I bought OOTP 15 because it was £2 on offer because I like sport management simulators and played it for 50 hours without a clue about the rules of baseball, strategy or the league. I deciced to buy OOTP17 because i was enjoying 15 so much and I now have over 200 hours spent on it as well as MLB online subscription to watch games. Do not be put off if you have never watched baseball (for the non-US players), if you like sport simulators, building a team, analysing stats, managing wages and transfers and finding the next superstar then give it a go. Beginners tip however, you need more than one starting pitcher.........

Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP for short) 17 is a text based baseball simulation. It contains features for historical gameplay, single player gameplay, custom universe/leagues gameplay and online multiplayer gameplay. The game allows you to take an active role in developing rosters and teams, or managing them. This is done through being a General manager, a manager and even play as the commissioner(you are able to play all three at once, or any combination of the two).

OOTP 17 offers new features over previous editions. They now have full support from MLB and MLBPA(obtained through licensing), so you will have accurate rosters, faces(done through facegen models) and with no worries that they will disappear. Simulation speed has been increased as the new code is allowing the use of multicore processors, which is a huge benefit. The AI also has been enhanced to be smarter in how they draft players, manage players, and develop teams. They will also make decisions depending on your goals and strategy. These are just some of the major changes that OOTP has offered over previous editions.

OOTP has one of the strongest modding communities around for sport simulation games. The community greatly enhances the vanilla gameplay. For instance, historical gameplay has accurate rosters, player attributes, statistics and settings for the era you choose to play(you can play from the grass roots of baseball, negro leagues, or any specific season). You can choose to play it as a single season campaign or start a franchise and build your league from the 1880’s to whenever you choose to end(the starting point is up to you!). The community also offers tools to develop uniforms and baseball caps, and there’s literally thousands already pre-made for you to use if you want to choose from them.

The gaming modes available(and some of this is a repeat of above, I apologize), are single player, and multiplayer. Single player modes allow you to play out single exhibition games with modern and historical teams. You can play as MLB teams, which will have player accurate rosters and attributes. You are also able to create your own fictional leagues, which is a massively popular feature for many players in the OOTP community. You can start from any time frame, and you can customize the league to fit your needs or gameplay style(there are many sliders to adjust to your likings, and needs). Regardless of the league, the game will track and keep a massive history of your statistics as your world/league develops.

The game also features multiplayer gameplay where you can compete in leagues against others, which will put you against the most difficult of opponents(or easy, if they don’t know what they’re doing ;) ). The league will track statistics as if you were in a single player franchise. Many leagues out there have dedicated websites where you can follow the action of the league as it unfolds. It is really a neat feature.

The development team is very active and proactive in fixing bugs and glitches within their games. You don’t have to worry about issues going unnoticed or fixed, and they are very open minded to additional features they may have fixed(as long as they are deemed reasonable of course). The best way to suggest and fill out bug notifications is to use the main forums on their websites, which is ootpdevelopments.com . The community is also very helpful in helping new players learn and teach players about the game(I myself have helped a few players learn the game of baseball and the workings of OOTP).

In conclusion, after 2000+ hours of OOTP 16 gameplay, and 1200+ hours of OOTP15 gameplay, I can honestly say this is the best addition to the series to date. I have never had a game give back so much in value then what OOTP has. It is simply the best baseball simulation on the market(possibly the best sports simulation as well). The game is very polished, and if you are a baseball fan, or a sports fan, I highly recommend that you take a chance on OOTP17. You will NOT be disappointed.

This game is a 10/10 for me. I hope to see you on the field! Feel free to add me if you need any help with this game, or series! I am always willing to help out new players get established in this great sports simulation!

Do you like baseball?

I didn't. I really didn't. I liked a lot of different sports but I always thought baseball was boring, archaic and more an excuse to sit outside, drink beer and gawk at the occasional on-field event.

But then, for whatever reason -- I didn't have much else going on -- I started to watch baseball, because it was always on, pretty much every day, and it started to wrap itself around my brain in a pleasing way. Baseball is low-intensity matched with extreme peaks and valleys of emotion.

More importantly -- Baseball is a long continuous set of calculations based on the manipulation of variables in series after series of problems. Every at-bat, every pitch, every inning, every game is a test of odds and outcomes based on the pitcher, the batter, the fielders, the field, the weather, past results obscuring present values... Baseball is a worthwhile flux.

So - OOTP 17. This is the most advanced and ridiculously satisfying way to run your own personal baseball simulations. So maybe I should rephrase - Do you like Baseball as a concept? Because you will love OOTP.

(Also this year they added little moving pawns to the broadcast view, so it's starting to get satisfyingly similar to half-watching an actual baseball game.)

For those already owning OOTP 16 and mulling an upgrade I would say - the engine runs much faster this year on x64, some under the hood stuff has been nicely tweaked, bells and whistles (the pawns) aren't nothing, and of course, I feel pretty good about supporting this developer, given their track record.

Now that I've put a few hours into this game, I feel qualified to give a competent review.

I have played baseball simulations my entire life. I played the Strat-O-Matic Baseball tabletop game as a kid, and I invested in the game on my Commodore 64. The limitation was that I could only buy one season at a time, and even back then, you could play a season pretty quickly on a computer. To keep playing, you had to buy additional seasons. That gets expensive in a hurry, and it's one of the biggest reasons why Strat-O-Matic isn't my game of choice anymore.

In 1997, Baseball Mogul came along. That was a great game for its time, but it was extremely limited in the different displays and statistical breakdowns you could view. OOTP Baseball debuted two years later, but the first time I heard of it was when I saw a copy of "Season Ticket Baseball 2003" on the shelves a few years later. I bought it, and I was amazed. You could use the Lehman Database to import actual Major League Players!

Season Ticket Baseball was a rebranding that OOTP did for two years in 2002 and 2003 before reverting back to the OOTP Baseball name.

My strategy is pretty simple. I upgrade my baseball simulator every 3-4 years. I have owned copies of OOTP Baseball from 2007, 2010, 2014, and 2017. My reasoning is simple. The game improves a little bit every year, but it doesn't improve drastically until you get three to four seasons along. Therefore, I will probably be looking to buy a new copy in 2020 or 2021. I will promise you, though, that if I'm still alive, I will be buying another copy.

I think the biggest way the game has chagned since 2014 are in 1) the fact that they can actually now use real Major League logos and 2) the fact that career progression seems to have improved immensely. With past versions of the game. I tend to prefer to play the historical career mode, and it just seemed like declining players had their skill drop off way too quickly on a fairly consistent basis. That aspect of the game seems to be better mixed now, except I still do think that defensive ability tends to drop off too quickly.

Other than that, I truly think that the only way the game could be improved further would be in adding more reporting options and abilities. And make everything exportable so I can play with it in Excel. The GUI is relatively clean, which seems pretty rare in this day and age. There are so many things you can do with the settings in the game, though, perhaps some of the menus could be organized better. I'm also happy that they have not succumbed to the modern day tendency to use icons instead of words to label menus because if they did that, the learning curve would be almost impossible.

I'm currently playing a truly epic simulation starting as the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1901, and I'm doing as much as the game will allow me to do without cheating. I unloaded all of my starters except Zach Wheat to land the number one pick in the 1913 draft so I could bring Babe Ruth to town. A last place finish allowed me to draft Rogers Hornsby and George Kelly in 1914, I won a championship in 1916. And again in 1918. Two more in 1919 and 1920.

Now it's 1923, and I'm trying to figure out how to get back to the top. My pitching sucks in a bad way, and Ruth seems to get hurt a lot. When Ruth is hurt, I can't win. In 1921, he was hurt trying to steal a base in game one of the World Series. I ended up losing against the Athletics in nine games in one of the most epic World Series showdowns imaginable. In 1922, it got better. My top four outfielders, including Wheat and Ruth, were shelved for over half the season, and it was only through a late season surge that I was able to catch the Reds and clinch the pennant on the second to the last day of the season. That was the same game that Ruth was hurt again, this time by a collision in the field. I got the Athletics in the World Series again, but all hopes of retribution were lost when they took the first four games. I made a show of it by winning the next three, but it was too little too late.

Now it's 1923. My entire team is healthy, it's the end of June, and I'm under .500. What gives? Despite the fact that my pitching, anchored by Dazzy Vance and a newly acuired Walter Johnson, who some are saying is over-the-hill, is much stronger than it has been in some time, my role players are not playing well. I have plenty of options at C, 2B, SS, and CF who are all defensive stalwarts, but none of them can seem to hit .200 this year.

Did I mention that this game is awesome?

I highly recommend the latest version of this game to anyone who likes baseball. I would estimate that I've put in over 100,000 hours in baseball simulations over the years, so I fashion myself as a bit of an expert. I can promise you that this is as good as it gets.

Former Microleague player, yea back in the mid 80's I started getting into that game. I had all the floppy disk and finally the editor so I could edit and add all the major league players individually, which I did. Played a whole season with each individual team then. I can tell you that was a lot of games I had to play and I loved every minute. This is just to tell you how dedicated I was to simming a entire one season of baseball. Then came Tony Larussa Baseball, and then OOTP, where I can sim entire season in one day instead of one year of my life.

Last OOTP I played was OOTP 11 which was few years ago. Enjoyed the game but it had a few faults in it, especially the not so friendly interface. I haven't bought baseball sim game since, thinking my joy for the game had faded.

So you ask why I bought this game? Well it peeked my interest from the high reviews I have read about it. So I said to myself why not, lets see if we can spark that old flame again. It not only sparked the flame, it has caused a three alarm fire. This game is going to be a classic. It has surprassed any of my expectectations I had for it.

The Quick Sim is now extremely fast because of the 4 processor support. No more simming and waiting for few minutes, just a quick click and a few seconds delay and the day is done. I love how technology has made it this easy, instead of the days of me individually going to play each game for each team.

One thing I truely love and pretty much look forward to is the unique things that pop in a season. Things can put your player out, not just basic injuries either. You might have caused one of your players to be overworked one game, for example a pitcher. That said pitcher you push him to his limits trying to get him a complete game and his arm figuratively falls off with a tired arm syndrome. So you loss him for few starts. Stuff like that and players being suspended for fighting is all in this game. Also players age as years go by and you can see how this effects them on thier portrait. Aging also has effect on how well and bad they play. Like a upcoming player starting to reach thier potential or a aging star fading away during his twighlight of his career. There is soo much content in this game, I am only skimming the surface of what this game has.

If you want to be just a coach for minor league team, you can. If you want to control every aspect of your franchise you can too. The choice is yours, if you want to relive your childhood and see your favorite heros from the past play, you can. Having every authentic player from both minor leagues and majors makes this game so realistic.

I am probably just babbling now. But for me this game has been enlightening and has taken me back to when I was a kid and when I was playing Microleague, I had wished a computer game just like this. I mean some of the extra stuff they did to this game is stuff I never thought off back then, but boy I am enjoying each and every new surprise each day.

Buy it if you love Baseball, buy it if you like micromanaging, buy it if your a strategy fan, buy it if you like history, and buy it if you like gaming. This is just a game, but its more then game. If you get my meaning. This is the Best and I mean "The Best Sim Game" out there bar none.

This is the first review I have written here on steam.

I admit, I was a bit skeptical about this game at first.
Part of me seemed like it might be boring and another part thought that it may be too complicated to get into.
Though it did seem like it was unique and potentiall fun to play.

I played baseball for 16 years up through high school and into college and coached for two years following that. I have to say the level of detail from every single aspect of the game is present in this title. I was astonished how the attitudes of the players could effect the teams just like they do in real life. That is just one example. THERE ARE SO MANY TINY DETAILS. It must have been painstaking to research and input all this information into the game.

To top it off, I figured that the actual game simulations would be boring but nope, I was very wrong there. It brought back my old days of coaching calling the shots from the dugout or sending signals, trying to direct your team to a big win.

I simply cannot say enough. I have been gaming ever since I can remember and I have never gotten into a simulator. If you enjoy baseball, you will love this game. If you kind of like baseball, you will love this game. Chances are even if you do not like baseball, you will love this game.

I've now put quite a few hours into OOTP 17 now since buying it in July so I can now fairly give a review and also compare to last years OOTP 16. First thing I noticed different from last year was the design and colors of the screens. Much better imo and easier to read. Something else that is much improved over last years game is the trading. You can actually now make a list of needs you are wanting so the computer makes more offers to you making the game more realistic in that area. Now I'm not saying the trades are easier to make, I still always get the they want two five star players for their 4 star and 3 star thing happening but overall this new function really adds to the game.

Now to just go over the game in general and not comparing to last years game. If you like baseball and sims you will absolutley LOVE this game. The options to starting leagues are never ending. There is almost nothing you can't make your league into with all the options given. You can base a league on current MLB seasons, historical MLB seasons. You can dump all the MLB players into a pool and draft them into new teams. You can start fictional leagues. You can decide on whether its an offensive league, pitching league or neutral league. You can start foreign leagues. It's endless.

The interface can be a bit tricky to learn to start but after a bit it starts to fall into place for you as things are designed well for the most part. My biggest complaint about the game is when setting individual player game strategies you can't always see all the players stats needed to adjust you strategies. Otherwise they have done a great job on making sure you can almost always find what you are looking for easily after a bit of practice.

I highly recommend this game to baseball fans and sim fans, you can't do any better than this game. If you are wanting to learn more about basebal I also recommend this game as well, so much can be learned while playing the game, it won't take long before you know you've improved your baseball IQ.

Last week, I didn't know the difference between a bunt and a line drive. Being British, we aren't supposed to. But this game is phenomenal. I've been studying baseball all week because of it. Amazing work by the developers, so many choices, so much depth and so much addiction.

Thank you. 10/10. I got it on the humble bundle and now feel a bit guilty I didn't pay full price. However, I will make that up to them on all their following releases!

I've always been a fan of sports games. Not in being the rising star player in career mode, not in dominating my opponents online (because, being honest, that doesn't really happen) or in the now everpresent card collecting mode found in almost every sports game. I am, through and through, a franchise mode player. I love to build up my team, scout, draft and trade my way to being the next dynasty. It's doable in the console based sports games out there. Some do it better than others. OOTP Baseball gives a deeper dive into the shoes of being a GM and provides the most satisfying sports management experience I've found.

I'll get this out of the way first. If you're looking to actually play a game of baseball, you should move on. The game is completely text based with outcomes generated by formulas. You are able to manage a game from "10,000 feet" if you will, but there is no playing a baseball game. This is not MLB the Show for the computer. This is about handling the front office functions of the team more than the actual playing of the game of baseball. I'll also say that if you're looking for a hardcore baseaball management sim, you probably know a fair amount about baseball. If you're not very familiar with baseball, you will probably get overwhelmed and should learn a bit about the management side of baseball beforehand. There's just so much to it that if you're coming in without a base of knowledge you'll probably be turned off. Losing a prized prospect to the rule 5 draft or not understanding service time and suddenly have a player hit arbitration and become expensive could easily ruin the experience when you're just getting your feet wet.

If what you're looking for is a deep dive into being a GM of a baseball organization OOTP 17 is great follow up to OOTP 16. You can play in the real MLB as GM of a team, as the GM of a team in another real world league, or create your own baseball universe. You can run more than one organization, but you would have the same controls over each. If you play in the real MLB the game has full rosters with minor league teams containing the real life players and even top prospects for the upcoming drafts. Upon creation, the game world you want is customizable. From things like the size of the active roster and how many rounds the draft go to modifiers for how rapidly players decline as they age and swing and miss rates. There are pages and pages of options you can modify to make the game to your liking. Most of the settings are also modifiable in game if you find you don't like a particular setting, though it's best to modify them in the offseason otherwise you can run into issues. You can also play as just a manager, or running a minor league team, or work your way up, but everything short of GM + Manager is just a restriction on what you can do.

Once you're actually in game it functions like a browser, with various tabs and subsections you can navigate to manage your team or see what's going on around the league or even in other international leagues. You manage your major league roster and minor league farm teams. You set your scouting budget and priority as well as review international free agents as they are discovered by your scouts. Set ticket prices, work to make your team's owner happy and balance your budget while fielding a competitive team. The list would go on for quite some time. It's baseball. You're in charge of a baseball team. Rule 5 drafts, arbitration, player postings, PED usage suspensions, it's all there unless you turn it off in the customization tab at the league creation.

There is a very in depth system for managing your roster with scouting reports not only on a player's ability and future potential, but also on things like their personality, leadership ability and work ethic. This system is in place for all players: majors, minors, amateur draft and international. Going through the amateur draft you'll look at a player who looks like he has off the charts athletic ability, but poor work ethic and would be a bad teammate versus a player that looks like a solid, above average player who is a hard worker that could become a leader in your clubhouse. Those decisions have an impact down the road. Team chemistry or a leaderless clubhouse can have an impact on your team's ability to perform and desire to play for your team like losing do. It's like the real world. When you're winning, things look better. Losing, worse. Good teammates make things better. Bad ones, worse. You need to figure out how to field a team that works, not only on the field but off.

Along with team performance you have to manage your finances. Each team has a market size, fan base loyalty and stadium capacity that are bases modified by fan interest and attendance which go hand in hand. Each team has a floor of a national media contract along with local media contracts, but the major differentiator from team to team is game attendance. If you field a bad team with no big name players, people won't show up and you won't have the resources to improve your team. Winning and player popularity play a major part in your team's finances through boosting ticket sales. As players are in the majors longer and do better they become more popular, and people want to show up to watch them. You will most likely develop most of your big name players in house, but signing big name free agents or trading away big names on your team will change fan interest. Losing minor leaguers can have an oddly large impact on fan interest. I remember one season in particular where I let five minor league players who were late round draft picks that never made it above rookie ball walk and my fan interest dropped 12 percentage points. It made no sense.

There are also random events factored into the game like would happen in real life. I have yet to see anything exciting happen, like a league expansion. What I've seen have been things like lengthening the time of DL stints. The mundane, every day stuff that actually happens. Maybe someday I'll see that league expansion I'd be so excited for, but so far nothing.

While the game is an amazing sports management sim, there are a few issues in the game. As a note all of this is with the default settings. I wanted the real deal of managing a baseball team so everything is with the default settings. International trades are a bit arcane. Some leagues are willing to trade players or post players, but others are not. There isn't any explanation or guide in the game as to why.

The game, like every other sports sim, can be gamed. It's not hard to trade up to get both the first, second, third and sometimes fourth overall draft picks, though the rest of the draft will be pretty thin to nonexistent for you. Minor league players, or even players almost to arbitration will sign ridiculous long term contracts. In the end, it's not such a terrible thing. You want to be able to be amazing. It is, after all, your world so figuring out the tricks and being a perennial world series contender is fun. It is a little unrealistic, but you play and you build an amazing team, one that you built and one you take to the world series.

There are a number of improvements over OOTP 16. AI controlled teams are no longer willing to give up prized prospects for a pile of mediocre. The AI is also better at managing its finances. No longer are all AI controlled teams chronically running in the red. The rate of decline in players is also more varied and feels more realistic. No longer is it someone's arm falling off at 32. Young promising players will fizzle out after a season or 2 sometimes and some players will have a slow decline over years allowing them to go from perennial all-star at 30 to riding off into the sunset at 40. The game also touted adding dual core functionality for processing. It does better and worse in certain ways. There will be quite a few hang ups when scouting players and going into the various tabs

The classic just keeps getting better year after year.

For those new to the series, this is strictly a management sim. No action aside from the outstanding baseball extravaganza your imagination cooks up from the play-by-play (if you so choose). (EDIT! There IS action now! There is a 3D mode to put a little bit of animation to your imagination) Guide your team over decades as a GM, manage your team pitch-by-pitch, or do both. It's entirely up to you.

If you're like me and in every baseball game you've ever played you've found yourself saying "but wouldn't it be great if it had (X) in it?" Well this is your dream game. Whatever your X was, every time, since Triple Play Baseball on NES, this game has it. And more. It has literally everything in it that baseball has in it. It is an outstanding work and is infinitely enjoyable for a baseball fan. The only negative I can think of is that I imagine the learning curve is fairly steep (although I've been playing the series for 11 years now so I forget how it was to pick up).

A must have for any baseball fan. 10/10 (year, after year, after year)