I only caught a tiny part of the stream, but I did see them talking about the prestige diamonds and how they were using them to respond to the requests for the return of some of the stat grinds. Except that in my experience, 95+% of the people asking for stat grinds were offline players looking for more to do than just play Conquest over and over.
As someone looking for better things to do with my DD collection without having to play H2H, was there anything new in this stream?
I want to play with my DD collection. Nothing else. I don't want to play with a drafted squad or with live MLB teams. And there's a big limitation with everything I can do with my collection - Conquest is 3-inning road games only, Play vs. CPU is aimless, and singleplayer Custom Leagues require exploiting a loophole, don't count as DD for the purpose of missions, and offer only home games.
Custom Leagues without the mentioned problems would be pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.
@NicholasHowardT5 said in Moments in The Show:
They haven’t shown the DD screens ? And the moments were 100 times better than playing with one player or team for 500 innings I can’t believe some of y’all actually like the old way better.
As I recall, ag1982 leans heavily toward playing offline. I'm the same way.
The Missions of 17 and 18 were at least interesting objectives that we could accomplish organically in the course of games. I understand how online players would much favour the XP rewards path + Moments, but us offline players were left with so little to do it wasn't worth it. Moments are walled-off objectives that were unfulfilling. Conquest is nothing but three-inning road games. Without the interesting and challenging missions, there's no entertainment to be had from Play vs. CPU.
@Psycho__Kinetic said in Lacking content.:
Play vs CPU
Make it a season mode and I'd enjoy it. As it is, Play vs. CPU is just meaningless individual games.
It looks like there's the ability to do the Evolution programs (the new rookie-to-prime) offline, but that's a small thing. Still no meaningful 9-inning single-player DD games with your collection.
@yankblan said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:
I mean, can’t you play a franchise using “add Legend to the FA pool” option?
It's not just about being able to play with the legends; a huge part of it (for me, at least) is the journey of building and improving my team by collecting cards, which I find much more interesting and entertaining than being a GM in Franchise.
Dear SDS,
Build on what you started with Custom Leagues. Let us play a single-player Custom League without having to exploit a loophole and have it count as DD for the purpose of missions.
Alternatively, let us play a proper 162-game season with our DD team replacing the MLB team of our choice, and based on how much success we have, award team affinity for the team we replaced. Increase rewards for keeping our team within roster restrictions BR-style as an optional salary cap mode.
A huge part of DD is the card collection, but there's so little that can be done with it in singleplayer. I've been wanting more for years, but they don't seem to care.
@iTzPSUNation said in I'm out not worth the time anymore:
As an offline player, you are nuts. Between moments, showdown, conquest, and MTO being impactful towards getting cards there is a ton of offline content. Adios.
Not content that actually uses our card collections. Conquest is all there is. Everything else is meaningless and uninteresting.
@CDNMoneyMaker93 said in Turn Off Online Only:
This is about they way YOU want to play and that is mindlessly grind 9 inning games to get stats for players
If that's the conclusion you come to when reading that I want meaningful nine-inning games, then you have my condolences for your imagination being broken.
Ideally they would've given us a decent nine-inning mode e.g. a season mode instead of showdown, but once that ship sailed, any ideas would need to fit in the framework that exists in MLB 20. Here's an idea I posted way back in March:
Here's an idea that I could see being added in 20: Award a TA voucher for winning a game (or games) in Play vs. CPU. The voucher can be used to get TA points for any team that has the team you defeated as a rival. The higher the difficulty, the more TA points the voucher is worth.
But they couldn't be bothered to do that or anything even close to it.
@CDNMoneyMaker93 said in Turn Off Online Only:
you can't be mad at SDS when they try and build a game and content for a wide variety of gameplay options.
That "wide variety", at this time, does not include non-pointless regulation single-player baseball games using the card collection that diamond dynasty revolves around. That's the kind of thing that should be added first, not after a bunch of peripheral novelties.
@CDNMoneyMaker93 said in Turn Off Online Only:
Right now in this game there is an amazing amount of single player content to play.
I don't want to play moments.
I don't want to play showdown.
I don't want to play conquest.
I don't want to buy and exchange a bunch of cards.
I want to play meaningful nine-inning games with my card collection. That they've left such a gaping hole in the middle of singleplayer DD two years in a row now is pathetic.
@nymets1987 said in Turn Off Online Only:
What were the old stat missions? New to DD this year mostly
They were program missions that ranged from small tasks like getting a win with 7 innings pitched and 7 strikeouts with a specific pitcher card to medium tasks like 15 doubles with all-star series cards, to painfully long tasks like getting 200 holds with left-handed pitchers (which was a requirement to get the immortal series Billy Wagner card).
The modes that counted for these missions were ranked seasons, battle royale, conquest, and play vs. CPU.
Since the worst of these tasks would take forever to do organically in H2H play, online players took the path of least resistance and played on rookie difficulty against the CPU over and over.
@CDNMoneyMaker93 said in Turn Off Online Only:
I'm sorry but MLB 18 stat mission were the most mind numbing thing ever, VS CPU 9 inning games on rookie so I could get 500 hits with X position was beyond trivial.
There were plenty of smaller stat missions that were perfectly reasonable and they got rid of them, too, and replaced them with stuff that doesn't use our card collections. Our collections are the centrepiece of the entire mode and to have so few meaningful uses for it is frustrating so people are reaching for what existed in the past because that's what they know.
The problem is that SDS has refused to give us suitable replacements for the old stat missions two years in a row now.
@CDNMoneyMaker93 said in Turn Off Online Only:
As well MLB 18 is consider the worst version in the series and yet we still have calls to go back to a format like that
The reason we see those calls is because there's so little to do in singleplayer with our DD card collections.
Especially, there's no meaningful nine-inning DD games (as opposed to moments) that we can actually get things like TA innings in. The only things that count for DD are conquest (3-inning road games) and play vs. CPU (meaningless). MLB 18 at least had plenty of entertaining, non-trivial objectives that could be done in play vs. CPU - innings are a mindless background task and there isn't near enough to do to make those innings entertaining.
An option to play conquest with nine-inning games and randomized home/away would go so, so far.
@msacks11 said in They Should Make Offline Events and Seasons:
Squad battles in NHL is a great time. I'd like to see something like this on The Show.
It would take very little change. Make Extra Innings games count for missions when they''re started via the DD menu option (as opposed to challenging a specific player's team in the Ranked Seasons standings) and then give us meaningful missions.
@pbake12 said in They Should Make Offline Events and Seasons:
Not a fan of those, as they were just full game moments. Where stats or innings did not count. I would rather have something where TA missions and innings can be earned offline in a meaningful way!
I haven't checked in months, but the lack of moments using our DD teams at launch this year indicated to me that they finally realized the incongruence of them giving us innings missions - background tasks in desperate need of interesting foreground tasks - and then giving us foreground tasks in which the background tasks don't count. Especially when there's no good reason for innings to not count in moments.
And of course, those DD team missions weren't replaced by anything using our DD teams.
The only offline stuff they add is ways to obtain cards. The list of single-player things we can do with our card collections remains straight-up pathetic. In the absence of so much as an interesting set of non-trivial missions to do in Play vs. CPU, the only conclusion that I can reach is that they just don't care.
They genuinely don't care about singleplayer DD. If they did, they would have done something about the abysmal list of uses for our card collections by now. I don't personally care about prestige cards, I just want meaningful 9-inning games to play.
@eatyum said in Where are all the Vet's?:
Idk, to me there seems to be more offline content.
There are evolution players. (Yes some online missions, but the majority of any evolution is offline stuff).
Team Affinity is way more relevant for offline, with stuff like showdowns and moments tied to it.
I have reasons to occasionally do Play vs CPU to accomplish things like player evolution.
You have player programs, which combines moments, stats, and play vs cpu (Again, some online moments stats, but majority is offline)
Conquest maps are decent, especially compared to this time last year, we didn't see things like prospect packs early on.
The only thing really missing to make offline the ultimate experience is being able to prestige players.
Imo 2020 offline > 2019 offline
Single-player DD in MLB 20 is unspeakably bad, just as it was in 19. There's a major disparity between the list of things you can do in singleplayer to get cards, and the list of things you can do with those cards. The latter list is simply pathetic.
I thought they had turned a corner in providing things to do in singleplayer with the stat missions from the last inning program in 19, but I was obviously wrong. They didn't add any kind of meaningful new mode to play proper 9-inning games with our teams, they haven't put out any moments that use our teams, and they haven't spackled over that hole with a decent set of repeatable set of missions that can be done in play vs. CPU. Same as last year, the only repeatable missions are the innings ones for TA points, and those are background tasks with not near enough interesting foreground tasks.
I can't help but come to the conclusion that they genuinely don't care about DD being good outside of multiplayer.