We apologize for not having issued any updates for awhile. We have been hard at work and we haven't forgotten about HBD.

Today's Update:

• From the Edit Lineups page you can now view split stats. This is based on the selection you have made in the "Type" drop down.
• On the Option Report page we have changed the wording, it now reads "Exercise/Decline" instead of "Accept/Deny". It will also prompt you before any decisions have been committed.
• The position column on the Edit Rosters page is now a link that will take you to the Position Assignments pop-up page.
• Trade proposals now include a link to the owner profile.
• The ML AI checkboxes will now stay checked if you have selected the AI to manage your ML team.

And last but certainly not least, we have added in Diamonds in the Rough. Occasionally, mediocre players will see a projected ratings boost based on their Coaching Staff and work ethic. This will occur sometime around the mid-point of the season.

Todays Update:

• Player Award Voting now shows critical stats which will make it a much more user friendly process.
• The bug with Split Stats on the Edit Lineups page has been fixed. If a player has no previous at bats versus that particular pitcher he will show up in your lineup/bench with all 0's.
• Slugging percentage is now being calculated correctly on the League Leaders page.

Todays Update:

* You can now view and add players from the selected teams depth chart from the Trade Build page.
* Coach ratings now appear on the Coaches Report page.
* You can now view players who have option years for different franchises in your world on the Options Report page.
* If you have blocked a user their world chat messages will no longer appear in the World Office.
* Improvement to the All Star selection process.
* New Trade History page allows you to view all of the trades that have occurred in the world. This is retroactive (minus cash received) to the worlds inaugural season.
* Player game logs now denote whether that game was played on the road.
* The injuries report page has moved to the knowledge base.



That's all for this week. Enjoy the new page and the enhancements. Much more is on the way!

Today's Update:

• The player watch system has been added. You may now watch any player in your world, excluding International Prospects and unsigned draft picks.
• We have added an International Prospect history page. You can now see all of the International Prospects that have been signed in your world.
• The problem with the all-stars not appearing for some worlds has been fixed.
• Slugging percentage was being calculated incorrectly for bench players when viewing "Split Stats", it is now fixed.
• Free agent demands for injured players were based on pre-injury projected ratings, this has been fixed.

That's all for this week, we have a lot more planned for this month. We'll keep you posted.

In Today's Update:

• We have made the International Prospect Signings page sortable.
• Minor league player's who did not make the playoffs will now recover fatigue.
• Three times per season you will be getting correspondence from your fielding instructor letting you know which players should be considered for position changes.

Today's Update Continued:

• Starting pitchers are now listed in the play-by-play
• Hit-and-run/strikeout outcomes have been added
• Corrected a bug in which fielders weren't being credited with 2 outs on double plays. For example, if a SS played an entire 9 innings but his team turned a double play, he'd show up as only having played 8.2 innings at SS
• Corrected a bug in which 2 RBI were being credited when a player hit a fly ball that fell for a two-base error when runners were on second and third. the batter should only get 1 RBI for the sac fly even though the fielder dropped the ball
• Lowered the rate of bad sac bunts turning into double plays
• Added 3-6-4 double plays
• Increased the importance of range when deciding if a player can turn two (the player recieving and then continuing the throw, such as the shortstop in a 4-6-3 double play)
• Corrected a bug in which a mopup pitcher was being removed from a game prematurely rather than staying in to eat innings
• Corrected a bug in which starting pitchers flagged to be used in relief weren't being brought in correctly. they weren't being brought in until all relief pitchers pitched, when they should have been coming in if the remaining bullpen guys were below their autorest value
• Improved the logic for determining when to pull a pitcher from the game, both in the field and for a pinch-hitter
• Improved the logic for deciding when to use a relief specialist
• Adjusted the pinch-running logic for aggressive and very aggressive managerial settings
• Improved the sac bunt logic to reduce sac bunt attempts with 1 out and a runner on 2nd.

We also found and fixed a bug involving end-of-season player awards. The results were being displayed incorrectly if two players tied for the user-submitted vote count. This has been fixed, but the listed awards could be wrong for the next 24 hours. If they appear incorrect, give it until tomorrow night before you submit a ticket. It should correct itself over the next day.

Today's Update:

• Corrected a bug on the Trade Build page (Depth Chart view) where it was allowing draftees to be traded. This snuck out the door when we introduced the depth chart view for trades.
• Added the ability to view and pick the franchise you want to control when signing up for season 2 and beyond

There were also a few small engine tweaks including:

• Improved logic for deciding when to bring in a starting pitcher eligible for relief into the game. previously, it would use a mopup or closer despite the related managerial setting instead of an SP
• Expanded the pinch-running opportunities when using the two most aggressive PR settings
• Made basestealing aggressiveness more of a factor in pickoffs. Teams that are more conservative will now have less pickoffs, for example.
• Reduced stolen base attempts when it's a 1st and 3rd situation
• Improved hit and run decision making. batter's contact now plays more of a role rather than his ability to hit for average

This post could not be converted. To view the original post's thread, click here.

The update is out!

We snuck in a few additional items, too:

• A totally new menu system for quicker page access
• When a team has the AI automatically take over for their big league team, the owner will now receive an email
• when a player is assigned to the big league team, we now automatically add the player to the 40-man to reduce the # of steps you have to make
• Corrected the order of supplemental round picks for a handful of worlds that were impacted by a previous bug.

That's it. We hope you enjoy the update.

Today's Update:

• Corrected the season/career rollups for fielding stats on the player profile
• Added Franchise Notes to the Edit Rosters page
• Added the ability for fielders to prevent throwing errors (will show up as + plays)
• Added ability for fielders to get to balls due to great range but then make an error (show up as +- play)
• Toned down the upper bound of pitches available for some starting pitchers. This stems from the most recent dev chat. Pitchers affected will be those pitchers with a durability betwen 25 and 35. The change will be noticeable the next time the player goes through a development cycle. The change is minimal for those between 25 and 30 and more substantial for those between 30 and 35. This will bring back the max # of IP a SP can throw to a more modern day level. For instance, if a top end SP could previously rack up 340 IP during the regular season, he'll now only be able to throw 300.

Enjoy!

Small update today:

• Improved the Rule 5 Draft player availability process. Any player acquired the 24-hour period prior to the Rule 5 Draft Roster Freeze is no longer exposed in the Rule 5 Draft. This is to handle the situations where a free-agent signed late, a trade was processed at the last minute or a waiver claim was processed and the owner didn't have time to add the player to the 40-man roster.
• Improved the supplemental round shuffle process so that all A picks are now before B picks which are before D picks.
• Added pitcher stamina and durability to the player settings page
• Added link to propose trade on the trade chat page
• Engine improvement -- Setup B pitchers will start to see more action when the team is winning by 6 or more runs (including baserunners) in the 7th inning or later. Previously, the setup A would get this assignment.
• Engine change -- improved some logic so that pinch-hitters can now be pinch-run for.
• Engine change - improved the logic where a player sub at a position would be replaced by another player at the inning half that wasn't as suited for the position as the original replacement. The original replacement will not remain in the game.
• Engine improvement - manager will now place more emphasis on defense when deciding whether to pinch-hit for a position player. For instance, if it's late in the game and the team has the lead, sometimes it's better to leave your slick fielding SS in the game rather than go for an insurance run by pinch hitting and then bringing in an inferior fielder at SS.

Enjoy!

Today's update contains some significant logic improvements as well as some fantastic fluff-type additions to the game.

We hope you enjoy!

• Added the Mid-Season Events (All-Star Game, Home Run Derby, Futures Game). These events will be played for all seasons that schedule their season following this morning's update.
• Added additional content to the world office main page. The area that includes off-the-field information (Amateur Draft, Negotiations, etc.) will now include an enormous amount of relevant and random information regarding the world.
• Added the Player of the Week award which is assigned at the end of each physical week (span of 7 * 3 = 21 potential games).
• Added the Hardball Highlights page available from the World Center. This page shows World Series results and recent noteworthy games across all worlds.
• Added the Trophy Case within Coach Profile to highlight past glories.
• Added the FAQ which rolls up our HBD-related Knowledge Base articles into one, easy-to-read page.
• Added "Submit and Return" button to Coach Negotiations Page
• Added Game Date column to Noteworthy Games Page
• Bug Fix -- free-agents that lower the # of years demanded now also see an appropriate drop in overall salary demands, too
• Logic Improvement -- expanded check for unbalanced multi-year contracts to also include minimum % per season
• Bug Fix -- closed a hole where you could release a player during the season of his contract option before deciding to accept/decline the option
• Bug Fix -- corrected a mistake in which you couldn't accept/decline when you should have been able to (it was off by one cycle)
• Engine improvement -- no more strike 3 looking on hit and run attempts
• Engine improvement -- no more walk-off groundrule doubles scoring more than the winning run
• Engine improvement -- no more poor defensive plays leading to more than the winning run scoring to end a game
• Engine improvement -- better breakdown of when errors occur (groundballs vs flyballs vs throwing errors, etc.)
• Engine improvement -- no more replacing an injured player after the game already ended
• Engine improvement -- no more dropped foul balls with bases empty and the same hitter getting out without reaching base leading to unearned runs later in the inning
• Engine improvement -- slight adjustment to the Player of the Game criteria
• Engine improvement -- logic adjustment regarding decision to yank a pitcher mid inning if current pitcher gave up numerous baserunners but no earned runs
• Engine improvement -- no more sac bunt attempts in 9th or later if tying runner isn't on base
• Engine improvement -- no more pinch-hitting for pitcher for strictly performance reasons if no alternative is available in the bullpen
• Engine improvement -- no more replacing a PH/PR that is capable of playing a position (according to the spectrum, although not specifically listed in hierarchy) with another player that can't play the position (according to the spectrum) and is not listed in the hierarchy

Our next update will focus more on improving existing parts of the game. After that, there's always the Arizona Fall League for those out of the playoffs and much, much more.

Thanks for playing! We hope you enjoy the game as much as we do.

Small Update:

We corrected a few issues with the latest rollout including some display issues with the new world content, an issue with the Player Awards page when toggling between worlds in different seasons and a rare sign-up issue.

It turns out there was, in fact, an issue with strikeouts. We had an error in one of our formulas which was causing a decrease in strikeouts across the board. This has been corrected, so plan on seeing a return to the norm for strikeout levels.

Thanks to those that pointed out these errors.

This update was driven primarily from your suggestions. The central focus was improving the coach hiring process, the Free Agent Report page, and the playoff format for the first and second rounds.

Coach Hiring Improvements:

• Retired players can now become Coaches! The subset of retired players who do become coaches will seek Rookie Level jobs.
• If a coach's demanded role and level has filled he will now adjust his demands.
• The number of vacancies at a specific role/level combination will now be displayed in the coaching matrix. This should give owners a good idea of what roles and levels will require a bidding war.
• The number of offers per level/role combination has been restricted to three. This was done to deter other owners from negotiating with several coaches at once to get other owners to drop out of the negotiations or to significantly raise the coach's demands.
• Coaches who are asking for a level or role change will now entertain offers at the same level/role that they coached at the previous season for a significant pay increase

• The Playoff format for the Division Play In Series and the Division Championship Series has been changed to a 2-2-1 format
• Minor League Free Agent demands now coincide with the player's highest level of play achieved
• The Free Agent Report page will not load any data initially so that owner's can set their criteria before having to load a large subset of data
• All arbitration players at the ML level can now be released without regard to the minimum roster requirement.
• If you have put a player on reversible waivers it will now show up in the pending moves display
• Lopsided contracts that are submitted to International Prospects and Free Agents will now throw an exception directly on the negotiations page
• The player gamelog will now display past month results in addition to the past week
• You can now initiate a trade chat from the trade proposals screen
• The sorting issues that some of you reported with the World Content have been fixed
• Filter options for the FAQ have been added along with some additional help for the Rule 5 draft and the Amateur draft

Engine Improvements:

• Expanded +/- opportunities for infielders
• Increased opportunities for runners on 3B trying to score on ground balls meeting certain criteria
• Only winning run will score on game ending ground-rule doubles
• Improved logic for runners advancing on balls hit to outfield where fielder would have to field, pivot and throw across body
• Improved logic for pinch-hitting for pitcher to now take into consideration whether he should be in to earn the win (by pitching at least 5 IP)
• Reduced likelihood of attempting steal of second when runners on 1st and 2nd
• Improved logic for deciding to attempt the hit and run

Our next order of business will be to add an advanced edit rosters mode. We hope you enjoy all of the changes and keep the feedback coming!

We put out a small update/patch today including the following:

• Corrected a bug in which the final 4-hour cycle of free-agent offers wasn't being processed at the proper time. Rather than being processed at the 3:00 AM EST cycle, they were being processed at 11:00 AM EST.
• Added regional scouts for Canada. Since the inception of HBD, no players from Canada have been seen by franchises because we had a typo in the scout creation code.
• Improved the addion/removal from the playoff roster so it can be done in the same series of moves.
• Added an extra correspondence during spring training to remind owners to fill their minor league rosters
• Expanded the logic on the Edit Rosters page to allow for the minimum roster size to be flexible for minor league teams when it comes to releasing/DFA'ing arbitration eligible players prior to arb hearings.
• Several minor engine improvements/adjustments

Enjoy!