Well, I got my hands on this after getting home late from work last night, and only had time to start up a MLB league (be sure to manually unretire players in History->Retired list who have teams next to their names...they're their mistakenly.

I got the Braves going, and was somewhat disappointed with some of the pitcher ratings, such as Hudson's, but I guess he didn't have a good year last year, so that's not entirely unexpected.

Chipper, McCann, and Kelly Johnson are STUDS, while Texiera and Francouer are weaker than they should be (though not Tex judging by his numbers this season I guess...)

In any event, I set myself as GM of the Braves, assigned control of some stuff to the AI, and fixed up my roster (they had Brandon Jones starting in place of Frenchy.)

Moved some minor leaguers around, and watched a PbP game, letting the AI take care of the dirty work. The new ball animations and locations add nicely, as does the sound.

It was a really exciting game, with the Braves coming back to beat the Nats 10-5 in extra innings...it was cool.

The scouting system is MUCH better than it used to be...much simpler, and it's nice to have scouting reports again.

The financial info given is better as well.

So far it seems to be really fast, and really polished. I haven't tried a trial conversion of the BBL yet, but will do so at some point to make sure we don't have obvious issues.

So far I'm digging it, and Markus has worked really hard on it. He's all over the boards, and seems in great spirits, as opposed to after OOTP2007 was released and he was physically ill from stress, etc.

I think having his baby back in his hands is the best thing that's happened to OOTP in a while, and so far OOTP9 looks really great. It's awesome being able to dive right into an MLB season.

The only thing is, none of the logos are there, which may be obvious, but I was surprised by it for some odd reason. Of course Markus can't afford to license those from the MLB...but of course, rest assured that a logo pack will be released post-haste by an OOTP player soon.

Anyone else cracked open OOTP9 yet?

glad to hear it seems good at first glance.  I really think OOTP2007 was a bit of a mess - needing extensive video tutorials for VETERAN OOTP players to even understand the interface is NOT a good sign.

I'm also really looking forward to the return of scouting.  Getting scouting reports, and the variations that different teams saw in players was one of the things i've enjoyed over the previous versions.

Any thoughts about allowing scouting to play a bigger role in the BBL vs "setting all scouts to good" or whatever the equivalent is?  It's a part of the game that it might be interesting to explore.

Haven't picked it up myself yet, but probably will sometime fairly soon.  Obviously depending on what we do as a league.

Tempus

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South Beach Sunburn GM

Oh no not a Braves fan lol. JK

 

I bought the game. Now, don't take my opinion on the game too seriously because I am pretty new to OOTP. I did exactly what you did and started an MLB league. I took control of the Mets organization, and what I quickly found out is the starting rosters are not anything to be taken seriously. First of all, catcher Brian Schneider (starter) had a lower rating than Ramon Castro (backup). Schneider isn't the best catcher in baseball, but he certainly is better than a 1-star rating. What I noticed the most was that Carlos Beltran was a backup center fielder which is just plain wrong. And the Mets AAA team (New Orleans Zephyrs) didn't even have a single player on the team.

As for the features, a lot has definitely been added. There are more stats than OOTP 8, and what I noticed most is how many different stats and rating you can sort players by. If you are looking for a good team leader (which is what my BB team needs right now), you can simply sort FA or the Draft Pool for the player with the most Leadership. The same can be done with work ethic, intelligence, etc. Like emrysx said, the financial system is much better now, and even provides more information than before.

The ball animations and sound definitely have a few bugs that need to be worked out, but it is nothing major.

Overall, OOTP 9 is a great game that I think we should definitely think about switching over to fairly soon.

Hope this helps!