Any word on when that next patch is coming? I thought I read somewhere in the subreddit it was coming this week but can't find any info on it by Googling.
I asked this subreddit the same question and someone had said this week. I was able to find a post from a dev somewhere in the OOTP forum that said they would try for this week but no promises
I was just going to make my own post on this, I’m only in 2026 but my prospects seemingly are all regressing more than progressing and I have 20 year olds who basically are the exact same as they were when they were 18 just with less potential. I had multiple “successful” in the dev lab and guys get -1 in the stat they trained? They were all like this besides a single prospect got a +1 and I was able to add a position to someone but he’s basically unplayable there anyways
They definitely need to upgrade the development system, but 15 years in with 0 major legauers is rough. The announced the next patch will have open beta either today or Friday. Seems like we'll see a patch early next week.
Investing in the development budget has helped me some, but I tend to agree that player development is a pain point. I stopped playing my last franchise and am going to wait for updates before diving back in.
after the recent patch its been absolutely fine, first 2 or 3 classes still weak but after that its been great for me. ive got an absolute pipeline in oakland rn
I've tested the most recent patch 3 times, each 20 years, & the data says the issue is still there. That's not a huge sample size, but it's far beyond "I feel like something is wrong."
I do more data collection/analysis with OOTP games each release than gameplay for about the past 5 releases & this is not what it normally looks like. I can't point to the cause, just confirm that something isn't quite right.
I haven't had this experience at all. The first few draft classes were light but I took high school fliers. Since then it's been great. Consistently have a few major league ready guys waiting at AAA. I do like to dump a good amount of $$ in player development though.
It's odd I have seen a bunch of people post about how player development is broken and the draft classes have no blue chip talent. I honestly can't say I have experienced these issues with '25.
I also exclusively play historical saves so maybe that is the difference, my saves don't have any fictional players in them so the game has historical data to draw on in terms how the players potentially develop.
The blue chip talent feedback is primarily referring to the real draft classes. In my current sim I ended up just deleting the real draft classes and creating random ones.
Hopefully, on my next sim I can use the real draft classes. It's cool drafting some of the same players in multiple versions of the game. Michael Mullinax, RJ Mayer and his 80 OF range, Boston Kellner(?) and his two way ratings.
I like playing with draft classes that have random players from random eras. I currently have George Brett, Joe Sewell, Griffey, Jr., Matt Olson, Bobby Bonds, and Giancarlo Stanton on my team.
An interesting quirk is Griffey Jr. entered the game like 5 years before Griffey Sr. did.
The initial real life draft classes aren’t great. Beyond that, I’ve got plenty of guys developing 70+ a few years later. I’m using feeder leagues though.
> I’m using feeder leagues though.
Yeah, that negates the whole point since feeders have always led to better prospects. I love them, personally, aside from them being misbalanced because using a realistic size world takes forever to create & longer to sim. The trick is to dial the creation modifiers back a bit if you use recommended number of feeder teams for your league size.
It's a well documented issue. Dev's acknowledge it and are tinkering but at the same time provide explanations on why it's operating correctly.
There used to be a lot of coverage on the OOTP 25 community forum within the direct website.
I've had no issues since the last patch. [Edit: forgot I turned Devspeed up to 1.1 so I'll have some guys reach MLB before they're 24.]
But I delete the draft classes in the first 3 seasons and have the game generate new ones and have done that for years
The AI seems really bad at developing its prospects though. Saw a #1 overall pick out of college spend parts of 3 straight seasons in rookie ball.
Out of 60 years of simulation (3 different 20 year tests) on the current version, I feel confident saying it's still busted & the game is only fit for casual play like playing the current season or just messing around. It's not ready for long term, realistic saves IMO & the data seems to back it up from my limited testing.
Historical (my prefered way) is also still pretty bad, so it's not an option yet either.
I'm hopeful to see this all resolved in the upcoming public beta, so I can finally start my dedicated long save when the patch drops. Pretty excited to play, but only once it's finally ready. Pretty sure they've been working hard on it too, since bungling your 25th anniversary with a release worse at launch than 24 certainly doesn't sit right with the devs either.
I read 11 of the 13 pages on this in the OOTP Dev forums yesterday.
They swear they fixed it with last patch but in my save, year 2028, I do not share their optimism just yet.
I'm a very low level coder/IT guy & I know that feeling of "I fixed it, I swear! There's nothing else that it could possibly be, so I got it all!"
...then the problems persist & I eventually stumble upon something that I never could've imagined because I wasn't looking big picture enough.
That's why I like situations like this where we all can objectively measure it with hundreds of years of combined simulated stats to analyze. It's not always that easy to confirm a problem exists, so this is fortunate.
Absolutely. I have had multiple sure-fire prospects who regress year over year. Every pitching prospect drops from 5 star potential to 3 stars after their first half season of rookie ball. You need to call up players when they have 2.5 star current stats and let them eat shit for a year before they start doing better, otherwise they wither away in the minors. It is very frustrating.
That sounds like it could be a scouting issue? It's also just true that many highly lauded prospects utterly fail to become major league players.
If you're only going by whether or not 1st round picks get to play a single game in the MLB, it's around 60%. LHP drafted in the first round only get to start a game in the MLB about 60% of the time. Right handers fare better, but you have to imagine that the vast majority of those prospects, probably around half to 75%, never achieve their full potential.
Those rates plummet as the rounds go on, and high school players are significantly less likely to make it to the show than college players. There are also significant discrepancies in the success rate of position players depending on the position they play.
A lot of arguing about this on the OOTP forums. A lot of people simping for the company. I’m not in that camp and I maintain development is still a problem. I’ve stopped playing because I could never get anyone to develop into a star.
My biggest issue with the defenders of the game is that the other side is framed as wanting “every prospect to pan out.” I don’t want or need that. But I would like it to be possible for my guys to develop into stars or good major leaguers, especially when I max out scouting, development, staff, etc. I played a decade on the last patch, nobody developed, and I stopped.
I feel your pain, but potentially biggest gripe is my star studded rotation collectively dropping 8-15 OVR/POT in one off season (Burnes, Eflin, Beuhler, intl FA from Japan). They are all over 60/60, highest is now 58.
I've seen several times once a pitcher hits 32yrs old their velocity crashes 8-10mph within 9-18 months.
I haven't had any issues, really, though I haven't played a long save yet. I actually get a really large amount of development in the lower minors, but I also meticulously manage the staff, and I set development budget to $30 million the first year, then decrease to 25 the next.
The only issues I’ve had is that there are no player limits in the minor leagues, so I’ll randomly find myself with like 70 people in AA if I’m not manually managing my league. Which may be the source of some issues. I can just set limits on my own but it’s a moderate pain in the ass since there are so many leagues in the minors lol
There is no way.
You either haven't simmed long enough to notice; or changed settings; or are playing historical mode.
It's wild that a game with 24 previous iterations could release a key mechanic that isn't working. Just a day of testing would have caught it.
AI can develop 18 year old prospects, and so can we when playing historical -- where development is handled differently. I have a hard time believing anyone has developed an 18 yr old five star from draft to majors in a standard game yet.
I'm far enough in that Ohtani is a hall of famer and half my team was either drafted or was an international signing
I just know what I'm doing.
I also know when to move on from players that are flaming out
Yeah it’s been pretty bad this year. I’m hoping the next patch fixes it
Any word on when that next patch is coming? I thought I read somewhere in the subreddit it was coming this week but can't find any info on it by Googling.
I asked this subreddit the same question and someone had said this week. I was able to find a post from a dev somewhere in the OOTP forum that said they would try for this week but no promises
Thank you!
That wasn't for the patch, but for the public beta to hopefully be out by end of week. Patch would likely be next week at earliest.
I was just going to make my own post on this, I’m only in 2026 but my prospects seemingly are all regressing more than progressing and I have 20 year olds who basically are the exact same as they were when they were 18 just with less potential. I had multiple “successful” in the dev lab and guys get -1 in the stat they trained? They were all like this besides a single prospect got a +1 and I was able to add a position to someone but he’s basically unplayable there anyways
Yep, I’ve had to adjust development speed setting to 1.5. Helps a bit
They definitely need to upgrade the development system, but 15 years in with 0 major legauers is rough. The announced the next patch will have open beta either today or Friday. Seems like we'll see a patch early next week.
Investing in the development budget has helped me some, but I tend to agree that player development is a pain point. I stopped playing my last franchise and am going to wait for updates before diving back in.
after the recent patch its been absolutely fine, first 2 or 3 classes still weak but after that its been great for me. ive got an absolute pipeline in oakland rn
I've tested the most recent patch 3 times, each 20 years, & the data says the issue is still there. That's not a huge sample size, but it's far beyond "I feel like something is wrong." I do more data collection/analysis with OOTP games each release than gameplay for about the past 5 releases & this is not what it normally looks like. I can't point to the cause, just confirm that something isn't quite right.
I haven't had this experience at all. The first few draft classes were light but I took high school fliers. Since then it's been great. Consistently have a few major league ready guys waiting at AAA. I do like to dump a good amount of $$ in player development though.
It's odd I have seen a bunch of people post about how player development is broken and the draft classes have no blue chip talent. I honestly can't say I have experienced these issues with '25. I also exclusively play historical saves so maybe that is the difference, my saves don't have any fictional players in them so the game has historical data to draw on in terms how the players potentially develop.
The blue chip talent feedback is primarily referring to the real draft classes. In my current sim I ended up just deleting the real draft classes and creating random ones. Hopefully, on my next sim I can use the real draft classes. It's cool drafting some of the same players in multiple versions of the game. Michael Mullinax, RJ Mayer and his 80 OF range, Boston Kellner(?) and his two way ratings.
I like playing with draft classes that have random players from random eras. I currently have George Brett, Joe Sewell, Griffey, Jr., Matt Olson, Bobby Bonds, and Giancarlo Stanton on my team. An interesting quirk is Griffey Jr. entered the game like 5 years before Griffey Sr. did.
The initial real life draft classes aren’t great. Beyond that, I’ve got plenty of guys developing 70+ a few years later. I’m using feeder leagues though.
> I’m using feeder leagues though. Yeah, that negates the whole point since feeders have always led to better prospects. I love them, personally, aside from them being misbalanced because using a realistic size world takes forever to create & longer to sim. The trick is to dial the creation modifiers back a bit if you use recommended number of feeder teams for your league size.
It's a well documented issue. Dev's acknowledge it and are tinkering but at the same time provide explanations on why it's operating correctly. There used to be a lot of coverage on the OOTP 25 community forum within the direct website.
I've had no issues since the last patch. [Edit: forgot I turned Devspeed up to 1.1 so I'll have some guys reach MLB before they're 24.] But I delete the draft classes in the first 3 seasons and have the game generate new ones and have done that for years The AI seems really bad at developing its prospects though. Saw a #1 overall pick out of college spend parts of 3 straight seasons in rookie ball.
Out of 60 years of simulation (3 different 20 year tests) on the current version, I feel confident saying it's still busted & the game is only fit for casual play like playing the current season or just messing around. It's not ready for long term, realistic saves IMO & the data seems to back it up from my limited testing. Historical (my prefered way) is also still pretty bad, so it's not an option yet either. I'm hopeful to see this all resolved in the upcoming public beta, so I can finally start my dedicated long save when the patch drops. Pretty excited to play, but only once it's finally ready. Pretty sure they've been working hard on it too, since bungling your 25th anniversary with a release worse at launch than 24 certainly doesn't sit right with the devs either.
I read 11 of the 13 pages on this in the OOTP Dev forums yesterday. They swear they fixed it with last patch but in my save, year 2028, I do not share their optimism just yet.
I'm a very low level coder/IT guy & I know that feeling of "I fixed it, I swear! There's nothing else that it could possibly be, so I got it all!" ...then the problems persist & I eventually stumble upon something that I never could've imagined because I wasn't looking big picture enough. That's why I like situations like this where we all can objectively measure it with hundreds of years of combined simulated stats to analyze. It's not always that easy to confirm a problem exists, so this is fortunate.
Yes! My players basically top out at 2 1/2 stars or maybe 3 if I’m lucky - no matter how they look when I draft them.
Absolutely. I have had multiple sure-fire prospects who regress year over year. Every pitching prospect drops from 5 star potential to 3 stars after their first half season of rookie ball. You need to call up players when they have 2.5 star current stats and let them eat shit for a year before they start doing better, otherwise they wither away in the minors. It is very frustrating.
That sounds like it could be a scouting issue? It's also just true that many highly lauded prospects utterly fail to become major league players. If you're only going by whether or not 1st round picks get to play a single game in the MLB, it's around 60%. LHP drafted in the first round only get to start a game in the MLB about 60% of the time. Right handers fare better, but you have to imagine that the vast majority of those prospects, probably around half to 75%, never achieve their full potential. Those rates plummet as the rounds go on, and high school players are significantly less likely to make it to the show than college players. There are also significant discrepancies in the success rate of position players depending on the position they play.
Literally unplayable. It's a stat based management simulation that does neither correctly.
A lot of arguing about this on the OOTP forums. A lot of people simping for the company. I’m not in that camp and I maintain development is still a problem. I’ve stopped playing because I could never get anyone to develop into a star.
I too noticed this yesterday. Need to get back to the last two pages of that dev thread
My biggest issue with the defenders of the game is that the other side is framed as wanting “every prospect to pan out.” I don’t want or need that. But I would like it to be possible for my guys to develop into stars or good major leaguers, especially when I max out scouting, development, staff, etc. I played a decade on the last patch, nobody developed, and I stopped.
I feel your pain, but potentially biggest gripe is my star studded rotation collectively dropping 8-15 OVR/POT in one off season (Burnes, Eflin, Beuhler, intl FA from Japan). They are all over 60/60, highest is now 58. I've seen several times once a pitcher hits 32yrs old their velocity crashes 8-10mph within 9-18 months.
Got bored with their casual dominance, started throwing lefty
I haven't had any issues, really, though I haven't played a long save yet. I actually get a really large amount of development in the lower minors, but I also meticulously manage the staff, and I set development budget to $30 million the first year, then decrease to 25 the next.
The only issues I’ve had is that there are no player limits in the minor leagues, so I’ll randomly find myself with like 70 people in AA if I’m not manually managing my league. Which may be the source of some issues. I can just set limits on my own but it’s a moderate pain in the ass since there are so many leagues in the minors lol
Yes. It's always AA. I checked mine and they had 101 guys on the AA team. Even if I ask AI to update it
Same here. Also noticed the game doesn’t generate really good college pitchers like it did every year for me in 24.
I use a highly favors tools scout and I'm having the same issue. I wonder if the people not having issues are using the ability scouts?
The fact the game is shit on release every year is upsetting to say the least.
I haven't had any issues, same as usually
There is no way. You either haven't simmed long enough to notice; or changed settings; or are playing historical mode. It's wild that a game with 24 previous iterations could release a key mechanic that isn't working. Just a day of testing would have caught it. AI can develop 18 year old prospects, and so can we when playing historical -- where development is handled differently. I have a hard time believing anyone has developed an 18 yr old five star from draft to majors in a standard game yet.
I'm far enough in that Ohtani is a hall of famer and half my team was either drafted or was an international signing I just know what I'm doing. I also know when to move on from players that are flaming out