It's tough to take somebody seriously when they start three separate whining threads within 30 minutes, only one of which initially contained some sort of suggestion, which, as Mike pointed out, has been suggested many, many times:

11:44am:  "Our world (Feller) has approximately 20 available fielding instructors. The highest rated FI is 87 in fielding. The second highest is 84. No one else is higher than 66. It's like this every season, and it's a pain in the ***. Please fix this."

11:51am: "Even with $20m training and advance scouting budgets, great coaching and players with solid work ethic, and slow rises through the minors (generally a year at every level if the prospect was a HS draftee), I've never had a player reach his real potential. Most fall far short.

It's just maddening to have these players never reach their potential. Maybe I'm doing something wrong."

12:06pm: "I'm sure this is a broken record and a bunch of people have posted on it, but the DITRs in HD are just beyond awful. In real life, gems are found late in the draft fairly frequently: Don Mattingly, Ryne Sandberg, Albert Pujols, Greg Maddux, Roy Oswalt, Mike Piazza, Dan Uggla and Mike Lowell were all drafted after the 10th round (most were far later). In HD, it's virtually impossible to get a decent ML player after the 3rd round, and there's absolutely no possibility of finding a player on par with Pujols or Maddux.

Improving DITRs would go a long way in improving confidence in the HD product. My suggestion would be to tie results to scouting...teams with high HS and College (and even Advance) scouting budgets should be more likely to uncover DITRs. It'd add strategy."

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/19/2011 6:55:00 AM (view original):
FI thread:  You said there was a lack of good FI.   tec listed the ratings that showed there wasn't.   You changed your suggestion at that point.   No arguing that.
Develpment thread:   You still seem to think projections are 100% accurate.  They are not.   You still seem to think these inaccurate projections should be achieved on a regular basis.  That can be under perfect circumstances.   You can't create perfect circumstances.  Therefore, you cannot achieve the inaccurate projections on a regular basis.  No arguing that.
DITR:  You are asking for MORE BETTER!!! while seemingly understanding that it will dilute the current talent pool.  If you want a handful of superstars to be drafted in the 17th round, good for you.  But it devalues the superstars taken in the 1st round thus turning the game into a MORE luck based game.

As far as the game being luck(and my understanding of alogrithms and percentages), you're right in the short term(like a playoff series).  But, over the course of 162 games, the better teams will almost always have the better records.  You decrease the luck factor by putting 90s on your team when your opponent is using 80s. Throwing random superstars onto teams who did nothing to earn them will INCREASE the luck factor. 

Lastly, in a public forum, I prefer to get to the point.   Beating around the bush in order to avoid damaged feelings seems like a waste of time.   I asked you to clarify your requests, because I didn't want to misinterpret them, and you did.   Your requests have been covered many times.  I pointed out the previously pointed out flaws of your requests. 

FI thread: You're right! I was wrong on that. I believe I admitted that fact at least four times in the last 24 hours. In the end, I think your suggestion about cutting FIs entirely was a good one. You win!

Development thread: Good lord, I'm not sure how you interpreted things so strangely (did I really infer projections were 100% accurate? I thought I said they should be 95% accurate if players spent $20m), but there's no convincing you otherwise. I will say I agreed with your suggestion about minor league players improving based on performance, because I just want players improving better across the board. You win!

DITR: I think I made it pretty clear I was comfortable diluting the talent base by tiny degrees at the top to make the game more realistic and reward teams with high scouting budgets rather than tankers. I really can't fathom how that is asking for "MORE BETTER!!!!", but I can't seem to convince you otherwise here, either. Luck elements are all over this game, from IFAs to college and high school projects to the actual games played. It's just varying degrees. If you want HBD to be less luck oriented, that's understandable. Me? I tend to like the unknowns, like reading my day-to-day PBPs, anticipating draft day, and checking new IFAs to see if there are any superstars to go after. I think almost every part of HBD I really enjoy involves some sort of gamble, and this would have been a minor tweak to improve a component that is already part of the game and currently useless. Didn't seem like something worth of a day-long flame war, but that's how things go.

But never mind about all that. You are obviously a man who likes to get to the point. So: You win!

@tecwrg: I really did appreciate you looking up those FI stats. I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong on something, and you called me on my lack of research, so I agreed you were right. Since then, you were just kind of unhelpful and seemed to echo whatever MikeT23 said, so I blocked you a while ago. I must say, though, it's perplexing that someone who's managed to play 51 seasons of HBD and never win a championship would be so opposed to making the game marginally more luck-based. Even if you didn't benefit, you could still use that as an excuse.

Thanks for taking the cheap shot at my lack of championships.  I play in arguably two of the most competitive worlds in HBD (Cooperstown and Moonlight Graham), primarily because I enjoy the challenge of the competition.  I suppose I could choose to play in lesser worlds to pad my record with more wins and a handful of cheap titles.  But I'd rather stick to the challenge and avoid (a) weak competition and (b) the "luck" that you seek to introduce into the game.

I'm not trying to be right, I was just pointing out the flaws in your requests.    I still don't know why you chose 95% but, if that's the number you think it should be, good for you.  Maybe that is the number.   You still can't create the perfect development enviroment so you shouldn't be surprised when your players don't develop to that 95% accurate projection. 

I'm fine with the level of luck involved in HBD now.  I don't need my 17th round pick to suddenly become a Hall of Famer nor do I want my main competition to get one of those guys either.   If he beats me by acquiring better players, good for him, he played the game better than I did.   But, as previously mentioned, this has been discussed many, many times and the vast majority of those who respond aren't interested in more random luck.

Yeah, 95% was just an arbitrary number I threw out there.

Maybe people aren't up for it. I know I would be, but again, I like a lot of the luck stuff. I understand why others don't. We're just coming at it from different angles.

And, admittedly, I wouldn't want the same success rate as real life. Even if a team tanks, they don't deserve to be saddled with a Brien Taylor or Matt Bush. Teams wouldn't ever recover if that was common.

Honest question: do you think they should get rid of DITRs altogether?

No

deathinahole is gonna love this response.    I think it's a "fun" addition with little meaning.    I look forward to opening my DITR presents even though I usually get crap.  To the best of my recollection, I've had 4 develop into BL-quality.   One was a RP I traded immediately.  Though he was good, he was also "free" in that I did nothing to deserve him.  So throwing him into a deal was easy.    Another was a 1B that I just couldn't get any playing time.  Here are two current ones:

Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Orlando Bonilla
Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Pinky Hubbard

Bonilla is a good D-catcher with enough contact/power/VL to be a BL player.  Hubbard has had a pretty solid career as a short reliever.

But, to fully answer your question, I wouldn't lose any sleep if they did away with them.  The complaining about them not being good enough would stop and that would be a bonus.  Since I can't convince anyone that "THEY'RE FREE!!  YOU DID NOTHING TO DESERVE THEM!!! QUIT COMPLAINING!!" , being rid of them would be a good 2nd option.

Also, in tec's defense, he's right.  Overall record doesn't mean a whole lot unless you're comparing it to owners who are facing the same competition in the same worlds.    Same with championships in any world.   We've already discussed the luck factor.   You only have to win 3 or 4 short series to get a title.    That's 11-14 wins.   Good teams often go on 11-8 runs. 

As for me, I know you mentioned it and I ignored in order to not get sidetracked, check my record in worlds I've left.   Every team I left behind was a playoff team, some were hundred game winners, and I left my WS team behind.  I left Joey Belle after 7-8 straight division titles because I was bored with wrapping up my division at game 100.  I could have padded my record by staying in Belle, ABU, HJack, etc. but I seek competition.   Trying to judge what someone knows based on their record or championships is silly.  

That said, if someone has half a dozen seasons and a .350 winning percentage, I think it's safe to say they don't know **** or they're tankers. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/19/2011 3:38:00 PM (view original):
As for me, I know you mentioned it and I ignored in order to not get sidetracked, check my record in worlds I've left.   Every team I left behind was a playoff team, some were hundred game winners, and I left my WS team behind.  I left Joey Belle after 7-8 straight division titles because I was bored with wrapping up my division at game 100.  I could have padded my record by staying in Belle, ABU, HJack, etc. but I seek competition.   Trying to judge what someone knows based on their record or championships is silly.  

That said, if someone has half a dozen seasons and a .350 winning percentage, I think it's safe to say they don't know **** or they're tankers. 

Yeah, I know HBD isn't like other Dynasty games. I went through an extensive 6-7 year rebuilding phase and just got back into playoff contention a couple seasons ago. I tend to think Feller is a competitive world, but who knows? It's the only one I'm in. I don't think I'd dismiss records as "silly", though. If a player has won 10 championships in Ruth or Aaron, it's probably a pretty good indication of their management skills. A couple of our owners (gidoni13 and job314) have winning percentages of 63% and 59%, respectively, and I think it's reflective of their skill.

But HBD experience didn't really matter, and I shouldn't have brought it up with you because this was a debate primarily of differing opinions.

As for tecwrg, I was annoyed he felt he could talk to me like I'm an idiot when it comes to this game. Playing 51 seasons and 17 playoffs without a championship seems to indicate poor management. Maybe he's a great manager and he'd wipe the floor with me.

I'm still of the mind that the fun aspects of HBD involve luck, and you and tecwrg obviously disagree. That's why I'd be curious about a poll.

I don't think that I was talking to you as if you were an idiot.  At least that wasn't my intent.  I apologize if you took it that way.

I did feel as if you were whining, and based on the way you started your three threads, you came across as somebody who didn't fully understand some basic aspects of the game.  You blew the fielding instructor thread right out of the gate.  In this thread, you've acted as if projections should almost always be fully attainable, and then got yourself in a huff and started making snide remarks to those who disagreed with your argument.  And in the DITR thread, you rehashed something that has been debated ad nauseum since the introduction of that feature, while offering no new ideas.  I don't apologize for my first impression.

@tecwrg: I can see you're posting stuff, but I'm not reading it because I blocked you two nights ago. I just wanted to let you know in case you're addressing me, because that seems like it would be a waste of your time.

I don't want to get into a debate over records, quality of worlds, etc, etc. but my first three worlds were Aaron(.617), Belle(.608) and Greenwell(.667).   Had I stayed in them, I might be over .600 with a pocketful of titles.  But, if that level of competition had been my only options, I'd have given up HBD a couple of years ago.  So while I don't dismiss records/titles, I do look at them with a skeptical eye.   In short, I'm a much better owner in worlds I don't commish and it's not because I suddenly get dumber.  

Anyway, with us, I felt the debate was over dilution of talent(DITR), the understanding of projections and what it takes to reach them(player development) and the economics of supply/demand(fielding instructors).   All of those could be HBD debates or just math, definition or economic debates.

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/19/2011 6:38:00 PM (view original):
I don't want to get into a debate over records, quality of worlds, etc, etc. but my first three worlds were Aaron(.617), Belle(.608) and Greenwell(.667).   Had I stayed in them, I might be over .600 with a pocketful of titles.  But, if that level of competition had been my only options, I'd have given up HBD a couple of years ago.  So while I don't dismiss records/titles, I do look at them with a skeptical eye.   In short, I'm a much better owner in worlds I don't commish and it's not because I suddenly get dumber.  

Anyway, with us, I felt the debate was over dilution of talent(DITR), the understanding of projections and what it takes to reach them(player development) and the economics of supply/demand(fielding instructors).   All of those could be HBD debates or just math, definition or economic debates.

I've left two worlds because I didn't like the way they were being run.  I averaged 90 wins per season over the six total seasons I spent in those two worlds.  One of those teams won the WS two seasons after I left with the core of players I put together.

Well, looks like I missed the bi-annual "more better" requests.

Looks like it's all under controi. Carry on.