Our review of Out of the Park Baseball @ootpbaseball |

UPDATE: The developer emailed me with some comments related to issues about the game we raised in the software. Please see just below for a transcript of those comments.

You can hear some of the HHS folks review the great baseball simulation software, OOTP Baseball, on the latest episode of our podcast–Episode 10. (Get to that by clicking on the podcast tab near the top of the screen.)

If you’re interested in buying the software, please use the links in the right sidebar.

DEVELOPER COMMENTS:

In the iOS game that runs on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, teams don’t move between cities and expansion doesn’t happen in historical replays, but in the PC/Mac game, those things happen.

RE the easiness: You can make trading and other things more difficult in the PC/Mac game too, vs. the iOS version. There are options for that in the PC/Mac game, but you can’t in the iOS version.

(The 2013 version of iOOTP is the current one, BTW – 2012 is last year’s version. In the PC/Mac game, version 14 is the new one and 13 is last year’s. I know, our naming convention is screwy and we should change it at some point, but it’s something that was established before I started working for them.)

In general, the iOS version is geared more toward casual players whereas the PC/Mac game has many more customization options, as well as the ability to set up online leagues. Also, you can have the computer take over a lot of things you don’t want to do, such as handling your minor league system. (In Manager Options.)

I noticed that you talked about those things later in the review, but I just wanted to point those things out for the future. I hope you don’t mind. We’re really happy you guys covered the game.

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CursedClevelander

11 years ago

I’ve always been a Baseball Mogul guy, but haven’t been a big fan of this year’s edition. How would people compare the two? I’ve seen reviews on other sites, but I trust my HHS brethren to steer me in the right direction.

Editor

Dan McCloskey

Reply to CursedClevelander

I’ve played both Baseball Mogul and OOTP, but I have a 10-yr. old version of the Baseball Mogul desktop software, so it’s not a really fair comparison vs. a fairly recent version of OOTP (albeit just the mobile version). You probably know much more about Baseball Mogul than I do, but my main frustration there was the setting for the expertise level of the opposing manager. When I set it at lower levels, I dominated, but when I raised it to higher levels, I struggled. And it wasn’t that I was being out-managed (I don’t think), but that it affected… Read more »

Perhaps you’ve seen these, but Bradley Woodrum at Notgraphs did some pretty thorough reviews of both:

http://www.fangraphs.com/not/ootp-14-review-the-best-got-better/

http://www.fangraphs.com/not/baseball-mogul-2013-review-is-gooo/

brp

I’ve played a fair amount of Mogul 2011 and much more 2013; however I think I may give OOTP a shot… there are some complaints I have with BBM, and it would be interesting to see how I feel about OOTP.

Brad Cook

Reply to brp

You can download a demo of OOTP 14, if you want to try before you buy. The info is about halfway down this page:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/out-of-the-park-baseball/downloads.php

I sent in the developer comments quoted above and wanted to add to Dan’s comments to say that in the PC/Mac version, you can, for example, change the trading difficulty if you want more of a challenge. It tends to be harder to dominate on the PC/Mac side – the financials are more complicated, too, and owners don’t tend to be as lenient with money. (Also, you can get fired in the PC/Mac game, although that’s an option you can switch off.) The iOS game is geared more toward casual play, and as such, we erred on the side of… Read more »

Reply to Brad Cook

That ahould say “without it being too *easy*,” rather than “too tough,” above.

Jim Bouldin

I’m curious about the grain of resolution of the game simulation engine itself. Does it get to a pitch by pitch, location and movement type of detail, based on pitch f/x data? Or something coarser, and if so, how coarse? I read what info I could find but it didn’t help much.

Reply to Jim Bouldin

Hi Jim: When playing out a game, there’s a pitch sequence box that shows you the location and type of each pitch in an at-bat. It doesn’t quite go into the detail that Pitch F/X offers, but you’ll see, for example, that a pitch was an 80 mph slider on the inside corner of the plate. For each at-bat, you can go pitch-by-pitch or one-pitch – the latter gives you the result of the at-bat. You can switch between the two, so you can go one-pitch until, say, you have a runner on base and want to figure out the… Read more »

RichW

As a long time OOTP player my bias is obvious. However if any of you have ever wanted to create your own baseball world this game is the only one capable of letting you do it in so many ways for a very reasonable cost. Historical leagues can be replay types like other games but you never have to buy a “season” disk so you can play any past season or play 100 years or more. You can play “alternate history” where you let players develop and age and get injured via the game settings. You will see some unfamiliar… Read more »