2.5 out of 10
Strap in because this will be a long one.
First of all, to give everyone reading a little context, I’ve been playing mlb the show since around 2021, my highest Rating in ranked seasons is 780. Before that, I played the older baseball titles dating back to 2005.
In my years of The Show, I started out playing only RTTS and started playing DD in 23.
This game has a list a mile long of issues not just gameplay related, but with how content is structured and how the game (and many others) are designed from a marketability standpoint.
For the gameplay issues:
- I like to think I have a very logical and in depth understanding logically speaking of what the team at SDS is TRYING to accomplish and why they’re tinkering with certain aspects of the game play but it’s my personal opinion that they have no true idea of how to accomplish their goals with it and the changes they make with each years new title is just the result of “throwing [censored] at the wall and seeing what sticks”
Oftentimes I wonder if any of the people responsible for some of the gameplay-design decisions ever truly played the sport at all.
Hitting is the most miserable and inconsistent thing I’ve ever experienced in a video game in my entire life. I’m not 100% sure exactly what they did to create that reality but I’ve heard rumors. I’ve heard a rumor that they someway shape or form added this design element where the velocity of the pitch effects the physics of the hit as a result -slower pitch means weaker contact (more often ). -for the few who know how broken WBC SP satoria is, if you know you know.. going off my own experiences, it also seems like the exit velocity boost previously given to breaking balls and offspeed pitches thrown up in the zone has been nerfed— previously, hanging an offspeed pitch usually resulted in a higher probability for being hit really hard.. it just seems like that has changed to some degree.
On to PCI shrinkage..
First, I know why it’s in the game.. foul balls are a problem and have been..
there was also a lot of high skill level players in previous years complaining that there were too many runs being scored in games and hitting was “too easy” making the game boring..
They also try to balance pitching year in and year out and keep things fresh by tweaking the meta-trying to encourage players to use different players each year instead of the same X amount of cards being the best in the game..
I’m convinced they have no idea how to properly tweak/balance the different pitches in the game, or how to more closely align the gameplay experience to realistic experience..
in reality, a pitcher who has a good slider, the slider is not usually hit very often..
the only times you really see it get hit hard is if he “hangs one or doesn’t get enough movement on it”
I get it..
But this is a video game, and y’all have tried to “balance shrinkage” and it’s not working.. the game does not function properly with pci shrinkage on anything remotely close to “consistent”.
A squared up good timing swing on a slider away that at times results in a swing and miss or barely fouled off is absurd..
Warping sinkers.
There’s no world where a sinker defies physics and goes from the pitchers hand to the catchers mitt in less time at a slower velocity than a 4 seam thrown at a higher velocity..
99 mph will always be faster than 98.9 mph..
So why in the hell does your game defy physics? Why is a 96 mph sinker faster/harder to catch up to than a 100 mph 4 seam.. regardardless of outlier..
It’s absurd..
PCI shrinkage has to go.
Find another way to achieve your goals as a design/dev team - you experimented and tried it, it sucks, has not worked properly in many years of attempts, the players ALL HATE it, end the experiment .
Next I’ve gotta talk about cpu pitching
In the show 24 they made some changes to how the cpu would pitch to you and it was also a miserable experience.. the cpu pitchers regardless of their attributes/ratings would consistently (at an unnatural rate) always have “just late or very late pitch release timing” and the pitch would either be way out of the zone or perfectly on the edge of the zone to the point that it made playing the game vs the cpu in every mode intolerable…
In 25 I had no problem with cpu pitching whatsoever.. no complaints…
But in 26? The issue from 2 years ago has returned to a degree.
I don’t know what causes it from a coding/programming standpoint but going off my own experiences and evaluation of what I’m seeing, cpu live series pitchers are broken again (not all) but it’s mainly live series pitchers . Their pitch release timing might not be “very late every time” like in 24 but the result of their pitches is consistently the same as previously mentioned..
a common live series pitcher with <60 control shouldn’t translate to “every strike thrown is perfectly dotted on the edges of the zone where in most cases unless you anchored your preemptively into the corner the pitch results in, you CANT physically perfectly place your pci on the ball” again, from my experiences it’s not EVERY live series cpu pitcher.. but the ones that this happens with, it happens with those cpu pitchers consistently.. Jaden hill for the Rockies is one.. I rage everytime the cpu brings that card in.
So idk what the hell happened between the show 25 and 26, but undo whatever changes you tried to make to cpu pitching and LEAVE IT ALONE..
stop screwing with things that aren’t an issue..
Next CONTENT structure.
As a 780 rated player, I understand that how yall structure content and release of it isn’t a simple “please everyone “ ordeal.
There’s a percentage of highly skilled players who probably spend more money each person on the game than the average joe may, most of them are content creators which provide free advertising and marketing for your product and as a business there lies incentive to please them..
I’d like to see the numbers on a spreadsheet of which percentage of your total player base ( not this year because of how many cheaters and where they’re ranked ) make up the 800+ rated vs 600-790 and <600 rated and then how much money annually each of those groups tend to spend on the game and how often because if I was a gambling uneducated fool I’d place all my money that (1) the majority of your player base falls in the 0-600 rated player group and it’s astronomically more money they’re spending on your game than the 800+ rated player when you look at the numbers as a group and not just on “individual player vs individual player “ basis .
My point is: I understand why yall drop content that’s really next to impossible for most players who aren’t 800+ rated caliber players—- to give the really good players something to strive for… but yall need to dial back the frequency of that’s
Almost every collection in this game to this point requires every card in the series to finish, which includes a TON of cards that can’t physically be earned without spending money on the game —if you’re not a top 5% skill player AND can’t play 40 hours a week..
I get it.. you’re trying to incentivize the majority of us to “buy packs/buy stubs” -micro transactions but you’ve gotten WAYYYYYYYY TOO GREEDY. It’s been ridiculous for a while now and it’s getting worse and we the consumer have become fed up with it. And it’s also my personal opinion that the introduction and take over of Micro transactions ultimately DESTROYED GAMING.. but that’s another conversation to be had elsewhere..
Stop with the “you have to earn every player and then pull every possible pack player in this series to finish the collection..
Stop with the “must collect 99/99 to get___ with every collection..
every now and then ? Fine.. some of us can tolerate it… but it’s the majority of the collections and it has been for a while.. there’s more people who can’t realistically obtain that, than those who can and if you’re a gambling person why wouldn’t you game on the larger quantity? Quantity sometimes does mean more… it’s math… if 50,000 people spend 200$ a year each on your game vs 500 people spending 500$ each on your game a year.. who are you getting more money from??
The new Miguel Cabrera collection just dropped… I have to ask, who is the genius who thinks structuring the collections like that is a great idea? Fire them immediately.
Y’all did this in 25 with the hall of fame themed cards like [censored] Allen, Billy Wagner etc etc etc.. I can kind of understand making the 99 John Donaldson that extreme to get… he’s the best pitcher in the game by far and it’s not even close.. and it was okay to nerf his usage rate for A YEAR by making him less accessible..
BUT, maybe next time instead of doing that, OR DROPPING HIM in a free reward path like you did in 23.. find some middle ground between the two… OR here’s an idea.. maybe find a way to balance hitting in a way that removes slider shrinkage and maybe he won’t be as over powered.. - get back on topic, all of those collections last year for those HOF cards -and rewards cards where you needed to finish every collection in game to get them… I think yall need to seriously stop and look at the analytics and come to the realization that is a stupid strategy.. the majority of your players can’t and won’t get those, and the amount of players who MIGHT ACTUALLY Say “screw it let me spend x amount of dollars to purchase stubs/packs to get this card” is so few and far between when you can comprehend that you’re negatively influencing most people’s experience and making a lot of people angry and consequently REFUSING TO BUY PACKs due to a result of your greed and structure, maybe you’ll realize I’m right and that you’re shooting yourself in the foot so to speak..
Again, I can understand having one card/collection PER YEAR where you have to finish every collection in the game to obtain.. I can deal with 1.. but not 6+… and the sad thing about 25 is that out of all of those cards and collections yall structured like that, the only cards meta relevant by the end of it all was John D and Billy Wagner but even Wagner BARELY makes the cut of what “the meta “ is considered and in my personal opinion there were many options better than him and most people even if they had that card didn’t use him.. so what the F$&,k was the point?
I hope you get my point …
Yall need to get a grip and make some serious changes fast.. there’s so many people trying to get into your game for the first time and you’re losing out on a lot of their future spending and time in the game because of how absolutely terrible this game is ..
ITS TIME FOR NEWER AND BETTER SERVERS..
I don’t need to dive into this.. you guys are way behind and playing your game online is an absolutely miserable and infuriating experience..
Just some honorable short mentions :
The content overall has been absolutely terrible.. the new miggy collection is terrible
, the programs have been super half @$$ed,
Ex spotlight trout … you get what 2 players a free pack and then him. .. nice man…
Maybe if there were more programs, that structure would be ok..
I’m okay with not having to spend 2 days grinding a program to get the one card I want, but if you’re going to keep your content drop schedule and frequency the same as when years past the spotlight program would be 100 xp points and have 10 players and etc before you got the final program reward, you need to increase the quantity of these what I’ll call “mini programs”
Also… stop structuring these programs where you have to do every single little thing in them to complete..
Give people more options and freedom to complete how they’d like, I’m not saying “I wanna be able to finish every one of them in 5 minutes “ or the contrary.. but it is absolutely frustrating to have to do every single freaking thing, I have to do a showdown , complete a conquest, all the moments, and every single mission to finish a [censored] program that doesn’t have much content/reward for my time and effort..
Yall need to make some serious changes and you lied to us..
You lied and said “we removed shrinkage on pitches away from”
What a ball faced lie..
You absolutely cannot do that again. Nobody likes a liar..
P.S. stop gate keeping live series collections for the best of your players..
I don’t care what analytical or psychological data yall have that that makes you and other gaming studios convinced that forcing micro transactions down everyone’s throats = the most money,
But it is killing your games and just as things changed when it first came to the culture, the culture will change again eventually .
Go back to putting more time into building a higher quality product and experience and establish trust and loyalty throughout a higher volume of players so that people will continue to play this game for longer than if you continue down this path because I promise you The days of games having a heavy focus on designing micros instead of wuality of game is coming to an end. People are tired of the greed and clear lack of respect for the people who got you here.. and your losing more players more money because of that.