the flu? Is a sore back worth missing a game or two versus having it linger with sub-optimal performances for two weeks? You’ll have to make the call.
Fantasy Draft Changes
The fantasy draft was one of the most requested areas for upgrade and we’ve done it. Now you can see the initial contracts of all the players in the grid before you draft them as well as see your team’s salary cap total so you know better how much cap space you have used up already.
Tournament Maker
Speaking of fantasy…a brand new option outside of career play is Tournament Maker mode. The sequel to Matchup Maker (which still exists in the game) will let you grab teams from a database and pit them against each other in a 16 team single elimination tournament. Tired of wondering who was the best of all-time or the best team one franchise ever had? Now you can settle it on the court.
That’s not all…
We’ve also hidden some surprises for you to find on your own – little things that will improve the game play and immersion factors and hopefully will get a “wow, that’s pretty cool” out of you when you discover them. One final thing we didn’t mention is that we’re working for the first time to be able to make DDS:PB 2017 leagues importable and all leagues being able to be carried forward from version to version from now on.
[end of Wolverines studios release]
From GM Games, we look forward to many of these enhancements coming to DDS College Basketball 2018!
The post Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2018 out now for PC appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games.
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On Nov. 27th, 2017 we released Top Eleven version 6.1 on all platforms: iOS, Android and web-browser. With this update, we brought a new challenge for our Managers and overall improvements. You can find the full change-log below:NEW– Get your Squad ready for a new exciting tour through the U.K.! In this release we added support for one more challenge in which you face a different opponent in different cities across the country. In each of them you can win exclusive rewards and unlock special offers. Stay tuned for more info in the game soon.IMPROVEMENTS– The changes in formation will now be correctly updated in Match Preview screen in Home menu.FIXED BUGSFixed the following issues related to the Live Match:– corners being kicked and goal scored by the same player;– goals and assists were not being registered in player stats (as a result the player’s rate was too low).Note: Bug fixes won’t have any retroactive effect. This means that the data and stats of the season won’t be updated.The post Top Eleven v. 6.1 – List of new features, improvements and fixed bugs appeared first on Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager.
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[GM Games] OOTP 19 partners with EA and will include brand new 3D engine
in GM Games News
Posted
Out of the Park Developments, an official licensee of MLB.com, the MLBPA, and MiLB, announced a partnership with Electronic Arts. The partnership includes the sale of and subscription access to the award-winning baseball strategy game Out of the Park Baseball 19 for all Origin users.
[This press release is made available courtesy of OOTP Developments with slight modifications.]
“We are delighted and honored to partner with Electronic Arts to distribute our baseball game directly to EA’s biggest fans,” said OOTP Developments CEO and lead developer Markus Heinsohn. “EA’s long history of sports excellence makes Origin a tremendous platform. A whole new audience will now experience the delights and agonies of running a baseball franchise across the majors and minors, from today or throughout the entire history of the sport.”
OOTP 19 unveils a new 3D in-game engine that, for the first time, has players pitching, hitting, fielding, and running the bases in Out of the Park Baseball.
Out of the Park Baseball 19 includes:
The post OOTP 19 partners with EA and will include brand new 3D engine appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games.
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