Time to Put This Game / Series Out to Pasture

[Squid_Adams_PSN]

We're here. The Show 25 was on life support basically all season, but since the last "Weekend Classic" I have seen a drastic shift in how poorly this game plays. Prior to SDS completely selling out, I was a fringe World Series player. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't. With this game, I'm a Divisional Series player who has flirted with Championship Series on a number of occasions. After the update... I'm not even cracking 300. The only games I win are when my opponent (with a record of like 49-297) quits in the 2nd inning. I'm getting smoked by guys worse than me (if you go off of record, stats and just the amount of games they've played.) I'm well past the 200+ games played mark, so even if I'm sub .500, you could make a solid argument that I'm still better than guy who is say 7-5.

What's happening instead, is that I'm throwing 99 Roy Halladay out there with something like 97 in control and getting lit up by a .220 hitter in the top of the first with a highly scripted diamond error that loads up the bases (the first two batters cracked pitches low, away and out of the strike zone like it was a meaty ball right down the middle) and of course the classic actual meatball down the middle of the zone that was actually a good released pitch in and on the hands. My opponent said he lost his previous game (and perfect game bid) on a bunt, so this totally reeked of a buff since SDS gip'd him out of his previous win.

At that point, I don't care what happens. I watched my stud 99 pitcher get lit up inexplicably. He wasn't tired, I wasn't predictable or throwing the ball in stupid locations... it was just my turn to get tuned up. That makes a game unplayable to me. It's been happening A LOT. This is the most consistent I've ever seen The Show play... sadly it's just been consistently bad. This definitely supports my theory that as SDS winds down 25 so they can start to come after our money again with 26, they will torch the game with an update that makes it borderline unplayable except to the overly forgiving people. That's all sports games, really.

Quick history lesson:
EA Sports was once the creme de la creme, then greed took over and their quality began to dip. Enter 2K, the savior of sports franchises....we thought they were different and for a while, they were. But eventually greed took over and their quality began to dip. SDS did the exact same thing as 2K. They were well respected for making an amazing sports title and The Show as the premier franchise for years. That ended about 7 or 8 years ago, from where I see it. Now we're playing the game of a complacent company that releases a game that is more infuriating than fun. It's wildly inconsistent and frankly doesn't do a good job at hiding game mechanics intended to make the game more engaging and fun. Comeback logic sounds cool in practice, then you realize that it takes the control out of the players hands. Whether I'm being nerfed and not allowed to get hits or anything cooking on offense or buffed and putting up 6 runs in two innings...that had less to do with how I was playing and more about how this game was made. I know it's a tough concept to grasp if this is not your view of the game, but the people who see The Show how I see The Show would know exactly what I mean.

So, in the way that WWE 2K took off a year after the debacle that was WWE 2K20, I'm suggesting the same for MLB The Show. Go back to the drawing board, forget 26 and show us you really care about the long term health of your franchise instead of cashing in with more subpar baseball and scripted gameplay. In the meantime, we need someone else to come out with a mainstream MLB game to compete with and challenge SDS. They don't care. Look at "Create a Stadium" that's a whole big feature that probably accounts for 10-15 GB of the game's storage (and was the crown jewel addition back in 21 or whatever it was) and it simply does not work. That's like the manager in your fantasy football league who doesn't set his lineup. We get new things to buy every week or two... yet we have whole modes and features that have fallen into disarray and neglect. That's a company who does not need to be in charge of the only baseball game in town.