Community Forum

@P0pa-Cherry_XBL said:

@akapaco159_PSN if you want sds to listen to your input, just become a content creator, develop a large audience, and complain about stuff that only you and the most elite players want changed. It's that simple. /sarcasm

I noted the sarcasm, and of course your thrust is on target. Not even people who invest huge in this game for no compensation whatsoever have seen their reasonable requests to make the game better acted upon. Just the opposite. Years go by and if anything, the modes they care about are made worse.

@RonSolo412_MLBTS said:

@GoonJackson_PSN There isn't any reason. We're 4 days from early access and if they were going to add any significant upgrades to stadium creator for 26, they would have announced it by now.

100% true.

The sole remaining question left for those few of us still left, from what used to be a robust and large stadium creator community, is how much longer we are going to treat SDS like it's a company that cares one iota for serving customers?

We all know the firm answer, but some of us are not yet willing to admit it loud and clear. Personally, I don't see how anyone can fork over his hard earned money to a company that seeks out every chance to poke him in the eye. I simply ask, after this game is released this Friday, and it is confirmed once and for good that Stadium Creator has gone now two years without any improvements, and over five years without any significant upgrades, will you be willing to hold this company responsible?

I've long been of the mind that Dale Murphy should be in the hall. His career was cut short due to injury to his knees, and he was a victim of the multi-purpose stadiums that featured larger than today's dimensions, which cost him many homers during the prime of his career.

But, two MVP, seven All Star, five Gold Gloves, and four Silver Sluggers all speak for themselves. He led the NL in homers twice and RBI's twice. Moreover, he played on just one team that could be considered good (1982). After that, his teams were well below average and he was pitched around the rest of his time in Atlanta and still put up monster numbers. He finished with over 2,000 hits and 398 homers.

When he retired early due to injury, he was 27th all time in homers. The steroid era allowed many players to eclipse his lofty numbers. But for the entire decade of the 1980's, Murphy led the NL in games played, at bats, runs, hits, extra base hits, RBI, runs created, total bases, and plate appearances. Oh, and throw in a 30-30 season in 1983.

The man should be in the hall.

You are being stubborn trying to defend an indefensible position. You doing it out of boredom, or do you really believe what you're writing?

@SaveFarris_PSN said:

You serious?

Call of Dutry
Fortnite
Madden
Netflix
YouTube
HBO
MLB Itself

The Show is competing with ALL of them.

Non-sequitor.

That's like saying car companies compete with bakeries. Yes, both are in business and both rely upon a finite number of customers. But, by all definition of competition, those two are not in competition with each other. Likewise, someone in the market for an RPG shooter game isn't simultaneously seeking out a baseball video game.

The lack of innovation by SDS with their once premier title is driven by lack of competition. Why do you think Bill Gates financially bailed out Apple? He said it plain. He knew that Apple was a prime competitor with Microsoft, and as such he knew their existence forced everyone at Microsoft to work harder and better.

No amount of managerial motivation can compensate for a lack of competition in the market. But, when the management leverage the lack of competition, then things drop to their lowest levels. That is the situation at SDS.

Not a fallacy, Sarge, but rather a deliberately stubborn reaction. I believe that within SDS leadership there is actually an outright malice at work, a mentality that leaks out their malice that we customers who enjoy creating stadiums dared to think for ourselves, express our desires, and then found a way to bypass their imposed restrictions.

The option to move the wall panels shocked all of us and we still don't know how that option materialized. But, when it happened and SDS learned of it, their actions betrayed their motivations, their values. They imposed restrictions and they hate the SC community for bypassing them.

At this point, their ego got bruised, and I conclude that if someone offered a $5 million payment direct to SDS, to upgrade Stadium Creator, that SDS leadership would refuse it and keep SC stymied. That is my measure of how personal this has gotten for SDS and how much value the leadership there places on their egos. One thing is clear, outright effort to please customers simply isn't important.

Lying to the customers through manipulative marketing slogans is as close to customer service as this leadership group will ever get. They value control over everything else.

@P0pa-Cherry_XBL said in Who is in Charge of Marketing?:

This is the most quiet I've seen the forums this close to launch. Idk if it is because of marketing, but it's not a good look.

The reason is no secret. It was a reality under heavy customer discussion here dating back to the release of MLB 25. SDS was bluntly warned that they were guilty of releasing new titles containing paltry upgrades. SDS was told that if this multi-year theme continued, enthusiasm and sales would suffer. And, that is precisely what is happening.

If one could get SDS leadership in an environment where they could speak their mind freely, I figure they would agree.

Marketing can only do so much. If the basic reality of the title is undermined by years of paltry upgrades, then charging $100 to $75 per unit is going to see greatly diminished sales and enthusiasm. This isn't a marketing issue, folks. This is an issue resulting from running SDS on too lean a development budget and too light a vision for keeping the title at the forefront of video game technology.

@Christuffer_NSW said in This was not 505 feet:

@PAinPA_PSN That would make sense, for foul pole homeruns but I can also see people being able to break records cuz of this.

What point are you trying to make? Projected distance has been the reported yard stick of real world and the video game homers for decades. The math isn't difficult and the projected distances reported in current days are quite accurate.

@mhenry23_PSN said in Umpire accuracy:

I'm pretty sure they intentially do that to make it seem like real life.

Umpires are graded on the rule book strike zone and those grades are now hard and fast, and umpires are told that if they grade poorly, they are subject to disciplinary action. Most real world umpires get the call right per the rule book about 98% of the time, with the allowable error being the width of the ball.

Now that ABS will be in use in the season, umpires who fail will be humiliated by overturned call after overturned call. It will become a public mode of correction that will force umpires to get the calls right.

It's been a multi-year issue, with hundreds of customers showing the proof in bug reports. SDS has never implemented the rule book strike zone and with ABS used this season, the issue is more acute than ever before. The way the MLB rule is written, if any part of the ball touches any part of the strike zone, then the pitch is ruled a strike.

The way SDS has implemented the strike zone, anything from 50% to 100% of the ball has to be in the zone to be called a strike. There is no valid reason why this bug has persisted. It's just another example of SDS stubbornly refusing to fix reported mistakes in the game.

@victoryphoenix_PSN said in An offline gamer gives his input way too late:

Here is my feedback

Make user created stadiums available to play in Miniseasons, and not just the cookie cutter stadium, ball parks with 'unique' dimensions

Bring back sounds of the show and put some resources into Franchise.

Fix Stadium Creator.

I wanted to focus on these three inputs. The theme of all three is ways to allow customers to insert customer-created items in the game. In particular, the idea of customers being able to create "unique" dimensions in created stadiums that still fall in line with baseball stadium rules, is the greatest single deliberately neglected part of MLB The Show.

If SDS wants to tightly regulate online competition by requiring totally uniform criteria, including stadiums, then I'm fine with that. But, there is no reason at all for them to extend that hyper control to offline play. It's just dumb. In fact, it's worse than dumb, it is self-destructive malice.

There is a version of Stadium Creator already out there, already being used, to create stadiums with unique layouts. It is the version used by people SDS hires to create stadiums for the game. SDS does not want the customers to have that version, so the customers get the deliberately degraded version that forces the jewel box layout that frankly no stadium in history has matched due to the way the sightlines down the baselines are unfriendly to how the game of baseball is watched. It's more at home to a football stadium than a baseball venue.

A year ago, I believed it was possible for enough people to pressure SDS so that they would acknowledge the desire and make their internal version of SC available to the customers. That disappeared when I saw what they did this year to SC, just to stick a deliberate finger the eye of customers. Now, I fully comprehend the level of malice guiding SDS leadership.

Your suggestions are all easy to implement. None of them will be, not in MLB 26 and not ever. It would require leadership who genuinely care about pleasing customers vice sloganeering.

I deliberately stayed out of this thread for three days to see if SDS would reply. No surprise they have not. Folks, we need to give up on SDS making SC better. They don't care to. For them, it is just another option to cater to DD players who want to grind out in cookie cutter venues. This truth is the only reason that SDS didn't kill the three custom content game modes entirely.

@The_Bane_Event_PSN said in Showdown:

If they made the card rewards guaranteed, I’d always play the mode at least once. Maybe make it only at Veteran difficulty if they want to make it somewhat a challenge. If you play All Star, you get maybe an extra Show Pack, Hall of Fame a Ballin Pack, Legend a Jumbo pack, Goat a Chase pack. You get the idea. Some kind of incentive for those that want to play higher difficulties. I’m just not a fan of the percentages they put in. Why play All Star over rookie for an extra 7% chance. They can still have failures or successes in the moments and showdowns give positive or negative perks, just remove the percentages.

Isn't that just common sense! I mean the reward for winning a contest should be certain, not a lottery outcome. Imagine the reaction should winning the Super Bowl result in picking what's behind doors #1, #2, or #3, and having a donkey behind one of the doors!

Yet, that's pretty much the outcome SDS chose. People can successfully complete the same contest and end up with radically different rewards. No real world sports league could get away with such.

@genopolanco_PSN said in RTTS Players in DD:

@GoozeFn_PSN I don’t care. DD isn’t fun for me anymore. I just don’t want them to ruin RTTS because of it.

That's the heart of the issue right there. This is the sole reason why SDS made their single most idiotic decision when, despite having Shohei Ohtani as their cover athlete, took away true two-way player capability within RTTS for MLB The Show 23. You see, someone advised SDS leadership that it was somehow an "unfair" advantage for DD players to have a two-way player from RTTS on their DD squad. The reason obliquely offered was that they could earn "double" the attributes.

A mighty thin basis for releasing a patch shortly after the initial release of MLB 23. But, that's what happened. After that "update," suddenly RTTS customers could not hit and pitch in the same game, which is sort of the whole point of having two-way players in the first place!

The point being, that if SDS would stop prostrating themselves rotten appease DD players, then having RTTS created players in the offline options in DD would be a nice idea. But, if there is the slightest inclination of SDS to botch it for the second time, then it's a firm NO for me and likely all RTTS players.

@jaychvz_XBL said in Good/Bad sportsmanship:

@PriorFir4383355_XBL what if you could only upvote , no downvotes . High upvotes get better matchups . ‍️ just brainstorming .

That would be an improved option certainly. It would prevent trolls from doing what they enjoy doing -- hurting people. Yes, that option would not allow them to act out.

@cedarballs_PSN said in Why Are You Forcing Your Players to Pitch From the Stretch in 26?:

No other sports game focusing shortening the time of the game. In NBA games you play shorter quarters (not make the time tick faster). So in baseball you play less innings modes like Battle Royal, and events. They could make a ranked option where you can choose your desired amount of innings. But taking away the windup from pitchers is a lazy/uncreative approach to fixing the length of games. We shouldn't sacrifice realism or what makes players unique from each other to shave off 8 minutes off gameplay. Will not purchase until this gets changed.

Outstanding points. No logical much less fair way to refute them. SDS did this because they pander to DD players, and length of the games was something too many lodged complaints about. These are people who just want to rush through the grind to earn the virtual trinkets, and this latest SDS response proves once again where SDS's priority lies. As I have written before, current SDS leadership treats MLB The Show like another role playing shooter game, vice something that sharply matches real world baseball.

That's an outstanding point and one that has been raised with SDS time and time again, falling on deaf ears. SDS operates on the basis that what caters to DD play is the driver of the game's evolution. Currently, there are only two modes that allow customized players -- Franchise and RTTS. There is no reasonable argument to be made why they should not be allowed in private league play online, or in Exhibition games.

Sorry, but I don't share your optimism. Most people wouldn't take the time to rate either way. Those who do would feature a far larger population of malcontents whose self-declared mission is to cause other people trouble. These are the same malcontents whose conduct in online games is the source of the expressed need for this "solution."

What is most likely to happen is that folks who play honest are going to get undeserved negative ratings from the same abusive players who wanted to make the game miserable in the first place. It's like allowing players in real sports to officiate themselves. It doesn't work.

You really don't think giving an opponent in a totally anonymous online game the influence to negatively or positively rate his opponent would not lead to abuse?

The reason why there are sports leagues in real life is primarily to write rules of the game, and enforce them. This to counter the human nature to cheat. The leagues hire, train, and supervise officials whose purpose is to ensure the games are played in accordance with the established rules, and hand out punishments when players break those rules.

Online gaming suffers because there is no rational way to match that setup. Instead, the games turn into a wild west show where within the limits of the game code, anything goes. People are free to play tough, hard, and fair, or tank, or in other cases cheat or play just to toy with the opponent -- with the goal to undermine the enjoyment of quality competition.

The reason why customers of MLB The Show so often ask for an expansion of capabilities within the framework of private leagues is because if one cannot replicate the real world league structure, then at least the private leagues are formed by folks who know each other and if nothing else, quality play is ensured through peer pressure.

In sum, if one chooses to play online games against completely anonymous opponents, then one must accept that if anything the anonymity encourages bad people to act badly. Few here have been as critical of SDS's behavior than I have. But, on this score, honesty must override that. SDS is neither responsible for, nor capable of, reforming human nature. If you dip your toe in online gaming, you accept the environment for what it is.

And this is why I choose to totally avoid online gaming. Each person must make his own choice here, but do so with a rational understanding of the environment. That means stop trying to pressure SDS to write game code that would effectively force bad people to play well.

That's just a big part of it, but not all of it. I think Clark knows this season may be the last for a while, and I don't think he wants to face the labor war that is certain to come. And it will be a lockout that will make 1994 pale in comparison. The majority of the owners are determined that professional baseball will not resume without a salary cap and floor in place.