SDS needs real competition, badly
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I’m beyond frustrated with San Diego Studio and MLB The Show right now.
Josh Hader has been glitched for months and somehow that’s still not fixed. On top of that, basic gameplay logic makes zero sense.
Look at the screenshots:
• A PERFECT PERFECT where my PCI is nowhere near the ball
• A routine pop-out with almost perfect PCI placementSo what’s the feedback even supposed to mean? Why does bad PCI get rewarded sometimes while good PCI gets punished? In a competitive mode, that completely kills trust in the system.
These aren’t rare edge cases either. This happens all the time, and it’s been an issue for years. The real problem is that SDS has no competition, so there’s no urgency to fix core mechanics.
MLB The Show desperately needs a real competitor. Until then, we’re stuck dealing with this stuff year after year.
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Competition would be focused around Franchise and CAP modes, and the game play would almost certainly be more casual than The Show.
The amount of players who would want the game based around perfect inputs is likely absurdly small, at that point the game would no longer be baseball
And who is this competition? The Saudi government isn't going to be making a baseball game so that leaves 2K. Good luck with that.
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Online competition needs to be a clean stage, devoid of junk, where the human players' skill with the controller determines the outcome of each and every play. This is where SDS advertises something that they fail to deliver on. It doesn't matter if a person can win 10 or even 50 games in a row, or another person loses 10 or 50 in a row. The next game should remain devoid of code-enabled skews to level the odds of outcome.
Somewhere inside SDS there are marketing types slamming the tables at meetings demanding that bad players find the road easier and good players find it harder because equal interest is paramount. But, that defies the meaning of competition. The rules are not changed during the game because one team is winning and the other losing. And SDS needs to be bold enough to enable that model.
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I see people are still complaining about the same things...
@c_lawson3_MLBTS said:
Look at the screenshots:
• A PERFECT PERFECT where my PCI is nowhere near the ballWhy write that your PCI was "nowhere near the ball" when your screen shot clearly shows the ball in the inner PCI? Maybe you're really good and also a perfectionist, but Perfect/Perfect has meant that the ball is in the inner PCI with perfect timing since it was introduced in 2020 (so that's what the feedback means). There is no issue, there.
• A routine pop-out with almost perfect PCI placement
The PCI is not the bat, and as such it is not meant to be an absolute indicator of where your swing will impact the ball (this is on purpose). It's where you want the bat to be, so, essentially, it represents where your batter is looking and functions as an odds generator. And it works like that because swinging a bat isn't like shooting a gun; it doesn't always end up where you're aiming, and that's the only way that a videogame can produce the kind of results that you'd see in a baseball game. While your PCI placement and timing are the biggest factors in determining those odds, other attributes (batter and pitcher) are still considered and play a role, and those other factors produce variance, which, this time, gave you a launch angle about 9 degrees too steep to produce the result you wanted.
Players who can aim as well as you will consistently have better results than those who cannot, and when two of you play each other, well, luck is going to be a factor if all inputs are equal. This is a baseball game made for people who love baseball, and if your goal in playing it is to prove that your input is more precise than that of the other person rather than to compete in something resembling baseball where luck and chance will always play a role, then you're going to continue to be frustrated and would probably be better served playing Call of Duty.
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What people don’t get is that Call of Duty IS competition for SDS.
They may be using different strategies, but both are playing the same game (Eyeball attention with microtransactions.)
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Serious question.
Have you played other sports games recently?
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@The_Joneser_PSN said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
I see people are still complaining about the same things...
@c_lawson3_MLBTS said:
Look at the screenshots:
• A PERFECT PERFECT where my PCI is nowhere near the ballWhy write that your PCI was "nowhere near the ball" when your screen shot clearly shows the ball in the inner PCI? Maybe you're really good and also a perfectionist, but Perfect/Perfect has meant that the ball is in the inner PCI with perfect timing since it was introduced in 2020 (so that's what the feedback means). There is no issue, there.
• A routine pop-out with almost perfect PCI placement
The PCI is not the bat, and as such it is not meant to be an absolute indicator of where your swing will impact the ball (this is on purpose). It's where you want the bat to be, so, essentially, it represents where your batter is looking and functions as an odds generator. And it works like that because swinging a bat isn't like shooting a gun; it doesn't always end up where you're aiming, and that's the only way that a videogame can produce the kind of results that you'd see in a baseball game. While your PCI placement and timing are the biggest factors in determining those odds, other attributes (batter and pitcher) are still considered and play a role, and those other factors produce variance, which, this time, gave you a launch angle about 9 degrees too steep to produce the result you wanted.
Players who can aim as well as you will consistently have better results than those who cannot, and when two of you play each other, well, luck is going to be a factor if all inputs are equal. This is a baseball game made for people who love baseball, and if your goal in playing it is to prove that your input is more precise than that of the other person rather than to compete in something resembling baseball where luck and chance will always play a role, then you're going to continue to be frustrated and would probably be better served playing Call of Duty.
What you write has merit, and would indeed clinch the entire argument IF it applied to CPU based actions. However, you miss something elemental in all this. Humans themselves are not gifted with perfect eye-hand coordination, especially with a device as sensitive as a hand control pad.
I have written on this issue many times, but this is where the game coders miss reality because they bury themselves in their virtual world too much.
First, the odds you speak of should not factor win streaks or loss streaks into account. The natural odds of a person hitting the sweet spot with the control pad is and should be the wild card in a human-vs-human online competition game.
In short, you are correct about what SDS has done, except omitting the critical addition that SDS does skew the odds further based on a person's success or failure rates. That said, the results are wrong because they layer additional variance to the human variance that itself carries ebb and flow due to natural human circadian rhythms.
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Human makes input
That input has a variety of possible outcomes based on many variables
Sometimes RNG is not in your favorIn a single individual game, the more skilled player is not guaranteed a win, though an exceptional player will likely never lose to an average or below player in a 9 inning game
In the long run, it evens out and your record is going to be around what it would be expected to beThis is EXACTLY how a baseball game should work.
You could argue the range/probability outcomes need some tweaking, and I wouldn't disagree, but everyone has those ranges. Yes, bad players will get more bloop hits for reasons that should be extremely obvious but good players have those same chances at bloop hits were they to have the same input
The subject of alleged catch up mechanics are another story, and I would agree that if they exist they shouldn't be there.
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@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
However, you miss something elemental in all this. Humans themselves are not gifted with perfect eye-hand coordination, especially with a device as sensitive as a hand control pad.
Respectfully, I think humans are more likely to perform well where eye-hand coordination is concerned with a control pad than they are with a bat against a pitched ball. And that, in my opinion, is why a true input-based system of results is a terrible idea. Luck and chance, both requisite to actual baseball results, need to be introduced through game coding because manipulating a controller is far too easy, comparatively, and good players will tilt the game toward something that does not resemble baseball at all.
I think @Teak2112 nailed it with the post above.
As to the catch-up mechanics, I personally don't think they exist in the head-to-head format (but I do think it rears its head in vs. CPU games, with respect to the opportunities the human player is offered), but that is an argument for another day.
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I agree with OP's sentiment but his execution was a little off. I brought the same thing up on another thread, how can you have a perfect perfect foul ball, pop out and even swing and miss(which did happen to me the other day on a mini season.... I just had to chuckle and said to myself it was stil a 9 pitch strikeout it and was still a successful AB) that's the beauty and complexity of the sport and broken bat to ball mechanics with in the video game. Moments are frustrating some you'll cruise through some not so much. I don't think they are designed to sit back and crush a pitch, I think they're designed to use some strategy and patience. I use directional hitting, because my eyes and hands sometimes at my age don't sync up very well and with zone hitting there's to much going on at one time. When trying to clobber the ball doesn't work after 4 or 5 tries in moments, I try a different strategy be a little more patient and put the directional arrow down or down and away and contact swing with guys who don't have a lot of power and the directional down and inside and normal swing with guys who do have power, and success rates for me are markedly better, is it a night and day difference, no but on average you'll see improvement and less frustration and it will teach you patience, which I personally believe the game rewards heavily on.
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Directional hitting is a whole different beast and you can, and should, occasionally whiff on perfect timed swings because you agree to let the CPU do the PCI for you.
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@The_Joneser_PSN
Hey, long time no see, brother. How are you? -
Hey man. I believe one of my cats absconded with my Garamon coaster, recently—and that was a bummer—but life and health-wise, all good things, so I’m doing well. I hope all is good with you and yours.
Just took a break when Ghost of Yotei came out and played only that for a while, and then my wife rediscovered Guitar Hero on the Wii, so we were having fun with that… never leave baseball for long, though.
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@The_Joneser_PSN said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
However, you miss something elemental in all this. Humans themselves are not gifted with perfect eye-hand coordination, especially with a device as sensitive as a hand control pad.
Respectfully, I think humans are more likely to perform well where eye-hand coordination is concerned with a control pad than they are with a bat against a pitched ball. And that, in my opinion, is why a true input-based system of results is a terrible idea. Luck and chance, both requisite to actual baseball results, need to be introduced through game coding because manipulating a controller is far too easy, comparatively, and good players will tilt the game toward something that does not resemble baseball at all.
I think @Teak2112 nailed it with the post above.
As to the catch-up mechanics, I personally don't think they exist in the head-to-head format (but I do think it rears its head in vs. CPU games, with respect to the opportunities the human player is offered), but that is an argument for another day.
Undercut by one question. If your approach has merit, then why not have teams below .500 in real baseball use wider bats and pitch with balls having larger stitching? The reason is because the concept of fair-minded sporting contests between people is that everyone plays by the same rules, and we don't force handicaps based on previous records.
In short, if someone can devote enough time to fairly get that good with the controller that he consistently puts the bat on the ball, then he earns the right to good outcomes.
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@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
In short, if someone can devote enough time to fairly get that good with the controller that he consistently puts the bat on the ball, then he earns the right to good outcomes.
No. They earn the right to have the best possible chance at a good outcome that the game offers. Their superior skill puts them in a better position than anyone else, and it comes with great advantage. They've earned that, and that alone.
@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
If your approach has merit, then why not have teams below .500 in real baseball use wider bats and pitch with balls having larger stitching?
Even by strawman standards, this is silly. Perhaps your obsession with comeback logic is clouding your thinking, as my position is not that there should be different rules for different people based on their success rate (I don't share your belief in this conspiracy theory, and I don't think what you're claiming is real). My position is that the PCI works like it does because it makes for a better article of baseball. Changing this mechanic and making it yield results based solely on the controller input of the person batting only benefits a very small slice of the community; it is certainly your prerogative to wish for a mechanic that allows a small number of people to marvel at their own greatness at the expense of everyone who prefers a game still recognizable as the sport they love, but I would go the other way.
@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:
The reason is because the concept of fair-minded sporting contests between people is that everyone plays by the same rules, and we don't force handicaps based on previous records.
In applying the same odds at good outcomes to everyone, the rules are the same. You just don't like them.
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To go back to the OP's point, how the game handles hitting is highly subjective to the degree if it needs change, if at all, but we can all point to numerous bugs that just shouldnt be.
The SDS needs competition angle is a bit silly though. Activision is content with making slop Call of Duties even with competition out there. The Show has pretty major competition already from EA and 2K, and the fact that its the underdog sport doesn't help either. Its the best of the major sports games, and has the most player friendly ultimate team mode (by a rather enormous margin)
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@The_Joneser_PSN
Nice. I actually got the Ghost of Yotei PS5 but never actually downloaded the game. I hear it's pretty narly.
