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Mods for an Overhauled Vanilla experience?


GammaLogic

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So I've been slogging through the mod database, which is quite expansive! Good work contributors. Unfortunately, most of them have no actual comments in the reviews--simply star ratings. It's hard for me to discern what's good, what's buggy, and what's in between. I began sorting by most downloaded, which I think is a good starting point.

What I'm looking for is a good combination to enhance the vanilla game. What do I mean by that?

1. Overhauled rosters. Note: That doesn't mean updating the rosters to a certain year, or season. It simply means fixing any balancing / stat issues noticed by veterans of the game.

2. Overhauled textures / models. Again, I'm not looking to update anything forward in time, but any improvements on the originals (such as higher resolution) are welcome.

3. Overhauled gameplay mechanics. Mods that rebalance, or strive for that ever-elusive "realism" or "immersion" factor hardcore gamers chase.

What I've found so far:

Various slider adjustments (#3)

Jim825's Combo Data file. (seems to address #3)

True's MLB Ball replacement (#2)

Compmaniac's hi-res base mod (#2)

Real Crowd Ver 3 (#2). This seems to require another program to get it installed.

 

Hoping the community can point me in the right direction, either comments on why these are (or are not) good choices, and any additions you'd recommend.

Thanks!

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I can only speak to the rosters and an additional adjustment I made.  The rosters have been a rolling work in progress where eventually I used existing stats to come up with corresponding attributes (and my documents are located in the DL section as to what I use for each area).  It's not exhaustive, e.g., I don't do hit spray charts as it would be impossible to finish in a timely manner, but it seems to hold its own. 

Once you get set up, if you want an immersive game play experience, I think I came up with something useful in the Sim play pack.

 

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So I've been slogging through the mod database, which is quite expansive! Good work contributors. Unfortunately, most of them have no actual comments in the reviews--simply star ratings. It's hard for me to discern what's good, what's buggy, and what's in between. I began sorting by most downloaded, which I think is a good starting point.

 

Unfortunately you are not going to know what is a good mod or a not so good mod until you try it. Don't expect any comments in the reviews only because many people around here are too lazy and too in a hurry to review anything let alone say thank you. It takes two seconds to say thank you but the modders around here do not get even that.

And you can not tell what is a good mod from what is most downloaded. Take Total Classics 1971 for example. A quick glance says that it has only been downloade3d 43 times. You would think that because of that it would not be worth downloading and if you thought that you would be wrong. The main reason for that is because this is a newer mod around here.  Now take Mvp 06. 29,948 downloads. That's because that mod has been here for ten years.

You got to try a mod that interests you and a lot of the great ones are buried in the download section. Good luck.

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@Gordo 

Much obliged. I'll see if I can track down your roster documents. The mod you linked is well described and appears to be in line with what I'm after, in fact I played a few exhibitions earlier and my thoughts were "Well how can I get rid of the GUI elements?" I like the "broadcast" feel to the presentation of the game, don't get me wrong, but the pitching / hitting aids are intrusive. As the strike zone / hot cold stuff are on toggles, I figured it ended there as I couldn't toggle the pitching meter. 

I plan to download it and compare it to a few other tweaks I've already had in mind. The rather short time the CPU takes between pitches is bothering me. The average time between pitches in MLB games falls somewhere between 12 and 20 seconds (rough estimate based on watching many games). Hopefully I can find that line in the datafile and tweak it without too much trouble.

@Yankee4Life

You raise some good points, partner. I agree with everything you're saying, which is why I started the thread in the first place: to get a smattering of opinions about what's hot and what's not. 

 

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The datafile in that sim pack does slow down the time between pitches, but if you go for 12 to 20, I think you're going to get very bored with the game.  Keep in mind that time probably includes the catcher throwing the ball back which is not emulated in this game.  One nice thing about this game is you will see variety between the pitchers because of the pitch types and even the occasional getting fast pitched which will take you by surprise.

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@Yankee4Life

You raise some good points, partner. I agree with everything you're saying, which is why I started the thread in the first place: to get a smattering of opinions about what's hot and what's not. 

 

Another thing you have to remember that one mod however popular it may be with some people is not a mod that you would download. For example we have a lot of uniform mod here. You may not care to get the throwbacks for a team that you don't care for. So while some old Red Sox uniforms were made I never grabbed them because I didn't want them.

There are also mods on this site that new people have no clue about because they are buried. One of my favorite mods was the Custom Organ Mod which was made by a guy named The_Betz. A lot of people that were around then don't remember him because this is the only mod he made and he has not been here in years. People would pass that over because they don't know anything about it.

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@Yankee

What a great find! This kind of addition to the ambiance of play is great. Downloaded, commented, and installed. Thanks man. I wish there was a list of these little gems somewhere. 

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Legends Of Booth is spectacular, but with current rosters there are some players not included or with some "wrong" names but in my case it doesn't matter, I really love it!

 

 I 'm working reassigning some names (I have 20 right now) and probably would put it in the download section in the next days

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Gordo

I've decided to compile my own datafile, a frankenstein of tweaks I find and my own perusing the spreadsheet. I'd like to cut back on the negative comments, and I see that's one of the changes you implemented. Which category and values handle announcer "bad swing" comments, do you recall?

Fiebre

Thanks I'll check it out for sure.

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You're asking the wrong guy about announcer commentary.  I don't play sports games with the commentary on.

Ah. I saw this line in the readme to your datafile: **Also eliminates the repetitive hecklers comments. 

Incorrectly thinking this referred to the heckling of the announcers. I suppose this is the crowd then.

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Ya, the crowd heckling volume can be zero'd out in the datafile.txt.    Would love to turn down the amount of pitch outs when certain types of runners are on 1st, but just can't find anything.  Increasing amount of foul balls would be great too, but I think stuff like that is just hard programmed.

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