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At first I thought the OP had pretty high success rate so I went through my game log and found my results to compare. To my shock my results were very similar. All my results were on All-star and almost all were events or BR games.
80+ power- 41/45 .911 average 15 HR
Below 80- 20/24 .833 average 12 HR
Total- 61/69 .884 average 27 HR
It definetly isn't that high on showndowns or any other offline mode so I think that is impacting our memories.
It really is all luck in showdown. I haven't tried this one yet but I'm sure it will be like the rest. There are times I get 6-8 runs without recording an out and then there are night like Tuesday when I couldn't beat the first boss in the NL Central 3 times in a row. Bad luck and bad nights happen.
Boosters are half the reason my messages are turned off. The other half is a profanity riddled messages from people on MLB and CoD when I occasionally play it. Maybe 1 of 50 messages I got was positive so I just gave up on it.
I see no improvement with foul balls. Just faced someone at least 3 batters that fouled off at least 6 pitches with 2 strikes. I was intentionally throwing the ball in the dirt and sliders down and in as far as I could without hitting the guy. The worst was the second batter of the game fouled off 11 pitches before he flying out to right on the 15th pitch of the at bat. It is just ridiculous.
Every year I can normally find things I like and don't like that they change and think that people are overly critical of the game. I can't say that this year. I'm struggling to think of a single change they have made that I like even if I understand most of them and thought they would be good before launch.
I wasn't a fan of seasons but liked the idea of less of them but longer if they were going to keep them. It would be good but they decide to nerf xp gains. Which still wouldn't be that bad if they just reduced things but it feels like they ran it over with a semi and decided it wasn't enough so they backed over it and ran it over again for good measure. I started playing DD in 16 and have maybe hit the daily xp cap 3 times 16-23 total. I have hit it at least 4 or 5 times this year already and feel like I have played less and that is a problem.
They removed basically all repeatable xp rewards too for offline modes too. So now it is just pack rewards with no grinding to catch up if you don't play every day. As someone else mentioned even reduced rewards would be enough to make it enticing to play past the xp cap.
And I totally get having special packs in the shop. They are company trying to make money but there have been way too many and none of them in programs like previous years.
After writing this the only thing I "like" is the multiple team affinity per season but we still have to see how it plays out.
They can still make changes to how things work for the better but the way they have botched just about everything so far I don't see it as likely.