Hello everyone,

We are looking to update the help guides and would like to include videos and other features to help new users with this complex game and to maybe get help with certain aspects of the game that aren't as intuitive to new users. If you know of HBD content that is out there that could be helpful to new users that we could consider adding to the guides please post them here.

Check out hbddean on youtube. The navigation screens are old, but a lot of the content and facts shared are still accurate and relevant. He has about 8 vids, but they're from nine years ago.

https://m.youtube.com/user/HBDDean

Posted by jholthus on 9/15/2021 10:28:00 AM (view original):
Hello everyone,

We are looking to update the help guides and would like to include videos and other features to help new users with this complex game and to maybe get help with certain aspects of the game that aren't as intuitive to new users. If you know of HBD content that is out there that could be helpful to new users that we could consider adding to the guides please post them here.

I don't have any videos, but I had been working with adlorenz fairly closely to create an updated guide. Let me know if you would like me to share what we came up with.

Posted by bruinsfan911 on 9/16/2021 9:04:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jholthus on 9/15/2021 10:28:00 AM (view original):
Hello everyone,

We are looking to update the help guides and would like to include videos and other features to help new users with this complex game and to maybe get help with certain aspects of the game that aren't as intuitive to new users. If you know of HBD content that is out there that could be helpful to new users that we could consider adding to the guides please post them here.

I don't have any videos, but I had been working with adlorenz fairly closely to create an updated guide. Let me know if you would like me to share what we came up with.

That would be great if you could and we can continue to work with it from where you guys left off if need be.

Posted by jholthus on 9/16/2021 4:10:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bruinsfan911 on 9/16/2021 9:04:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jholthus on 9/15/2021 10:28:00 AM (view original):
Hello everyone,

We are looking to update the help guides and would like to include videos and other features to help new users with this complex game and to maybe get help with certain aspects of the game that aren't as intuitive to new users. If you know of HBD content that is out there that could be helpful to new users that we could consider adding to the guides please post them here.

I don't have any videos, but I had been working with adlorenz fairly closely to create an updated guide. Let me know if you would like me to share what we came up with.

That would be great if you could and we can continue to work with it from where you guys left off if need be.

That sounds like a good plan. At the moment everything is in one Google Doc, so I'm thinking that the best way to proceed would be for you to send me a site mail with the email address that would be best for me to share it with and we can go from there...a lot of the stuff should still be usable after the coming updates but some of it might need to be reworked to fit the changes coming in November/December. I look forward to working with you!

Hello everyone,

We're going to shift gears on this a little bit. We are going to create a series of videos to help new users. We are going to try to break them down into couple minute segments to help new users with various aspects of the game. I am reaching out to compile user feedback to see what are the basics that users should know to help set them up for success. Try to keep input constructive and not "biased or opinionated" on things you personally have found to be successful but things that are widely accepted or used and would help a new user shorten the learning curve.

Issue	Grouping
Site Navigation	Intro
How to purchase more teams	HBD Intro
HBD Navigation	HBD Intro
HBD Chat	HBD Intro
How to set lineups	Lineups
How to set pitching roations	Pitching
Setting Up (management console, manager settings, player settings, etc)	HBD Intro
Important values for position players	Lineups
Important values for pitchers	Pitching

Posted by bripat42 on 12/28/2021 1:03:00 PM (view original):
You might need to clarify:

Try to keep input constructive and not "biased or opinionated" on things you personally have found to be successful but things that are widely accepted or used and would help a new user shorten the learning curve.

In the context of:

Issue	Grouping
Important values for position players	Lineups
Important values for pitchers	Pitching

A consensus on important values for both position players and for pitchers always has been elusive -- and that's a good thing. The constant search for how ratings best work with and against other ratings is what makes the game challenging and fun.

To the first one, I am mostly saying if you've found that for your particular strategy something works that is "abnormal" then that isn't something I'm looking for. If you've found something that works for your strategy and a lot of other users also use the same strategy then that is information that could be beneficial.

To the second point, I was mostly indicating looking into control and eff vs LH and RH and pitch qualities... some of the "basic" ideas to give users at least a ballpark of ratings they should prioritize, the same with position players.

Site Navigation and Purchasing New HBD Teams:
https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Main/FranchiseCenter.aspx
The above link brings the user to the franchise center. From this site, the user can click on a franchise that he already owns or click on a link to purchase more teams. The user can also use this link to reserve his franchise for the following season. If a user is looking to join a new World with one of the seasons that he has already purchased, he would click on the below link, click "start your dynasty". Then he needs to find a World to join. He can join an open world by staying on the "View Open Worlds" or, if he has a password, he can click the "View Private Worlds" tab, enter the World password and join the private World.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Main/WorldSelect.aspx

HBD Navigation:
Like any site, learning navigation comes with time and tinkering.

From the lockerroom page, the user can choose the World/franchise he wants to navigate to by clicking on "Office". This brings the user to the homepage for the World. The home page is also named the World Office. It has scores of recent games played, the World chat, the inbox, headlines, etc. There are four main dropdowns to the middle right top of the screen. The first of the top four drop downs is summarized below:

World:
Office -- if the user clicks Office, it brings him back to the World Office/Home Page;

Schedule -- if the user chooses schedule, he will have two choices. The first choice is World Schedule, this is a higher level schedule that highlights big events during the season (I.e. budgets due date, FA and coach signings due dates, draft dates, trade deadlines, transaction deadline, etc.). The second is the league schedule that gives a game cycle by game cycle breakdown of the season;

Standings -- if the user chooses Standings, he'll have four choices. The first choice is the standard league standings in the league(s). It also shows the record for the last ten games, any relevant streaks, the home record and away record. The second choice is advanced standings that show the amount of runs scored, runs given up, 1-run game record, spring training record, etc.. The third choice is franchise standings which show a snapshot of the division in each level (MLB, AAA, AA, HIA, LOWA, ROOKIE). The fourth is Playoff Brackets. This shows the current playoff bracket. There is a dropdown to navigate from level to level;

Stats/Awards -- there are six choices here. The first three are self explanatory (league leaders, team stats, player stats). The next choice is Player Records. This will show the players that have been historically the best or worst at a certain stat from a career or single season perspective. The next choice is Player Awards. This shows player accolades like Player of Week awards, All Star Selection, Future Game selections and year end award selections. The final choice is the Almanac. This gives a high level overview of the Worthheeld from season to season (championship, year end award winners, etc.);

Hall of Fame -- there are four choices. Each should be self explanatory. If you just want to view the players in the Hall, click Hall of Fame, if you want to vote during the spring training voting period, click voting, if you want to nominate a player for the Hall during the nomination period (just after budgets), click nominations. If the user wants to see the results of the Hall vote, click on voting results;

Reports -- HBD has many reports. If you just want to view your rosters or other rosters you don't manage, simply click team rosters. If to you want to see the 40 man roster, whether it's yours or others, click team 40-man rosters. If you want to view positional depth chart, click on team depth chart. The Franchise Rankings will give you the average player ratings of each team with dropdowns to further analyze. The Prospect Report shows the top prospects in each level. The prospects on this report are chosen by the sim so be careful. Player Search allows the user to search for a player by level, name, team or positional type. It also allows you to see fatigue levels of other teams. The Diamonds in the Rough report is only available, for the current season, after the Futures game is played during the All Star break. It can be accessed for past seasons at any time. Ballparks and coaches allow the user to view coaches and ballparks.

News -- nearly every section under the News section is self explanatory. If you want to see draft history or any league transaction history, this is where the user needs to be. Game highlights, the disabled list and the World scoreboard can be found here as well.

Finances -- the Budget Analysis gives a high level overview of the budgets of each team in the World. The Franchise payroll analysis shows the user it's franchise's expenditures on player salary.

If the above has been helpful, I will write more. If not, I will hang back.

There are many fans of Hardball Dynasty. In fact, there are many blogs that have been written through the years. One of the more -- helpful to beginners -- blogs that I have come across is the Hometown Tonight blog. This was written back in late 2015 so it is about 6.5 years old, but nearly all of it still applies except the fact that a 70 across the board player is an All Star player at the MLB level. I would say that a player like that has a chance to make all star games only if he plays a premium defensive position (i.e. SS, 2b, CF, 3b). A player with 70 across the board ratings will not be making the all start game if he is playing LF, C, RF, or 1b.

As far as player ratings, I think most would agree that when it comes to pitchers, the most important ratings are Rsplit, control and p1, followed by Lsplit, P2 and other pitches. Also, I think most would agree that groundball/flyball and velocity ratings are secondary ratings and that most owners would prefer a pitcher with a high groundball rating over a pitcher with a high velocity rating.

Power and R split are likely the two top ratings for hitters. After that, it is likely eye, then L split, then contact. Speed plays a role as well, especially for teams that are looking to steal bases, teams in extreme pitchers parks and teams that have high on base skills. Some owners may place a higher emphasis on speed than they do contact, but to me, speed is similar to groundball rate or velocity for pitchers in that it is a secondary rating.

Posted by tlowster on 4/20/2022 11:37:00 AM (view original):
There are many fans of Hardball Dynasty. In fact, there are many blogs that have been written through the years. One of the more -- helpful to beginners -- blogs that I have come across is the Hometown Tonight blog. This was written back in late 2015 so it is about 6.5 years old, but nearly all of it still applies except the fact that a 70 across the board player is an All Star player at the MLB level. I would say that a player like that has a chance to make all star games only if he plays a premium defensive position (i.e. SS, 2b, CF, 3b). A player with 70 across the board ratings will not be making the all start game if he is playing LF, C, RF, or 1b.

As far as player ratings, I think most would agree that when it comes to pitchers, the most important ratings are Rsplit, control and p1, followed by Lsplit, P2 and other pitches. Also, I think most would agree that groundball/flyball and velocity ratings are secondary ratings and that most owners would prefer a pitcher with a high groundball rating over a pitcher with a high velocity rating.

Power and R split are likely the two top ratings for hitters. After that, it is likely eye, then L split, then contact. Speed plays a role as well, especially for teams that are looking to steal bases, teams in extreme pitchers parks and teams that have high on base skills. Some owners may place a higher emphasis on speed than they do contact, but to me, speed is similar to groundball rate or velocity for pitchers in that it is a secondary rating.

I would second this, I often still refer to this blog when I have questions.

Posted by Mwett on 4/21/2022 12:47:00 PM (view original):
I'm an HBD newb, imported from SLB free/cheap promo. I have my 1st amateur draft in a 2nd world I picked up to practice in 15 hours. If HBD SIM runs similar enough to SLB, BA (I'm assuming here that's Contact) is very important in SLB and hit or not a hit is of major early importance on the decision tree. Yet it was just offered that here at HBD it's much lower in importance than Power (SLG, I'm assuming).

For the upcoming draft I weighed them basically equal, as I basically would for SLB with generally good results. Any other opinions on if I should or shouldn't reshuffle based on the earlier offering that (at least for HBD purposes) Power (SLG) outweighs Contact (BA) ? I know there's lots of HBD tweaks to unravel and I'm willing to put in the time, and maybe I mistakenly assumed that since it's all not only WIS but also baseball specific, that the SIM would generate similar result and decisions.

In conversations with other HBD vets, and a couple WIS employees, I believe "out vs not an out" comes before "contact or no contact" in the HBD decision tree. I'm not 100% positive that's true, but I am fairly confident.

lowster - When estimating batting averages how do you account for ballpark effects?

lobster - thank you. One of my teams plays in Burlington so I was curious. I’ve been playing for several years now and I’m always learning new things!