The Future of Winterball

[Board of the PEBA]

With the new additions to OOTP v25, the new Development Lab potentially draws away the benefits of winter ball as a CP reward. I have not digested that feature completely, so I do not have a view of all it's options - other than I know it's variable by player. It also provides us with some new options that we might consider adding to our WB stable of options. That doesn't even include the shift in the base ratings under the hood number shifting from 250 to 550 - with no simple mathematical correlation, as far as I can tell. That's definitely going to be the biggest challenge.

What I would like to do is collect thoughts, ideas, experiences and discoveries so that we can be prepared for the move from our PEBA perspective and evolve our reward system to meet the changing software environment.

Thanks!!

[Ghosts]

I did some early testing and discovered a few points I shared with the board. Now, the caveat is that these results may certainly change since v25 is only in beta mode.

-The AI preferentially selects non-active rostered players, but doesn't seem to care about age
- For "hard" changes (just what I decided to test first), I am seeing successful outcomes reagardless of age with no correlation to age (R^2 0.0061, n=16).
- I saw a 36 year old catcher improve by 10 points in C defense (100 point scale), translating to a full point of improvement on a 10 scale (one of three "outstanding" outcomes in 12 samples, the other two belonging to 18-year-olds)
- There is a limit of once per year per skill for any player

[Ghosts]

So with the above in mind, I share the concern.

Winter ball has a special place in my heart. It’s a great reward, well-designed, not too powerful but definitely worthwhile as a CP reward. I’d hate to see it supplanted.

My first take is that we should simply disable the development lab.

If that’s not popular, we should at the least limit the slots - I suggest two slots.

Regardless of development lab decisions, I think a small revamp of winter ball is in order. I would love to see some additional options such as:

- Add Improve BABIP to the batting options
- Allow duplicate awards (if still under the cap, e.g. 2x Improve Stealing)
- Repair (1) Improve Catching Ability, (2) Improve Stealing, and (3) Improve Movement by parsing those into separate rewards for framing/blocking, stealing aggressiveness/ability, and HRA/PBABIP
- Maybe add like 20% or so to average outcomes? I think this could be important in keeping pace with development lab as it stands, but I would suggest we wait until it becomes more clear that development lab’s outcomes are staying where they are currently.
- Add an Improve GB/FB option

[Borealis]

Definitely adjusting for the changes to catcher ratings is a must.

My primary concern focuses on the radical increase of point value for the base ratings - with no easily seen correlation between existing 250 pt scale and the new 550 pt scale, adjusting changes upward so we are even close to what we have is a challenge.

[Dinosaurs]

So with the above in mind, I share the concern.

Winter ball has a special place in my heart. It’s a great reward, well-designed, not too powerful but definitely worthwhile as a CP reward. I’d hate to see it supplanted.

My first take is that we should simply disable the development lab.

If that’s not popular, we should at the least limit the slots - I suggest two slots.

Regardless of development lab decisions, I think a small revamp of winter ball is in order. I would love to see some additional options such as:

- Add Improve BABIP to the batting options
- Allow duplicate awards (if still under the cap, e.g. 2x Improve Stealing)
- Repair (1) Improve Catching Ability, (2) Improve Stealing, and (3) Improve Movement by parsing those into separate rewards for framing/blocking, stealing aggressiveness/ability, and HRA/PBABIP
- Maybe add like 20% or so to average outcomes? I think this could be important in keeping pace with development lab as it stands, but I would suggest we wait until it becomes more clear that development lab’s outcomes are staying where they are currently.
- Add an Improve GB/FB option

I'm mostly in support of this, leaning towards at least some access to the new system though (the 2 slot idea maybe). I definitely do not like that age seemed to not play a factor.