PCI vs Buttons

i’m not a fan of PCI. never used it before. always been a buttons guy. maybe that’s keeping me from being a better player but if you use PCI and zoom in on the plate then I feel like there’s no point of having a unique player because you can’t even really tell who is at bat.

so my question is, is PCI a much more effective way of hitting? or can i compete with top players using buttons??

Thanks.

@WILDCARD2122 said in PCI vs Buttons:

i’m not a fan of PCI. never used it before. always been a buttons guy. maybe that’s keeping me from being a better player but if you use PCI and zoom in on the plate then I feel like there’s no point of having a unique player because you can’t even really tell who is at bat.

so my question is, is PCI a much more effective way of hitting? or can i compete with top players using buttons??

Thanks.
Are you talking about directional Vs. Zone hitting? If so, I think zone is far better, although will take a short adjustment period. I use zone buttons and still am not great but I'm better than when I used directional.

The way I'd put it with directional vs zone.
Directional you are counting on to much "RNG", you need a dice roll to go your way.

Zone still has RNG and you get unlucky dice rolls, but you have way more input on that dice roll. You may be able to go on a hot streak with directional, but a good directional hitter is light years behind a good zone hitter. It takes time to get good at, it's not an instant change, but if you are using directional, you are capping how "good" you can get.

@eatyum said in PCI vs Buttons:

a good directional hitter is light years behind a good zone hitter.

This simply isn't true. A good directional hitter will be about on par with a good zone hitter. It's just relies on a different skillset, namely patience.

Zone allows you to square up anything close to the zone and have relatively good success, but requires great stick skills (I'd guess <1% of users are truly capable of this). Directional will severely punish you for swinging at bad pitches but, with pitching the way it is, it will auto-square those RNG meatballs for you. So if you can stay patient, you'll have great success hitting (along with getting a ton of walks).

I do agree that there is a ceiling to directional, though. A pitcher who can stay on the black will beat it every time, though that is increasingly rare with the increased RNG this year.

@Furious_Boogers said in PCI vs Buttons:

@eatyum said in PCI vs Buttons:

a good directional hitter is light years behind a good zone hitter.

This simply isn't true. A good directional hitter will be about on par with a good zone hitter. It's just relies on a different skillset, namely patience.

Zone allows you to square up anything close to the zone and have relatively good success, but requires great stick skills (I'd guess <1% of users are truly capable of this). Directional will severely punish you for swinging at bad pitches but, with pitching the way it is, it will auto-square those RNG meatballs for you. So if you can stay patient, you'll have great success hitting (along with getting a ton of walks).

I do agree that there is a ceiling to directional, though. A pitcher who can stay on the black will beat it every time, though that is increasingly rare with the increased RNG this year.

I don't necessarily disagree with your statement, but I do have some issues with how you presented it. You don't have to have "great" stick skills to be good at zone. You have to have "good" stick skills to be good at zone. You are stretching the definition a bit.

You are also using the case of the game RNG hanging a lot of pitches, which is true. But I don't think that makes Directional good = Zone good. That's not really being "good" (At least in my definition, yours could be different which is ok). That is instead relying on the game to serve things up.

That's not so much a different skillset as it is being helped by the game. I'm not arguing that it's some immorally wrong thing to do, but I think skillset is the wrong word to use.

Zone gives you better control over your batted ball outcome than the other methods.

Example: if I'm batting with a runner on third, I can manipulate the PCI so that the batted ball will go to the right side of the diamond, no matter where the ball is located. With directional, a lot of that is dictated by where the pitch is located and the RNG of the hitting card's contact, vision, clutch, and power attributes. The same with pure analog (or flick or whatever it's called now). You can only control the timing of your flick in pure analog, if I remember correctly. Yes, there's still RNG with zone hitting.

I was a pure analog hitter for years until I decided to make the switch to zone at the tail end of '17. I can't imagine going back. That being said, there are some very successful pure analog and directional hitters.

thanks guys. this is very helpfully.

Yep, agree with you he others. I used directional for awhile in 18 and made the switch after I felt like my hands were tied by the RNG. My subjective opinion is that the reward for correctly timing a pitch and location with zone was much higher than correct timing with directional.
My guess is that with directional you might time the pitch correctly but the RNG might decide you were looking for a pitch high in the zone and swung at a pitch low in the zone, as an example.
Further to what others have said, I found that I had to turn the pci off when using zone as the pci was distracting me, perhaps because I wasn’t used to it from not having it with directional.
The transition was tough but quick.