Community Forum

I’m tired of getting ticked off even playing a rookie CPU game. There’s just no fun this year in this game. Getting close to just moving on. I play this game quite a bit, but I’m not gonna finish the second inning (I’m at around 410k). Had several wheel spins in 1st inning, got the 30k head start, finished all of the programs except egg hunt, did a mini season, continued with Team Affinity. Stat grinds are tedious and not rewarded enough with XP in offline games. I’ve decided I’m just gonna save the latest Spotlight program for inning 3 for the XP. This game has always just been a way to wind down after hard days at work. It’s become too much of a chore, especially considering how inflated Live series diamonds (upper) are, and how the game just hasn’t evolved hardly any in several years. It’s a shame really. I’ve said it before and caved, but I’m just not buying this game again until it evolves. I mistakenly thought it had for this year. It’s gotten worse. Not sure how SDS thought nerfing elevation, nerfing hitting, and having CPU pitchers throw fewer pitches in the zone was gonna be a fun experience. There has to be a huge number of players not completing this inning this time.

@LuvMyXBOX_XBL I think hitting sucks offline too. Couple that with jacked up reaction times and speed of even rookie CPU defenders and the game gets old quickly. Game will be stale before summer if they don’t fix the hitting.

Absolutely my last year buying this game and I’ve spent thousands on it over the years. It’s tedious, not as fun as it once was, and not rewarding. Something is definitely up with the pack odds this year. I’ve never had so few diamonds considering the number of packs opened. However, the biggest problem I have is just how little rewarded you are with gameplay PXP with bad hitting and unreal CPU defense on rookie (especially). There’s no fun way to grind stats this year and I absolutely don’t have time to play several hours per day. Lately, I give the game one CPU 9 inning game to pull me in. If hitting isn’t bad and I’m not getting gipped by the computer, I might continue to play longer that day. Otherwise, I’m done. Not gonna let myself continue to get ticked off playing rookie CPU games. There are more fun things I can do. If I had this year to do all over again, I wouldn’t have wasted money buying it. If I wanted to get ticked off and ripped off by a sports game, I would’ve played 2K and Madden. MLB is right there with them now.

I fear this is just gonna be a problem the rest of the year. It’s the year of the Pack. They don’t want you grinding for good rewards this year. Bottomline.

I do feel like on Rookie, the CPU needs to throw more pitches in the strike zone and tone down the superhuman defense. So tired of barely making it to second base on balls hit to the wall in the gap or having an 80+ runner barely make it home on a sac fly to the warning track. The reaction times of CPU defenders should be the same as human defenders, considering the players are supposed to have the same attributes. The CPU grabs every ball with a bare hand and throws immediately. Slow it down. So annoying this year, even worse than years past. Making a game on lower levels tedious does not make me want to continue to play the game.

Sorry but XP caps are dumb in any game. Why keep playing if you’re not earning XP in a game that rewards earning XP? I understand why they want to slow things down, but people sometimes have to binge a game when they have time. We aren’t all content creators that play all day long to unlock cards. It’s a childish punishment.

There’s so little XP earned for games now, I don’t see how any offline grinders can even hit a cap. I played for 5 hours one day this weekend against CPU and a few moments and barely hit 20k XP. Couple that with CPU pitchers that barely throw strikes and the games is gonna get old fast this year. Sure hope changes are coming. I have a full time job and lots of responsibilities so hitting a million xp is not gonna be easy or fun.

It’s annoying but I’m finding that it is training me to be a little better at seeing pitches headed out of zone. It definitely needs to be changed though. CPU games are so slow and not worth it with such minuscule XP earned each game. It will take Double XP days in order to get the same XP per game that we’ve gotten in past years. It goes well beyond just walks. I’ve had my batters hit with pitches more than the last few years combined already. I swing at pitches to prolong at bats, just to give my players a chance to accumulate stats. One thing I will also mention is that I’m seeing way more well struck baseballs dying at the wall, even when playing at short created stadiums. I do think part of that is due to glitchy wind patterns. Maybe I’m different than many players, but sometimes I just prefer a more arcade feel to the game. If I’m playing on Rookie, I want to enjoy the experience of a lot of offense. Simulation should be for higher levels of play. This year’s gameplay is not living up to their own definitions of what the lower level experience should be. They are just too hung up on not wanting fast progression in the game. That should be the decision of each player. We should be able to progress as quickly as we want if we are putting legitimate hours into it. Nobody should be cut off from XP gains after just a few hours, especially with such minuscule gameplay XP being awarded now. I can understand that it may take time for an update, but this team heightens negativity with such poor communication about issues. And I do expect them at some point to give a statement saying that they have been gathering data before making changes. It’s just the wrong way to go about things in a social media world and in games that have forums monitored by the development teams and studios. This year is disappointing so far and needs a turnaround quickly before it’s too late to save it.

Love it or hate it, I really think SDS is using this year as a test of the tolerance of the player base. It’s a bit of a titration of what people will pay to play the game and at what point the player base declines. I’m curious if it was a one-person decision at SDS. I’ve played for quite a few years, paying a lot of money because I have OCD tendencies, but the only thing positive I can really say about the game this year is that servers seem more stable. Other than the first few hours of early release, I haven’t noticed many hiccups. Unfortunately that’s my only positive so far. The low XP cap, little content, expensive packs with low odds, no sell rewards, continued seasonal sets that will require you to pay to get all 3 reward cards, etc are all just very disappointing. I hope it changes but I’m not sure that the whole year hasn’t already been predetermined and locked in. We may be down to zero major sports games that aren’t using this model. It needs to be give and take and not take take.

We grind this game by accumulating stats. Those stats don’t include walks. Tone down the balls way out of the zone. Also, either get rid of wind altogether or fix the direction glitch when you start a game.

I really think SDS did some things to slow down early release players to keep them from progressing very far before the general release. Lowering xp, xp caps, pitches out of the zone, etc. I would imagine the first patch will include a slight increase in xp things and fixing the cpu pitching, among some other tweaks. If that’s indeed what they did, it wasn’t well thought out. I think making things easier that first weekend would’ve generated more buzz and perhaps created a bigger desire to play the game on release. I also feel like they used the early release as a soft opening beta test. Not the best. I still enjoy the game and will continue grinding most of the year.

Would be nice if they could somehow be assigned to one of the MLB teams to get TA xp and credit. Could go by city or other affiliations. I want to use them since I have all of them (from the packs), but it’s difficult to make that decision while grinding so long for TA and the other programs. I think it’s a big oversight. Surely there’s a creative way to make it work.

@Pergo Yep, I wish I had waited a week or 2 longer to complete the Live Series. Way cheaper the last few days.

Gonna be very hard to complete collections this season anytime soon if there continues to be so few of the higher end Live Series diamonds being pulled. I’m assuming one of the issues is that there are way fewer packs being opened with the game not being on Game Pass. Way too many $100+ cards required. Maybe when better pack and program cards come out, the live series cards will lose some value.

@olis_94_PSN Why would I do that? Nowhere in my comment did I say that. If they cared about that, it would’ve already changed.

I honestly haven’t played much this inning after not completing last inning either. I wanted the Sosa card, so I figured I’d do some of the moments, thinking I’d possibly work my way back into playing again. Nope. Played 25 minutes and only hit one homer. The card is supposed to have 125 power. I barreled pitches more than once that had 80mph exit velocity. The pitchers in the moments were throwing junk 90% of the time. How is this supposed to be fun? I did buy the Tony Perez card because I liked the Big Red Machine in the 70’s. Guess I’m out again.

If those are the packs, it’s not a good program. Sorry. Boring players.

Acuna was only one I would’ve been excited for. Knew it would be Chapman, because that’s the disappointment I’m used to with POTM.

Several times I’ve had rewards from the wheel appear in my inventory without actually going through the process. When I login the next session the wheel graphics come up, I start it up, and the reward is what I received the session before. That makes me think the rewards are just predetermined without it mattering where I stop it. Seems a bit sketchy. Sorry.

@Dankmaymays I kinda think it’s working as they intended at the start of the season. They seem to have done everything possible to slow down the grind early in the cycle this year. If XP gains for CPU games (etc) aren’t increased soon, I’m gonna be OUT early and unfortunately I’ve already paid good money on the game for digital deluxe and quite a few stubs.