Work that DESEPERATELY needs to be done on Progression

[Kriegz]

Good luck guys, I really would like to see this done.

[DarkEnigma510]

OK, I have taken a look at this and can definitively say that the 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 columns refer to magnitude of chnage for a given age. Even though it says increases can happen up to 15, in reality I think a pitch can only increase by +5 in one year. But remember, a given pitch has three subcomponents to it: velocity, control and movement. I think a +15 increase is really increasing all three components of a pitch by a magnitude of around five. I also suspect that projpadj also impacts the magnitude of pitching changes. I think its possible for a pitcher to increase volocity but lose control and movement. IN such cases, a large increase in velocity could be countered by decreases in control/movement. Therefore, the overall change to a pitcher's fastball might only be +2 instead of +5. It wasn't until I adjusted projpadj to bascially force increases for pitchers under 30 and decreases for pitchers over 30 that this became apparent.

Either way, my recommendation is this:

The only file that needs to be modded is projpinc. The other two: projpadj and projpdec can be left alone.

The only three columns in projpinc that need to be modded are the three columns in 80-99 category.

For ages 25+, I would change the 1-5 column to all 1's (or alternatively 0.9), the 6-10 column to 0s (alternatively to 0.1), and the 11-15 column to 0s. Again, this should only be done for the 80-99 pitch category. All the other pitch categories should be left alone to allow for proper progression.

This should limit pitcher progression once their pitches get up to a 80-99 overall level (which in MVP terms is an above average pitch). I would leave pitchers 18-24 alone since this are the ages that pitches will progress the most and its not out of the realm of possibility you would see big changes here at a young age.

[TheMadcap]

Have you tested this over multiple seasons? Your findings seem to make sense. My guess was just that, a guess. I too was thinking that only projpinc needed to be modified but for slightly different reasons. We should test this out & report our findings. This could be HUGE!

[DarkEnigma510]

I didnt test this over multiple seasons yet. Just wanted to verify the info works the way I thought it did.

Unfortunately, I am going to be travelling over the next few weeks with no way of testing this unless I can quickly try it tomorrow. But everything in my tests worked the way I thought it was supposed to.

The only real question is whether it screws things up 5 or so years down the line and you have a league of mediocre pitchers (although when a pitch is rated in the 80s, that means its pretty good).

[Requiem]

From billharris' Player Progression Pack README:

There are four ratings bins (0-39, 49-59, 60-79, 80-99), each with their own probabilities for each age. So a rating can theoretically change by up to 15 points a year.

For position players, anyway. Even though these tables exist for pitchers, they're not hooked up. Pitch ratings change 1-5 points a year and no table entries for increase/decline are used, as far as I can tell. This makes player progression much less dynamic for pitchers than position players, because it's not possible to steepen the aging curve with large ratings decline. All that can be adjusted is the probability of decline, not the size.

I think he may be underestimating some aspects of it, as some testing I've done suggest that there MIGHT be more to it than that.

Also, the problem mainly seems to be that velocity keeps getting upped throughout the progression (though not by that much).

So, you would probably want to fix this by limiting how fast a rookie pitcher can throw a 4-seam FB at (specifically the 5-star SPs).

Which means modding 4sfbvel.csv as 5% of the 5-starlevel rookies will have a 98-mph heater (and 5% of the 4-starlevel rookies will have 97, 5% of the 3-starlevel rookies will have 96, etc.) 8O. It should be rather simple to drop the rookies' velocity to reasonable numbers.

Of course, then, the problem will be the testing the changes you made and seeing if you broke the play-balance between hitting and pitching since the 4SFB rating is mainly dependent upon the velocity and might swing things back in favor of hitting.

Ideally, you'd have a team of simmers ready to test each iteration and see if the results are similar to what bill harris came up with.

Good luck,

Req

[billharris44]

Damn, one of you guys should have just e-mailed me.

I stopped working on the game because at some point I just tired of the sick amount of work we were all doing to fix EA's screw-ups. I just started resenting that I paid for something that I then spent 300 hours to improve, along with a bunch of other people. But I'm always happy to answer questions.

I do know a few things about this. One, I believe the 4 seam fastball is probably the only pitch where the speed is dependent on the variables in the different rookies files. All other pitches probably use a formula that is derived from the base 4sfb speed when a pitcher is created. Which is a problem with the engine.

Two, the speeds in "4sbfbvel" are way too high for rookies (which you guys figured out). It doesn't look too bad, at first, but most of the 1-3 star guys will never make it up through the minors, so if you look at the 4-5 star guys as the true future pitcher's pool, their velocities as rookies are way too high.

When I was originally doing the mod, I believed that "progpinc" adjusted a pitch's rating, not its velocity, but that may be wrong. I say that because I originally thought that the numbers listed for individual pitches were ratings, but I now believe they're actually velocity (which you can see pretty easily--you'll never see a changeup "rated" in the 90's, which is nonsensical unless it's a velocity rating). So that plus movement must create an overall pitch rating that's not actually visible to us. So maybe "progpinc" adjusts velocity or movement (or both), but it doesn't directly affect the pitch rating, because that's calculated (and invisible).

Somebody e-mailed me a few months ago and said they were working on this, and at one point they said they were almost final, but I think the testing may have wound up killing it. Little adjustments wind up having huge effects afer 20 seasons, and after going through adjustment after adjustment and having to sim 20 seasons to see the true effect, it's just not fun anymore.

I'll tell you what, though. If one of you guys mods the files to the point where you're satisifed with the pitch speeds over 20 seasons (which means the pitch speed issue is fixed), then I will dust off the game and test that file in conjunction with the progression mod, and if necessary, make a few passes at trying to rebalance the stats (if necessary). I'm not going to commit to simming more than 100 seasons overall, but I'd like to help you guys get the game where you want it to be.

I'm on auto-notify on this thread now so I'll keep track of it. And I may have gotten a few things mixed up, because it's been a long time since I worked on this. But I think I still remember most of it.

[TheMadcap]

Wow, that was Bill Harristhat just posted there. Glad to have your progression expertise on-board, as we can surely use it. Your progression mod is incredible, now only if we can successfully add on to it. Any help that you can offer, would no doubt be appreciated.

[Requiem]

I stopped working on the game because at some point I just tired of the sick amount of work we were all doing to fix EA's screw-ups. I just started resenting that I paid for something that I then spent 300 hours to improve, along with a bunch of other people. But I'm always happy to answer questions.

Heh, I totally understand. I was the same way with Civ 4 (well, that and I think I'm all Cived out), though modding Civ 4 was definitely easier.

When I was originally doing the mod, I believed that "progpinc" adjusted a pitch's rating, not its velocity, but that may be wrong. I say that because I originally thought that the numbers listed for individual pitches were ratings, but I now believe they're actually velocity (which you can see pretty easily--you'll never see a changeup "rated" in the 90's, which is nonsensical unless it's a velocity rating).

I believe this is incorrect. I did some adjusting of pitchers and the rating of ALL the off-speed pitches seemed directly related to their MOVEMENT and CONTROL. Speed had no affect whatsoever on the rating.

So that plus movement must create an overall pitch rating that's not actually visible to us. So maybe "progpinc" adjusts velocity or movement (or both), but it doesn't directly affect the pitch rating, because that's calculated (and invisible).

I believe that progpinc adjusts the control of the pitch. The thing is that an 8 point increase in control translates to a 2-3 point increase in the rating. I'm not quite sure what changes the movement rating as it only goes in multiples of 10 from 0-50 and 5 from 50-99 (with 95 to 99 being the last jump). And anyways, the movement rarely does a double jump (i.e., 20 point jump from 0-50 and 10 point jump from 50-99) so you're usually going to get a change of 1 level which I believe is a 2-3 point jump in rating. So, the most that a pitch can go up is 6 points since I've never seen a jump of 2 levels in movement and the highest jump in control I've seen is 8.

BTW, nice job on your blog. I've read a few entries and some are very funny.

I probably will lose interest in MVP 2005, so I'm probably not going to do very much (if any) modding.

With what I most enjoyed contented least....

Oh, to find the next stanza....

Req

[bigmo78]

Is there a way to take into consideration the "in game" potential of each player for instance if a player is a two start potiential his peak would probably occure earlier in his career and would also drop off earlier as well. Where as some one with 4 or 5 star players would peek over a longer period of time. Most baseball players are considered to start thier "prime" years around 28 or 29. Now that is a loose average as we all know certian players are just freaks and are great thier whole careers. But from all the studing ive done it is believed that around the ealier mentioned age most ball players are considered to start their prime and last into the mid thrities.

[DarkEnigma510]

Is there a way to take into consideration the "in game" potential of each player for instance if a player is a two start potiential his peak would probably occure earlier in his career and would also drop off earlier as well. Where as some one with 4 or 5 star players would peek over a longer period of time. Most baseball players are considered to start thier "prime" years around 28 or 29. Now that is a loose average as we all know certian players are just freaks and are great thier whole careers. But from all the studing ive done it is believed that around the ealier mentioned age most ball players are considered to start their prime and last into the mid thrities.

Yes, this is part of the progression files. Each player, at a given age and star level has a certain probability of increasing, getting worse, or staying the same during progression.

[maddux31]

I was just checking in to see if there was any progress? I can't wait to see

how this turns out!!!