One thing I miss from older mlbts games
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Is painting the corner with a low outside change up. I could hit it more times than not. Now it's all random. Either too much in the zone or out of it.
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I too miss being able to have command of your pitches.
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Pitch command is what made 92 C.C. Sabathia one of the best pitchers in MLB17.
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‘17 was the last year pitching was roughly equal to hitting. It wasn’t just CC Sabathia who was lethal, remember how nasty Vida Blue was? Verlander? Kershaw was a nightmare too. That’s because pitching was generally relevant in ‘17. When you aimed the ball somewhere and made good input, that’s exactly where the ball would end up.
‘18 was the first year we saw major problems with pitching. First, they reduced pitch speeds so much that you could take a nap between the pitcher releasing a 4 seamer and it actually reaching the plate. When people constantly complained, in what I can only assume was a hissy fit of petulance and frustration, SDS then released a “F you” patch, that made AS look like legend difficulty. The PCI was tiny and extremely sensitive, had a huge range of movement and even though pitches were still too slow, swing timing windows were narrowed as much as possible. Then when everyone inevitably complained again, they reverted to the “spamming low off speed” meta for the rest of the year.
‘19 was another terrible year for pitching in MLB the Show. Not only did we have the HR/9 debacle, where it didn’t do anything, then it made everything die at the track, then it didn’t do anything again, we also saw the introduction of the random hanger with good input. While most people were singing the praises of SS Kershaw and making up superlatives to describe how good he really was, the rest of us were scratching our heads as to why good/good was almost always a line out. It wasn’t that Kershaw was that good, he just scored highly in most RNG stat vs stat dice rolls. It was like having the best card in the deck at Top Trumps, no matter which stat it came down to, he usually had the upper hand. In any case, by the end of the year, pitching was pretty much exactly as it is in ‘20 currently. At least it shows they’re working on ideas and implementing them as the season wears on, I suppose.
The state of pitching in this game is not good at present. Input isn’t the determining factor in hanging a pitch, giving up a hit or a run, or hitting a spot in a crucial situation. You can still pitch to contact effectively at times, if I want a ground ball into the shift, or to try and get a hitter to pop up, I can often execute what I’m going for. That said, you can’t really dominate a game with a pitcher, unless you’re facing a bad opponent who will assist you by chasing a lot of bad pitches. Accuracy is more of an issue than pitch speeds and speed differentials, which aren’t that bad this year. A fastball is effective enough to set up an off speed pitch and vice versa. Even a good hitter can be blown away by an unexpected heater at 96mph, which suggests that pitch speeds are fine. The random hangers are not, the lack of accuracy is not, the fact that there’s pretty much nowhere you can pitch without the batter getting ridiculous foul tips and extending ABs until the random hanger comes is certainly not fine. Pitchers need a little more help, but the problem is it’s now baked into the game to have useless ineffective pitchers who throw the ball anywhere they feel like on reasonably good, albeit not perfect, input.
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Well said.
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@ComebackLogic said in One thing I miss from older mlbts games:
‘17 was the last year pitching was roughly equal to hitting. It wasn’t just CC Sabathia who was lethal, remember how nasty Vida Blue was? Verlander? Kershaw was a nightmare too. That’s because pitching was generally relevant in ‘17. When you aimed the ball somewhere and made good input, that’s exactly where the ball would end up.
‘18 was the first year we saw major problems with pitching. First, they reduced pitch speeds so much that you could take a nap between the pitcher releasing a 4 seamer and it actually reaching the plate. When people constantly complained, in what I can only assume was a hissy fit of petulance and frustration, SDS then released a “F you” patch, that made AS look like legend difficulty. The PCI was tiny and extremely sensitive, had a huge range of movement and even though pitches were still too slow, swing timing windows were narrowed as much as possible. Then when everyone inevitably complained again, they reverted to the “spamming low off speed” meta for the rest of the year.
‘19 was another terrible year for pitching in MLB the Show. Not only did we have the HR/9 debacle, where it didn’t do anything, then it made everything die at the track, then it didn’t do anything again, we also saw the introduction of the random hanger with good input. While most people were singing the praises of SS Kershaw and making up superlatives to describe how good he really was, the rest of us were scratching our heads as to why good/good was almost always a line out. It wasn’t that Kershaw was that good, he just scored highly in most RNG stat vs stat dice rolls. It was like having the best card in the deck at Top Trumps, no matter which stat it came down to, he usually had the upper hand. In any case, by the end of the year, pitching was pretty much exactly as it is in ‘20 currently. At least it shows they’re working on ideas and implementing them as the season wears on, I suppose.
The state of pitching in this game is not good at present. Input isn’t the determining factor in hanging a pitch, giving up a hit or a run, or hitting a spot in a crucial situation. You can still pitch to contact effectively at times, if I want a ground ball into the shift, or to try and get a hitter to pop up, I can often execute what I’m going for. That said, you can’t really dominate a game with a pitcher, unless you’re facing a bad opponent who will assist you by chasing a lot of bad pitches. Accuracy is more of an issue than pitch speeds and speed differentials, which aren’t that bad this year. A fastball is effective enough to set up an off speed pitch and vice versa. Even a good hitter can be blown away by an unexpected heater at 96mph, which suggests that pitch speeds are fine. The random hangers are not, the lack of accuracy is not, the fact that there’s pretty much nowhere you can pitch without the batter getting ridiculous foul tips and extending ABs until the random hanger comes is certainly not fine. Pitchers need a little more help, but the problem is it’s now baked into the game to have useless ineffective pitchers who throw the ball anywhere they feel like on reasonably good, albeit not perfect, input.
Everything you said is accurate, but I don't agree that it shows they're working on pitching. It shows that they recognize it has to be harder, but just like with hitting, they aren't taking the time to change the mechanics, they're simply trying to use RNG to make it harder.
They need to actually change the pitching mechanics and make good inputs harder to accomplish. Stats should matter for how fast the meter moves or how sensitive the analog movements are. It should affect how big the targets are to hit on meter and analog as well. Heck, this would probably make people mad, but make pitching clutch matter for the user, not RNG by making the ball shake slightly and controller vibrate when you're trying to hit your release points or aim. The more confident they are the less it moves and for dominant closers, have it be completely still. Have stamina factor into this as well. Show me that when I'm not confident my breaking pitches cannot break as much, don't just make it random and not let me know why.
These are the problems with pitching and how they need to really look at fixing them, but it would take a COMPLETE overhaul to the pitching system and they haven't really changed the mechanics of pitching in the game in who knows how long with the exception of adding pulse pitching.
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@theu175 Yes, I totally agree with what you’re saying, it would be the most logical way to make stats matter, by affecting how hard it is to make good input with a pitcher who has bad control on the pitch he has selected to throw. I also strongly agree that SDS don’t understand how to make hitting or pitching better without simply skewing results. To boost pitching and counter OP offense, they simply make good/good contact be a line out more often than it was previously. We see that again this year, with perfect swings no longer being rewarded at the same rate as they were earlier in the year, because it made the gameplay trash, all about hitting. Now we have the return of people complaining about hitting not being rewarding enough, because the only way SDS understood to counter the offensive game they’d created by “fixing” hitting was by making good swings successful less often. That’s laughable in and of itself, but the fact we’ve been in a never ending cycle of repeating this process on and off for years is even more ridiculous to me.
Finally, have you tried going to your PS4 dashboard, under settings>devices>controllers and turning off the vibration feature on your controller? I just wondered by the part where you mentioned your ball marker shaking when trying to hit your spots. Disable vibration, if that’s not what you mean try a new controller, I get through one a year playing the show, my PCI starts shaking when I elevate it in the zone, analog is worn.
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@ComebackLogic said in One thing I miss from older mlbts games:
@theu175 Yes, I totally agree with what you’re saying, it would be the most logical way to make stats matter, by affecting how hard it is to make good input with a pitcher who has bad control on the pitch he has selected to throw. I also strongly agree that SDS don’t understand how to make hitting or pitching better without simply skewing results. To boost pitching and counter OP offense, they simply make good/good contact be a line out more often than it was previously. We see that again this year, with perfect swings no longer being rewarded at the same rate as they were earlier in the year, because it made the gameplay trash, all about hitting. Now we have the return of people complaining about hitting not being rewarding enough, because the only way SDS understood to counter the offensive game they’d created by “fixing” hitting was by making good swings successful less often. That’s laughable in and of itself, but the fact we’ve been in a never ending cycle of repeating this process on and off for years is even more ridiculous to me.
Finally, have you tried going to your PS4 dashboard, under settings>devices>controllers and turning off the vibration feature on your controller? I just wondered by the part where you mentioned your ball marker shaking when trying to hit your spots. Disable vibration, if that’s not what you mean try a new controller, I get through one a year playing the show, my PCI starts shaking when I elevate it in the zone, analog is worn.
No, I was actually suggesting that would be a way to make pitching clutch an important stat. The ball marker would shake based on their confidence, especially pressure situations. You could turn vibrate off still, but the ball marker could still shake. As for hitting getting worse, it’s the normal problem fielders get much better later in the cycle and they can all shag everything. It’s an issue of not adjusting the hitting engine and instead make the cpu randomness decide if they get a good jump or not. Make harder hits find more gaps, not because random defensive ratings.
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Personally, with how easy it is for people to smash home run after home run, it should be easier to pitch. If you are using a high level pitcher like Maddux, you shouldn't be throwing meatballs for such a small miss. I get it for low control guys but far too often with good control pitchers you still get far too many dead center pitches that get cranked. If you really miss time a pitch, there should be more chance that it misses the zones rather than going to the middle.
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