Out of the Park Baseball 19
Out of the Park Baseball 19 Review: Another Achievement for the Series
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Out of the Park Baseball is one of our favorite series here at Operation Sports. Year to year, this title serves up quality experiences, enthralling gameplay and unmatched depth.
If you are interested in a game that simulates the business end of baseball with extreme precision while offering up a challenge you won’t get with traditional AAA sports games, keep reading to find out if this is an experience for you.
What I Liked
- All The Options – Seriously if you have dreamed it you can play it in Out of the Park Baseball 19. Want to set up a game in the dead-ball era with modern-day ballparks and stats to see how they compare? Yep, no problem. This is a baseball fan’s playground first and foremost, where you can play and experiment with all sorts of possibilities if you so desire. Needless to say, there’s very little you can’t do in Out of the Park Baseball 19.
- Management Completeness – I honestly don’t know how else to word a subhead for this, but just about every option you could imagine when it comes to managing an MLB roster is present. From fully stocked minor leagues at every level to more obscure roster rules, Out of the Park Baseball 19 continues to have (just about) everything you’d ever want.
- Improved 3-D Graphics – The in-game graphics got a big leap up and they make watching your games play out while you manage things even better than before. The ballparks and players look good and when you take into account this is still a text-sim at heart, any missing animations do tend to be forgiven quickly.
- New Interface Options – The new skins and fonts can give the game a different appearance and several screens also were redesigned a bit to better streamline information. All good things.
- The AI Is Still Really Good – Opposing GMs are tough cookies to crack, and you aren’t going to fleece too many, especially egregiously. If anything, especially after following what real GMs have been doing for years — the GMs in OOTP 19 may be a little “too good” by and large with managing rosters.
- Being Able To Vote For End Of The Year Awards – A small but great little touch.
- The Ability To Edit Your Home Screen – Customizing your home screen to put the info YOU care about on the front should be a standard feature not just in sims like OOTP, but all sports games. This is an amazing and well thought out feature addition.
- The Handling Of Morale/Team Chemistry Is Still The Best In Sports games – New improvements were added this year, and that’s already on top of what is probably the best sports game to handle this aspect of the sports they simulate. Bring in a guy who’s a known clubhouse cancer with poor veteran leadership? You are going to really regret that one in time. A team careening downhill in chemistry and morale will lose a lot and suddenly you have a self-feeding monster. It’s something to behold and also something that’ll frustrate you if you find yourself on the wrong end of it all.
- New Scouting Reports – This was an area of the game that really needed some work and the information is now presented in a way that’s very helpful to quickly discovering the key information you need. This addition is a particular achievement among the new additions within the game. The old system was far from bad, but that’s how this series has traditionally operated. Find the things that are just decent and make them better, which results in an improved experience at the end of the day.
What I Didn’t Like
- It’s Starting To Feel Too Familiar – The game itself has begun to really settle into a similar rhythm from year to year. This makes a lot of the experience familiar, but at the same time perhaps too familiar for long-time players of the game like myself. I don’t want OOTP Developments to reinvent the wheel, and I’m not sure that’d actually be a good thing. It’s actually possible that there’s not many places the game could go without messing up what makes Out of the Park Baseball so great to begin with — but this is definitely a slight negative of sorts from me. The new options are great, but the improvements still result in a familiar experience that has always been excellent, so I may be talking myself in circles here.
- The Accessibility For New Players Needs Work – This is one of those things that is not an easy lift for a developer of a sim like this. Out of the Park Baseball 19 is excellent, and having this sort of an experience more accessible would be great for our genre as a whole. While there has been some effort to add some tips in places, I think a more thorough “hold the user’s hand” experience would do this series well to beckon itself to new players. A new and inexperienced sim player will find OOTP overwhelming and it may turn them off, which ultimately is a negative for the series in the future.
- The Story Elements Are Kinda Bland – This is one of those quibbles that I’m admittedly reaching for, but it’d be great to see a bit more story elements integrated within the game. Things like “Aaron Judge is two HRs shy of 100” would be great and simple little elements to add into the game. Other more complicated and franchise-specific items would be excellent as well. What is here isn’t bad, but fitting within the theme of making serviceable items great, having more of a story-driven experience in the sense of the game framing significant moments would be an endearing feature in the future.
Final Analysis
As it stands, Out of the Park Baseball 19 is an achievement yet again for OOTP Developments. While I personally wasn’t so sure last year’s title was worth the upgrade as a yearly purchaser, this year’s justifies a purchase as a yearly upgrade.
From the improved interface and scouting system to the continued smaller tweaks and tunes, OOTP 19 is nailing just about every aspect of the game of baseball and managing it. There’s very little you can’t do here. If you are a fan of baseball and the business of the sport, especially in building teams, this is a game that’s totally going to consume your free time.
Buyer beware.
**Perfect team was not yet available for this review, and we plan to have a review of it later this summer
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I do a lot of simming, but will play out key games in a series and often during the playoffs.
I'll also watch some minors games or play games at the ML level when there's a prospect I want to see play. I don't know how faithfully the played out game represents whatever is going on under the hood, but if I see a kid get robbed of hits a lot or a pitcher giving up runs but not getting hit hard, I'd feel better letting them learn in the majors if I can.
So a lot of times, I watch games to try to see the why of performance the player is getting, especially if they are doing poorly.
But some play out every game like they would on The Show. Someone just posted they do just that in the franchise thread. It really depends on you.
I think that's what I love most about OOTP - it really depends on what you want to see and do (be it a purely historical league or purely fantasy off the wall with wild stats and players) and the game will show you the outcome with no bias...or at least with the bias you tell the game to have.
From my perspective, OOTP 19 is a very nice game and I've thoroughly enjoyed my latest game of being a manager only and seeing where things go from there. When in-game (actually playing baseball), I usually play either in classic webcast on my surface or on my decently sized laptop I'll go into classic 3-d mode just to see the shifts and little players running around. This isn't a knock on the modern interfaces, I do like them, however I prefer the way the info is presented in the old interfaces just a bit more. I will also add that the modern interfaces in-game are way more touch screen friendly which is a plus. My only complaint is that I wish smaller screen resolutions (1366x768) had been given a bit more love because with that resolution or smaller it begins to get very difficult to navigate menus or to see the information on the interfaces while in-game. Granted I can just customize the in-game widget coordinates but without a way to save that it becomes difficult. Hopefully though the small pitch tracker from the modern interfaces will eventually be available for the classic choices too.
I miss the old fashioned way where noobs would have to learn how to do things and keep working at it until they either: (a) progressed in their enjoyment of the game or (b) put the game down and picked up something else moire suited to their interests.
The main problem with catering to noobs is that it runs counter to everything that has made OOTP great (depth, numbers and management features out the yang, and hard won observations through the experience of playing it). How did any of us old timers learn how to play OOTP in the first place? By complaining that it was too hard of a game to learn? Actually, no. It was by trying it out, asking questions, reading/researching, and having some level of agency instead of an opinion that because I can't learn to do this within 5 minutes, then it's broken and needs to be tailored to me.
Hold on a sec while I climb off this soapbox...
Or just refer them to the OOTP developments board where it's already organized like that. This subforum on OS has such low activity in comparison with The Show's that I doubt it could sustain a higher volume of Q/A--or there'd only be one or two people (probably you, lol) answering all the questions.
I miss the old fashioned way where noobs would have to learn how to do things and keep working at it until they either: (a) progressed in their enjoyment of the game or (b) put the game down and picked up something else moire suited to their interests.
The main problem with catering to noobs is that it runs counter to everything that has made OOTP great (depth, numbers and management features out the yang, and hard won observations through the experience of playing it). How did any of us old timers learn how to play OOTP in the first place? By complaining that it was too hard of a game to learn? Actually, no. It was by trying it out, asking questions, reading/researching, and having some level of agency instead of an opinion that because I can't learn to do this within 5 minutes, then it's broken and needs to be tailored to me.
Hold on a sec while I climb off this soapbox...
I agree that what you mentioned is important, however, when the main new user complaint is that it's easy to get lost I feel that it's important to address that in a way that isn't throwing the the literal manual at them. Additionally, not every OOTP user will use the OOTP Dev Forums or the OS Forums so having something in the game that it's less of a sink or swim. This isn't saying to remove features to make them less complex, not at all.
It's my opinion that the user should be presented with "here's a tour that lets you know what you can do as you click around and discover things" rather than having to flip through pages of the manual as you go along. Alternatively, maybe it's as simple as a startup prompt that's "new to baseball? click here for a tutorial mode that's an interactive manual" type of thing. This way, it still leaves the door open for what you described.
Slightly off-topic:
In this day and age where 5,000 (slight exaggeration) things are competing for our attention and mental bandwidth every minute and where software is more user-hostile and development-hostile than ever before I feel that we should return to the software like Hypercard where you can do amazing things but even a child can pick it up. That doesn't mean that it has any less features but instead that anyone can pick it up, not just experts. If any of this sounds familiar it's because I've been thinking about a certain off-site post on this topic for a few days now.
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LUL true, good point :y1:
That's difficult to do when the game is oriented around you finding your way in the situation you find yourself in or put yourself in, depending on how you start your career, etc.
It would be difficult to come up with even a write up to explain what to do. There's too many scenarios and situations and a lot of them need or are handled by multiple approaches...because that's the other beauty of the game...no one right answer.
Some things are unnecessarily obtuse (coaches, I'm looking at you), and I wouldn't expect a new player to know to look at the development influence as a proxy for the handling/teaching ratings, for example. Heck, I had to think how to explain it myself.
The basics of roster management - perhaps. Same for signing contracts (though that's very grey area) and lineups and talent evaluation...there's as many opinions on that as there are users, even when you take scouting out of it by turning it off.
I can understand giving new players some sort of guidelines...but what then as they explore the game further when the guidelines aren't as clear? There is a lot of subjectivity as well as objectivity...and the guidelines can, to a degree, help with objective stuff (roster limits are X, this is what DFA means, this is what waivers are) but a lot of questions newer players also ask are very qualitative/subjective, like "how do I know when to promote/demote my prospects?"
Should the game tell them to blindly follow the arrows, even when they are suggestions and opinions of the scout? Go by stats alone? Ratings alone? If all of the above...the user is back where they started..."how do I combine these things to know?"
I think if the player is familiar with baseball - basically just jump in and test your opinions and see what sticks. That's pretty much OOTP. You think you should promote until the prospect sucks at a level? Try it and see how he responds. You want to bat the pitcher 7th? Try it and see. Not sure what to do? Ask your manager or bench coach and see what they do.
I understand the sentiment and don't disagree that it would be nice to have in-game guides to help the players, but it's hard to give them that but not having them be "this is how the game 'should' play"...because OOTP will do stuff that will defy those guides...and it won't take long.
It's my opinion that the user should be presented with "here's a tour that lets you know what you can do as you click around and discover things" rather than having to flip through pages of the manual as you go along. Alternatively, maybe it's as simple as a startup prompt that's "new to baseball? click here for a tutorial mode that's an interactive manual" type of thing. This way, it still leaves the door open for what you described.
Slightly off-topic:
In this day and age where 5,000 (slight exaggeration) things are competing for our attention and mental bandwidth every minute and where software is more user-hostile and development-hostile than ever before I feel that we should return to the software like Hypercard where you can do amazing things but even a child can pick it up. That doesn't mean that it has any less features but instead that anyone can pick it up, not just experts. If any of this sounds familiar it's because I've been thinking about a certain off-site post on this topic for a few days now.
I'll begin by just stating that we will probably just disagree on this topic. Nothing wrong with that.
That said, I think OOTP is perfect the way it is and I would hate to see any sort of push for universal accessibility or for more casual players to start calling the shots (kinda like what happened with Diamond Dynasty mode totally hijacking The Show). My philosophy is if this game isn't someone's cup of tea and they don't have the desire to invest themselves into learning, then so be it. More accurately, they should be so excited to play a game like this that learning the ropes doesn't even feel like work--it's actually fun. The guy who doesn't know anything about baseball, or that guy who follows football and basketball, but not baseball, or that guy who doesn't really want to play a text-based sim style game in the first place--this one isn't for them. It never will be. This is our game--the baseball nut's game. We don't need to stretch OOTP's already thin development team to insert countless tutorials and hand-holding while worrying about what Joe Schmoe the non-baseball fan (who will lose interest at the drop of a hat or when Madden comes out anyway) thinks is easy enough to pick up and play.
Maybe there are 5,000 things competing for our mental bandwidth. There probably are. You are totally right. But, everyone doesn't need to chase down every single possible thing of the 5,000 and force themselves on it. There are things I don't enjoy and things I am just plain bad at--I don't go around with the attitude that these things should be made easier and more enjoyable for me. I just do something else. For the casual who doesn't want a learning experience, they should just stay away. For the casual that is willing to learn and grow and doesn't need instantaneous gratification, then welcome aboard. And know that you won't become a guru overnight.
I understand the sentiment and don't disagree that it would be nice to have in-game guides to help the players, but it's hard to give them that but not having them be "this is how the game 'should' play"...because OOTP will do stuff that will defy those guides...and it won't take long.
Yeah, I think a lot of new players get in trouble thinking there is a "correct way" to play the game. They don't realize this is more of a sandbox game. It's your sandbox so do what you want with it. Certain types of noobs seem to always want to double check everything first according to a rubric that doesn't really exist rather than dive in and move some sand around.
i think this is probably me
I usually suggest for people to try the mobile version (MLB Manager) first if they want to try OOTP but don't have a high knowledge of baseball. It isn't nearly as good as the main game but it is way less complex and it is only 5 or 6 bucks.
Just my thoughts and was wondering if anyone feels similar? All this being said at some point I will probably buy 19. I love baseball and want to love this game. Who knows maybe this time it will stick.