Posted by pjfoster13 on 1/24/2014 2:02:00 PM (view original):
[In this game (which is vastly different from real life MLB]

That statement right there kind of takes the wind out of my sails, because this game is fun and addicting but it's...not realistic.

[Why limit your "best" pitchers to situations that may NEVER arise (aka, "save" situations)?]

Indeed, your 5 "best" pitchers should be your starters, you want them to go the whole game, so why limit your 6th pitcher, your "best" remaining pitcher on any given day, to a situation that may never arise aka his appearance in the 7th. Your statement proves my point, doesn't it? If the starter isn't tired yet and is still effective, don't take him out. If that starter does happen to get into a key jam near his fatigue point, you want a fireman to bail him out for the .1 or .2 at the end of that inning + whatever the fireman was already intended to give you after that. So hence the post title of the 1.1 inning save, the .1 is the jam in the previous inning and the 1.0 is what he was scheduled to give you anyways. Similarly for setups, you want to plan for them to pitch the 7th and 8th or whatever but you also would want the ability to have him get that key .1 BEFORE that- at the end of the 6th. For relievers only, the algoritmic logic for this SIM needs to be re-designed to work backwards not forwards. That makes sense, right?  Are there any developers still around?

You say that your 5 best pitchers ideally will be your starters, and you want them to give you the most innings.  In an ideal world, they would all pitch complete games every start, and that would maximize the performance of your pitching staff.

Is that correct?

If the reality is that they are not going to give you complete games, then you're going to have to go to a 6th best, 7th best, 8th best, etc., pitcher at various points thoughout the season.

Why would you not want to maximize the number of innings your 6th best pitcher, i.e. your best reliever, i.e. the guy YOU want to minimize and ideally never have to use because he's the "closer"?

That seems like a massive hole in logic.
 

Posted by pjfoster13 on 1/24/2014 4:24:00 PM (view original):
What this might come down to is the idea of the "Live Sim," which people have said WIS allegedly talked about implementing but never did

Years ago I used to play MVP Baseball 05 for PS2, that was the last baseball game EA sports ever made and that game was killer, maybe the best baseball sim of all time; I played it for so many hours that I literally wore out an entire out-of-the-box playstation and had to buy a new one. That game had a Live SIM and it was awesome.

The main purpose of a live SIM is that you (in your own brain) can re-calculate your need to make a pitching change or execute a hit & run or whatever in real-time. This allowed the user to maximize his or her own customization.

In HBD, the engine is broken because the engine does not re-calculate the logic algorithms per at bat based on game situation, it only re-calculates per inning and it only does so within incredibly general and vague parameters.  It's also calculating via incorrect logic in the first place like with the order that setupA and setupB enter the game.  HBD could write a "live sim" into the engine where you didn't have to literally log in at 7:30pm and go thru the outs 1 by 1, the "live sim" would just be the automated re-calculation of in-the-moment pitch counts and call bullpens based on score, inning, outs, baserunners, fatigue, remaining stamina of the other players, etc etc, just like you would if you were playing a console game.  Somebody just needs to write the logic framework so that the programmers can translate it into code.  The original WIS guys didn't know enough about baseball game theory so the sim was flawed since day 1.

The problem is that I'm not a computer programmer, I'm merely the game theory guy, merely the logician if that's a word, and I have no idea how to translate logic into programming language. I can describe the concepts as they should appear but I can't fix them.

As a new user to this game, I can see through the facade that the game still exists as something current.  I can tell from when you guys post the responses you get to tickets, the development inactivity since 2009, etc.  Those responses are an away message.  The developers are gone and they're not coming back.  WhatIf Sports, Inc probably began just as a few guys writing code, and then when a company like Fox Sports buys out a company like WhatIf, the developers retire to Tahiti and Fox Sports never re-assigns their own developers to take over, because why would they- the money-making machine is already generating what it needs to generate; its existing users are already invested and addicted.  Fox Sports is probably just taking all of our money and giving us nothing in return.  Luckily, I've only invested $100 or whatever for my 5 seasons, but some of you guys look like you've invested literally thousands of dollars on a broken game that has no moderators.  If that's actually the case, take your next $10 and buy yourself a used copy of MVP.

So it's all good, I can still try to enjoy WIS for what it is even if it's not perfect (or nowhere near)