Community Forum

Last year SDS revealed their motivations and there is no logical method to refute it. SDS does not want to see customers create stadiums that could rival what their team creates in the game. That is irrefutable and once that reality is accepted, then understanding every move SDS has made, and will continue to make, becomes easy and unassailable.

The barest new option emerged briefly in MLB 25 last fall, and a month later SDS recoded SC to try to nuke that option. SDS could have expanded the existing code to invoke when any wall panel is moved, but they did not do that. Conclusion: SDS wanted a fiasco with cheat stadiums like Lagrassa so they could use it to justify their policies with Stadium Creator.

The people who created the few new items for SC are no longer working for SDS. I know because one of those people contacted me to provide the low down. If you think the community is disappointed, just imagine how angry those who worked hard to create Stadium Creator feel about it now!

SDS is on suicide watch right now and are too myopic to realize it. Once their neglect of the game offends the bulk of the DD players then MLB The Show is doomed. And a serious erosion of profits is just as likely to see Sony sell off the pieces of SDS for a final profit dip vice spend any money on hiring a code team capable of upgrading the game title.

@DominickB3_XBL said:

It seems it is still broken for me on my pitcher throwing to first base. I have it set to use the fielding perspective base buttons, on the diamond it shows it correctly with x as first, a as second, b as third, and y as home. But if I hit x it throws it to third base. It is especially frustrating since it makes it impossible to pick off to first base if you pick the pitch that is the b button pitch as you just end up doing a slide step and throwing the pitch.

I feel like this has been a problem since last year and I just assumed it was a known issue that was going to be fixed.

Could it be linked to me using meter for my pitching somehow? And when my guy is at shortstop the buttons work as intended so I know it's not a full RTTS bug, only when I am pitching.

Yep, it's been three years since SDS goofed this up and despite hundreds of bug reports they still have not fixed it!

@Gamerskilledboy_PSN said:

@PriorFir4383355_XBL Its definitely made the game less fun and more infuriating when pitches fall a millimeter on the corner or the sides. Bases loaded and thats instantly a strike out. Which can ruin the game.

Do you hate real baseball the same way? Bases loaded situations end all the time on a called strike three for the third out.

@ApolloZ_99_MLBTS said:

@KoaSouljah_PSN you are asking the world for a game that releases yearly to cater to your every wish. It’s just not plausible. Game isn’t as bad as some of yall let on

Asking for a significant technological upgrade to the game so that it matches multiple sports games on the market already is, in your words, "asking for the world?" Do you really believe that?

If you do, then allow me to ask you this. Precisely when -- if ever -- would you expect SDS to significantly upgrade the game?

MLB The Show desperately needs to replace RNG engine based play outcomes with physics based play outcomes. It needs to upgrade the graphics, with significant improvements needed in body object modeling and how objects interact with weather (wind and rain), and also how the ground interacts with rain. If you don't think SDS is lagging behind other game titles, then take a look at NCAA College Football 26. I own that game and believe me the quality of graphics in all those areas I discussed are significantly better than what SDS continues to put out.

Just like golf, baseball is a game of physics. The way balls are thrown, hit, react to a pitch, are all deeply ingrained into the psyche of not only players but also fans who have spent years watching the game played. Savvy baseball fans can watch a hitter contact a baseball and know within a second whether that contact is going to be an out, a single, an extra base hit, or a homer with about 90% certainty. That other 10% of the time is the case of a hit being snagged by an outstanding defensive play.

There are essentially five data points for the game to calculate to use nothing but the physics of bat to ball contact to perfectly play out in graphics how that hit performs: exit velocity, launch angle, contact angle, temperature, and wind. Of these, the temperature at game time plus the wind is known before the pitch is thrown. The other three are therefore the data inputs that must be calculated within a split fraction of a second, but modern consoles can crunch those numbers quickly enough.

By contact angle, what I mean is the angle formed by the bat, upon contact, relative to the front side of home plate. Is the bat, at contact, perfectly parallel to the front edge of the plate, or is it canted acutely or obtusely to the front edge of the plate? This contact angle not only determines the initial angular direction of the hit, but also when combined with the launch angle and exit velo, able to calculate the spin that the contact imparts on the ball. Combining this angular measure with the exit velocity and launch angle, and then measuring the influence of wind and temperature, and a nearly perfect replication of every hit can be calculated and fed to the game engine to drive how the graphics of the ball in flight are presented.

Difficulty levels can be implemented by changing the virtual size of the bat's sweet spot, with the largest area assigned to the least difficult level, and shrinking until at the highest difficulty level the sweet spot replicates the size it would be in real baseball games.

If this concept of the physics based baseball video game can be explained in a few paragraphs, don't tell me it cannot be implemented in any of today's generation of baseball video games played on today's generation of gaming consoles. It can and SDS should have done it years ago. And yet, even in MLB 26, we see example after example where it is clear that some RNG calculation is what determines the play, not hard physics. This is where SDS has failed and it is reasonable to call them out for it.

This is an overreaction. SDS actually did something positive here. GIven their overall performance, it is hard for me to write that, but I have to be honest about things. They reformed their strike zone to conform with the rules that have been in the MLB rulebook for over 100 years.

They did this by shrinking the dimensions of their depicted zone slightly, so that any ball that nips any portion of the zone is a strike. The same pitch that was a borderline strike before the change remains a borderline strike now. It's a minor change and certainly not capable of "ruining the game."

@Bridge-Piece_XBL said:

Probably unpopular as this is ALL OVER Twitter, but I think two things are getting mixed together here.

The strike zone update seems pretty simple: it’s visual. The logic didn’t change. If the ball clips the zone, it’s a strike, and that’s how it was already working - we just didn't see the "correct" box. Now, the box is smaller / more accurate. Annoying to adjust to? Maybe. But I don’t think that’s some huge gameplay change as the box disappears as you're swinging anyway.

The PCI shrinkage thing is different. The communication around it was bad, and I get why people are pissed. But the actual logic makes sense to me. A hanging curve should be easier to square up than a dotted slider down and away. I know it’s a video game, but by that same logic, every perfect-perfect should be a hit and every bad swing should be an out. There still has to be some balance between input, ratings, pitch quality, and baseball randomness.

I’m not saying the game is perfect. There are definitely things that drive me nuts. I just still like playing it, and I think some of this is getting taken to the worst possible interpretation.

For me, the strike zone thing is basically nothing. The PCI thing makes sense in theory, even if it sucks. The biggest issue is the communication around it.

I agree with your overall take. That said, I don't think the PCI should shrink on a down and away pitch like a slider or curveball. The reason they should be hard to hit is because it should be hard to square up the bat on a ball that far away from the natural swing plane of the hitter. If that isn't harder in the game, then there are better ways to make it harder without shrinking the PCI. For example, the further away from plumb the control stick is moved, then the more uncertainty in the location. This would replicate the effect of human strain.

PriorFir4383355_XBL said:

I don't know why people advocate for "rules" in the video game that would be totally fake in terms of real world baseball rules. There is no rule in MLB regarding how many switch hitters one can have in the lineup. So, this is fairly termed a legal competitive advantage -- and no, I don't play DD so I don't have any person stake in this issue.

Now, if there is some contrived (artificial) reason why switch hitters have some special advantage in the video game, then it would be reasonable to take a look at that artificial reason. But, phony make believe rules do not need to be put into the game -- there are already too many phony aspects to how the game code functions.

The video game needs to become more realistic, not less realistic.

I don't know why people advocate for "rules" in the video game that would be totally fake in terms of real world baseball rules. There is no rule in MLB regarding how many switch hitters one can have in the lineup.

Now, if there is some contrived (artificial) reason why switch hitters have some special advantage in the video game, then it would be reasonable to take a look at that artificial reason. But, phony make believe rules do not need to be put into the game -- there are already too many phony aspects to how the game code functions.

The video game needs to become more realistic, not less realistic.

@SavageSteve74_PSN said:

@Onix_Savage22_PSN

The guy running the cheat had better be living out of the US with all the money he earned in offshore accounts. This is big money just on napkin math, 40k users at $200 a piece is $8M, plus another $1.2M per month, yeah Sony will come after you with that kind of money. They know he’s on discord, they’ll subpoena his account, lock up his payment methods, track those to his bank accounts, put holds on those. Even if he transferred to crypto, they’ll flag his account and trace the money. YFK doesn’t need to give up the name, I guarantee they’ve already got it.

If he doesn't live in a country that disregards requests for extradition, then I agree he's in serious trouble and good for him. Much as I hate the way SDS treats us as customers, I agree with them unleashing their legal department to go after these dirtbags with all the resources available to them.

If he does live in one of the civilized nations of the world, then he's in serious trouble. DIscord cannot avoid a subpoena and content once posted in a web forum is forever even if the individual later "deletes" it. Trust me, the post isn't deleted. Instead, it is merely transferred to another location where the web forum staff can still see it.

I think the criticism lodged here is comparing the methodology used by SDS in the Franchise game mode to real world MLB roster quality.

If we operate on the presumption that a 99 overall player is Mount Rushmore HoF material, and that a 90 overall to 97 is a HoF player, then it would seem that a player rounding out in the mid-60's should be a AAA player at best, and on a good franchise with quality rosters, assigned to a AA team. In this example, we have a player with an overall attribute level of about 50 being declared ready for the show.

That doesn't strike me as anywhere close to meshing up with reality, and isn't the whole point of this video game to try to mesh up with the real world?

@xRatedGProdigyx_PSN said:

@Dodgers_1890_PSN said:

@mietha_PSN yeah I know what you're saying. I'm still just very much confused on the whole thing. These people paid $100 for the game, $200 to join a cheater group, and $30 month to not actually play the game. In what world, does that make sense?

Also, what exactly is the end goal? Is it comradery within the group itself or some type of Truman Show complex? At least with Tik Tok troll types (e.g. Johnny Somali and Vitaly) they're making fools of themselves for outside attention, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. These cheaters are basically sworn to secrecy.

I understand why someone would use the mini-season and offline stuff. The online stuff... confused.

It's a fair question. My guess is their motivation is that winning by any means is a reality they have embraced, and it doesn't matter what the reward for winning is. They don't see how it cheapens themselves in the effort. The live entirely in the here and now.

PriorFir4383355_XBL said:

@ryguy034753_XBL said:

I'm so tired of EVERYTHING these days being gambling.

AMEN! Tell it, brother, tell it!

Think on it this way, what would the reaction be if the team that won their fourth game of the World Series was -- vice handed the big trophy -- was instead invited to "spin the wheel of trophies!"

Oh tough luck guys! You win a case of oranges! Better luck next time!

Here is the way it should be ... for any DD competition, either online or versus the CPU, there should be one card, or at least one level of card, that is advertised as the reward. Win the competition, you get that card. No games, no odds, no controversy.

Simplicity has a value all its own and yet SDS seems obsessed with hiding everything behind odds that may or may not even be accurate. SDS has morphed Churchill's description of the Soviet Union -- "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Quite telling folks! It took SDS a full calendar month to put out this statement. Joe is merely the messenger and what he does here is tightly regulated. The problem isn't his cause. It is however directly the cause and responsibility of the SDS leadership. They either didn't know what their marketing department was doing, or were complicit in releasing conflicting information.

Either way, there is glacial speed and then there is SDS speed. Hundreds of customer observations over several weeks, and seven game updates before any authoritative statement is given. That's actually worse than the actions taken and the statements initially made. This should have been clarified within a few days.

SDS certainly suffered a blow to their credibility. Their marketing department went to great effort to say that due to customer feedback that PCI shrinkage was being eliminated. Their update #7 text says that was not the case and went on to state that on certain pitches, deemed by SDS to be difficult, the PCI will still shrink, and on other pitches it will expand if that pitch is deemed to be in a bad location.

Here is the basic problem with this approach. It applies a double effect. It ignores that there is a human being using a controller to make inputs to play the game. A "hanger" will be easier to hit because there will be less movement of the controller stick to place the PCI on the ball square. Yet, there will be a second parallel running effect where the PCI expands.

So, what is SDS doing here? Is it trying to create a realistic baseball simulation game, or is it trying to influence the outcome through artificial means that have nothing to do with the skill of the human playing the game? Frankly, SDS does not seem able to make a decision on which strategic vision to follow.

My view is that the state of technology today means we should be well past sports video games relying upon RNG-based factors to determine outcomes, but instead implement actual physics to analyze what the human player is directing through his control pad and how those inputs combine with the objects in the game (baseball, weather, bat, etc ...) to produce an outcome.

Of all the sports out there, baseball is one of the easiest to base things on physics vice RNG. Baseball is a very simple concept. A ball is thrown, a bat is used to strike the ball, and the physics of that contact can be measured very precisely within any game code, and the outcome then very accurately determined upon ball-to-bat impact and then played out realistically in the video.

Then, a group of fielders react to the hit to make a fielding play.

This really shouldn't be all that difficult to achieve.

Listening?

I'd settle at this point for SDS not acting out of pure malicious spite!

Look folks, when the community finally has something they have wanted in Stadium Creator for over five years, and the ONLY time during MLB 25's release cycle that SDS devotes time and money to recoding SC is to DENY the very thing the community wanted and finally got, that is the dictionary definition of malicious spite!

Then, SDS doubles down on that malice, and leaves the backdoor wide open for cheat stadiums to ruin online play, when they had right in their hands already the existing code within SC to bar any and all cheat stadiums from any and all online play!

But, I'm not done yet! Then, seven months after all this ugliness went down, SDS doubled down on malice with the release of MLB 26 by severing the stadium vault from it, vice extend that existing code to bar stadiums from online play that feature modified wall panels.

And you actually want them to listen?

For so many years, SDS neglected game modes that were not DD. Now, it seems their quest to shortchange the title has extended to even DD. Would be nice if the leadership at SDS took note and ordered a change of focus toward customer service and keeping the game at the top of technology. But, assuming there are executives left at SDS with that goal, I seriously doubt they have the freedom to implement it.

When something like that happens, just immediately turn off your console. Then, restart it and from the main console menu, move the cursor to highlight the MLB The Show game, and bring up the sub-menu. There should be an option to "quit" the game. After that is done, restart the game and it starts off fresh from the game's main menu and the partial game is not reflected in the stats.

And yes, such annoying events that seem entirely contrived, and just garbage game code deciding to ratchet up the degree of difficulty in an offline game mode remains out of place.

@go4stros25_PSN said:

@Easy_Duhz_It__PSN why are you always so rude to people?

Because he is a troll. The solution is to block his account so you don't have his writings appear.

SDS has created a virtual gambling syndicate. You proud of yourselves SDS that your marketing folks have created an environment where people are induced to drop $1,500 in six weeks for virtual trinkets?

I know that a corporation is profit motivated, but that used to mean not to the extent that all moral concepts were abandoned. Our entire society has become hyper tuned with gambling, and manipulating pack odds to encourage people to drop real money post-sale for stubs to buy more packs is nothing more than an open invitation to gamblers anonymous.