@tvsectog_xbl said in Lipstick on a pig:

....oh....and SDS, after watching above and reading all of those comments.... can you also answer the questions below?

SDS has three main audiences this time of year.

New Players

Returning Players

Parents.... who are financially responsible for the purchases

It seems that much of the the marketing hype focuses on gaining 'new' players, yet this isn't as helpful/meaningful for returning players. Many returning players are looking for different features, one being game stability, which new players might now know about.

As a returning player, below are the questions I hope that SDS answers, which are different than many new players. I don't expect them to answer the questions in a stream, yet some kind of statement, response or FAQ with more details would be greatly appreciated. If you have questions as well, go ahead and leave them here.

Engineering likely 'branched' the code. Did the bugs found in '21 get double-committed (or sync'd) into the '22 branch, or will we be starting all over and finding many of the same bugs again in '22 that were fixed in '21??
For example, the "collection duplicate bug" ..... is that fixed from the very beginning in '22, or are people going to flood support again getting this fixed if they make a mistake?

SDS, do you know the root cause of the crashes/freezes in '21?? Memory leak? Have you run static-analysis against the code to find memory leaks?
Is the issue a timing issue? What specifically triggers the code to loop, and thus hang?

Anymore information you can share about the root cause of the hangs, that we can look out as players that could help you debug the root cause (if you don't know what it is)?

Is the issue in the code that causes the hangs an issue in the game itself, or it's interaction with the OS (PlayStation OS, Xbox OS, etc.)??? Are the hangs seen more often if the users are on different platforms (ie - PS4 and Xbox Series X|S, PS5 to Xbox, etc)?

Is there anything we can do as users to prevent the hangs?? (Ie - Always plug in our consoles (if possible) instead of using WiFi? Close the MLBTS app after playing for x number of hours, etc? (Closing/Killing the app completely might help, if it is in fact a memory leak somewhere in the code.) Any recommendations that you (SDS) have that leads to less hangs?

Also, not looking for a marketing/sales answer that states ...."all the crashes from '21 are fixed in '22", which we all know is not true. Looking for actual, technical reasons, recommendations you may have to avoid game freezes and/or things that we can do to help and/or prevent crashes.

How many CFD (customer found defects) have been committed into '22?? What percentage of the code committed in '22 is new features versus CFD's?

What changes were made to your support team (increased headcount?), tools and or processes that will allow you to respond to issues faster in '22 than '21??

Subsequently, can you provide some metrics regarding your support team and also a breakdown of the cases you receive?

Ie....

30% of cases involve crashes
20% of cases involve chasing down players with inappropriate content
10% of cases are caused by backend, database issues
15% are caused by backend server issues related to load/performance/etc?

X number of cases are handled by frontend support
Y number of cases requires backend engineering support

How many cases were caused by bad code that was pushed (like a .12 release....that immediately required a .13 code update to go out)?

Some breakdown numbers would be great.

Oh...and another set of regression questions I'd like to see SDS Engineering answer....is for 18,19,20,21 .... what do their regression metrics look like? Are bug fixes for older releases not making it into their newer releases, or are their regression bugs trending down between releases??? Their answer would tell us a lot about the code quality, TBH, and would be great to know as well.

Will '22 support 120fps, specifically 4k@120?? Everything that I have seen so far leads me to believe that '22 will still only support 60fps, even though both Sony and Microsoft have released features that would easily allow the game to get 120fps. Since Sony and Microsoft have both issued patches to bring 120fps support to games....what is the holdup for why you are not implementing the fix?? I know why you didn't want to include it in '21, yet the same reason isn't valid for why it is not in '22. It seems there is not a good technical reason why 120fps should not be in '22....so please enable 4k@120fps in '22.....as I know it can easily be done, and you know that, too.
Anyway, for returning players the answers to questions like above are more interesting than just the regular marketing slides that will say "'22 is incredible". Returning players want to know that the game will be more stable and also have some, real, techological advancement (4k@120fps), not just marketing hyped slides.

Oh...and as a parent buying deciding whether to buy the game or not for my kids, I also want to know the answers of above. '20 and '21 are very similar....and frankly, without the game having 4k@120fps ....I'm having a hard time justifying getting '22, which has a cascading effect of additional lost sales. If I don't get it for myself and my kids, I talk with other parents and they won't get it for their kids, they talk to other parents, etc. In addition, the last couple of years I have bought copies of the game for 5 to 10 other people (not including my kid's friends). I'm not the only parent that makes this calculation every year (same calculation we use to determine which system to buy for our kids, be it a PS5 or Xbox).....and with Covid likely coming to an end later this year....there will be many more options of what to spend $$ on this year. Thus, if I decide to buy The Show '22, I at least want to make sure it has the features I want (4k@120) along with metrics and answers to questions that show it will be a stable game this year ....otherwise I am far less inclined to buy it this year TBH.

Absent real questions like above being answered, it will be harder to convince me to buy '22. I don't want the same game as prior years (that have a lot of bugs in them), I want a better, more stable product, and so far what I have seen hasn't convinced me this is the case in regard to '22. Additionally, I am the only one thinking this way. I know multiple streamers who are setting up second accounts to play other games, because they are concerned about just being dependent on MLBTS, especially since it is so buggy. The streamers are concerned about their revenue streams being dependent on a buggy game, as it makes it harder for them to make content. Hopefully, SDS engineering ( and not SDS marketing) will answer these questions honestly, to put us all at a little more ease in regard to '22.

Can SDS Engineering comment on the off-PCI homers? Personally, I think the issue is not really an issue, yet rather an offset/timing bug between the hitting engine code and the display code. I think sometimes that code that displays the hitting location displays slightly incorrectly in relation to the actual hitting engine code. The display code of the hitting feedback would be single-threaded code, dependent on the actual hitting engine code. I am tired of listening to people complain that "this was an off-PCI home run", when in reality it probably was not, yet rather just that their is a bug in the hitting feedback display code that makes it look worse than it is. Some comment from SDS engineering regarding if there is a disconnect between the actual hitting engine code and the feedback display code would be great. Maybe something that says "....The hitting display feedback is not always 100% correct, and sometimes displays off-PCI home runs, that are in-fact, actual home runs, yet just don't always display correctly. We are aware of the issue and it is a bug, yet rest assured, off-PCI home runs are actual home-runs and it is just a bug in our hitting feedback code." Some statement like this would be much appreciated.

Content filters to limit inappropriate content......did they receive significant updates in '22?? Seemed like their were no inappropriate content filters that actually worked in '21. Hopefully, this code was fixed in '22 (<cough, cough>).

(Coincidentally, just some basic database scans on the backend that looked for offending words would be great ..... and could be done in an automated manner. User puts offending words for their team name from the app on their Playstation, Xbox or Switch device). Scan runs once a night on the backend looking for offending items....and removes any it finds by just doing a substitution and replace of the offending content. In addition, if the backend scan finds anything offensive...it automatically keeps track of how many times the user put some offensive content in the game....and after three strikes (scans) that identify offensive material....their account gets suspended for x amount of days. After 6 strikes .... they get suspended for a week, 9 strikes ..... 2 weeks, etc. This is an area in the code that needs significant improvement.

[censored] you went all in with putting SDS on a hot seat, I like it. Unfortunately SDS is not the only gaming company to abuse the GACHA/Loot Box element. The fact that they used Randy Johnson being in the game as an advertisement, is exactly what I'm scared of for the video game industry.

They may be scottfree legally since technically, you dont have to spend any money to get any of the players. There's no clear pay wall after the initial $60-$70 investment. Theit focus on DD just sucks for the rest of us MLB video game fans.

Real Life Example: The mother of my kid shelled out $100 worth of stubs just so my kid can buy the Tatis Jr Live Series card in the market lolol. Considering she's definitely not the only mom/nongamer to do this, SDS and the rest of the companies aren't changing their profit model any time soon.

Community Forum

JayCruise21_PSN