Legitimate questions
-
Why does the game play completely different from one game to the next? Is it pitcher confidence, ballpark effect, elevation, RNG? Even after 4 years of playing DD it still amazes and frustrates me how inconsistent games feel from one to the next. How perfect perfects with 125 power are lazy fly balls and off PCI early or lates are no doubt HRs. I’m sure programming a baseball game is hard but it’s confusing how random results feel. Before I get the standard response of “that’s baseball” let me just say this isn’t baseball it’s a video game depiction that often doesn’t reward good input and often rewards bad input. Not asking for perfection here but some consistency would sure be nice.
-
Not every perfect perfect hit will be a homerun just like not every perfect perfect pitch will go exactly where the ball is placed. To use the pitch as my example because it has the circle. A perfect pitch could still go anywhere in that circle.
-
Oh I get that results will never sync up perfectly. But I’ve had times where every swing results in a crushed ball no matter what and others where whole games every ball dies or is right at someone. It often feels very feast or famine. On the whole I like the game and love baseball but way too often things just feel kinda “off”.
-
A couple of things to keep an eye on. SDS publishes various stats on their website on a weekly basis. Now you can choose not to believe them but their stats for 12/4-12/10 (the last week they published them) show the batting averages for Perfect/Perfects range between .837 to .878 depending on difficulty, for a combined .878 average across all difficulties. That seems pretty consistent, at least if you choose to believe them.
https://theshow.com/2023-community-stats/?cs-date=12-04-2023-to-12-10-2023
I have also noticed that they seem to be fairly accurate when it comes to exit velocity and launch angle and how that relates to distance.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_hit_probability
As an example the difference in distance between a ball batted at 105 MPH can be significant for small variations. at a 25 degree launch angle the average distance in 2023 was 403, meaning it was gone in almost every park. If you drop that launch angle down to 24 degrees the average distance becomes 387, which will most likely be a warning track out in CF most of the time.
-
@Dolenz
I appreciate the stats and can truly appreciate and understand the nuances of baseball. I guess what I’m getting at is that when you’ve poured hours into this game like many of us have you can kinda tell when things just don’t feel quite right. It’s a video game and there is a lot going on under the hood for sure. I’ve had games against the CPU where I’ve put up 40-60 runs and then others where I’ve struggled to score 3 and lost. Oftentimes there isn’t much in between so I can only chalk it up to patience, pitcher confidence, and some randomness sprinkled in.
-
It's all based on your biorhythm as far as I can tell. Some days are diamonds, some days are dust.
-
@TripleH-4481 said in Legitimate questions:
I’ve had games against the CPU where I’ve put up 40-60 runs and then others where I’ve struggled to score 3 and lost.
I've been in the same boat many times. To go back to your original question
Is it pitcher confidence, ballpark effect, elevation, RNG?
I think the answer is all of the above and probably some things we have not even thought of.
-
Of all those factors, pitcher confidence has the biggest impact on results imo. All you have to do is make three outs in a row in the first inning of a conquest game, and suddenly your good/perfect swings die at the track, etc.
I understand WHY SDS programs the game to play this way, but I strongly dislike it. I’m one of the few that wants a video game result from a video game, not a realistic box score. -
@halfbutt
Yep. Conversely if you put a few runs on the board right away vs the CPU you will likely score double digit runs. I hate that for myself and hate it more for my son because on lower difficulties that shouldn’t be the case. Confidence seems to overpower everything allowing common or bronze pitchers to super dot and hard hit balls to just completely die in the air or warp to fielders gloves.
-
@TripleH-4481
Exactly!
For me, what compounds this is the cpu pitchers being very stingy even on lower difficulties.It’s a double edged sword because you get, say 12-15 pitches to hit in the first inning, and of those, maybe 2 will be fully in the zone and 2 will be dots. The rest will be balls on the edges.
So that makes the Cpu pitcher confidence increase.
Many players accept this or even appreciate it because it’s “realistic”. That’s fine, but it’s the main reason why I don’t buy the game when it’s new anymore.
-
@halfbutt
Yeah and for kids like my son that are getting into baseball the learning curve on this game is very steep. Like you mentioned the CPU should not be dotting up the strike zone and nibbling just off the plate anywhere near as often on lower difficulties. On higher difficulties it makes sense but for people just learning the game they shouldn’t have to “hunt” the perfect pitch. Again I enjoy the game for the most part. Programming a baseball game has many challenges. Just nerf the pitcher super dots and fielder dolphin dives on lower difficulties so newer players don’t get turned off within the first 5 minutes of playing the game.
-
If you play the cpu on dd just pause and go to the game manual/strategy guide or whatever it’s called in the settings menu, and it has a page telling what percent of perfect perfects do what
-
@LookatTheRhino
The video game gives us stats to prove the gameplay is good? -
@TripleH-4481
You’re not wrong. Sometimes I think it would be better to just do away with the lower difficulties entirely. At this point, pitch speeds and pci size are the only difference, and honestly, I don’t think the slower speeds do anyone any favours.At least if the pitch speeds were consistent from difficulty to difficulty and mode to mode, one could adjust.
-
@halfbutt
Yeah I could see that. If they aren’t gonna make differences in gameplay and tendencies then it makes sense. I could be wrong but I’m guessing things are the way they are because SDS was trying to cater to new players and hardcore players at the same time. That’s a no win situation unless you make entirely different modes. The vast majority of players likely fall into the casual group so that should be the target. If the game is too easy for the hardcore players then can easily just dominate and move on. Catering to the hardcore players, outside of a new mode like weekend league, just drives away the vast majority of the player base that just wants to hop on and have fun. Most of them don’t want a non stop sweatfest.
-
@halfbutt
No it’s not giving stats to show the gameplay is good but they give a general percentage of what each type of perfect perfect hit results in during gameplay. Go read it
-
@LookatTheRhino
I’ve seen that stuff previously.
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that they publish stats like those?
Anyway, the point about pitcher confidence still stands, imo. The idea that the outcome of a perfect (or any other good) swing is impacted by a pitcher’s high confidence is still totally arbitrary. -
Why aren't there any announcer languages other than English? For example, Spanish and Japanese announcers. Applying this to the game would be able to make the game feel more comfortable for players with different languages.
-
@halfbutt
They publish these stats to show the game is working as intended.
-
@halfbutt said in Legitimate questions:
@LookatTheRhino
I’ve seen that stuff previously.
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that they publish stats like those?
Anyway, the point about pitcher confidence still stands, imo.We should all feel lucky that Napoleon Boneparte wasn’t a pitcher lol
-
A admin locked this topic on
