Community market bots
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Bottom line is that it’s a major issue that will and has driven many players away this year, some for good. The only reasons I’m still playing this year are that I love baseball and it’s my thing to relax and unwind with after a busy day. Unfortunately this year has exposed a lot of flaws and SDS has done little to nothing to improve the experience. It’s a bummer and truly shocking how far and how fast this game has fallen.
I agree that it's a major issue, but I disagree with you saying SDS has done little or nothing to improve the experience. Manu is in here every single day removing the bots, trying fixes for it, etc. I really believe that they're doing as much as they can.
Where is your proof of that? All I see is that the market is completely destroyed now, to the point where I don't even care anymore. I've moved on.
The gold equipment cards have completely crashed and are no longer worth even bothering with.
Manu has been in the forum quite often asking people to check it. People have gotten wrongly restricted quite often as they try to control bots.
Lack of success does not equal lack of effort.
I still maintain that it must be a monumental task to try and differentiate a bot from a really efficient flipper. Also, that the people running the bots (I assume 3rd party stubs sellers) are very motivated to circumvent any safeguards SDS implements
^^ this exactly. I also don't flip gold equipment cards. The cards I flip do get impacted, but then after a bit are back to having large enough margins for me. I probably flip differently than most people.
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Bottom line is that it’s a major issue that will and has driven many players away this year, some for good. The only reasons I’m still playing this year are that I love baseball and it’s my thing to relax and unwind with after a busy day. Unfortunately this year has exposed a lot of flaws and SDS has done little to nothing to improve the experience. It’s a bummer and truly shocking how far and how fast this game has fallen.
I agree that it's a major issue, but I disagree with you saying SDS has done little or nothing to improve the experience. Manu is in here every single day removing the bots, trying fixes for it, etc. I really believe that they're doing as much as they can.
Where is your proof of that? All I see is that the market is completely destroyed now, to the point where I don't even care anymore. I've moved on.
The gold equipment cards have completely crashed and are no longer worth even bothering with.
Manu has been in the forum quite often asking people to check it. People have gotten wrongly restricted quite often as they try to control bots.
Lack of success does not equal lack of effort.
I still maintain that it must be a monumental task to try and differentiate a bot from a really efficient flipper. Also, that the people running the bots (I assume 3rd party stubs sellers) are very motivated to circumvent any safeguards SDS implements
Alright fair enough, I do appreciate that SDS is doing all they can in a really terrible situation. I imagine if we are frustrated they must be even more frustrated seeing their game in this state.
My questioning just comes from pure frustration, it's August and once again i'm down below 100k, I don't know if i've ever been that low this far into the game cycle.
Sorry if I sounded negative.
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Bottom line is that it’s a major issue that will and has driven many players away this year, some for good. The only reasons I’m still playing this year are that I love baseball and it’s my thing to relax and unwind with after a busy day. Unfortunately this year has exposed a lot of flaws and SDS has done little to nothing to improve the experience. It’s a bummer and truly shocking how far and how fast this game has fallen.
I agree that it's a major issue, but I disagree with you saying SDS has done little or nothing to improve the experience. Manu is in here every single day removing the bots, trying fixes for it, etc. I really believe that they're doing as much as they can.
The efforts have to be effective to truly earn plaudits. Failure in any form is bad. Yes, willful neglect is worse, and SDS isn't guilty of that in this singular case, but they are guilty as sin of neglect in many other important areas of their game.
But, ultimately, SDS is a professional business. With all professional endeavors, the only acceptable performance measure is success.
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One thing I was also thinking is that real time monitoring of the thousands of buy and sell offers entered every hour might not be feasible without causing the servers to slow down and cause issues in other areas. Checking every bid to see if it is one more or one less than the previous amount and how soon after it was posted and how often the account repeated that same process is quite a task.
They should still look at resolving it but the fact that the market, the game and game play and app are all tied together probably adds to the complexity.
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Bottom line is that it’s a major issue that will and has driven many players away this year, some for good. The only reasons I’m still playing this year are that I love baseball and it’s my thing to relax and unwind with after a busy day. Unfortunately this year has exposed a lot of flaws and SDS has done little to nothing to improve the experience. It’s a bummer and truly shocking how far and how fast this game has fallen.
I agree that it's a major issue, but I disagree with you saying SDS has done little or nothing to improve the experience. Manu is in here every single day removing the bots, trying fixes for it, etc. I really believe that they're doing as much as they can.
The efforts have to be effective to truly earn plaudits. Failure in any form is bad. Yes, willful neglect is worse, and SDS isn't guilty of that in this singular case, but they are guilty as sin of neglect in many other important areas of their game.
But, ultimately, SDS is a professional business. With all professional endeavors, the only acceptable performance measure is success.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but as someone who's a little older and has spent quite a while in the business world, I've learned that things are rarely as simple as they appear from the outside. A lot of this community is also being fed false narratives by content creators and treating opinions, speculation, and toxicity as fact.
Based on the way you write, you seem like an intelligent person. I would expect you to look beyond the easy "SDS doesn't care" narrative and recognize that SDS isn't some "multibillion-dollar company" with unlimited access to Sony's money. From the outside, it appears they're understaffed, overworked, and genuinely trying to improve the game. At this point, no matter what they do, good or bad, someone is going to attack them for it.
And to your point about success, despite all the complaining, people are still logging in, playing the game, and spending money on stubs. That doesn't mean the game is perfect or that its problems should be ignored, but calling it a failure is a major exaggeration. It's still a very good game and, as a dad with a full-time job and limited time to turn on my Xbox, it's still one of the few games I consistently choose to play.
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I'm 63 years old, retired from the USAF and civilian careers. So, I fit the age bracket you proffer.
My experiences with SDS goes years. I went from being an open champion of this game to a persistent critic, to such an extent now that I have on three occasions had former SDS employees reach out to me to tell me I am on the right track in my analysis of what happened at SDS and what is wrong with their strategic direction as a company.
I purchased five straight years of MLB The Show games, but no more until SDS changes how they have mistreated this game title. Even though I still have both MLB 25 and 24 on my console, I rarely play them. I play 24 more simply because I created my customized collegiate leagues there with stadiums.
But, EA Sports has lapped SDS. I know EA takes a lot of heat for their post-sale revenue marketing of their online modes, but NHL hockey, CFB, and Madden all deliver rewarding experiences with their offline avatar player modes. Their level of immersion and realistic player development is way ahead of where SDS is now, and years ago SDS was the best of the bunch. No longer. SDS has rested on their laurels going cheap on production and the results show.
And truthfully, merely trying isn't good enough in any profession. You have to be successful to keep your place in the business. You got one thing totally correct -- SDS is understaffed, underfunded, and trapped by Sony. Yep, that's totally true. Sony is milking MLB The Show for all the dough they can get their hands on and relying upon historic achievements to fuel purchases.
No more of that for me. I'm done. I don't think it will be much longer before another company secures licensing rights from MLB and MLBPA. At that point, MLB The Show will become an afterthought in the industry.
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From the outside, it appears they're understaffed, overworked, and genuinely trying to improve the game. At this point, no matter what they do, good or bad, someone is going to attack them for it.
Herein lies the problem- they are understaffed and overworked. It's a point beaten to death, so I shall apologize in advance- but they had massive layoffs and staff turnovers about 3 years ago. Which directly coincides with the heaviest downturn in quality in years, if not the game's history.
calling it a failure is a major exaggeration.
I both agree and disagree with this point. I agree in the sense that yes, people are still logging on daily (myself included) in some way shape or form. And For all it's faults, it is still a solid game to play half the time. And to boot, they've further dug their own grave by splitting an already thin dev team between the core game, and the mobile game.
I disagree in the sense that there has been a major philosophical shift in how SDS/Sony views it's customer base, and it's not remotely positive nor have many of the changes been well received. The removal of TA programs, the cutback on content and MP programs outside of Events, the lack of communication on whole, the very poor optics of how the WBC exploit situation was (or wasn't) handled, the Netcode that almost appears to be degrading by the day at this point...this release in particular really has been, by comparison, a failure from the get go
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I think next year will be extremely telling. A lot of long time players are fed up and this year has pushed them away in record numbers. Many of those won’t be back next year and coupled with an inevitable work stoppage it could be the death knell. Time will tell.
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@Dolenz_PSN *** I dont have time to edit this but I’m just gonna type and post so it might be sloppy. you seem like a reasonable guy… if I was selecting a jury, I’d want you on it. I have been paying close attention to the marketplace daily this season. Ive been paying close attention to what is said about the marketplace in forums. I’ve preen paying close attention to changes made all season and more importantly to changes rolled back and undone. I think manu is a good guy and I think he understands exactly what’s going here. Unfortunately, he works for a company that doesn’t make decisions based on what would be in the best interest of the players. Clearly, he is told to make changes or fix things - then they get fixed. They have demonstrated that they are able to keep the majority of bot traffic out of the marketplace. I’m not sure why, but after a few days without bots, They rolled back the changes they made and everything went back to how it was before they tried to combat the issue at all. I have my suspicions, but they are speculative so I won’t lay them out here. Needing to review every buy/sell order is a silly way to look at how this might be fixed. Any player that turns to the internet to find answers to their questions about this game will no doubt come across websites selling stubs or even bots to farm stubs. A lot of these sites actually say they use android emulators. There probably are more sophisticated bots out there that don’t use emulation, but the majority of them do. The answer is simple - cut off access to the app from android emulators. There are a few ways this can be achieved, easily, google and apple make tools available to developers to use that signal traffic coming from emulators. All request to the shows api from emulators could be denied and the majority of bots would be unable to access the app. I think they did just that for a few days and it was a success. But it was undone.
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Very interesting stuff and one can only assume that the walking it back action may just be that they are fine with losing a chunk of the pie to 3rd party stub sellers as long as they get more pie in the long run. This also keeps the market inflated which might generate more stub sales from the few desperately trying to finish collections. They don’t care if it ruins the market for most of us if it gets a few more dollars
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I try to be one of the more positive players on this forum, and you'll often find me defending the game or mocking people who I feel are being overly negative. But im with you all on the botting issue. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but I won't be buying next year's game unless they get it under control.
