OOTP Fantasy Leagues – Road to 1.0: Rotisserie Scoring Part 1 – And then there were two (scoring formats that is)

The Road to 1.0 is a series of articles chronicling the journey of this mod from conception to full 1.0 release.

I’ve made no qualms about stating that I’m a huge fan of head to head play in fantasy gaming. I like the competition and constantly trying to find the player to mass the most points in a scoring period.

In my time in MLB fantasy baseball leagues, I constantly picked up the Jon Garland or Cliff Lee who surprised everyone by starting the season 3-0 and who would eventually go on to win 20 games and be THE surprise player of the season. I also was the guy grabbing the Felix Hernandez and Evan Longoria’s of the game, young talented rising stars. I loved that feeling of laughing in my competitors face when I went 3-0 in a scoring period. Take that, boys!

I also liked having a playoff format and championships at the very end. I never won one myself, but that’s another story (and several therapy sessions and/or blog posts as well). To put it plainly, Head-to-head suited me so I coded my mod that way.

Despite personal favoritism toward this scoring format, however, there is a huge following for the traditional rotisserie scoring formats and I knew adding it as an option was inevitable. I just had to do two things first:

1. Rally my inner coder to take on the challenge
2. Figure out how to not screw up the already established and tested head-to-head scoring in the process/li>

I’ll go into the technical process I undertook to tackle this challenge in part two of this topic, but for those not familiar with the difference between these two formats here a quick primer:

• In rotisserie scoring leagues, your standings are based on how team’s rank across between 8 (4 offense, 4 defense) and 12 (6 offense, 6 defense) statistical categories. The better you’re ranking across each category the better your overall team score. Teams are ranked based on these combined team scores. The higher the score, the better you rank overall.The main challenge in rotisserie leagues is not in finding players who provide you overall high combined scoring, but who help you in the specific categories your league tracks and ranks with. Also unlike the head to head format where picking up a big bopper or ace pitcher having one hell of a week can lift you over the competition and improve your standings, you have to really strategize and map out your lineup to truly rank highest across all the available stat categories across an entire season.
• In Head-to-Head Points Scoring, point values are assigned to individual statistic categories (ex. HR=4, RBI=1, etc.) and each scoring period’s winner is determined solely by which team accumulates the most fantasy points versus a single or multiple opponents. The end result is a win (1-0) or loss (0-1). This league features team schedules, league playoffs and the option to divide teams into divisions.This format mimics the real life way in which baseball and other sports are played so it adds what we like to call in the OOTP world “immersion” into the game so to speak. Your competing to win games just like the players that make up your rosters. It’s fun, dynamic and competitive.

So that’s a little background as to why rotisseries were the must-add feature of the mod and specifically 1.0.5. It’s a challenging format and I’m very glad to see it represented in the fantasy mod now. I hope it opens the game up to an even larger audience than before.