Home » OOTP 24 Review: Out of the Park Baseball Sets the Platinum Standard Once Again
Breaking down the new arrival in our OOTP 24 review. We also spoke with Rich Grisham about trading upgrades and more in Out of the Park Baseball.
The new season is underway, and with it comes the arrival of Out of the Park Baseball 24. With a series built upon two decades of baseball simulation innovation, our OOTP 24 review will dig deeper into how this year’s new features and upgrades push the authenticity even further.
We also took the time to speak to Rich Grisham, Director of Business Development at Com2uS, about the community around Out of the Park Baseball and the latest in-game changes. Whether you’re unfamiliar with the sandbox, so authentic the pros use it, or are looking for the right time to upgrade, our OOTP 24 review will help you know how the latest installment shines.
In this review, you will learn:
- How the OOTP 24 community helps new players dive in
- The true meaning of ultimate customization in franchise
- New features make trading systems more authentic than ever
- How fans fueled upgrades to Owner Goals and international scouting
- Our official Out of the Park Baseball 24 rating
OOTP 24 Review: Customization and community shine in Out of the Park Baseball
Out of the Park Baseball 24 builds upon two decades of gaming innovation, but it does so with the concrete foundation of a community that absolutely loves their infinite baseball sandbox. In addition to breaking down this year’s new features in this OOTP 24 review, we had the opportunity to speak to Rich Grisham about the latest arrival from Out of the Park Developments as part of Com2uS.
As a game that aims to provide players with as close to an infinite amount of options as possible, Out of the Park Baseball 24 runs the risk of being a bit intimidating for new players looking to dive in. OOTP 23 addressed this by introducing on-screen tutorials all throughout the game that continue to provide a major boost in the latest arrival, and Rich Grisham also emphasized the power of the existing player community when we spoke.
“I am regularly, just almost on a daily basis, delighted by how welcoming the community of Out of the Park Baseball is. Whether it’s in our Discord, which has I think almost 12,000 members, or whether it’s in our forums, which have been around for a couple of decades,” Grisham explained. “I’m not trying to criticize anybody, quite the opposite, but unlike some gaming communities where people that are new can be intimidated, it’s really the opposite. Whenever a new person pops up in Discord or on the forums and says ‘hey, I’m new to the game, any suggestions, advice,’ it’s incredible how quickly people jump in and help.”
“It’s a very welcoming, friendly community. It’s relatively small and close knit, and people really get a kick out of helping newcomers enjoy the game,” Grisham said. “It’s one thing to have a tutorial that, you know, needs to sort of encompass everything. It’s another thing when someone says ‘I really wanna know the best way to sign an international free agent,’ right? Like, that’s a very specific thing. And when people say those specific areas they need help with, they get help very quickly from our amazing community.”
OOTP Developments also provides an extensive searchable online manual for players, but nothing quite compares to being able to crowdsource an answer from a community filled with players who have years of experience making magic in Out of the Park Baseball. Just to get a glimpse at how customizable things can get, Rich Grisham discussed a few of the many many possibilities players have in OOTP 24.
“You can, within almost any amount of reason, set up your baseball universe however you want. For example, if you want to start with Major League Baseball as it’s run right now to this minute with the rules and the new stuff and the DH in both leagues, banning of shifts and all of that, you can do that. If you want to make a few tweaks and you’re like ‘I don’t like the fact that they banned shifts. I wanted shifts to be on.’ And check a box, and shifts are now in.”
“On the other side you can say ‘I don’t like how the American League and the National League divisions are set up. I want to construct an entirely new way to run baseball. I want to create new leagues, new divisions, new teams, and I just want to have a fantasy draft and rebuild baseball in my own image with, instead of 30 teams, I want 50 teams or I want 20 teams. I want a DH in one league and no DH in another league. And I want to put Mike Trout on the Phillies and I want to put Ohtani on the Dodgers.’ You can completely construct your own completely customized universe in terms of teams, rules, who’s in the playoffs,” Grisham continued. “You can set up multiple tiers where you can have promotion and relegation like European football. You can literally create your own completely custom world using real teams, real players, or fictional teams and fictional players, or a mixture of both.”
In playing the game over the last few weeks while preparing this OOTP 24 review, not a game session goes by without discovering some new way to push the customization and immersion up another notch. From small details like uploading your own General Manager photo to make it look like Stan Hansen really does run the 1995 Houston Astros to the wonder of simulating historical years to see how differently things could’ve been, you’ll never stop discovering new ways to enjoy Out of the Park Baseball 24.
Trading levels up in OOTP 24 with several new features
One of the most difficult aspects to nail down in any sports simulation franchise mode is trading, but Out of the Park Baseball 24 continues to push forward with authenticity that takes multiple aspects of trading up to a new level this year. A new Trading Reputation System has arrived, and Rich Grisham explained how real world teams like the Tampa Bay Rays inspired innovation in this area of OOTP 24.
“The trading reputation system is another thing that’s really sort of based off of what we’ve seen happen in the real game, in the real world. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays are known for just being really good at trading. The players they get seem to perform better than the players they send off, and that has made a lot of real world teams wary of trading with the Rays.”
“We really wanted to introduce a better mechanic representing not just that, but also who is good to do business with and who might not be good to do business with,” he continued. “If you’re the kind of person who negotiates and negotiates and then doesn’t pull the trigger a bunch of times, your reputation will change based upon your actions and your behaviors. Teams will be more willing or less willing to do deals with you.”
Another way things got more accurate this year is with the new Dynamic Trading Deadline Day experience, which revamps that point in the season to try and capture the chaotic energy that fans get to see each year when it arrives. While player feedback played a role once again, Grisham explained this was also one feature he’d hoped to see upgraded for some time.
“I love sports video games. I always have, and I always will. One of the things I love about FIFA is the transfer deadline day where it counts down the clock and it shows you who’s moving around and there’s an element of anxiety and almost thrill and nervousness to it,” he explained. “We’ve been talking about it for years, but we were able to really crystallize what we wanted the trade deadline experience to be this year.”
“We basically just wanted to introduce a level of excitement because again, it’s different now than it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Now in Major League Baseball, the Trade Deadline Day is a big deal. MLB Network is on all day long. Deals are coming in. It’s happening on social media. We wanted to bring some more of that level of excitement in the moment to the game, and that’s where all this came from,” Grisham said. “It was looking at what other games do, like we always do, and looking at what’s happening in the real world of Major League Baseball. We just wanted to make it thrilling and real-time and [give players] a fear of missing out. If you don’t make that offer, oh my gosh, the guy just got traded to another team.”
The final adjustment to trading this year is one that’ll impact every aspect of it, as OOTP 24 introduces a hard mode for trading that allows players to disable the helpful “make this work” button during trade setups and forces players to submit trade proposals before getting any feedback from the opposing team about how they might respond to the offer. Grisham talked about how some players may want an easier time, something they’ll still be able to do, but others wanted that deeper challenge.
“That’s where the Trading Hard Mode comes in. Some of our players really, really want that significant challenge. And not for nothing. Some of our players are actually people who work in Major League Baseball front offices, and we got some feedback that helped us make that mode a little bit better as well,” he explained.
“It was almost like we wanted to make sure that we could measure up to what the real world is like when it comes to trading, because we market the game based upon authenticity. So we wanted to make sure that we could give players the most authentic level of trading that we got, ‘cause trading is such a huge part of baseball.”
“Every team is really, really smart. You know what I mean? You’re only gonna be able to pull off a trade with the team if they’re getting something that they want of value and you’re getting something that you want of value,” Grisham continued. “That’s where that came from. And again, we recognize that some people want that and sometimes they don’t. Both of those things are okay, and we want people to be able to have fun and have a challenge. And sometimes those can be different experiences.”
Continuing to evolve alongside the game of baseball
A few of this year’s other key feature improvements included revamped Owner Goals and changes to the International Amateur Free Agents system. As Rich Grisham discussed when we spoke, Out of the Park Baseball 24 doesn’t just seek to upgrade existing features, but it has to continue to innovate as the game of baseball itself changes with each passing year.
“The international scouting was a big deal because that was one of the areas of our game which hadn’t really gotten an upgrade for a few seasons. Like a lot of things in baseball, a lot has changed with international scouting in the last four or five years, the rules and the finances,” he said. “That came directly from the community. That was exactly where that came from, and we’re happy with how it came out. We’re getting a lot of good feedback on it.”
“[Owner Goals] are another one where those had not really been upgraded for quite some time, and people were saying ‘hey look, you should probably take another run at these and modify or tweak them.’ A lot of the things that we do come directly from the community, and [it’s a] blessing and curse,” Grisham explained. “The blessing of Out of the Park Baseball is every single year we get a new opportunity to deliver a new game with new features and new upgrades and new changes. The curse is that you don’t have a whole lot of time to do it. With a game like Out of the Park Baseball where the studio is so small, really there’s only like four developers and they have to do everything [from] live service development [to] base game development, all that kind of stuff.”
“When we release Out of the Park every year, we are maintaining that game and servicing that game for about six or seven months. We do patches and updates all the time. So you’re only able to spend two or three months really doing design and development for the next year’s game. So we really have to prioritize and figure out what can we do well with the resources that we have and the time that we have. That’s why sometimes it goes three or four years where scouting or international scouting or owner goals don’t get the love, but we’re doing other stuff,” he said. “Again, baseball has changed a lot in the last three or four years. And owner goals changed too, right? It’s not easy, but it’s a lot easier to make the playoffs now than it was five years ago, certainly than 10 or 15 years ago.”
That dedication to keeping up with the real world counterpart is felt all throughout Out of the Park Baseball 24. Every new installment pushes things several steps closer to providing the most authentic experience possible for diehard fans, and OOTP 24 is no different.
Out of the Park Baseball 24 release date, platforms, system requirements, price, and microtransactions
Before wrapping up our OOTP 24 review, it’s worth taking a moment to outline the logistics for fans who might still be on the fence about whether now is the time to jump into the action. Out of the Park Baseball 24 launched worldwide with a release date on March 24, 2023.
OOTP 24 is currently available on PC, Mac, and Linux with options to purchase directly through the Out of the Park Developments website or via Steam. In either case, the game is currently available for $39.99 across all platforms.
There are no special editions or paid DLC for Out of the Park Baseball 24, but it does include microtransactions which pair with the Perfect Team mode. For players who enjoy that mode, they have the option to purchase Perfect Points to use in-game at the following rates:
- 1,000 Perfect Points – $0.99
- 5,500 Perfect Points – $4.99
- 12,000 Perfect Points – $9.99
- 25,000 Perfect Points – $19.99
- 75,000 Perfect Points – $49.99
- 175,000 Perfect Points – $99.99
Like most titles, Perfect Team still provides plenty of opportunities for players to build up their collections without having to spend extra money on the game. Players who hope to try it out will still have plenty of ways to compete if they’re “no money spent,” and those who simply wish to stick to the franchise simulations can avoid Perfect Team entirely in-game if they prefer.
OOTP 24 review and rating: Is it worth it?
When it comes to deciding if a release is worth it, one of the most important questions to ask is whether a game successfully delivered on the fun it promised. In playing the game for our OOTP 24 review, it became delightfully easy to get lost in the wonder of it once the earliest tutorial hurdles had been jumped.
Like most larger strategy simulation games, you’re going to stumble a few times. Your first attempts will probably run into aspects you hadn’t even considered, but making those mistakes is part of learning all the different things that OOTP 24 has the power to do. Out of the Park Baseball is the kind of game that’s only going to get exponentially more fun the longer you play it, because there’s definitely a way of doing things you didn’t even know was an option.
With a price point a full third lower than even the past gen versions of top tier sports titles, it’s worth keeping in mind that the only franchise mode which even comes close to matching OOTP 24 is NBA 2K23 because of the introduction of MyNBA Eras. However, Out of the Park Baseball has been providing that level of historical deep dive and immersion for years and only continues to improve upon that with each installment.
Like any good sandbox, to some extent, the only limit is your imagination and the kinds of things you want to make it do. For some players, that might mean jumping into today’s league on the highest difficulties possible and really testing whether you know the sport better than the pros. For others, that might mean building a league unlike anything the sport has ever seen.
When developers love their craft, it shows. It’s genuinely difficult to find any glaring flaws in OOTP 24, even if it doesn’t have quite as many game modes or the same graphics quality that some larger games bring to the table. Out of the Park Baseball knows it only has one job, and it does that job better than any other game on the market.
Official Out of the Park Baseball 24 Rating: 10 out of 10
This Out of the Park Baseball 24 review was based on gameplay from the Steam version on Windows.
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