Quote:
Runhead, Skunkle and Purchasearea said the game had to grow on them and I'm curious as to their reasons.


I like to conduct as-played replays with older seasons. When 2nd Degree Black Belt and crew made the 1924 season available in this fashion, I thought that would be a good time to give DMB another try.

I had done such replays with SOM and grew weary of the repetitive nature of the graphics and play-by-play commentary. It also bothered me when the PBP would begin to describe a play where I already KNEW the outcome, i.e., "The ball gets away from the catcher, the baserunner is thinking of scoring all the way from second, but he puts on the brakes and stays at third," knowing full well that a two-base advance on a wild pitch is impossible in SOM.

I can see why many just turn off those features. But I don't like to play in "card-and-dice" mode either because, well, it becomes a card-and-dice game rather than baseball, if that makes any sense.

Also, while SOM boasts of its open game engine, the computer dice rolls aren't open. And the game engine unapologetically fudges the results, at least in its most advanced mode. Seems to me a better game wouldn't NEED to do this. And DMB doesn't.

I still play SOM in one of my leagues, and I don't see that league ever giving up on that game. But as more and more past seasons with real-life lineups and transactions become available from DMB, I can see that's where my future solo projects will be.

I pretty much agree with many of the responses to my original post as to the other reasons I prefer DMB. I never was attached to the cards, so that made the switch easier too. To me, you either trust the game engine or you don't.

While I still think SOM's roster and stat interfaces are probably the best, I'm confident that the next DMB upgrade will close the gap. And no game can touch DMB once the first pitch is thrown. The pitch-by-pitch feature (which importantly can be toggled or or off), the wide variety of possible plays, and the knowledge that the game designer and staff are students of baseball are big sellers too.