URett
Posts: 54
Joined: 8/22/2005
Status: offline
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With the recent flurry of updates the PureSim bug bit me again. I had stopped playing over a year ago (except for the brilliant online league XIBL) because for my playing style there wasn't really much of a challenge to be had.
I play exclusively as a GM and have no interest in playing out games. I like to wheel and deal, so a strong GM AI is most important for me. After a few days with 1.84 B2 here are my impressions.
Draft AI
With my first association back I tried to find out if the PureSim had gotten any better at dealing with extreme situations by setting up a 40 team league seeded with 1900 players (no finances). This seems to work a lot better than previously. There are still a few scrubs on rosters when there are non-scrubs available, and quite a few real pitchers ended up undrafted in a 2400 player draft, but overall it seems to work ok.
My next attempt was to set up a 40 team fictional league with finances, giving everyone $500m and my team $100m. I used the auto-draft feature going for prospects all the way, but the AI picked 4 $20m per year players early, so enden up with mostly scrubs. Epic Fail!
I tried again drafting manually. The rich teams did pick some cheap players early on, but some of the cheap prospects I picked developed into very good players quickly, so I can't blame the AI for drafting prospects early.
The yearly drafts were a bit of a mixed bag. In the real player league teams picked scrubs in the first round, which should never ever happen. In the fictional league there were some picks I disagreed with, but overall the AI seems to work ok.
Trade AI
Picking the best players off AI teams seems to have gotten a lot harder, definitely a great development.
One small issue for me is that some players have a negative trade value. That makes sense in leagues with tight finances, but in no-finance leagues or leagues where everyone has hundreds of millions to spare this shouldn't happen. In one specific example I was able to get the player I wanted "cheaper" by also picking up 3 scrubs on 1 year minimum contracts. Those players shouldn't have been on the roster in the first place and the AI certainly doesn't benefit by unloading them on me.
Technical issues
I've had a few glitches, but nothing serious or reproduceable.
In another post I mentioned released players in real player, no finance leagues showing up in amateur drafts.
The biggest issue has been around for at least 2 years. After a few years my 40 team associations become unplayable. Opening rosters and moving players takes 30 seconds, while simming there will be short spikes of activity followed by 30-60 seconds of nothing. My machine is not brand new anymore, but it is still a quad-core with 4 gig of RAM and Vista 64. I'm quite disappointed that Shaun hasn't been able to nail this one down, as I prefer bigger associations (more opponents = bigger challenge)
Overall I'm quite happy to be back as a single player. It's too early to tell if I can still dominate the AI, but the trade AI seems to have toughened up sufficiently. I'll try again with a smaller setup to avoid the slowdown bug, if that works out I will be back for the long haul. Thanks again, Shaun!
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