Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@jonblaze2424 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Higher difficulty weeds out the mediocre players who catch a few breaks guessing correctly on all star. HOF and Legend are a whole nother animal
Yes they are! My theory is to have ranked based on difficulty. Let all star play all star and have HOF play HOF. Awards would be commensurate with difficulty level.
Meanwhile that would heavily split the population base, which isn't as vast as say a game like Madden, and while you may say that longer wait times are fine for you to guarantee to play what difficulty, it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,
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@eatyum said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@jonblaze2424 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Higher difficulty weeds out the mediocre players who catch a few breaks guessing correctly on all star. HOF and Legend are a whole nother animal
Yes they are! My theory is to have ranked based on difficulty. Let all star play all star and have HOF play HOF. Awards would be commensurate with difficulty level.
Meanwhile that would heavily split the population base, which isn't as vast as say a game like Madden, and while you may say that longer wait times are fine for you to guarantee to play what difficulty, it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,
Personally, for me being a 43 year old, HOF is tough. Small PCI and increased pitch speeds kill me. SDS should somewhat accommodate the player base. I’d like to just have fun, not struggle. It’s prob just a function of being older, having reduced reaction time and vision.
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@eatyum said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@jonblaze2424 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Higher difficulty weeds out the mediocre players who catch a few breaks guessing correctly on all star. HOF and Legend are a whole nother animal
Yes they are! My theory is to have ranked based on difficulty. Let all star play all star and have HOF play HOF. Awards would be commensurate with difficulty level.
Meanwhile that would heavily split the population base, which isn't as vast as say a game like Madden, and while you may say that longer wait times are fine for you to guarantee to play what difficulty, it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,
Personally, for me being a 43 year old, HOF is tough. Small PCI and increased pitch speeds kill me. SDS should somewhat accommodate the player base. I’d like to just have fun, not struggle. It’s prob just a function of being older, having reduced reaction time and vision.
I get that, I do, but just as the game should not cater only to top players, (I've seen a lot of people campaign for HoF to be pushed even further down to like 500 in ranked season), it also cannot fully accommodate players like you.
You say "accommodate the player base", but what you really mean is "accommodate my part of the player base" because it's a diverse group. And there is nothing wrong with campaigning for your player base, but it's a give and take and SDS probably won't satisfy either group for fear of alienating the other half.
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Just a thought- if there was HOF WS, all star WS and Veteran WS, with rewards being commensurate with each difficulty, wouldn’t that satisfy the player base? One would argue that tiered difficulty plays to the elites. It’s almost impossible for someone of my age group to compete on HOF. I’m sure some have but I’m also sure many struggle simply due to the physical limitations that come with getting older. Let’s be real, baseball in 2021 is not a young mans sport. Many guys my age play the game.
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Just a thought- if there was HOF WS, all star WS and Veteran WS, with rewards being commensurate with each difficulty, wouldn’t that satisfy the player base? One would argue that tiered difficulty plays to the elites. It’s almost impossible for someone of my age group to compete on HOF. I’m sure some have but I’m also sure many struggle simply due to the physical limitations that come with getting older. Let’s be real, baseball in 2021 is not a young mans sport. Many guys my age play the game.
But again that deals with my first point, " it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,"
And I would argue that tiers don't play only to the elite. All-star already makes up the majority of the game, going from 300-699 (and even further, because if I am at 740, but I play a guy at 690, I'm pulled into all-star), just because you can't make it all the way to the top doesn't mean the game is only designed for elites. Not everyone can make the top, that's not just how person vs person video games work, that's how baseball itself works.
And I am sure a lot of people your age play, that wouldn't surprise me, though I doubt 40+ would be the majority.
The thing is though, the top-end community is much louder, mostly because they have most of the content creators, so if they get unhappy, their followers get unhappy, even if that follower never has a chance of making it to HoF because he or she isn't good enough.
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@eatyum said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Just a thought- if there was HOF WS, all star WS and Veteran WS, with rewards being commensurate with each difficulty, wouldn’t that satisfy the player base? One would argue that tiered difficulty plays to the elites. It’s almost impossible for someone of my age group to compete on HOF. I’m sure some have but I’m also sure many struggle simply due to the physical limitations that come with getting older. Let’s be real, baseball in 2021 is not a young mans sport. Many guys my age play the game.
But again that deals with my first point, " it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,"
And I would argue that tiers don't play only to the elite. All-star already makes up the majority of the game, going from 300-699 (and even further, because if I am at 740, but I play a guy at 690, I'm pulled into all-star), just because you can't make it all the way to the top doesn't mean the game is only designed for elites
And I am sure a lot of people your age play, that wouldn't surprise me, though I doubt 40+ would be the majority.
The thing is though, the top-end community is much louder, mostly because they have most of the content creators, so if they get unhappy, their followers get unhappy, even if that follower never has a chance of making it to HoF because he or she isn't good enough.
Man ,you’re right about the content creators. I didn’t really think of it that way. It’s a shame because guys like me, I’m assuming, spend money. It’s easier for me to buy stubs or cards than grind due to the time commitment. It would be nice if SDS factored us into the equation for ranked.
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@eatyum said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
Just a thought- if there was HOF WS, all star WS and Veteran WS, with rewards being commensurate with each difficulty, wouldn’t that satisfy the player base? One would argue that tiered difficulty plays to the elites. It’s almost impossible for someone of my age group to compete on HOF. I’m sure some have but I’m also sure many struggle simply due to the physical limitations that come with getting older. Let’s be real, baseball in 2021 is not a young mans sport. Many guys my age play the game.
But again that deals with my first point, " it is easy to recognize that SDS will never sacrifice wait times to that extent,"
And I would argue that tiers don't play only to the elite. All-star already makes up the majority of the game, going from 300-699 (and even further, because if I am at 740, but I play a guy at 690, I'm pulled into all-star), just because you can't make it all the way to the top doesn't mean the game is only designed for elites
And I am sure a lot of people your age play, that wouldn't surprise me, though I doubt 40+ would be the majority.
The thing is though, the top-end community is much louder, mostly because they have most of the content creators, so if they get unhappy, their followers get unhappy, even if that follower never has a chance of making it to HoF because he or she isn't good enough.
Man ,you’re right about the content creators. I didn’t really think of it that way. It’s a shame because guys like me, I’m assuming, spend money. It’s easier for me to buy stubs or cards than grind due to the time commitment. It would be nice if SDS factored us into the equation for ranked.
They do factor you in, that's why all-star runs from 300-699. If they didn't factor you in, ranked would have changed to only HoF a long time ago.
As I edited my comment to say " Not everyone can make the top, that's not just how person vs person video games work, that's how baseball itself works."
It's a compromise that doesn't make either side happy, but also doesn't make either side completely quit, they both come back.
Also content creators influence a lot of $ to, people want the shiny cards that they watch others play with. There is a lot of money to be made in making content creators happy, especially in terms of buying packs.
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We can’t have top players and casuals playing on the same difficulty. I don’t like switching between difficulties either, but I think it’s the best compromise to appease both the comp community and the casual gamers. If anything, I’d rather see two separate ranked seasons, one for comp players on legend. And the other would be the current ranked format with similar rewards so non top players don’t complain. Everyone would be happy.
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I’m in my 40s, first year playing online, and I will choose HOF every single time. All Star is arcade baseball , at least in HOF I fell my pitching strategy and execution can somewhat matter when done right.
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I sympathize with all the points expressed here. I guess it’s even less likely that we could have universal pitch speeds, since the changes at the different levels seems to be the major difference/difficulty.
I’m also an older dude, but what I struggle with more is going back and forth.
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
What’s the point? Going from AS to HOF to eventually legend is disorienting. Let’s just stick to one difficulty. BR does it, events do it, why not RS? Thoughts?
If this is implemented then it should be Legend speeds with PCI size shriking as you level up division tiers.
The pros will beat everybody easily if speeds are lower than legend for them
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They can't change the format without upsetting at least one part of the player base. The only change I'd like to see that once get above 700, you only match up with players who are also above 700. Having to play on all-star in DS or even above is annoying. It'd be nice to know what you're going to be playing on so you can prepare appropriately.
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What I would prefer is staying within one's division for a season. Maybe not every time, maybe alternating?
I'm much better now than I was in March and a lot of that comes from RS play, but at the same time there are times when I'll get matched up with someone 800+ and I pretty much get waxed every time without fail, which isn't fun, though maybe I'm getting marginally better from that as well.
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The problem with the way it is now is that everything changes with the difficulty level.
Pitch speeds change.
Timing windows change.
PCI sizes change.
RNG changes (meaning poor PCI placement and/or timing results in fewer hits as you climb).
Pitchers’ ability to locate changes.
The only thing that doesn’t change are the controls. Lol
Why does everything have to change? Can’t a couple of those things remain the same, at least?
So it’s like playing three different games. I agree that it is annoying. And I absolutely hate playing AS, but I don’t know what the solution is.
I just know that when I get my [censored] kicked on HoF or above, I give credit to my opponent. When I play AS, I don’t give myself or opponent any credit at all. It’s a crapshoot.
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IMO it would be fine as it is if you were guaranteed a HOF game after you hit 700. Not knowing what difficulty you are playing on and it being a crapshoot from 700 to about 775 whether you are on AS or HOF is irritating. With multiple different difficulty ranked seasons there really isn't a good way to set up the reward structure either. The complainers about content are arguably louder and more annoying than the complainers about gameplay(at least complainers about gameplay are justified though).
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I agree the AS/HOF [censored] shoot is no bueno. I actually prefer the game on HOF and wish I could always play on that as it seems like a better game with less of the bs you see in AS. The thing is it's hard to get better at playing on HOF because of the difficulty in getting there. You have to grind you're way through AS which is a mine field then have to go back and forth between HOF and AS, then, like it was mentioned above you don't get a guaranteed HOF game until 770ish or so.
Truthfully guaranteed HOF games above 700 seems like a good idea, or maybe once you crack 700 you get a mark and then play on HOF for the remainder of the season? Once you get there you're there kind of thing, no bouncing back and forth.
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The easy solution is to play on the higher rated players difficulty instead of the lower
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@maurice91932 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
The problem with the way it is now is that everything changes with the difficulty level.
Pitch speeds change.
Timing windows change.
PCI sizes change.
RNG changes (meaning poor PCI placement and/or timing results in fewer hits as you climb).
Pitchers’ ability to locate changes.
The only thing that doesn’t change are the controls. Lol
Why does everything have to change? Can’t a couple of those things remain the same, at least?
So it’s like playing three different games. I agree that it is annoying. And I absolutely hate playing AS, but I don’t know what the solution is.
I just know that when I get my [censored] kicked on HoF or above, I give credit to my opponent. When I play AS, I don’t give myself or opponent any credit at all. It’s a crapshoot.
I totally agree with this
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I was thinking about this...correct me if I’m wrong, but every other sports game keeps the difficulty for competitive play the same throughout the course of the “season”. The only thing that changes is the quality of the player as you progress. If you’re playing madden weekend league they’re not nerfing teams to accommodate a lower ranked team. In 2K when you’re playing my team they don’t adjust the timing window for the shot meter. Why does MLB feel the need to have several difficulty levels throughout ranked seasons? Seems like an antiquated system to me.
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@mrwonderful95 said in Do we really need multiple difficulty levels throughout ranked season?:
I was thinking about this...correct me if I’m wrong, but every other sports game keeps the difficulty for competitive play the same throughout the course of the “season”. The only thing that changes is the quality of the player as you progress. If you’re playing madden weekend league they’re not nerfing teams to accommodate a lower ranked team. In 2K when you’re playing my team they don’t adjust the timing window for the shot meter. Why does MLB feel the need to have several difficulty levels throughout ranked seasons? Seems like an antiquated system to me.
You can't really compare though, Madden or 2k doesn't have anything akin to pitch speeds where you have to react to something like that. (Note that I'm not saying there is no reaction skills in those games, merely that pitch speeds and reacting to shooting a basketball are two very different things that cannot be compared) Shooting a basketball would be more aptly compared to the throwing meter when throwing to a base.
No matter what pitch speed SDS's picks as a universal speed, it will make a large group angry. I doubt you'd be very pleased if they picked HOF speeds for it no? Even though that would solve the issue of having "several difficulties" by making it solely that.
