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I never bought 2020. First time in about a decade that I didn't buy the new version. Was just too much going on in life with COVID and whatnot. Normally I've had a pre-order waiting at GameStop each year. That said, I'm currently reinstalling 2019.

I'm extremely frustrated with this year's version of the game, and, along with others who have expressed similar sentiment, I am very concerned with the direction and design decisions SDS is headed in.

I have four major concerns regarding what SDS has decided to do with our beloved game.

First, I think the idea of a Universal Profile for RTTS is just flat-out boneheaded. If I want to build a toon who is a fleet-footed, base-stealing, contact hitting CF who can chase down fly balls like a greyhound, that character is going to have a much different look and physique than my power-hitting 1B who crushes balls 450+ feet and runs a 40 yard dash in about 2 minutes. Those two guys are not, in my mind's eye, the exact same guy with the exact same physical appearance with two different "loads".

Second, removing or severely nerfing aspects of the game of baseball for the purpose of online play and forcing players of all other modes to "take the hit" is unfair at the very least. Two examples which I know of: the Knuckleball and the check swing. In the 2021 version of the game, the Knuckleball simply doesn't exist and the ability to check swings when initially fooled by a ball has been nerfed to be nearly obsolete. That's NOT baseball.

Third, the idea and implementation of "archetypes" seems to me to be clearly inferior as compared to the previous method of player progression. If a player can run like Rickey Henderson on Monday, he's not going to transform on Tuesday to a Miguel Cabrera and then again on Wednesday to a Clayton Kershaw. IRL players don't simply forget how to hit a baseball because today they are wearing their "pitcher hat" as compared to their "slugger hat".

Fourth, at one point RTTS could be played and enjoyed entirely offline. You didn't need a persistent, or even a particularly good Internet connection once you had installed and patched the game. In the 2021 version of the game this is no longer the case as Program Progression is entirely dependent on Internet connection.

None of the above reflects my disgust with current state of the game with all the bugs and whatnot. That definitely impacts my overall satisfaction with the game. But the issue I'm trying to call out in this thread are about larger game-design issues which are, at the very least, perplexing to me.

Cheers,
Moose

Totally agreed.

SDS's design decisions with respect the "universal player" and it's impact upon RTTS are profoundly disturbing for the people that have been playing that mode for years. Gone are the days of having multiple unique characters with unique looks, gear choices, playing styles, etc. Heck, you can't even "start over" because there is no starting over. Once you've levelled up your "universal player" (meaning base stats have progressed from 30 towards the cap of 50), there is no going back. If you start a brand-new RTTS career with a developed account, your guy is going to be way OP for AA ball right off the bat - nothing you can do about that.

Like you, I've been a customer of this franchise for years. I'm a young 55. And almost every year I have looked forward to this game's release date (2020 was an exception due to COVID). 95% of my play time is RTTS. And this release, on the whole, has been the most disappointing garbage I've ever seen SDS attach their name to.

I've really tried hard to like this game. I have two different archetypes levelled up to Diamond, one to Gold, and one to Silver. My "base stats" on my "universal player" are near 50 across the board except for bunting (I never bunt). But I think I'm going to go back to 2020 to get away from the universal player concept.

@Tarne67_PSN Great post. Appreciate your insight.

@Chalonverse_XBL - well, I'm sorry that happened to you. And I salute you for describing the situation with a much more gracious and calm demeanor than I would have. That just sucks being removed from the roster like that because SDS didn't improve the postseason scripting to account for the 2-way mode that they are basically shoving down all of our throats. Truly mind boggling.

Is it my imagination or have check swings been ridiculously nerfed in this year's game? I have played most years of the past 10 or so, I do admit I skipped 2020. But check swings in 2019 at least worked about half the time (if not more). In this year's version, maybe 5% of the time if I'm lucky.

I've been fairly active on this forum the past couple days. Thought it might be beneficial to put together a separate post as to what things are wrong with RTTS right now that we know of. This is not meant to be a whine post but rather an attempt to list out all of the things which appear egregiously wrong with RTTS as it stands one day after release day.

Hopefully someone from SDS is at least looking at this (easy to notice from the "Dev Tracker" that they appear to be mostly concentrating on DD and marketplace issues).

So, these are the things we know require improvement and/or possible redesign by SDS:

• Program Progression is largely not working/intermittent at best. This is crippling to the RTTS mode as progressing your character is largely based on the new game design and requires acquiring better "perk" objects (e.g. - the "gold" Power 1 gives +7 POW at the cost of -4 CON and -5 VIS, whereas the "bronze" Power 1 only gives +4 POW at the same cost). Those "perks" are quite difficult (impossible really) to acquire playing RTTS at this time;

• New character creation is poorly thought out and executed. Areas of pain identified by players include (1) disdain for having to be a 2-way player out the gate; (2) inability to have control over your own secondary position; (3) inability to create a knuckleball pitcher (hey SDS - ever hear of a guy named Phil Niekro? Baseball Hall of Fame? Ring any bells?);

• Items which are equipped as part of the RTTS "loadout" do not appear to have any impact at all upon OVR but do actually impact performance on the field so actually this is mostly a non-issue provided items are properly applied when selecting a "load out" before each game;

• Check swings went from being fairly reliable in past versions to basically impossible in 2021. RTTS is supposed to be a simulation and check swings are definitely a big part of baseball. If this needed to be nerfed due to DD then frankly that's fine but at least allow RTTS players to check their swing on pitches as previous versions of the title have. And btw - did SDS consider the impact of this change on being able to raise plate discipline? Because the way it is now, you can only raise that attribute through training and not on the field performance.

• Player progression through training opportunities appears painfully slow. This compounds the issue with Program Progression not working because in the absence of both, how the heck are we supposed to be able to advance our players to be able to achieve any success at the MLB level (presuming that doing so is our actual eventual goal).

• Players who use multiple "loadouts" report that picking which one they are using before the game does not work as designed.

• Inability to easily have multiple separate and distinct RTTS careers. For instance, in previous versions I (and it appears many other players) would have one RTTS career running as a SP, another as a power hitting 1B, another as a speedster, another for my child who liked to intermittently play. The Universal Player makes that so much more cumbersome to accomplish - even if having different loadouts were working as designed (which, sadly, is not the case);

• The assertion, previously made by SDS employees Tony and Nick on the blog post (https://theshow.com/road-to-the-show-feedback-improvements-repeat/) that "a RTTS player should feel like they can freely progress by playing RTTS and only RTTS" is at this time (the day after public release) completely false.

Those are the things which I came up with which are known "broken" and seem particularly egregious.

Anyone else care to add?
Moose

edit - made a minor grammatical correction, added that players with multiple loadouts don't always get the right one in each game, removed reference to catchers because apparently you can create a catcher (who, of course, will have SP as his secondary position), corrected on items giving bonus attributes in-game.

@GrizzBear55_PSN - you the same Grizz that's been posting here for years man? Just wondering...

Uhmm... no disrespect man, but today is launch day. Meaning public initial release date. Don't believe me - no worries - do a google search "mlb the show 21 launch date".

Just saying - today is launch date. This mode is broken, by the measure of the very words posted by the dev team in that blog post. You cannot progress your RTTS player by playing RTTS and only RTTS. And no, I'm not feeling like I'm being ungrateful. I payed a solid $85 for the Jackie Robinson Edition. It's not an unreasonable expectation for me that I expect for $85 that SDS deliver a working game in one of the primary game modes on release date.

No disrespect to you personally man - but if you can't see that aspect of it then frankly i think you've spent a bit to much time as a SDS fanboi.

Moose

I've been forming a thought. Not sure if it's a good one or not. But figured I'd toss it out and see how ya'all responded. Asked myself the question - if SDS waved a magic wand, and everything which is currently broken with this year's game was suddenly working exactly correctly and as designed, would I want to play RTTS? And, for me, the answer is no. The current game seems, to me, profoundly wrongly designed as compared to what it has historically been to the point that frankly I would rather play previous versions.

So, in the spirit of trying to actually be helpful, what changes should SDS implement to make 2021 (or some future version) attractive to me? This is what I came up with:

• One, give the players back control over what their primary and secondary positions are going to be. For guys who want to be two-way players, then they have that. For guys who do not, have the primary and secondary positions be ones that use the same archetype. For non-pitchers, having a secondary position is actually quite important to various roster moves - and has always been a huge part of RTTS.

• Two, allow the players to create "profiles" which combine the archetype/program + physical appearance (height/weight/complexion/etc.) + equipment and then bind that profile to a created RTTS character. Obviously, for the players with two-way characters, a profile would require two different archetypes/programs - one for pitching, one for position play. For the one-way players, they would have only one archetype/program - either one of the pitching ones or one of the position ones - which would be appropriate for both their primary and secondary positions. For the RTTS player who wants to have multiple unique toons - this is how they do that - allow them to have multiple profiles. Maybe some of their profiles even use the same archetype - but with different physical appearance. This allows the father who wants to let his child play on his account to create a player of said child that is "his own" (something that I happen to be familiar with).

• Three, do away with the "buildout selection" at the start of each game. If it's a two-way character, automatically use the correct archetype/program for the position being played that game. If it's not a two-way character, then there is only one archetype/program to use.

• Four, assuming the "universal player" isn't going away - allow the RTTS player to select which of his created toons is to be assigned as the "universal player". This is the toon that would be available to play with and earn progression in DD.

• Five, bring back the knuckleballer for RTTS. If a player chooses the knuckleball as one of his pitch types for a certain toon, then do not allow that toon to be bound to the "universal player". That separates the "problem" from DD and online play.

• Six, bring back the check swing. There's got to be a "happy medium" between how this worked in 2019 and how this doesn't work in 2021. Find it. At least for RTTS.

• Seven, allow pitchers to develop more than 3 pitches. Hard to believe you guys (SDS) missed that but from all reports you have.

• Eight, figure out a way to support the user who has intermittent or poor Internet connection. Or perhaps the user who wants to take his console on the road and not connect to the Internet while travelling. RTTS used to be stand-alone - figure out a way to make it functional in that capacity.

That's what I came up with. I think (1) - (4) all sort of work together but if taken as a whole would allow RTTS to function within the framework of what SDS has already built. (5) - (8) are all sort of stand-alone fixes that could be done individually. Anyway - my feeling is that if SDS were to modify the game in the manner described above it would address the vast majority of issues that players have reported here.

Thought I'd toss it out there. Please input if you agree or if you don't.

Thanks,
Moose

edit - cleaned up the formatting to try and make this flow a little bit better. Sorry for long post - but hey, at least I'm passionate about the game!!

@thebootman88_psn said in potential loadout program workaorund:

Some of the DD people are talking about wanting to change the color of their cards, so that will probably be priority.

Thanks for making me laugh. Through bitter tears of course, but still - good for a chuckle!!

I thought the same about the equipment bonus. But if you pause the RTTS game while playing and look at your player card, you will see the bonuses are actually being applied. They simply aren't visible as part of your OVR.

@painpa_psn said in Duct tape fix to get your RTTS progression working again.:

Duct tape can fix digital problems now.
Just when you thought it could do everything,they invent new stuff for it to be capable of.

Don't fool yourself. This isn't duct tape, this isn't even bailing wire. This is like taking some chewing gum, and the foil wrapper it was in and using the gum as an adhesion to position the foil at the top of your corroded starter cable on your car's battery to get the damned thing to start. And it might... for a while...

This is McGiver before he became good at what he did.

@osogigz_psn said in Will it get better?:

I’ve been playing RTTS since The show 16, and nothing’s changed until this year...

Although I'm not SDS's biggest fan at this time, in fairness I can't agree with this statement. SDS has tried to make various changes to RTTS over the years - some have been better executed than others. Well, almost all have been better executed than 2021. Here's a list of things that they've changed:

• Player Team Selection not sure exactly what year they introduced this - I think ~2016 or so - but back in the day the player had absolutely no control over which team he played for. Then they introduced a dialogue box during the character creation process (still there to the 2021 version) which lets you pick which team you will be drafted by;
• Player Progression way back in the day you earned training points via on field performance and the you could spend those training points as you saw fit on your attributes. All player attributes went from 0 to 99, as your invested in attributes your OVR would go up. Back then, guys on this forum joked about "peds" because you could also buy caps from the store, use the caps to buy training points, and thus spend IRL $$ increasing your RTTS toons OVR faster. Sometime, I think it was around 2018, they changed this progression model. The cap was still 99 but they incorporated archetypes which would limit certain attributes and favor others. That's when the training model changed to something similar to the 2021 version - with a batting cage, training field, and gym option which would allow you to either increase your cap or directly increase your rating for an attribute. Eventually you had to increase your caps to improve your toons. But unlike 2021, character progression then was much faster than now;
• Equipment back in the day equipment used to be purely cosmetic - no bonus gear at all. At that same time that SDS changed progression, they also introduced equipment. So players who were spending caps on training points could now spend caps on packs and hope to open great gear. The gear essentially became the substitute for the "peds" of years past;
• Personality/Relationships I think it was 2019 that this change was introduced - you had different personality types ("Captain", "Maverick", etc.) which included their own training tree and as you unlocked the tree, you would gain different perks for your toon.

That's a partial list for the ways RTTS has changed over the years. Again, I'm not a huge fan of SDS right now. But I do give them props and credit for being willing to experiment and introduce new concepts to this game.

@osogigz_psn said in Will it get better?:

This years RTTS is absolutely horrible.

This statement I absolutely and 100% agree with. It truly boggles my mind how completely SDS has screwed the pooch this year.

Couldn't help but notice by the glaring lack of mention regarding gear not reliably working in the RTTS mode.

SDS - please note that RTTS players would like to receive their gear bonuses while playing. What's the point of unlocking all the diamond and gold level gear while levelling up your archetype if the gear doesn't work?? Considering that the gear has a certain monetary value (measured in stubs at least), it continuing to not work feels more and more like robbery.

I guess I can have some hope that even though this issue isn't mentioned in the update notes it will just magically start working after Update 4 is in place.

@SGoforth3_PSN - your base stats are capped at 50. But your effective stats are not. Your effective stats are impacted also by your Archetype (the large diamond shaped card - either bronze, silver, gold, or diamond) and your Perks (the smaller diamond shape cards that "bolt on" to your Archetype - of which you can have only 2 at Bronze or Silver Archetype, 3 at Gold Archetype, and 4 at Diamond Archetype). Then lastly your effective stats should be modified by your equipment - but this is broken in RTTS (works in DD).

Your effective stats are: base stats +/- archetype card +/- perk cards + equipment. Which end up getting pretty high actually. My "The Hawk" build is max diamond archetype with all diamond perks and mostly diamond gear. 120 CON and 105 POW in DD mode. Only 99 CON and 79 POW in RTTS mode. The difference is because in RTTS mode equipment does not seem to work in most cases.

In any case, to @Mav232_PSN 's original point - yes, you can't go past 50 now. But you can still build a pretty impressive character with the new system. Unfortunately with gear currently busted, it's not as good as it should be in RTTS right now.

And to @SGoforth3_PSN 's point - my "The Hawk" is a 5 tool guy in DD mode. Basically his lowest stats with current build are in stealing and speed - which are ~85. So you can still build a pretty impressive toon with the new method if you want.

Other people have posted on this with the same experience as you indicate. I wouldn't say that this is a bug - more of a game design flaw. Basically SDS has to revisit the logic used in the post season roster management to account for the 2-way players that they are forcing everyone to be with the new Archetype model.

I find it moderately amusing (in a very exasperated sort of way) that they push the 2-way so hard on us but they didn't fix their post season logic to account for it. And yes, I say that the 2-way is a force because no matter if you choose to only play one-way you will still be locked into a secondary position which is the other.

Anyway, if you don't want to have to deal with ongoing post season roster weirdness, start a new toon that is not a 2-way player. At least until they fix it.

@rathanian_psn said in If you had to choose right now RTTS 2020 or RTTS 2021?:

But I doubt it goes back to the old method. Though I hope I am wrong but I think the load outs are here to stay.

You're right - loadouts and Archetypes are definitely here to stay. SDS has said as much already. Something about how this is the direction they are going to build on in the future. But my opinion is that they definitely could have implemented this without impacting RTTS nearly as much as they have in 2021.

The game play in 2021 is actually quite good, and there are things I like about the Archetype system. SDS could "fix" RTTS, imo, by making one major change - allow second and subsequent RTTS careers to NOT be linked to the Universal Profile. Meaning they could start at "30" all over again - could have a different physical appearance - maybe could even learn to throw a knuckleball and also not have the exact same pitch selection as the "main" RTTS save - and pick their own secondary position if they truly do not want to be a 2-way player. Yet at the same time allow games played with the "non-linked" RTTS career to count towards Archetype and Program progression (because everyone wants goodies). This fairly simple (in concept at least) change could resolve about 95% of the issues that players seem to have with RTTS.

And, yes, allow RTTS to function in offline mode. Points you earn towards progression should simply be in local cache until server connectivity is restored.

Hopefully in a future version. Obviously not going to happen in 2021, so I'm back to playing 2020 for now.

ROFLMFAO!!!!! You think RTTS will hold you over?? Go check out that discussion area - for the most part, the RTTS players seem to be fuming at the state of this game right now.

If you just made the toon, you can exit the game and delete the save file. Yeah, it's a bit of rework but based on the forums I seriously doubt you want to try and change your pitches once set. People are having all sorts of problems with pitching right now.

Basically I also feel like the blog post says a very nice version of "sorry, not sorry". This is release day, and basically RTTS is totally broken at this time based only on what the devs actually say. This quote is taken from the blog post linked above "a RTTS player should feel like they can freely progress by playing RTTS and only RTTS"

Is that true right now? No, it's absolutely and completely not true right now. You simply cannot earn progression points towards your archetype by playing RTTS right now.

So... thanks for admitting that your game is broken on release date. Good job!

@victor_sds_psn said in SDS - Fix Equipment for RTTS Please!:

Thanks everyone for these reports.

We hope to have this addressed in an upcoming update.
Barring any setbackᵀᴹ of course

This is not particularly reassuring actually. First, "hope to have this addressed in an upcoming update." basically means nothing. It would be great if global warming, world peace, and economic disparity could all be fixed. And I can just picture the UN saying "we hope to have all this addressed at some ambiguous future date". This statement from SDS means about the same.

"Barring any setback (trademarked)..." So, barring anything more important and/or interesting coming along??

Let me make this a bit less ambiguous - diamond gear has a monetary value measured in CAPS. CAPS have a real dollar value set by SDS/PSN in the marketplace. Ergo, gear has a real dollar value. Gear is described as functional in both DD and RTTS mode but only works reliably well in DD mode and only very intermittently works in RTTS mode. Ergo, SDS/PSN is perpetuating a fraud/theft of goods against their customer base for as long as this issue is unresolved.

Potentially consider this argument as you contemplate the "setbacks (TM)" which would further delay a fix to something which should have been working from Day #1 of release.

Working for me. Playing on PS4.

Just played a series in RTTS and after completion noticed that the numbers in the "my player" > "loadout" > "sparkplug" > "program" have moved up. Also, it does not show "program progress" in the after game summary. So if you don't go into "my player" then potentially you might be missing it.

Something which sucks - I'm about half way through my first season. The date on the calendar is 7/22/2021. I just recently got moved up to AAA but the first three months of the season I was tearing up AA. None of those appearances, none of those games, did I get credit for my appearances, hits, etc. Which means I've unlocked less stuff than I should which means AAA is probably a bit more challenging that designed. Oh well, first world problem I guess - at least it's working for now. For me at least.

Yeah... I have no idea what is going on with this bug-ridden game. As I reported above, this worked for a series. Before I started the series, went into my "program" menu (totally unintuitive crappy interface imo) and saw where my stats were. Finished the series, they had gone up and I got the first reward (the one you get at 5). I claimed the reward and have played two more series since then. Many at bats, a handful of hits - no movement at all in the "program".

So basically I have no damned idea what the delta is between working and not working might be. Sorry all.